Grand Campaign V1.00

[macroeconomics]

The decision is made to resume the offensive in Scotland and force the outright surrender of Great Britain. Accomplishing this will also require the capture of Londonderry in Northern Ireland. But that is a matter for later. The reasons for this move are fairly clear cut, primarily involving the elimination of the Royal Navy before the US can enter the war. So we will need to resume convoy supply. The Kreigsmarine which had been hiding in Kiel sorties forward.

In Russia, the orders go out for a general offensive. There continue to be scattered snow showers in the northern sector of the front, but this is affecting no more than 5% of the hexes. Heavy rainfall will make the advance slow, but the Wehrmacht needs to get a head start on grinding down Soviet opposition. If heavy casualties can be inflicted on the Soviets prior to the middle of June, it would mean that Germany starts its traditional Barbarossa offensive with an early head start. 7 tech 2 panzer korps are now active on the eastern front along with a tech 3 panzer division (received from the Afrika Korps event). 2 more panzer korps are refitting with another 2 yet to be formed from divisional cadre.

Soviet air opposition is minimal along the entire front. Soviet reserves appear to be light. They look vulnerable. The toughest opposition comes from Soviet tank corps which are strong enough to require a German panzer corps plus 2 or 3 infantry corps to take down.

Here's how the northern sector of the front looks prior to the German moves for 16-April-1941.

[macroeconomics]

And the situation in the southern sector:

[Razz1]

Really? I will have to check this.

We had it in the game fora year before there was a major reorganization.

Italy was suppose to keep a certain amount of territory, up to and including one city.

ORIGINAL: macroeconomics

Some other minor points about how ToF handles situations that commonly occur in WW2 big strategy games. W.r.t. Vichy formation, Italy does NOT get to keep any small territorial gains it makes prior to the armistice. Any Italian units in France once Vichy forms are simply put in the "available to be redeployed bin". So there's no point in making mini offensives in Tunisia, or even towards Marseilles for that matter. ToF's French AI isn't stupid enough to leave southern France barren, so if you are playing as the Italian, simply accept that France is there for you to enter the war with, and go from there.

I'm in the middle of making my Hail Mary pass attempt to capture Dover and I have to say I really like how ToF structures its land/air/sea interactions, at least as far as amphibious invasions go. In a lot of WW2 strategy games you can sneak in an invasion force without air cover, or without taking out enemy air. Not in this game. You must have your bombers help take out the port defenders. And they won't be able to do that without enemy fighters prevented from intercepting them. So first you need to go in with your fighters. Then your bombers, then drop paras and the invasion infantry. It's a really nice overall structure that makes intuitive sense. Now they just need to get that Royal Navy more active.

[Razz1]

Also, USA is supposed to automatically join the Allies when Germany lands in Great Britain.

Plus, there were other factors to make the conquest of England harder.

Unfortunately, the play testers wanted an easy invasion of England.

I did make some adjustments to fix this scenario. I'll have to check to see if I still have them.

How would you like to be at war with the USA ans USSR in 1940 because you invaded Great Britain?

[macroeconomics]

On the Italian player turn immediately proceeding the German turn when the Kriegsmarine sailed to protect a supply convoy to England, the Italians note intel coming from Spain regarding a large assembly of British ships near Gibraltar. The Italians note that in the past that has meant the British intend to smash the Italian supply convoy to Africa. So they simply delete it. The Italian offensive in Egypt won't have legs now, but what would have been the point of continuing the convoy? It would have been destroyed and still no supply would have gotten through to Alexandria. And sure enough on the AI's player turn the British sail through the Western Med, park next to Sicily and on the end of turn results phase, find no Italian shipping. Ah, the benefits of having Italian spies in neutral Spain!

On the following player turn, the German supply lines are indeed refreshed. I was wondering if one needed to run the supply convoy up to a destination port in northern England, but no. The game's supply system is smart enough to connect cities with land links to southern England. German land units immediately begin their sprint north. No telling how long the wiener schnitzel will continue being sent across the Channel.

So this then is, I think, my verdict on the game's naval AI for Great Britain - best AI I've seen so far in this type of large scale WW2 strat game, but if you coordinate the movements of the Italian and German navies, you can try to get the RN coming and going between the Med and the Atlantic. That strategy isn't costless for the Axis. You'll need to spend a lot of PPs on completing the naval builds from all the naval ship events. Otherwise the RN should be big enough to squash both fronts simultaneously. But if you do complete all your naval builds you have rough parity with the RN. Rather than split its fleet into two parts and try to take on the Germans and Italians both at once, the AI seems like it will concentrate into one mega fleet and then the Axis player can try to make that fleet bounce between the two theatres. Nor is that Axis strategy fool proof. If the British can catch either of your fleets in port resting, you will get thrashed by the carrier air. And by thrashed, I don't mean losing 2 or 3 ships. I mean seeing your German (or Italian) mega fleet reduced to 33% of its original size. Such is the danger of a concentrated fleet strategy.

For some people, this may be an "Aha! You see the AI is not that good" moment. To me, it's a measure of how far of a leap this game's British naval AI is over that seen in competing titles where defeating the RN is trivial. To wit, you need to devote a large chunk of your builds to naval units, risk the occasional total destruction of your fleet and then you get a couple of turns of supply alternated with a couple of turns out of supply, etc. If the ToF British naval AI is randomized somewhat (a debugging nightmare but a powerful tactic to foil meta gaming humans) and the chance to spot Allied fleets off a neutral Spanish coast is reduced, then you'd have a guessing game at best for the Axis using this tactic. A very interesting result indeed.

[macroeconomics]

Razz, it may very well be that Italy can keep a French city if Vichy is formed. My Italians never made it that far. And in that case they don't get to keep non-city hexes.

[macroeconomics]

The fat lady has been announced and has stepped on to the stage.

I think the end is near. The Soviets are in deep trouble. The concept of starting Barbarossa in late June from a semi advanced start line is now a bit behind the times. The front line runs from Velikiye Luki to Smolensk to Bryansk to Kursk to Stalino and it only late May. Moreover it is a line in name only in many sectors. It's shocking how much the tables turn once clear weather popped up. The tech 2 panzer corps just cleared the map of Soviet infantry divisions. There are now 9 tech 2 panzer corps in Russia with 2 more refitting in Poland and 3 more refitting in France. Those western corps will not be needed in Britain and will head east. The only thing holding the Germans back was a lack of infantry to grab rail lines and besiege cities.

That problem was solved however when it became clear that Yugoslavia would not enter the war. I decided that Italy would not declare war on Yugoslavia and that freed up a ton of cheap Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian infantry corps. Operationally the Axis are formed into 8 or 9 mini-army groups each headed up by a panzer corps, 2 or 3 German infantry corps and then 5-10 German inf divisions or Allied Axis inf corps. The panzers sweep away the enemy infantry divisions. Soviet infantry corps or the very rare armor corps are bombed by tac air and then hit by the panzer corps with one or two German infanty corps assisting. The resistance hard points, invariably located in the cities, are surrounded by half the cheap infantry while everyone else marches forward. The sheer numbers of these Axis Allied infantry hordes is amazing. Although they are still being railed into Russia, it looks like they will field something in the neighborhood of 40 corps. Space eaters as it were. And there's plenty of empty space out there. That Axis Allied force structure is fragile and can't be easily replaced. But right now the Russians aren't doing any killing. Only the panzers are.

In Britain, resistance on the main island has basically collapsed. Glascow and Edinburgh are surrounded and recon shows that the last the last VP city on the main island, Aberdeen, is garrisoned by a lone infantry unit. Both the German and Italian paratroop divisions are enroute to Scotland to deliver the coup de grace on Londonderry. Similar situation in Egypt where the Suez Canal city is surrounded by swarms of Italian infantry, whose main hurdle is fighting each other for space to get over the canal.

The RN intervention in the Med did smash some Italian hardware when they chased down the Italian fleet off Alexandria. But the RN took as many hits from Italian land based air. And the interruption in the supply convoys to Egypt didn't really slow down the Italian infantry marching to the Suez. They were like a carpet of ants moving forward.

Below is a wide zoom screenshot of the eastern front with the locations of the Axis Allied assignments. Perhaps only 25% of the projected Axis Allied infantry have reached the field and yet you already get a sense of how outnumbered the Soviets are.

[cherryfunk]

ORIGINAL: macroeconomics

I don't know that it is a bug. After all it did say that Germany would "propose" that England become an allied state.

It's not that so much as the early Russian declaration of war. If I read what you wrote correctly, because you're playing Finland as well as Germany, and despite the fact you followed the historical timeline, the script got confused and declared war on Germany as well as Finland? That sure seems broken to me...

Unfortunately, the play testers wanted an easy invasion of England.

Uh... I think that's the designer's call, not the playtesters. Sealion should be extremely difficult to pull off. The point isn't to make an easy game, but a challenging one.

[macroeconomics]

It turned out that the plans to capture Londonderry were completely irrelevant. Londonderry has a production point, but it is not a victory point city. Thus is would not lead the Britain's surrender. The last British VP city was Gibraltar.

Using Slaytanic's information that an opposed amphibious assault was possible, an Italian operation was planned. The Kreigsmarine and a German supply convoy were used as bait in the Channel, while the Italian fleet assembled in Genoa. Two infantry corps, each with a leader were on amphibious assault boats. The ships set sail, and the Italian battleships and cruiser were ready to shore bombard Gibraltar when they were notified that would not be allowed. The British garrison in Gibraltar had not been spotted. Doh. Fortunately the amphibious assault was allowed and surprisingly at only 4.4-:1 odds the Italian infantry corps overcame the defenders and marched into Gibraltar. At the end of the game turn, Britain dutifully surrendered.

This also happened:

[doomtrader]

ORIGINAL: Razz

Also, USA is supposed to automatically join the Allies when Germany lands in Great Britain.

No, it does not.

[macroeconomics]

I'm not going to proceed further in this game, but I thought I'd turn off FoW and take a peek at what was behind the curtain on the eastern front. The Soviets were doing a little better, but with all the German units coming back from the West and the German industrial base (PPs) being what it was, it was hard to see them surviving.

Here's the Soviet defense of Leningrad. It's clear they weren't going to give that city up without a fight.

[macroeconomics]

Here's the Soviet defense of Moscow. A lot of defending units, but of rather low quality. I've noticed that the AI won't send the good stuff until the Germans are nearby. A reasonable method to prioritize.

[macroeconomics]

And finally the southern sector. I noticed that the German advance in the south was faster in ToF than in some other WW2 games. I don't know if that was simply an anomaly of this particular play through or whether the German player might actually be able to pull off big advances in the south as they historically did.

[macroeconomics]

Some random notes:

Northern Finland - this actually became an interesting front by mid 1941. The dynamics here are completely different from the rest of ToF. It's almost a mini-game within the game. Large expanses of terrain with no rail lines and few cities, make this almost like the desert war in North Africa - except with forests. The primary characteristic here is how far away you are from your supplying city. If the Finns advance to Murmansk, their divisions are rated 0-1 and their infantry corps are 1-1. When the Soviets rail in three armor corps they show up as a 10-4s and you are thinking all of Finland is lost. But if you retreat all the way back to Petsamo before getting blasted by the tanks, your infantry corps is now a 4-2. And those Soviet tank corps are now 2-2s. So there can be some big swings back and forth here despite the low unit density.

Egypt - hard to reach a lot of conclusions here because in this game all the results in North Africa were a consequence of the British AI forgetting to garrison Alexandria, which is a simple fix in a patch. Some PvP games may shed better light on what to expect from the theatre. I can say that Malta is going to be an important facet of whatever happens in the Med.

Germany - it's all about the panzers! Well at least if you want to defeat Russia. The key is getting to tech level 2, so you can build and upgrade to tech 2 panzer corps. Those are your virtual cardboard counters of destruction!

And speaking of cardboard counters, ToF does remind you in lots of ways of certain old big board games. Now I know some people might expect big to go along with complicated. And in computer gaming that typically is so. The HoI series is perhaps the poster child for that - each step of the series has increased the map size, unit density and rules complexity. But in board war gaming big size and big complexity don't always go together. Certainly it did in some titles, like War in the Pacific (the board game, not the computer game). But in a lot of other big wargames, "big" just meant a big map and lots of counters. The rules remained clean and simple. Wacht am Rhein, Drang Nach Osten, and of course War in Europe are examples. ToF is more like those games. Very playable despite its size. And a very polite multi-tasking program when run in windows mode.

Well that's a wrap then. Hope the AAR was useful. I think I'm now off to see what happens if you don't sign that Ribbentropp-Molotov treaty...

[jjdenver]

Great AAR Macro - thanks for taking the time to write it.

[oldspec4]

Agree...excellent write-up.

[Lascar]

Excellent AAR macroeconomics. Overall your thoughtful narrative has increased my interest in possibly buying ToF. There are some issues coming up in comments by other players, especially multi-players, that are giving me some pause but I hope the developers can polish things up a bit more to allow ToF to reach its full potential.

[gwgardner]

Really interesting. Thanks. 

I think if you continued, you might find the Soviets stiffening up and giving you a good fight.

[Razz1]

He's afraid of the winter.