European Theatres of Operations Game 2

[82ndtrooper]

and the final totals for the turn

[82ndtrooper]

scrolled down

[RufusTFirefly]

Nov 1940

Meanwhile the fighting in the west has come to an end. France and the Low Countries are completely occupied. Only the French colonies in Africa and Lebanon remained.

On the Balkan Germany is advancing slow but steadily. Maribor, Novi Sad and Belgrade have fallen (all centers you see in the two screenshots given above by 82ndTrooper). Only winter saved the southern parts of Yugoslavia so far from being defeated. Greece has joined the west and sent a corps to Yugoslavia. But as Greece is weak itself not much help can be expected.

Britain should be save as a result of the efforts made to strengthen the RAF. But the situation is quite different from what I planned and expected.

From the first turn on my idea was to use the air force as main weapon in the west. It should first of all protect Britain and make Sealion impossible. An invasion of Britain must fail without sufficient air support. Therefore superiority in the air is essential. I made two tech upgrades to guarantee that the RAF has powerful fighters available (first upgrade: Hawker Hurricane to Hawker Typhoon and Spitfire I to Spit V, second upgrade: Hawker Typhoon to Tempest and Spit V to Spit IX). The upgrade provided strong tactical bombers as well, being able to attack transport vessels and warships in case the Royal Navy needs some help. The upgrade from Bristol Blenheim to Bristal Beaufighter and now to DeHaviland Mosquito are big steps in this tech development. As 82ndTrooper used airborne divisions very successfully in the attack on France it appears as even more essential to prevent any German air unit from showing up somewhere over Britain. Several fighter squads spread all across England should guarantee that the RAF is always possible to intercept even in case some attacks by German fighters would have been flown before. The short distances between the air fields and any important place in England should enable the British fighters to attack even with very few AP left. The map shows the air fields where fighter squads are based (in Sept 40).

Second the RAF should be able to attack the German Luftwaffe in France and reduce it to an extent that makes bomber attacks possible. This strategy failed completely. After three turn paused, that I needed to deploy more fighters and build up new tactical bomber squads (that I havnt deployed before the first tech upgrade) I have sent lots of fighters to the French channel coast. The attack was a disaster. More than 30 fighters got lost, Hurricanes as well as Spitfires V and even some newly developed Hawker Thypoon. The German Luftwaffe lost 11 Messerschmitts. This failure destroyed my plans for spring and summer 1941. My idea was to bomb some French centers and reduce their production capacity. Beside this the Royal army should do some landings at French coast. It was not my intention to recapture France. British forces are too weak for that. But the landing should force Axis to send more units to France that would therefore not be available for any campaign in the east. As the British infantry might be in danger of easily being thrown into the Channel by attacks of powerful German tanks, the RAF should do ground attacks. Britain has no tanks being able to stand a fight with the German tanks as far as they were nearly equal in number. But the tactical bombers are very much able to defeat the German armour, using for example the Hawker Tempest that is available after second tech upgrade. But although being a good fighter the Hawker Tempest should not be attacked by German interceptors and use its full strength on the tanks. A British superiority in the air was regarded as being necessary for successful operations of tactical bombers. I now have to change strategy due to the desastrous result of the air battles in October.

(Being really shocked by the results of the air battles I opened the turn again and tried to do the attacks the same way. This time the outcome was 1 : 1.5 instead of 1 : 3. Only 10 fighters got lost while Germany lost 6 fighters, instead of 11 fighters to more than 30 fighters before). Many flights completed without any loss on both sides. In the first attempt there had been British losses in each attack. Results differing so much seem to me being similar to roll a dice instead of a calculation that enables the player to plan his attacks wisely. Of course there should be an uncertainty in the battles. But I am still frustrated of the way AT handles air battles. And I miss a patrol mission similar to the ones available in HoI and WitP, where few squad from different air fields can be sent to an area and take control of the sky in that area. Sending single squad in a recon mission like it is done here is not the best way option.)

[82ndtrooper]

To everyone reading this please understand that Rufus and i have talked this over between us in several emails so anything we post here was discussed in-depth between us beforehand. This is to pass information along to you folks and to Grumpy.

According to my history actual loses of fighters in the first battle was 27 plus some bombers which took your total over 30. The fighter results where 2.5 : 1 not 3.0 : 1.

27 divided by 11 = 2.46
which is still very harsh results. I only point this out because as a test game its important that we pass along to grumpy accurate information. ( I am not trying to be rude or a smarty pants )
But there are other factors involved that have a bearing on the results of the combat.
First I had around 30-35 fighters defending spread out evenly across the entire front. The majority of my fighters had 70+ XP with one squadron at 80 XP and 2 around 66-68 XP my squadrons consisted of 3-4 planes each.
My planes where tech-II his where mostly newly made tech-III, so he attacked me with raw inexperienced pilots against my most experienced pilots.

As the German player and as a player in general I am pleased with the results because it shows that XP does play a part in the air combat in this scenario which as a player is exciting to me. Because of the first test game I played I thought that XP was playing a larger role then in any other scenario I played so in this game I worked hard to get my pilots as much XP as possible. I was very careful in how I used them and did the majority of my ground assaults without using my air-force to prep. I mostly used my airforce to attack behind the lines and intercept his attacks so as to minimize my losses and gain XP.

as it is the 11 planes I lost where almost all from my 70xp pilot group. so after the battle I wound up with 1 squadron at 81 xp ( I merged the sole remaining 78xp fighter into it which brought it down from 85xp to 81xp) and the rest of my squadrons in the mid to high 60 xp range.(after rearranging units and replacing losses)
As the German player that really hurt my air defenses.
please also understand that except for two small squadrons in the Balkans all my fighters are defending France, I have nothing on the eastern front or available for North Africa.
I have not been able to tech up anything except for infantry-II and planes-II.

Now some other things to look at.
its only 1940 and Germany has just captured France. I have to move my main armies to the east and attack Russia and I have to secure the Balkans and Greece Plus I have to support Italy when it comes online in North Africa.
I also have to raise the war footing of Italy which starts at 30% and the axis minors which start at 60% while teching up my armor and artillery etc...

and England has already teched up to tech-III aircraft.

If as Germany I have to get in a Arms race with England and do nothing but tech up my aircraft and constantly replace huge plane losses to defend France in 1940 then the game is already lost. Germany does not have the production capacity to do this and accomplish everything else.

If all England has to do is tech up planes and throw them at France in large numbers to win in 1940 then what is the point in playing ? Historically if England had thrown its air-force at France in 1940 they would have been destroyed and would have lost the Battle of Britain. So its my opinion that these results are as they should be. low XP pilots against veteran pilots should get shot down at 2 :1 odds. As it is I lost the core of my veteran pilots and had to replace them with less experienced pilots and the next time he attacks I will lose more and then more until as it was historically Germany will run out of experienced pilots. The allies will gain XP and Germany will gradually lose xp. So I feel that the scenario is working as intended since its just winter of 1940.

Also in this version the price of cargo ships and the fact that Germany only has 1 production center of 2000 on the coast means that Germany can only make 1 cargo ship every two turns and nothing else. I do have 4 other production centers of 1000 each which means it takes 5 turns or more to make 1 cargo ship or sub or destroyer from each of them. This makes it impossible in this version to do Operation Sea Lion. So England doesn't have to build anything but planes to be completely safe from attack. Germany cannot build enough subs to be effective much less anything else or enough cargo ships to carry an effective invasion force in 1940. I can not counter the powerful English navy or make enough cargo ships to absorb the losses I would encounter. It simply can not be done. ( I know Grumpy has already stated that he is working on adjustments to the naval part of the scenario for the next version I am just saying in this version Germany is limited)
Understand that I am not complaining at all, I am explaining the situation as I understand it as a game tester.

I gave this a lot of thought over the last couple days and just realized this morning that there is a simple and effective way to fix this problem already built into the game.
Each technology upgrade is labeled with the time frame in which it was available. (see screen shot below) All the players have to do is make a house rule that you cant research any tech until the years that it is listed as available.

this will cure the whole problem of for the German player. England could still make a lot of fighters and attack Germany but they wouldn't be allowed to tech up past the planes that where available in that time frame. So they could still do Rufus's strategy but it wouldn't be totally crippling to the German player.
its fair to both sides and doesn't require any changes to the game. Simple and effective.

Right now I feel that there are no adjustments that need to be made to the cost of cards or planes or anything except for the naval costs as noted above.
I just sent Rufus an email about this idea this morning.





you need to fix this picture grumpy [:)]

[82ndtrooper]

Any thoughts or suggestions are always welcome.

[RufusTFirefly]

Jan 41, upgrades:

Both sides have made an upgrade of infantry, Aixs has upgraded to air tech level II while Allies have reached air tech level III. Last turn the air battles over the Channel caused 3 losses for the RAF while 6 German fighters were killed. This turn the ratio was 6 : 5, so no real advantage for any side despite of different tech levels. Maybe in the long run the increasing experience will change the balance to Allies, but the effect should not be heavy.

Axis might upgrade armor or artillery now while this turn Allies upgraded naval tech.

In Yugoslavia things go on slowly as all is frozen in a harsh winter.

[82ndtrooper]

I upgrade my air to tech-III but have just begun to produce the new planes.

[82ndtrooper]

ok we have done two turns each already today so things are moving fast.

last turn I researched planes tech-III but the allies have had tech-III for several turns so I am racing to produce enough new planes to catch up before all my experienced t-II planes are lost.

The bad thing about T-III planes is that the new T-III BF109-G version is an inferior plane then the T-II 109'F the only thing about it is that its cheaper to make and now I can no longer make the better 109-F. The new FW190-D fighter is a much better plane but its more expensive to make. So I have been forced to make a Italian fighter to fill in the gap. If I wasn't already way behind I could make the cheaper 109-G's work. Since the new 109-g's are inferior I don't want to upgraded my current experienced 109's to a worse plane it would actually be paying supply to down grade my planes and the allies went through tech-II to tech-III so fast I wasn't able to build many of the 190-A's so I have very few with experience to upgrade.
I have 90% of my fighters on the western front just to hold on while I try and make new planes.

Other than that not much going on I am just moving forces to the eastern front and slowly working my way through Yugoslavia.

a look at the new 109-G

[82ndtrooper]

and the previous 109-F

[RufusTFirefly]

The opponents of the BF109 are the Spitfire IX ...

[RufusTFirefly]

... and the Hawker Tempest.

[RufusTFirefly]

The fight for superiority in the air doesnt turn out as badly for Axis. This is the result of the third recon flight done by 4 Hawker Tempest. Two flights provided a result with nothing more than losing AP on both sides. The third attempt ended in a loss of a fighter although the RAF seemed to be much stronger.

[RufusTFirefly]

So it is no surprise that the turn ended up like this ...

Britain will produce 18 fighters next turn. But as long as Axis has to replace only 2 fighters, Britain wont win the battle for French skies. And next turns Axis might install some air defence as well.

[RufusTFirefly]

Here is some nice screenshot of a recon flight a group of Short Sunderland made, starting at the Scottish coast. They waved hello to some Russians at Leningrad.

[RufusTFirefly]

Meanwhile Turkey joined the Western Allies. First units are boarded and will soon be shipped to the European battlefields.
(Turkey near the border to Lebanon)

[82ndtrooper]

Notice in the above screen shot it was my LFT V-JG squadron of 1 plane that fought his 4 tempest.
that Pilot has 89 xp and is one of my last high experienced pilots.

this morning he was awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler himself.

Then he was sent to the eastern front.

[82ndtrooper]

my 109-F's are slowly being lost so the new German planes being produced are the Italian Macchi-205 and the FW-190D.

[82ndtrooper]

and the Italian plane.

[82ndtrooper]

its now march 20 1941 and Italy still isn't awake neither is Bulgaria and Finland.
This is hurting especially Italy I really need that production.
This turn I played a "raise Italian war footing card in hopes that may jolt Italy and help wake it up.

Winter is finally over and I am still moving armies east.

I spotted a small British fleet off the coast of Yugoslavia and sent all available planes against it.

[82ndtrooper]

this is the force i was able to muster.