1985 Red Storm - Beta ready to download

[havoc1371]

Downloaded the files into my War in Europe\Campaigns folder. It doesn't show up on my game menu as a campaign choice. What did I do wrong?

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: havoc1371

Downloaded the files into my War in Europe\Campaigns folder. It doesn't show up on my game menu as a campaign choice. What did I do wrong?

It needs to go into a different place as it's a user campaign - more similar to the file path for the save games. For me it's as follows:

C:\Users\me\Documents\My Games\Strategic Command WWII - War in Europe\Campaigns

[havoc1371]

ORIGINAL: The Land

ORIGINAL: havoc1371

Downloaded the files into my War in Europe\Campaigns folder. It doesn't show up on my game menu as a campaign choice. What did I do wrong?

It needs to go into a different place as it's a user campaign - more similar to the file path for the save games. For me it's as follows:

C:\Users\me\Documents\My Games\Strategic Command WWII - War in Europe\Campaigns

That worked! Thanks.

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: havoc1371

That worked! Thanks.

Enjoy!

[maitrebongo]

Decidedly more than interesting this campaign, bravo.
I'm making a graphic mod for this one based on the Iron Cross mod from Iron X which should give it all the beauty it deserves.

Did you update the file in the first post with the changes you mentioned above?

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: maitrebongo

Decidedly more than interesting this campaign, bravo.
I'm making a graphic mod for this one based on the Iron Cross mod from Iron X which should give it all the beauty it deserves.

Did you update the file in the first post with the changes you mentioned above?

Hello!

So the first post is still restricted to Germany and the Baltic Approaches. I should be able to add Norway, the North Atlantic, victory and so one sometime in the coming week for another release - but it depends on workload from the rest of life

Support with graphics would be amazing, I am very much an amateur on that and have only been doing basic changes to keep the NATO counters making sense.

[The Land]

Some of my latest work has been on neutral minor powers - specifically, Finland, Sweden and Austria.

Minors are slightly challenging for this mod as the game mechanics are all set up to assume every minor power behaves like it's the Netherlands in 1940. Majors get a big surprise attack bonus as when minors mobilise they do so at 0 supply and with no upgrades. The lack of upgrades is a particular challenge as upgrades are turned off entirely.

And 1980s-era neutrals are rather more competent than the Low Countries in the 1940s. Generally, any country at risk of being invaded by the Warsaw Pact made plans to make that invasion as slow and costly as feasible.

The solution I've come up with is to create whole new unit types reflecting Mechanized Brigades and Infantry Brigades belonging to neutrals. These have the equivalent stats of the regular units, as if they had about one level of tech. In some cases, these units get augmented with other units that get mobilised on the first turn the neutral enters the war.

So, taking these countries in turn:

Finland is actually really simple. I have assumed that Finland has caved in to Russian demands for military access. So it starts the game as a 'mobilised' member of the Warsaw Pact, though one without any units. (How plausible this is historically, I'm not sure. In the West some people assumed that Finland was a de facto Warsaw Pact member under Russian occupation... which it certainly wasn't.)

Austria had a relatively small army backed up with a large reserve. Austrian strategy was based on the observation that one of the best Eastern Block routes into Bavaria was through Austria, via Linz. So their one mechanized division would have mobilised between Linz and Vienna to attempt to slow the Russian and Czech armies down. Vienna itself would have been abandoned, with the Austrian government moving to a bunker in the Alps, where it would have been protected by reserve units, terrain, and its own strategic irrelevance.

Here you can see the Austrian deployment as well as West German positions around Munich, and some of the Warsaw Pact units deployed to take Austria. Is it worth invading, or would those divisions be better kept in reserve for the main attack on Germany?

(Ignore the Cavalry and Shock Army graphics, those are Infantry and Mechanized brigades respectively. The graphics-modding hasn't caught up with the gameplay yet on the new unit types).



Sweden was formally neutral, and had an independent defence industry. But it was Western-inclined and Swedish strategy was essentially to deter or delay Soviet invasion and wait for NATO intervention. From the Soviets' point of view, the main reason for attacking Sweden would have been to get through it to Norway and Denmark.

Like Austria, most of the Swedish army is reserve Infantry Brigade units - though there are many more of them and Sweden is a larger country. In southern Sweden there are also several mechanized brigades. On war entry, Sweden also gets an HQ, a fully-teched Armoured Division, and fighter and strike aircraft units reflecting the powerful Swedish airforce. It's not a force that the Soviets should bring in without thinking carefully about it. (In my current test game, the Russians have landed in southern Sweden but have got snarled up there... their supplies depend on Karlskrona Harbour, which is continually getting destroyed by American B-52s...)

[The Land]

I've added a new download file with an updated Alpha build - covers everything that I've described in this thread, APART from scripting victory conditions.

It's nowhere near finished or balanced, but it plays well! Enjoy!

[The Land]

So a few things from the latest test game:

On the whole, the Soviets are finding it too difficult to gain territory and too easy to win by reducing West German NM.

To address this - I've reduced the NM values of resources to about 2/3 of the values from the previous version (still far higher than the base game though). I've also slightly beefed up the defence values of Armoured Corps units - these units are crucial to the Eastern Bloc and a clever NATO player will often counterattack them, so giving them more defence value makes this more expensive. I'm also considering delaying some more of the Western reserve formations (and maybe improving some of the Soviet reserve formations) but we'll have to see how this goes.

Secondarily, I've made a few more tweaks to the air and naval war. I have reduced the Resource Attack on strike aircraft and close air support, as it was too easy to destroy strategically important harbours especially in Norway and Sweden. Similarly I've made SAMs more lethal against Strategic Bombers so that there are more counters to having B-52s or Backfires come to bomb an important resource.

Also I have reduced sub defence values on light carriers after 5 Russian submarines immolated themselves trying to sink HMS Invincible. I am not 100% confident about this (should an ASW carrier be a great high value target for a sub, or is it a threat to be avoided at all costs?) but I'll see how it plays.

Next up - more testing, more event scripting, and before long I will add the the Southern Theatre with a Soviet attack on Turkey and Greece, an additional strategic option to go via Yugoslavia into Italy, and the Mediterranean Theatre...

[BillRunacre]

Sounds good!

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: BillRunacre

Sounds good!

Thank you!

Not so much happening this week as the rest of life is busier. However if anyone out there is playing the alpha I'd be interested in your feedback!

[The Land]

So recently I have been working on the Southern Front.

As you probably know, Turkey and Greece were both NATO members - with a land border to Warsaw Pack Bulgaria to the North.

It is uncertain how intense the conflict on this front would have been in the event of all-out war. Researching the OOBs on both sides, it seems that both sides were content to put second, third and fourth-rate equipment into the front lines. These were relatively poor countries, who bought much cast-off equipment from the superpowers. In 1985 for instance the Turkish Army's main battle tank was the M47 Patton, a tank which the USA considered inadequate at the time of the Korean War.

So why care about this theatre at all? Well, first I would like to have at least something happening on the 'south flank' of the scenario.

Secondly, the Turkish Straits were of great strategic significance. Much of Russian foreign policy since the time of Peter the Great was about gaining access to the Mediterranean from the Black Sea. (In fact control of the Straits was part of the deal that the Entente offered Russia to remain in WW1, resulting in the doomed Gallipoli landings...) The Soviet Union would have loved to have free access through the Straits, possibly also with a long lease of a naval base somewhere like Smyrna.

In the context of a war in Germany this objective would be very much secondary. But it was still an objective. Which makes it, to my mind, a valid strategic option for the Soviet player. If Turkey had been knocked out of the war, that would doubtless have an impact on the West's willingness to continue, and the shape of any negotiated peace. There is of course also the Russian Black Sea fleet and its ability to come out of the Black Sea and cause problems for NATO supply lines in the Mediterranean.

So here is the Bulgarian front as set up, with its many indifferent units on both sides. If the Soviets commit some of their high-quality reserve units here then I expect them to make a lot of progress, despite the poor terrain. But that will come at the cost of progress on the Western Front. The NM payoff for taking Istanbul will have to be carefully calibrated in the balancing of the scenario.

And to the west you will notice Yugoslavia is currently neutral and empty... more on that later!

[The Land]

Ha, no. The Turks are falling apart faster Boris Johnson's credibility I'll need to strengthen them with either tech or fortifications... possibly both.

(What *would* have stopped a Soviet armoured division equipped with T-80s, BMP-2s and Hind helicopters, and supported by the Bulgarians and Romanians on its flanks and rear, from taking Istanbul in a week? Anyone got any ideas?)

[El_Condoro]

I am no historian of 1980s Cold War military strategy, but maybe the same sorts of things that are making Putin hesitate against Ukraine now: economic considerations, political manouevres, the uncertain allegiance of allies (soviet satellites), risk of civil unrest. 1985 was the era of glasnost and perstroika, IIRC, so maybe Mikhail Gorbachev is agitating against military operations in the south. It would all need to be approximated with supply.txt, strength.txt and other scripts, maybe some redeployments by DE? Just some stream-of-consciousness stuff here.

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: El_Condoro

I am no historian of 1980s Cold War military strategy, but maybe the same sorts of things that are making Putin hesitate against Ukraine now: economic considerations, political manouevres, the uncertain allegiance of allies (soviet satellites), risk of civil unrest. 1985 was the era of glasnost and perstroika, IIRC, so maybe Mikhail Gorbachev is agitating against military operations in the south. It would all need to be approximated with supply.txt, strength.txt and other scripts, maybe some redeployments by DE? Just some stream-of-consciousness stuff here.

All great thoughts... but not for this particular question...

In the book "The Third World War" it's really clear that both sides are trying to hold off the total political collapse of their coalitions - in a situation of immense casualties and the terrifying threat of nuclear war. So both sides will have NM that is fragile and falling. This will be particularly true of the Warsaw Pact (which, let's not forget, were mainly under military occupation). Events where there is a Polish general strike or another attempted Hungarian revolution are definitely in the plan (along with Western equivalents..)

And you're right, it was ultimately political and strategic constraints (and of course the likelihood of US retaliation) that stopped the USSR trying to force Turkey into being a client state historically.

But... here, the setup is that there's a general European war, with a Turkish front, and the political collapse of the Warsaw Pact is a future possibility. So I need to find a military reason to make this particular offensive more difficult.....

[Taxman66]

Maybe Istanbul does fall rather quickly, but a massive amount of aid (better equipment) would be delivered quickly.
I think Israel was on good terms with Turkey at this time too. They would badly not want to see Turkey fall either.

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: Taxman66

Maybe Istanbul does fall rather quickly, but a massive amount of aid (better equipment) would be delivered quickly.
I think Israel was on good terms with Turkey at this time too. They would badly not want to see Turkey fall either.

Yes - could take some inspiration from the "US tanks arrive in Egypt" event in the core campaigns - have some shipments of upgraded armour / aircraft arrive in Turkey. Possibly some US troops redeployed from the Indian Ocean / Pacific as well (they must have had some Marines floating around waiting for something to do, right?)

[The Land]

Ah, I think I've got it.

So far I've not accounted for the US's strategic reserve formations. 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, 9th Infantry and 10th Infantry (Light). These were all capable of being airlifted around the world - and none were entirely suited to Central Europe as they lacked heavy armour. One, or more, of them could readily have been sent to stiffen the Turks.

(Also the fact they were airmobile makes them quite appropriate for event-deployment).

[Taxman66]

Air support and 'advisers' could also be deployed from Israel rather quickly too.

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: Taxman66

Air support and 'advisers' could also be deployed from Israel rather quickly too.

Doubtless!

Do you have any more info on the relationship between Turkey and Israel in this period? I can find a bit (basically, they had a shared enemy in Syria and a shared ally in the USA, and the Turks also wanted to enlist Israeli help in stopping the Armenian lobby having too much of a voice in the USA) - but not much about military / strategy cooperation.

At the moment I'm thinking of possibly having an Israeli 'volunteer' tank brigade show up in Turkey - even if Israel was inclined to intervene, it wouldn't want to do anything that would make it a proper belligerent in the eyes of the USSR, or weaken its own forces so much that Arab states wished to invade.