Did I shoot myself in the foot for good?

[Pocus]

Hey,

I'm playing a PBEM with my son. I decided to mostly follow historical choices in events, so the French and British are supporting Finland. And they managed to help repel USSR.

Meaning their industrial % dived a lot, and instead of 51 MPP I now earn 15 MPP. Basically nothing.

Did I kill my game with this choice? Even if they get back to normal production, this is still a 'constant' shift in productivity, i.e. the 51 is now 15, and when they get back in the 60-ish, if I had not made this choice, they would be at 120 and so on.

[&:]

[The Land]

So what's happened is that USSR mobilisation has gone down. This means that you get less MPP.

However, mobilisation will gradually go up again - and automatically goes to 100% when the Germans declare war on the USSR.

This does mean that the USSR's preparations for Barbarossa are messed up a bit. But equally, the French and British have got Special Forces counters out of it (tip: move the French one to British territory then it can become Free French when Paris falls) and also the Finns will be less inclined to join the war against the Russians.

[Pocus]

My point ... all USSR production is shifted down, and if you make a rough tally, 20 turns where you have from 25 to 100 MPP less means I just removed something like 1500 MPP to the USSR. Not sure the nation can resist the German, even if the Finns are out.

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: Pocus

My point ... all USSR production is shifted down, and if you make a rough tally, 20 turns where you have from 25 to 100 MPP less means I just removed something like 1500 MPP to the USSR. Not sure the nation can resist the German, even if the Finns are out.

Oh I see what you mean. So yes, this is an irrecoverable loss, even though your MPP production will increase again. You have the loss of 10% or so of mobilisation, so 10% or so of total MPP (.. Maybe 30 per turn?). Of course this has a bigger impact earlier, moving down from 20% mobilisation to 10% feels like a bigger deal than 80% to 70%.

You definitely *can* still resist the Germans, though for this reason, that event is not usually viewed as a good one to take.

[BillRunacre]

One counter would be for the UK to invest in diplomacy to swing the USSR towards the Allies and therefore neutralize the negative effect that helping Finland had.

And something to bear in mind is that unless the Axis invest in diplomacy to move Finland to a pro-Axis leaning, then you won't be having to fight the Finns.

[pjg100]

I would play it out. There are a number of things the GE can do that would increase RU mobilization significantly (e.g., annex Lithuania), which will cause a commensurate increase in MPP.

[EarlyDoors]

As the Russians I always favour not being at war with Finland even at the expense of mpps as its a large border to secure.