The ability to control other TBs-- a "War in Europe", so to speak

[evilman222]

The title is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the ability to make high-level decisions about other fronts would allow for an interesting exploration for how certain decisions impacted the Eastern Front. Instead of just sending or removing troops in exchange for pushing back events by a few weeks or losing VPs, the axis player could, for example, go as far as to push the Normandy invasion back into the sea provided they divert a large number of troops from the Eastern Front. Additionally, give the player the ability to choose if/when any major Wacht-am-Rhein style offensives happen, with a possibility (even if it's an incredibly small one) of succeeding, giving the player a possible incentive to take desperate actions to delay or even reverse the WF. The ability to withdraw from North Africa after Torch also seems particularly interesting, giving the axis player the opportunity to take some of those units and reinforce the Eastern Front at the cost of moving the allied invasion of Normandy (giving the player consequences for withdrawing instead of making it a "free troops" button). The latter was explored from a WF perspective in one of the Torch DLC campaigns for WitW, but given the time frame and scale it would be better explored in WitE2 as some sort of player decision in the main campaign instead of an entirely separate campaign.

Additionally, adding a togglable option for plausible-but-ahistoric TB events would make the decisions behind force allocation a bit more realistic than just "Send enough troops so that X variable is above the required point". The option, for example, of a Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union, would make the decision by the Soviet player to commit reserves from the Far East much more complicated. The fact that we currently know exactly which events which will happen in other TBs means that sometimes replaying campaigns feel more like you're trying to min-max the game, and adding uncertainty about how things will unfold in the future will make the player's decision-making process a bit more realistic.

[Nazcatraz]

Everything in your first paragraph kind of makes sense but as soon as the second one hits you lost me at "Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union"

[Aurelian]

They were *not* going into Russia.

[evilman222]

Everything in your first paragraph kind of makes sense but as soon as the second one hits you lost me at "Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union"

The idea isn't necessarily to model "what would happen if the Japanese invaded", but a way of forcing the player to have to weigh the risks of transferring reserves from Siberia in a better way than meeting a benchmark for scoring purposes. The Soviets weren't keeping hundreds of thousands of troops in Siberia for the hell of it-- they were there because they were concerned about a potential conflict with the Japanese (as were the Western Allies, for that matter. Richard B Frank makes some good points about the relationship between the concern about Japanese entry into the war against the Soviets and American/British policy leading up to Pearl Harbor in one of his talks on WW2TV). That's why Sorge's telegram that Japan is not going to enter the war was so significant-- it allowed the Soviet Union to transfer reserves away from the Far East since they were no longer necessary. The way that this dilemma is currently modeled in WitE2, by having a guaranteed event that lowers the required forces in the FE TB in late September, means that the Soviet strategy during Barbarossa is basically "hold out until reinforcements arrive". If you don't know that these reinforcements are coming, as the Soviets were unsure for the first few months of the war, your strategy is probably going to be different. I'm not thinking of this feature in the context of "modelling how the Soviets would fight a two front war", so much as "how does the threat, or at least the threat perceived by Soviet decision makers at the time, impact the decisions made on their strategy". Dealing with uncertainty is a huge part of war, and the best way to introduce this type of uncertainty is to allow for ahistorical events (within reason, specifically ahistorical events which decision makers thought were plausible enough that these possibilities were factored into their decision making process, and it's a documented fact that the fear of a Japanese attack on the USSR was a concern for Soviet and Allied decision makers). I certainly understand why some players wouldn't want this sort of ahistorical event in their game, which is why I suggest making it togglable. It comes down to how a player defines realism. If you define realism as the game being able to consistently simulate a historical(ish) course and outcome of the war, then of course you want TB events to be purely historical. If you consider realism as the game being able to simulate the decision-making process of commanders during the war, then allowing for ahistorical events like this is necessary. Otherwise, the game becomes less about making decisions and more about min-maxing the mechanics, which I find to be extremely unrealistic.