Is Sealion feasible?

[pmiranda]

Hi there,

I'm just starting playing W@W and it looks impossible to me to ever successfully land in England with the Germans (as planned by Hitler) in 1940. Problem being the lack of german fighter escorts over England (fighters only have range 1) and lack of transports (you can at most land 1 unit by amphibious assault and one by airborne assault). Producing extra air or naval units wouldn't help either, because of the time it would take. Am I missing something or is it really hopeless?
One could imagine making a concentrated effort in 1941, but in this case that would mean postponing Barbarossa...

[a511]

right, lack of german fighter escorts over England remained the issue in 40 as even u go full force in R&D, range 2 ger fht only available in Wi41. so the earliest Sealion with german fighter escorts over England is Sp41.

imo, in pbems, u either go for Sealion or Barbarossa in 41 and stick to ur plan. its not feasible to do both unless the WA player is really careless.

AN

[MarkF]

I managed to occupy England in spring '41. I was able to increase my fighter range to two and use them in the attack.

[Denbushi]

I have found that it is possible for a daring and lucky german player to successfully invade Britain on TURN 1!

send your two bombers and one battleship in W Germany into the sea east of england and bombard scotland. You will probably lose one or both of your bombers, but with luck, you will damage or destroy the artillary unit in scotland. Then send your two destroyers and 2 transports into the sea and amphibiously assault scotland with 1 infantry. With luck, and 2 coastal bombardments, you will damage the flak and kill the 1 (or 2 with the new patch) militia units. Now send your remaining two transports out of port, capture netherlands, repair the railroads, and load as many units into scotland as possible, including 2 flak guns. Next turn attack london, and allied resistance in europe is effectively crushed forever. The AI makes very little attempt to ever retake england or france after this. You may lose most of your atlantic fleet in the subsequent counter-attack, but the british are already the walking dead.

Of course, japan will now face the full fury of America come 1943 since there is no incentive for the US to spend resources in europe.

Comments welcome.

[JanSorensen]

Impressive - my hat if off to you for spotting this.

I dont think you can take London against a human this way - but I will need to run some tests to be sure.

I also need to run some numbers to consider the chance of actually getting ashore.

Again - very well spotted.

[JanSorensen]

I just looked closer at it.

With 2 bombers + 1 BB the odds of getting the Art is high - around 85%.
The odds of taking anything else out too is low - around 3%.

But - the odds of 2 LS + 1 INF taking out both MIL from 2 MIL, 1 AA and 1 FTR without the INF getting hit is very, very low. I ran some numbers but as I didnt know exactly the rules that govern targeting for ships I had to just run the assault a number of times. Out of 12 invasions I had only one that actually got ashore. That seemed to fit somewhat with the numbers I could approximate.

So, as far as I can see it is a fun possibility but the odds of making it are slim to none. Ofcourse someone could just keep trying till it worked in a PBEM game but thats how it is.

A couple of things confuse me though. You talk about "your other two transporters" - but the Germans only have 3 transporters total in that area. Also, "or 2 with the new patch" - wasnt the extra MIL in the original version?

[Denbushi]

Well, I don't know about your attempts. But I found it to be fairly successful. The fighter is of little consequence, since it can't really damage your ships or your infantry, and it will retreat if there are no land units left. The 2 bombers + battleship have a high probability of removing the artillary, and if you are lucky, the 2 destroyers + infantry will take out the 2 militia and the flak gun. Now as to what are the odds of taking london against a human player that is actually smart enough to try and reinforce england and frantically counter-attack scotland? I don't know.

Maybe I'm just using different difficulty settings though.

And you're right, I did make some errors in my post. I'm only human after all. I was thinking of the mediteranian fleet when I said 2 other transports. And I really don't remember there being 2 militia in scotland before the patch. Didn't they ad the militia spawning rule for countries other than china in one of the patches?

[JanSorensen]

We agree that getting the ART is highly successfull in the first bombing.

The FTR matters because it fires on the INF - meaning further shots get a larger chance to hit it due to already reduced evasion.

Did you try the invasion a number of times and count how often you do get ashore? As said above I only got ashore 1 in 12 times - but that is obviously too small a sample to adequately tell.

Difficulty - I did my tests on normal. I assume you are talking about normal too?

I havent even begun looking into the options the WA has to prevent the turn 2 move - I merely looked at getting ashore.

Its possible those MIL were in a patch - though I do believe they were in the retail version.

[Denbushi]

Well, milage may vary.

In reality, I imagine the US probably would have immidiately entered the war if German troops had landed in Britain.

[JanSorensen]

Could I possibly pursuade you to perform the invasion (just the turn one part - so you dont even need to take the Netherlands) 10 or even 20 times and report how often you actually get ashore? On normal difficulty. It would be great seeing if your data and mine fit or not.

[Denbushi]

Well, I guess I must have just been lucky the first several times I tried it. I just tested it again between 15 and 20 times and my results were pretty close to yours. About 10-15% of the time, the artillary was not damaged, about 60% my infantry was wounded, and the rest the targeting AI doubled up, leaving a Tommy unit undamaged. I was successful once.

It has made me realize what a delicate balancing act the setup near the channel is. One more surface ship of any class or another bomber in West Germany, or a German bomber with speed 4, and the odds would jump dramatically.

There were a few other amusing aberrations too, like a JU-88 Shooting down a Spitfire, or the failure of the Tommy Air Defense to damage either bomber. I guess it's all about the dice rolls.

I have often wondered though if the game is built to gradually degrade your odds the more times you reload? It often seems to me that the more times I load and retry a particular combat, the worse and worse the average result gets. My one success this round was fairly early on, and as I continued the failures moved from targeting errors, into my infantry being wounded, into the infantry being destroyed.

[Denbushi]

It seems like a turn 2 invasion against an unsuspecting player is still a distinct possibility if you were to move the bomber from E Germany and your paratrooper into the netherlands on turn 1.

The extra firepower of the one bomber and the paratrooper could well be enough to turn the odds, move your dive bomber to the netherlands also, and you only increase the odds.

It seems a shame that the range of the Junkers has to be so limited, especially while carrying paratroops, as historically, the Fallschirmjagers did airborne assaults on Sicily from germany, and on Crete from Italy. Neither of which is possible in the game. I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure that a JU-88 could historically have made it from the german coast to southern scotland with paratroopers on board. Especially since they are lighter than bombs!

[JanSorensen]

The paratrooper would get shot down the majority of the time - as the bombing run does not eliminate the Ftr/AA at any reliable rate.

Another ship would not do a terribly lot either (on its own). Only one ship can do shore bombardment for the airial bombardment and one 2 ships can help the invasion as only one land unit is invading. So, the extra ship would not do all that much.

Another bomber would mean you have a chance at taking out a MIL/AA on the initially bombing. That would indeed chance the odds considerably.

I dont think the odds get worse from reloading

[Denbushi]

Some of what you say is true, but I think that the extra attack value of a battleship in the second bombardment could make a difference. And the presence of another transport most deffinitely could. And I'm relatively sure that a paratrooper still lands even if their transport is shot down.

[von_Schmidt]

ORIGINAL: Denbushi

Some of what you say is true, but I think that the extra attack value of a battleship in the second bombardment could make a difference. And the presence of another transport most deffinitely could. And I'm relatively sure that a paratrooper still lands even if their transport is shot down.

Yeah, the paratrooper does stil jump when the bomber is hit (oddly enough; just like the fact that the bomber drops the airborne and then uses its land attack...)

-von Schmidt

[toddtreadway]

I thought it was a little odd that the bombers would shoot, but I guess it makes sense, since the last time I checked heavy bombers weren't used to do airborne drops very often. I guess the heavy bomber unit is actually a combo cargo/heavy bomber unit!

[Uncle Josef]

Of course Sealion is feasible. In the games I've played as Japan and my friend as Axis, he's always able to take England in 3-4 turns.

God knows how... but his successes make mine in Asia look minor and unimportant :S

[Davidovich Trotsky]

I can do it in 3 turns easy, basically order west germany to build 10 transports first turn, and on 3rd move your fleet into the ocean and bomb england with your bombers (also do bombardment at same time) artillary gets destoryed then put your transports ships there and you can get around a reasonable force landed and take over England then move more troops onto england and wipe out Scotland 4th turn.

Easy as 1 to 3 and you invaded England the exact date as it is on the video. [;)]

[silodhlehan]

The big reason why it's feasable is that the computer will leave like 2-3 guys in the UK but 10+- infantry in Egypt.

Try sealion VS 10 infantry. Yikes.

The turn one option seemed risky I always wait til fighters go 2. Which means that I'm NOT done by turn 3.

10 transports seems like a lot of material, hmmm have to try that. [:D] sounds cool.

Plus the second I have the England subdued I like to move my light fleets to france to have fun on WA transports. WA Transports never sink Axis destroyers unlike Axis subs.

I fear sending subs against more than one transport esp when near gibraltar there are often bunches of 5-7.

[Davidovich Trotsky]

you can use east germany for building transports as well to make sure you got enough to decimate England or Scotland, its impossible for WA to build up enough forces to combat the attack.