Matrix Games Forums

Not really bug reports, but things that are unrealistic in the game:

* Fleets should not be able to sail in and out of Leningrad during winter.
Nor should they really be able to use the north part of the baltic sea,
really. Unless they have wheels.

* WA should not be able to ship supply to SU in winter via Archangel.
Murmansk is OK because of the gulf stream, it never freezes over but
Archangel is on the opposite side of the Kola peninsula and doesn't
get the gulf stream.

* Not sure what this whole invading Gibraltar via spain thing is. The
spaniards have been trying it since 1805. It can't be done, the stretch
of land is too small, precipitous, and too heavily fortified. Treat
Gibraltar like an island, really.

* There are no reasonable landmarks on the southern coast of Spain on
which to mount artillery platforms. Not sure why artillery in Spain
gets to op fire at sea traffic moving from the atlantic to the western
mediterranean, that's what Gibraltar is for.

* The kerch straits -- not really crossable unless you have support from
the Black Sea fleet. The Germans never managed it in several years of
trying. So you can't just stick a big army in Sevastopol and march it
to the Caucasus, again a matter of a small stretch of (swampy, treacherous)
land.

* The bit about spain being a frozen ally of Germany (covered in Francos
alliance) and the bit about how scotland can be invaded on the first turn
before the allies get to move have been covered elsewhere.


Del

ORIGINAL: delatbabel

Not really bug reports, but things that are unrealistic in the game:

* Fleets should not be able to sail in and out of Leningrad during winter.
Nor should they really be able to use the north part of the baltic sea,
really. Unless they have wheels.

True, but not really important in terms of WaW. Its not like moving in and out of Leningrad with naval units during winter is a crucial part of any tactics.

* WA should not be able to ship supply to SU in winter via Archangel.
Murmansk is OK because of the gulf stream, it never freezes over but
Archangel is on the opposite side of the Kola peninsula and doesn't
get the gulf stream.

True, but again not terribly important if you consider the scale of the game. Definitely not something that worries me.

* Not sure what this whole invading Gibraltar via spain thing is. The
spaniards have been trying it since 1805. It can't be done, the stretch
of land is too small, precipitous, and too heavily fortified. Treat
Gibraltar like an island, really.

When did Spain ever mount an attack on Gibraltar? What do you think would happen if Gibraltar was cut off from supply/reinforcements and shelled endlessly by artillery and Stukas? Sorry, but I believe you are way off if you think Gibraltar could not be taken.

* There are no reasonable landmarks on the southern coast of Spain on
which to mount artillery platforms. Not sure why artillery in Spain
gets to op fire at sea traffic moving from the atlantic to the western
mediterranean, that's what Gibraltar is for.

I havent been in that area personally so I cannot dispute that. I would like to see some actual proof though as I have to admit that I find the claim a bit unlikely.

* The kerch straits -- not really crossable unless you have support from
the Black Sea fleet. The Germans never managed it in several years of
trying. So you can't just stick a big army in Sevastopol and march it
to the Caucasus, again a matter of a small stretch of (swampy, treacherous)
land.

I do not understand what you mean by this. In WaW you cannot cross from Sevastrapol to Grozny unless you already control both areas. So, please elaborate.

* The bit about spain being a frozen ally of Germany (covered in Francos
alliance) and the bit about how scotland can be invaded on the first turn
before the allies get to move have been covered elsewhere.

Spain is handled differently in A World Divided - hopefully you will like that better. Scotland has also become much harder to invade for several reasons so again I hope thats more to your liking.

I am not sure how you manage to invade Scotland during the first turn in WaW though - unless you mean by replaying the first turn over and over till you get some amazingly lucky dice rolls. Would you care to explain how its done?

Del

ORIGINAL: delatbabel

* Not sure what this whole invading Gibraltar via spain thing is. The
spaniards have been trying it since 1805. It can't be done, the stretch
of land is too small, precipitous, and too heavily fortified. Treat
Gibraltar like an island, really.

Del

I agree with Jan about the other stuff, however I wanted to add that taking Gibraltar in modern times would not have been hard for the Spainish to do, with Axis help. So to say it can't be done is highly unrealistic. What you actually dislike, I gather, is the German conquest of Spain just to get to Gibraltar. I also hated that metagaming, which is why I made Spain unattackable in Franco's Alliance. Only when Spain joined the Axis willingly could the Axis then roll into Gibraltar the easy way and avoid the whole difficulties with amphibing it. That is also a feature I added to Franco's Alliance. The other is, one way movement between Spain and Gibraltar so that another silly tactic is nipped in the butt. In the new game these features of my mod are now modeled into the game via the new neutral rules and the Spainish coup event. While its not identicle, and it couldn't be because of the differences with what I had to work with while modding WAW, the effect in the new game feels very similar to what I was tring to achieve in WAW. While you could still technically attack Spain in the new game you really would not want to because its already leaning Axis so your getting something out of it. If you really want to take Gibraltar now you could wait and hope for the coup event or you could launch an amphib.

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen

True, but not really important in terms of WaW. Its not like moving in and out of Leningrad with naval units during winter is a crucial part of any tactics.

Mmm ... maybe. However Russian fleets / subs in Leningrad should not
be able to (nor were they able to) disrupt the Sweden / Genmany baltic
convoy route in Winter.

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen

* Not sure what this whole invading Gibraltar via spain thing is. The
spaniards have been trying it since 1805. It can't be done, the stretch
of land is too small, precipitous, and too heavily fortified. Treat
Gibraltar like an island, really.

When did Spain ever mount an attack on Gibraltar? What do you think would happen if Gibraltar was cut off from supply/reinforcements and shelled endlessly by artillery and Stukas? Sorry, but I believe you are way off if you think Gibraltar could not be taken.

Google maps to the rescue. Go have a look at maps.google.com and zoom in on the southern corner of spain, containing Cadiz, Gibraltar, etc. There are reasonable quality satellite maps.

Gibraltar is essentially a "rock". It's a heavily fortified isthmus connected only via a small sand spit to the spanish mainland. Also, if you're looking at it at ground level, it's very steep sided.

You could take it amphibiously, no question about that, as you'd have sea access to the port area. Or even just with superior naval force -- knock out the defending fleets. The Dutch have done it twice. Trying to hit it with artillery or stukas would be no more successful than taking Mt Everest by the same method. It's just one big lump of granite.

Perhaps you should go there some time?

Spain, incidentally, has on several occasions mounted attempted attacks on Gibraltar since 1704. 1713 was the one where they finally gave up and handed over sovreignity.

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen

I havent been in that area personally so I cannot dispute that. I would like to see some actual proof though as I have to admit that I find the claim a bit unlikely.

Again, I suggest you check out google maps. Tarifa is the closest point but it's fairly low lying, floods regularly, and muddy. You could mount small artillery there or build up the area with major earthworks but the island is relatively easily avoided.

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen

* The kerch straits -- not really crossable unless you have support from
the Black Sea fleet. The Germans never managed it in several years of
trying. So you can't just stick a big army in Sevastopol and march it
to the Caucasus, again a matter of a small stretch of (swampy, treacherous)
land.

I do not understand what you mean by this. In WaW you cannot cross from Sevastrapol to Grozny unless you already control both areas. So, please elaborate.

OK, I can (as the Russians) move troops back and forth, so I assumed the Germans could do the same. My misunderstanding of the map symbols.

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen

* The bit about spain being a frozen ally of Germany (covered in Francos
alliance) and the bit about how scotland can be invaded on the first turn
before the allies get to move have been covered elsewhere.

Spain is handled differently in A World Divided - hopefully you will like that better. Scotland has also become much harder to invade for several reasons so again I hope thats more to your liking.

I am not sure how you manage to invade Scotland during the first turn in WaW though - unless you mean by replaying the first turn over and over till you get some amazingly lucky dice rolls. Would you care to explain how its done?

Yes, by replaying the first turn over and over until you get the necessary dice rolls. The German player can easily do this because discarding the game and re-starting doesn't show up as a reload.

I've now seen this in 2 PBEM games -- both players sent me a start position with Scotland occupied -- twice out of two attempts. Since there isn't any real in-game mechanism to stop that I guess we can assume it's going to continue to happen.

Similarly I'd like to see a way of the Russians stopping the Germans from capturing Leningrad on the first turn of Barbarossa, however that's after the first turn of the game so I guess it's possible.

Del

If I was faced with an opponent sending me a game where Scotland was invaded on turn 1 I would inform my opponent that I consider that inappropriate play for the reasons stated in this thread and ask him to start over. I suppose it boils down to finding opponents you can trust to not cheat (too much).
 
Incidently you can cheat in even worse ways but thats probably a topic best left alone.
 
I am also well aware what it would take to prevent such cheating - but unfortunately thats outside the scope of whats realistic for this game.

ORIGINAL: delatbabel

I've now seen this in 2 PBEM games -- both players sent me a start position with Scotland occupied -- twice out of two attempts. Since there isn't any real in-game mechanism to stop that I guess we can assume it's going to continue to happen.

I just have to say this is terrible. I have never had a player do this in PBEM. But if I did, like Jan, I wouldn't continue. Obviously, your opponent doesn't want to play a fair game. Even if they were a very gamey player, you'd expect to see them trying and failing to do this about 8 or 9 games for every one it succeeds. [:-]
It's actually good in a way - because you can weed out this kind of player as untrustworthy in short order.

By the way, this kind of surprised me. I play PBEM for the challenge of playing a human opponent. Win or lose, it's fun matching wits against some very good opponents. If I just wanted to win, I would have kept playing the AI............

ORIGINAL: Forwarn45
By the way, this kind of surprised me. I play PBEM for the challenge of playing a human opponent. Win or lose, it's fun matching wits against some very good opponents. If I just wanted to win, I would have kept playing the AI............

Nicely say, if you just play to win then why bother with PBEM. Must say I prefer to win than to loose as everyone I guess but right now I did play only a few PBEM games. 2 were with the Axis and one I'm not loosing (not winning either unless because of the end date) but one where I'm so fucked up that Berlin and Tokyo are under sieged in 1943. At then end I did learned way more in that 1 game than in the numerous victories I had over the AI.