The real possibilities for Sealion

[mcaryf]

In the fighters over Britain thread I made some comments about the practicality of Sealion in the game versus real life - this thread is to amplify that.

Prior to WW2 only the Japanese made serious efforts to develop specialised amphibious or beach landing capability i.e. landing craft. Certainly the Germans and Italians did not have anything that would do that job. This is clear if you consider the two actual attempts at seaborne invasions that they undertook. The first of these was Norway. The German method here was to hide troops in the holds of merchant ships and enter Norway's major ports in an apparently peaceful fashion. At the appointed hour the troops emerged and seized key positions overwhelming the small military forces of Norway. The seaborne attack was augmented by parachute landings at some airports. The hazards of directly attacking a defended and alert port were clearly illustrated when the Germans lost one of their few heavy cruisers to shore batteries after Norway became aware of the German intentions.

The second example was the German's attempted invasion of Crete. In this case they commandeered a fleet of fishing craft and attempted to travel to Crete under the cover of darkness to augment the parachute attack. The Royal Navy patrols detected this fleet and turned it back with significant losses to the troops involved none of whom made it to Crete.

Given that they had no capability to mount a beach assault what then were the German's actual plans for Sealion. The answer is that they set about modifying Rhine barges with the idea that these would either be towed or proceed across the Channel under their own power. The modifications were to enable them to be beached and the troops aboard allowed to drive or charge onto the beach. I guess they also hoped the tanks might be able to add their fire to the assault as they approached the beaches.

Now Rhine barges are not intended to be seagoing and could probably manage a maximum speed at sea of around 5 knots. Thus a Channel crossing of at least 25 miles is going to take 5 hours plus and a lot longer if you consider forming up into some sort of assault formation on a wide front.

In the game players currently happily discuss the option of invading Scotland let alone England. We are plainly in the realm of fantasy wargames here. It would take more than a week for a 5 knot Rhine barge to make it up the East Coast of Britain and you might imagine the state the troops would be in after that experience even if the barges had survived the buffetting they would get in the open seas and the week long attacks of the RN.

What would we have to do to inject a bit of realism into this situation?

Unfortunately GGWAW only allows one unit type (the Transport) to ferry troops across seas. Thus we are faced with a dilemma of either giving the German transport its true speed/range as an amphibious unit i.e. 1 or leaving the speed/range as it is for transportation purposes but recognising that it cannot initially at least support amphibious invasions.

My preference would be the latter i.e. let the German transport retain its current range but reduce its amphibious capability to 1. This would mean that the German player can only initially use transports to follow up a successful parachute landing (sort of the case in Norway) or they need to undertake a crash building programme to construct a minmum of 5 transports and probably research amphibious assault for future deployment in world conquest.

Oh well, I just wanted to get that off my chest but I expect you guys will want to continue with fantasy wargames because it is more fun than the real thing!

Regards

Mike

[SeaMonkey]

I agree Mike.

Actually we should have a separate unit for this feature which would, in conjuction with a transport, allow amphibious invasions, aiwirl(as it was in real life), in hostile territories.

This would restrict the vast Allied invasions early in the game, but then we are faced with the Japanese dilemma of initial expansion.

Will see how SC2 handles this aspect.

[Lebatron]

That sounds logical mike. Yes it would have been something like you imagine if it went down in history that way. If the battle of Britain went favorably for Germany, Sealion still may have been a disaster. We will never know.

As far as your gripe about Germany's transport capacity, I can live with the fantasy, as you like to call it. I personally use the term what-if. When you sit down to play this game you got to accept a certain level of fantasy. How far back you go before the outbreak of WW2 can determine the level of fantasy you will accept. If your of the school of thought that your playing Hitler and would have done everything exactly as had done right up to the start of war, then I can see why you would say Germany should not have this level of amphibious capability. Because they only had barges. On the other hand, what if your of the school of thought that you had been in change for 10+ years before WW2 starts. Would you not have done some things different? What if you had listened to your naval officers who said we need good transport ships? When you look at it that way, couldn't you accept that German had a slightly different focus in this alternate history. It seems reasonable to me that Germany has real transports because as Supreme Commander I ordered them to be built.

[Joel Billings]

I could see a drop to amphib 2, but a drop to one will kill any amphib by Italians as well and is really too much to do. I know Jan has other ideas on how to make Sea Lion tougher (or at least less likely to lead to a sure German victory), so you may see some changes in the next patch. Jan's latest exe has theoretically fixed 20-30 bugs (I don't consider them game stoppers, but they are annoying), so people should be happy with it once we are able to test it and get it out to the public.

[mcaryf]

Hi Joel

I agree with you that for the playability of the game a reduction of amphibious lift capacity to 1 would be a bad move if only because it removes the uncertainty of Sealion which did to some extent exist. I say to some extent because Churchill despatched his one and only armoured division to the Middle East in August 1940 before the outcome of the Battle of Britain was known so it does not look as though he regarded Sealion as a serious possibility but then the Germans had already lost the use of their surface fleet in the Norway invasion.

One of the great strengths of GGWAW as a game is the scale chosen for it which allows many other complicated issues to be addressed more simply. Unfortunately amphibious assaults is one area where the scale does work against it. The minimum unit size in the standard game is a corps of 100,000+ men. Even the Allies with their enormous maritime resources struggled to mount D Day in 1944 using that sort of number in the initial assault. Conceptually of course, because of the 3 month time period, you can imagine a much smaller landing force with follow up units filling out the corps over time and this works for the Japanese island conquests. However, in the case of Sealion the German Army beleived at the time that they would need to use several divisions in the initial attack.

I have seen various suggestions of making it harder to mount amphibious assaults over great distances but these probably all require code changes to be mandatory. There is obviously the possibility for a "house rule" approach one of which might be to say that no amphibious assault could take place against a defended region where the attacking army has traversed more sea regions than the current year less 1939. Thus in 1940 the max is 1 region in 1941 2 regions etc. This would allow the major historic invasions to take place as most of Japan's early expansion is against undefended regions.

Regards

Mike

[WanderingHead]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
I know Jan has other ideas on how to make Sea Lion tougher (or at least less likely to lead to a sure German victory), so you may see some changes in the next patch.

Personally, I think that at a minimum the eastern coast of Scotland should be changed to double movement, so that German air support over Scotland is more difficult.

But in my opinion, the better solution is rejiggering all of the sea zones in the North Sea area. Scotland should be two sea moves away from France, and anything moving from France to Scotland should be subject to air op-fire from England. This would all be possible with a reconfiguration of the map.

Some small map changes like these are all that I think are needed to improve the situation.

[Lebatron]

WanderingHead, I had considered doing that for my mod. Both the double border on Scotlands east bank or moving a sea line. Another small change I had considered was to move one pop up to Scotland so that one more militia was created during invasion. I settled on something else, and thats whats in Franco's Alliance v2.2 now. You can see a pic of the change in my mods thread.

Placing Scotlands range at 3 would probably kill sealion. So what I settled on was not as drastic but does add a little to the defendability of Britian. If you make the range to England longer via the Atlantic sea zone you force German fighters and tac air to fly the North Sea. With this unknown removed the British player can set up his defense accordingly, because he no longer has to worry about this back door through the Atlantic sea zone. Its a small tip in Britains favor.

Another reason I liked placing a double border where I did rather than on Scotland was to fix an oddity. The range between England and Spain is now 3 which it should be. So my choice to place the double border on Englands west coast fixes this oddity and increases Britains defendability slightly. I much preferred that solution to the other ones.

In my opinion most of the reasons why Sealion succeeds is the fault of the UN player. He either gets to timid in committing his forces to save his country, or he builds wrong. When he builds wrong its usaully because he is trying to min/max things so he has an advantage later in the game. Unfortunately this method can sometimes backfire and prove inadequate in a pressing emergency. Thats strategy. It shows the level of strategic depth this game has.

[JanSorensen]

If I am playing against a competent German player I dont see the possibility to use population on weak MIL. Rather, I will be using every single point of population on units that are stronger when it comes to averting Sealion. So, against a competent German I dont believe there is any pop to spare. Sure, once its clear that Germany is heading for Russia there may be - but then the point is moot.

As for changing the border on the south of England to cost 2 MP it obviosly has an effect but most of that effect can be countered by the German player upping the speed of his Stukas to 3. If the English keeps his FTRs at home the North Sea is open for transit for the German FTR. If the English commits his FTRs to the North Sea the German bombers can still fly south. Its an interesting idea though and possibly the effect is larger than I can initially see. Right now though I think that making Scotland rough will have the same or a larger effect and have the virtue of resembling reality more. Ofcourse both could be done and you may even have.

[Lebatron]

Since I don't play the UN much, I had forgotten that on Britain's first turn he has a fighter and 2 transports using up 6 pop. I was thinking that those pop would be wasted if 3 militia were not built on turn one. Seems that's not the case.

[WanderingHead]

I wasn't thinking about making Sea Lion harder so much as redirecting to England instead of Scotland, at least some of the time. It seems very unrealistic that the further location is just as easy to reach, when clearly somewhere near the narrower Channel would be the place an invasion would really occur.

Clearly in reality there is a longer delay to get to Scotland, longer range for aircraft, and the possibility that everything would get sunk on the way there. That's why I would like a sea border re-jigger that would allow air op-fire at troops on transports passing England on the way to Scotland.

Similarly, British air targeting mainland Europe would be stationed in southern England, not Scotland.

But I recognize that such a change is very unlikely at this stage. But the 2MP east Scottish border would get part way there. The drawback is that then it is 4MP to Norway as well. I think it is a consequence of the awkward sea borders that were adopted in that region.

Having Scotland rough is also a great idea.

[Banedor]

I only have one question, in human games, how many times has a german player actually attempted Sealion? It seems like most Germans won't take the risk so really no need to make it anymore harder if they don't really attempt Sealion to begin with. But than again, I have never done a human game to know if Sealion is actually attempted more than I would have expected.

[JanSorensen]

In my last ~10 games against human opponents I have opted towards Sealion. So, it may be rare overall but its very feasible within the current setup. I would even say that its too easy and I expect that Scotland atleast will be rough in the next patch.

[Flatline]

In my pbem games I often go for sea lion as well, but the WAL can easily stop that if they dont get too crazy in Africa.

Since a proper sea lion in WaW requires german production of transports, I just figure that they made proper landing craft in those 6 months instead of the same barges they had already.

I do agree that an invasion of scotland is pretty far fetched. The allied air would be harassing them the entire way, not to mention the navy. Also if I recall, scotland does not have many places an invasion could really take place. Unfortunaly WaW does not model that very well (sea invasion of Gibralter anyone?).

In reading this thread, while making scotland a double border is a positive step, it does not really solve the problem.

I dont see any reason that transports could not be taken down a bit from the amphibious side. 1-2 would be the starting level for most. It then takes a TON of transports and gives the allies something to do with all their spare production.

But wait you cry, what about the japanese and italians? Well the italians didnt have much sea invasion capability either so that is reasonable enough. The japanese get hurt the most but there is a potential fix:

Allow invasion against undefended territory to use NORMAL transport not AMPHIBIOUS. If you think about it, this does not change things for the japanese a great deal from the default game yet includes the low amphib capability we seek.

[Lebatron]

There is a problem with placing Scotland out of reach. For one thing, a double border at Scotland introduces an oddity. The range to Norway, for one, would be messed up by this. The other and more important flaw that would be introduced by making Scotland range 3 would be that under such a change Germany's only real choice would become England. Of coarse, in real life such an invasion would have taken place in England and not Scotland. But in the game, to give Germany any real chance of pulling off Sealion you have to force the English player to spread his forces over 2 territories. Look at it this way, what chance do you think Sealion would have if Great Britain was just one territory with all the units stacked in one place? This would basically be the case if Scotland was placed out of range.

The way I see it, having Scotland and England both adjacent to the North Sea just represents a wide range of areas the German invasion could land. Why would any invaion force choose to land where the enemy has the greatest concentration? In France the Allies choose to invade further west because of this. And in this game the long French/Lowlands coast is 2 territories. Imagine how much harder D-day would be if the Netherlands and Western France were combined into one game zone. The current design choice makes it necessary for the Germans to use double the forces to secure the coast. The same should be the case with Britain or it would just become to easy to defend.

The current setup would need to be completely changed if Scotland was placed out of range of most German air. Sure it could work, but England would need to be weakened to make it balance. Right now it gets 4 free MIL upon invasion. If I was to mod this and include a new sea zone around Scotland I would probably eliminate the free militia, and adjust the starting forces. This would probably be more historic anyway. Does anyone know, or can make an educated guess, about how much extra resistance the Germans would have encountered? It was my understanding that if the regular army was eliminated that would have been pretty much it for the British. Well I welcome comments on this, and may concider this for a future update of Franco's Alliance.

[Heinz Guderian]

If I may make an observation, it would appear as if some of you simply wish to make Sealion impossible in WaW, not because it was(is) physically impossible for Germany to have undertaken a Seaborne invasion of Britian but simply becaue IRL, it did not happen. This makes one wonder if all you want to do with your matches is replay WW2 exactly as it occured over and over why bother to even make simualations in the 1st place?. Yes its true, Germany never invaded GB or could have, but not becaue it was impossible, they were not prepared for it in any way shape or form. They simply did not commit the resources to the endevor , it might even be debateable whether they ever seriously intended to in the 1st place. One of the things that makes WaW interesting is, (if your playing the axis), your not bound by any rule spoken or otherwise that says you have to repeat the mistakes of the past. I really fail to see the point of makeing it (virtually) impossible to invade GB while maintaining the fiction that you can at least try...whats the point. Wouldnt it be easier to just remove Transports from the German force pool and be done with it? There problem solved.-No chessy invasions vs an un-garrisioned Scotland or an even less likey scenario-a head on assault on England itself. Simply code transports out or code the game so Germany cant attempt any seaborne ops-period. Another way is to code certain zones so they cant be attacked via sea landings-Gibralter was mentioned as an example. Fine, however theres only one small problem with tagging something 'impossible' . We humans have an interesting quirk. We declare things 'impossible' 'unsinkable' , inpregnable', whatever, and then someone comes along and shows us reality seldom conforms to our wishes. A good in game example is the Ardenne forest in France. The French beleived the forest formed an impenetrable barrier to a modern, mechanized army, hence it was virtually undefended, well..we all know that one turned out [:D] . So useing the logic employed above the eastern france zone should be coded impassable or at least get supermega fortress status because, well...thats what they thought it was so unlikely that anyone would ever attack thro it. -WaW allows every country the flexaibilily to controll R+D and resource allocation. If I (as virtual ruler of germany in WaW) order massive commitment to develop and build specialized Seaborne landing capabililties....why shouldnt we be allowed to use and deploy them any way we see fit. Just because the real germany suffured from (many) bad tactical and strategic decisions that cost them the war-doesnt mean the game should force me to repeat historys misttakes.

If the thought of WaW transport icons not jiveing with the reality of what was 'floating on water' really bugs anyone that badly think of them as .....civillian cargo ships pressed into militarty service, after all, luxury liners were used as troop ships and you dont see them given special icons. All that national commitment is represented at the top level in WaW by transport icons regardless whether its converted cruise liners or germanys wildly impractical barges idea or specially designed LST type vessels (or fishing boats for that matter eheh). WaW simply isnt set up to reflect the enourmous real world difficulties involved in mass seaborne invasions. If it were.-it would prob be a different game altogether. The abstracted way WaW handle things now isnt prefect -but, really.....why re-invent the wheel...

[Lebatron]

Don't get these guys wrong. They don't want Sealion to be made impossible. Just a little harder. The sweet spot would be a balance that allows Germany to succeed with Sealion if he builds and plays well. That is kind of the case now but the victory in England is perhaps coming to soon. A good balance to strike would be a delay of a turn or two of Englands conquest. In this way the rest of the Allies can have a chance in 1943 to push the Axis under 70PP before its to late. As the game plays now its very possible for the Germans to get a quick victory in England and then have the time to neutral land grab a little to get very close to AV. Then during Barbarossa quickly grab the few needed to go over the top. Russia during its first turn of war is usually not in a good position to retake much. I recently had this very same thing happen to me while I played Russia in a PBEM game. I got attacked and could do nothing on my first turn to knock the Axis down enough to prevent the AV.

So the flaw as most probably see it, is not whether Sealion is possible, but the time frame required to pull it off. Anything that can delay Sealion a turn or two would be seen by most as a plus. Perhaps making Scotland rough terrain can do just that. We'll have to see if thats the case.

[mcaryf]

Hi Heinz Guderian
I understand your interest in "what ifs" for wargames - it is obviously part of their appeal. Where I part company with you is that I think a game like GGWAW has to have some sort of logical start point and the designers chose one. Thus it is sensible to apply what if's from that stage but if you want to go back earlier and map on a German amphibious capability that would take years to develop then you would logically need to think about what the other "players" might have done. Other wargames, e.g HOI, cover that sort of what if ground allowing the relevant countries to follow different R&D paths. My initial objection about GGWAW was that whilst the game starts at a point in time it gives the Axis a capability to invade Scotland that was/is frankly incredible and is only made possible due to the game's turn structure. In my view it was not necessary within the game mechanics to allow it and various people including myself have pointed out how the game could be adjusted to reflect a more realistic situation. There should still be the prospect of a German invasion of England, as that was a realistic possibility, but not Scotland.

Going back to your alternate history - it might just be in the bounds of possibility that Hitler could have invested in the technology of landing craft but that was not really the issue it was the UK's huge preponderance in naval craft such as DD's that would have completely annihilated any such force going to Scotland (and in real life England also since the Luftwaffe failed to get into a position to interdict the RN from operating in The English Channel). To build a navy capable of taking on the RN would have required Hitler not to build so many tanks and other vital parts of his war machine in the period in question and that would have left him vulnerable to military pressure from France so would not be a very probable alternative.

Hitler did have various other opportunities to win versus the British, e.g. with a Mediterranean strategy attacking Gibraltar through Spain, and it is good that GGWAW allows these to be explored but, to adapt a phrase, invading Scotland would be a sea too far!

Regards

Mike

[delatbabel]

I am playing a PBEM at the moment on v 1.202 where Sealion was done on turn 2. I have no idea how, it seems my units in Scotland just evaporated at the moment of impact, and I didn't have enough left over in England to defend that either. By then the transports to Africa were cut as well (how he got so many subs into the indian ocean on the first turn is beyond me). So I couldn't bring anything back from Africa or India, I just got hammered.

I am playing this out a few times against the computer and it seems relatively easy for me to take out Scotland on turn 1, England on turn 2, and then the war is over. Not sure I managed that on any earlier versions of the game.

I think I have figured out that it is in fact possible to take England on turn 1. So how an allied player defends against that I don't know.

So something the designers may want to look at.

[delatbabel]

OK, here is the problem. It was pointed out in another thread that Sealion against scotland on the first turn is possible, just very unlikely. Someone calculated the odds at around 3% (can't find the thread now, sorry).

I played this a few times and figured out what die rolls are needed. Sure, it's difficult, but possible.

The problem is that in a PBEM game an exploit is available where the axis player can play the first turn over and over and over again until that sealion is successful. From there, England falls on turn 2 (provided the turn is replayed enough to sink enough transports to kill off any reinforcements) and the game is unloseable for the axis.

So -- any way to stop it? It would only require one extra unit in Scotland to make sealion impossible on turn 1, or to make that 2 move border as suggested to at least delay it until 1941, but I think as it stands if the axis player is allowed to repeat his first turn over again until sealion on turn 1 is successful, then the game is poked.

Del

[JanSorensen]

Ahh, I see. I remember the thread - though I dont recall if I was the one claiming the 3% or not.
 
Yes, its possible to take Scotland by cheating. With enough patience you can also have the Italian Fleet kill off the E. Med Uk Fleet without taking any loses (the odds are very low so be prepared to use alot of time on that). I suggest using a house rule not to allow such sillyness.
 
In A World Divided Scotland has indeed become tougher to invade and absolutely cannot be invaded on the first turn.