THE LAST KINGDOM: Sillyflower v sveint. SVEINT WELCOME

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Are you grouping them together? Use them in packs of 3 for best results. Don't split them up. This is the secret sauce.

I was not grouping them together. My understanding from the Manual was that 10 convoy escorts provide maximum protection no matter how many resources/merchant ships are using a particular convoy route. In other words using more than 10 for any route is pointless. Is that not true?

If so, one would think that if you grouped all of your subs to attack just one convoy route the Allied Player could put 10 of his escorts onto that single route giving it maximum protection and limiting sub damage. But since the Allied player doesn't have enough convoy escorts to cover all of his routes, logic would dictate that the Axis player would sink more merchants by splitting up his u-boats between 2 or 3 convoy routes; thus forcing the Allied Player to use less than the maximum escorts for each route (or perhaps maximizing one route at the expense of the others).

So either I don't understand the Rules or logic doesn't apply here. Either way I thank you for your advice.

[RoadWarrior]

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Are you grouping them together? Use them in packs of 3 for best results. Don't split them up. This is the secret sauce.

I was not grouping them together. My understanding from the Manual was that 10 convoy escorts provide maximum protection no matter how many resources/merchant ships are using a particular convoy route. In other words using more than 10 for any route is pointless. Is that not true?

If so, one would think that if you grouped all of your subs to attack just one convoy route the Allied Player could put 10 of his escorts onto that single route giving it maximum protection and limiting sub damage. But since the Allied player doesn't have enough convoy escorts to cover all of his routes, logic would dictate that the Axis player would sink more merchants by splitting up his u-boats between 2 or 3 convoy routes; thus forcing the Allied Player to use less than the maximum escorts for each route (or perhaps maximizing one route at the expense of the others).

So either I don't understand the Rules or logic doesn't apply here. Either way I thank you for your advice.

Based on my exp ( 2 games vs sveint ) only the southern route at start has ships to sink, so pack ships south to start then spread.

Rule sets generally never reflect how things really work the first few months after release.

[sillyflower]

Back to the game for now. May 10 '40



sveint finally decides to be all masterful and throws the wehrmacht at plucky little Holland which will now be under sveint's jackboot for at least a couple of years. Plucky Belgium hold out for now.

As sveint wrote, luck tends to even out and we agree it's better to have luck on land than at sea. The French army decided to stay put inside its defences in France and Luxembourg. The retreated Belgian xxx (on the far left) can serve no useful purpose and is disbanded for replacements. All Belgian units in or adjacent to Brussels put in defence mode and ? 1 or 2 others but I forget.

At least no baddies expected in France before June.
The BEF makes a cameo performance - something I almost never do in WWII games, but sveint is bound to want to take Spain and Greece in '40 so Yugoslavia joins him and he can have a full-blooded Barbarossa in '41.

Another first for me: I occupy Iceland. Given his success with the uboats, I thought sveint would try to grab it if he could.

[sillyflower]

24.05.40




Belgium surrendered after the XXX in Brussels shattered after receiving 3 casualties after a lot of bombing. A bit disappointing but hopefully the Germans have accrued good amount of fatigue.

As seen above, rain prevented the axis from reaching the French border at any point. The French decide it's more comfortable to stay in their entrenchments rather than risking muddy boots if they advanced into Belgium. Having been taught a well known English taunt, the French set up speakers at the front which blare out the message "come and get us if you think you're hard enough." This may be a mistake, but we shall see. The BEF itself is more interested in the duty-free shops of Calais.

I have not seen such bad weather before. If I wasn't a complete ......(you may add in your own appropriate epithet, gentle reader), I would have some sympathy for my opponent, but that is an emotion beyond my comprehension.

At least the Atlantic has been sub free for a couple of turns. They are presumably upgrading to '40 tech. My escorts already have. all but 1 or 2 french corps have upgrading whether they have AT or assault capability, apart from those on the Maginot line.

The plan: to stop sveint getting Spain and Greece and early enough to wreak more havoc before has to focus on Barbarossa, and stopping him getting Yugoslavia as an ally which means Greece holding on until '41. I don't see him wanting another '42 attack. My other, related priority is to stop him grabbing all of N. Africa + the middle east like he did last time. Keeping all ports garrisoned is key to this, as is keeping the UK safe from successful invasion.

[Flaviusx]

Heh.

I would've at least marched a French corps into Brussels here and maybe some more besides that. Of course, you couldn't know in advance you'd get rain, and you had those nice foxholes in France, but still.

[sillyflower]

the weather last turn prevented me from getting a french unit into Brussels, or at least I think it did. I know it was 3 MP to get 1 hex over the border. I remembered an earlier AAR where Brussels or Amsterdam was holding out until the player inserted a french xxx into the city, only for the city to be captured next turn.

I also thought of advancing 2 xxx over to attack the G inf xxx SE of Brussels, along with 3 Belgians. A 5 hex attack with only 2 chances of getting a retreat result, which would have meant a shatter. I decided that would a fun result,but not that much help and would do. However, failure (the more likely result) would mean 5 xxx much weakened, Brussels would certainly fall and would probably shorten Fall Gelb by a turn. Even success might have had the same negative impact

[sillyflower]

I don't know how up to date svient is keeping in his AAR, but this was the relatively weak start to the invasion of France that I had expected



The refreshed uboats re-appeared in the Atlantic doing their Groundhog Day thing: as did the RN with its expected failure of my 3 carriers (inc 2 upgraded to 1940 tech) to do anything useful.

I was also most careless in my turn (it was well past my bedtime) and forgot to replace the xxx I had taken out of Metz with anything else [:(]

[sillyflower]

21/6/40 Allied research




This my normal set up, driven mainly by the set up forces. I leave the strategic air war (bombers + escorts) to the Yanks, and scrap the UK escort ftrs when they get a bit obsolete. I don't have any fixed ideas about build queues, but just what I fancy and depending on the game situation. I never build warships, unless uboats are being a nuisance when I will buy some escorts. I only buy unit types will benefit from research

[sillyflower]

During the turn, sveint went south Liquidsky-style if you've read that AAR of sveint. Para took Metz I didn't take a screenie as I assume sveint had, but I don't care because the Miracle of the Atlantic happened

[Flaviusx]

Nice.

Don't quote me on this, but I suspect that grouping carriers is better than splitting them up for this kind of work. The mechanics of the sub war are not very intuitive as you have seen. Would love to see the code and formulas on this.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Nice.

Don't quote me on this, but I suspect that grouping carriers is better than splitting them up for this kind of work. The mechanics of the sub war are not very intuitive as you have seen. Would love to see the code and formulas on this.

It certainly is not intuitive. My understanding from the Manual is that you stand a better chance of locating subs if you use several fleets. My experience with using several Fleets, each with 1 CV, is that about 90% of the time they don't locate the sub and the 10% of the time they do they just spot the sub but don't attack. My understanding was that if one CV Fleet spotted the sub than a 2nd CV group could attack it; but to date this has never happened. So I am heartened to hear that the answer is to group the CVs just like the subs are grouped.

[Flaviusx]

I'm not certain that grouping is better, though. It is just a suspicion. Pinging away at subs with different fleets doesn't seem to have any cumulative spotting effect in my experience, whereas one big group (including the escorts) may just be raising the chance of detection of that group. This is all under the hood and hard to tell.

[sillyflower]

5 July 1940



The inevitable para drop on Metz with only myself to blame, but the turn could have been worse for me. More BEF arrives as my desire to slow the Nazis down overcomes my deep-seated philosophical objection to sending British troops to France.

The pink hex shows where a panzer xxx showing a strength of 9-10 was thrown back 2 hexes, and a fresh French xxx was rushed into the vacated hex. Casualties were about 12 French to 11 German or thereabouts. 'Every little helps' as the advertising slogan for a well-known UK supermarket goes.

The uboats sink 4 merchants for the loss of 1 sub from escorts, before they then scuttle back to Germany with indecent haste. The carrier task force returns to port for tea and medals.

[sillyflower]

19 July



Defensive moves only as sveint's aneurysm expands and I don't want it to burst all over me. Hoping to hold out to Sept. but that's 4 turns away. At least Lille held foe another turn.

[sillyflower]

Don't think that I haven't noticed

[sillyflower]

2 August

Looks like I forgot to take any pics that turn, and the pic I took on 16 August is blank: rather like my brain [>:].




This was actually taken on the 16 Aug. turn (my latest) showing red AA (ie the max 6 AA guns in the hex) in 6 locations. At the moment that's good for me because I never buy UK strategic bombers and I only start strategic bombing with the Yanks in '42. 360 german PPs not spent on things that might hurt me now at a time when the Allies just need not to lose.

In the long term it's a wise move on his part. I've done the same in my only game as axis, but only did it when the first bombs started to fall on my german cities: in '42.There had been a little bombing on some occupied cities earlier but I had ignored that as it takes 3 hits to lose 1PP, so that cost the allies more in lost bombers than the damage cost me.

[sillyflower]

16 August '39



Can't see Paris surviving next turn and French losses to date will probably persuade them to call it a day.

Assuming that, British DOW'd Italy and grabbed an unoccupied Rhodes and planted a large fleet just S. of Greece. I anticipate that the DOW would trigger the attack on Greece, but I did not want to risk an Italian garrison and naval bombers on the island because that would make reinforcing Greece very much harder.

[sillyflower]

30 August

The French sued for peace at the end of August but await a decision from the Reichskanzlei. It is rumoured that the french terms will be accepted as the Nazis have been spotted getting ready to assault the cradle of european civilisation, even though there does not seem to be any space in Albania for them to go.



The BEF returns to the UK and to other parts of the Empire in triumph; not having lost a single man.

[sillyflower]

This the my USA advancement set up. I've just noticed that the Yanks don't have any large warship, so that was wasted points in '39. Maybe detection would be better but it only seems to be usable on bombers. I don't konw if that advanced can be incorporated on new build ships because I never build any.

Anyway, the number of advancement I research diminishes over time as each advancement enables an additional point to be used for the next year

[sillyflower]

13 Sept

After a long pause caused by the bets expiry problem followed by my inability to install the patch, or even to do a complete reinstall of the game, I transferred the game onto Steam where I have never had this sort of problem. I also had to redo my whole turn as the beta thing had obviously stopped it from uploading properly

Somehow sveint managed to accept the French surrender and take out Greece in a single turn with massed Italian paradrops and corps-sized invasions by both axis nations. Whilst the invaders were able to sail unharmed under the guns of the Royal Navy, sporadic naval combat saw the sinking of 1 UK CA and 2 Italian patrol groups.

Admiral Alan Cunningham (who is bizarrely 1 of my army commanders) promptly attacks the Italian fleet. Ignore the fake news in the combat report about an 'ambush'. The attack by the best fighting Admiral the Royal navy has had since Nelson did significant damage before the fleet returned to Alexandria for tea and medals




Somewhat disappointing because in the original turn, the Royal Navy did a bit better but that's no excuse for a rage quit.