Flaviusx v. Tyronec

[Jim D Burns]

I'm thinking Britain should probably build at least 2, perhaps 3 fighters as their very first builds. Trying to fight for France to maybe gain a turn or two extra will not help vs. a Sea Lion launched a bit later.

In our game I was crunching into max tech panzers with 43 tech allied stuff and still managed to push you back (granted slowly) because of air power. Germany will do the same to your mech and armor land builds trying to hold London if limited fighter coverage allows full strength CS strikes to get through unanswered.

That said with 4 CS builds Germany would probably be unstoppable anyway, that's a lot of air for 1940, I usually only build 2 cs, might change my early builds based on these results. I really thought the British builds were going to help out more than they did.

Perhaps a ton of AA would be better than fighter builds? Won't help France but might make it tough to crack hexes in Britain. This is going to need a lot of experimentation to figure out a decent defense.

Jim

[Flaviusx]

AA would help, yes. It would also help if the Germans didn't have so much of their own to begin with.

I'd probably build fighters and AA next time but the outcome wouldn't be hugely different. We are talking 1-2 turns, maybe. And with no counterattacks on the allied side due to lack of armor. With 4 panzers and that much airpower, the Germans will punch through.

That would be ok if they were punching through from the actual German border rather than the Belgian-French one.

I don't think I will be playing the 39 scenario again as the allies until changes are made.

[Flaviusx]

Also, there is no way Britain can get more than 1 fighter into this in time. They take 6 months to build. It takes several turns just to scrape up the production for one fighter. You can put one in the queue in October. That one will be ready late March or early April.

The next one won't be online until June or so. In time for the battle of Britain, but not for France.

[tyronec]

I'm thinking Britain should probably build at least 2, perhaps 3 fighters as their very first builds.

IMO an extra Fighter would not make much if any difference, Axis would lose a few more Fighter points but with less threat from Armor they could make it up in the land war. The thing with the air war is the attacker has the edge, they can concentrate all their air on one area of the map. I think this number of CS is overpowered.

With France gone the Battle of Britain begins. First landing goes OK and get a port cleared.
Paras do a raid to the Midlands and overrun a couple of Fighters. Now a race to see if they can escape before they get squashed, but even if they are will distract a few units for a turn or two.

Think it is pretty tough for the UK from this position, Italy joins in next turn and you can be assured they have been building lots of transports.

[Flaviusx]

Lol.

I offer my resignation. Not interested in playing this out. Congratulations to my opponent.

[tyronec]

Lol.

I offer my resignation. Not interested in playing this out. Congratulations to my opponent.

Have to say that I agree there is no point in continuing, will write something on the main Forum but I think the game is heavily loaded towards Axis if they pursue this approach.
Apologies to Flavius for having played a loaded game.

[battlevonwar]

Armor actually packs a lot more punch than CS. CS works a lot better for special situations like punching through strong points.

[Flaviusx]

No apologies necessary, you played it straight and you played it well. The scenario is just unbalanced as is with the current ruleset. You did a fine job maximizing your production and squeezing all this stuff out so quickly, too. I'm guessing you put most of the Wehrmacht on garrison mode after Poland, except for what was immediately needed.

[Michael T]

The game under 1.05 is pro German. No doubt. But we still have a guy banging away for more German buffs in the forums.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: battlevonwar

Armor actually packs a lot more punch than CS. CS works a lot better for special situations like punching through strong points.

No way can London hold in the face of massed cs. He could have 4 armor/mech units defending and Germany would still push him back. Britain may get a few counter attacks in, but without massed cs of their own Britain will never push Germany back into the sea.

Britain simply lacks enough funds to compete with Germany even with an ocean surrounding them. Invasions are too easy and once ashore German air power assures victory.

Jim

[Flaviusx]

It's the airpower that kills, I agree. With all the bombers in play here, the German can take any hex they want in clear weather. I wasn't going to hold Britain here.

Note that Dover had a corps on it, or at least 2/3 of one. It was dug in. It exploded anyways.

[Saper2229]

Dover must have a 6 Flak. I loss 1 game UK, but now not problem to hold UK.
I can play by Allies and see this.

[Flaviusx]

I agree that Dover needs flak. I am not sure that will stop the invasion, though, just raise the cost.

It sure would be nice if the British got some of this free flak being passed around to the Germans. This is a 90 point investment, or most of 1 turn's production.

For that matter, I think the French are best off doing nothing but building infantry and flak. And I am now thinking that the Soviets should also buy lots of flak, which I noted earlier in the AAR.

[Flaviusx]

Tyrone, if you are willing to do this again, I'd like to try this flak thing and see if that works.

[Saper2229]

France must trade max production to UK. Good luck!

[Flaviusx]

France has been trading max production to the UK in both my last games and will continue to do so. But this time it will be flak, not tanks.

And I still think it is ridiculous that the French need to do this and that the UK production is way too small.

[tyronec]

Tyrone, if you are willing to do this again, I'd like to try this flak thing and see if that works.

Am very happy to play you again, from either side, but not as the game stands at present.
I don't think 6 AA in Dover would have made any difference. In my game with MM he had 6 AA in Leningrad and Axis were still able to take it in one turn using heavy bombing and without losing too many bombers. Axis can afford to take a big hit to get ashore if it leads to knocking the UK out of the game. Also UK would need 24 AA, 6 in each Southern port - in this game was ready to attack the next one on the next turn.

[Flaviusx]

I suspect you are right about this, I may just go ahead and solo this by hotseat and set it up just to see if it can stop it. More likely it just raises the butcher's bill but not the end result.

For giggles I'll park the RN in Dover and see if that helps.

These are all desperate expedients, though, to try to make up for something which shouldn't be so easy in the first place.

Once you are getting up to 24 AA to stop all such port invasions, then it's not even economically practicable at this stage of the game.

[tyronec]

In my other game tried putting the whole Italian navy in just one port in Sicily to provide AA cover. They got trashed by just a few bombers in one turn and shot almost nothing down.

[MagicMissile]

Didn´t WitE have the same problem with unlimited bombings and now you can only do two per turn? Different game different scale for sure but maybe the same problem that requires the same solution.

I understand that there have to be a mechanism to be able to take difficult hexes like Malta Sevastopol, Leningrad and Gibraltar also ports after invasions. It is hard to project much landforce since there is no stacking. But maybe the answer is to limit the amount of bombings (alternatively lower effect of each bombing) on a hex but increase the retreat chance even on low odds attacks. Possibly lower effiency of hold action.

Like Tyrone said I defended Leningrad with the best army 10 strength Russia can muster and 6 AA it fell in one turn. The battle just feels a bit anticlimactic could draw it out to last 2-3 turns at least. There is nothing wrong with the Axis being able to take Leningrad if they really wanted. They probably could have but I think it would have been more costly and taken longer time than the in game attack.