I decided to go for Sea Lion in 1940, so had the expectation that it would difficult to impossible to accomplish. Unfortunately it was a cakewalk.
While I was busy sailing AKs and Amphs across the English Channel (while British warsips were present mind you) absolutely nothing happened. I even put the entire Germany fleet in the Channel and not a single Naval combat took place. I put the fleet into port (by accident too many circles. As a side note it would be VERY nice to have the sea area circles different shapes/colors than the port ones.) Still my transports sailed back and forth with not a single shot fired.
Well, maybe supplying them through convoys will get my convoys sunk. Nope. British subs in the Channel just watched them sail by with no effect. Must have switched sides when Churchill was not looking [&:]).
So what was the British CVs and BBs doing while all this was going on? Playing with the Italians in the Med!!!! I will admit the weather is better, but still. If Britian is being invaded through the Channel, every British ship would come screaming home as fast as possible in RL. Plus the british always kept a strong presence around the isle (Home Fleet anyone?). Of course they may just wave as the German convoys and AKs sail by, but they should at least be there. Not playing with Italy and NA.
It does seem that SOMETHING is happening with the AI fighting naval battles against other AI countries. But it is really hard to tell for sure. It just seems like if a human is playing a country, they are immune to being attacked at sea. And yes all my fleets were set on Engage and regular. I tried Raider as well and still no effect.
I have had subs out around Britian since the start of the war and have not had a single report of a convoy being hit. Made me wonder did the British even have any convoys? How about a pop up box at the start of every turn giving the results of Strat Bombing/Sub war. If nothing happens, then still have the box pop up and say nothing happened. Going into the Reports section, having to check on the Raider report, and THEN have to figure out is the report I am looking at last turn's or sometime before is less than useful. If viewing the report is the only way to accomplish this, then at least add a report for every turn so we will know that what we are looking at is the last turn results versus something that happened 10-20 turns ago.
One last thing is that Amphs are wayyy too easy to create. As Germany, I created 16 of them in less than a month (of course having over 500 PP after the fall of France did not hurt [X(]). So I was able to land 3 Corps in one turn. The US at DDay could not do that after years of planning but the Germans can do almost three times as much in 1940 (including a full Armor Corp
? In most of the other games that I have played that cover this period at this scale (Board and computer), Amphs take a long time to build and cost a LOT. So much so that the German player is forced to chose between a gamble with Sea Lion and a weaken (or delayed Barbarosa). As easy as creating Amphs was, it was not much of a choice. I can do both [:D].
So either make Amphs even more expensive, have them take time like most of the other units, limit the number that can be built at once (could even be country specific), or some other method to accomplish a real choice for Germany.
Like I said before, everything else works so well (and I am glad I bough the game) it just really makes the naval portion look very bad. So I can only hope that getting the naval routines up to same level as everything else is number one on your to do list. Of course you could always borrow the naval code from WitP [:D]
