Grand Campaign V1.00

[macroeconomics]

So it's now late-May and the event which is supposed to trigger Germany's invasion of the Low Countries (and give me 70 PPs) still hasn't triggered. So I decided to take a peek at the event script. It should have triggered at the beginning of April. But, it had a condition of "no war with Russia". Well, I'm not at war with Russia, but I know a certain Scandahoovian country that is... I'm guessing that short circuited that event. Ugh. So I've waited the better part of about 4 months beyond when I was ready to invade the Low Countries in order to get an event that I won't be getting. Well at least Finland is happy!

With the scripted entry of all the Benelux countries into the war at the same time off the table, there's no reason to proceed in that manner and we can invade Holland first, then Belgium. Below you can see the results of after the first weeks attacks into Holland. We need to capture the two big Dutch cities to force a surrender. The key to opening the way to those cities was the destruction of a Dutch infantry corps just to the east of Amsterdam. It succumbed after 4 air strikes (3 Luftwaffe steps shot down by AA, natch...) and an assault by a motorized and infantry corps.

[JJKettunen]

ORIGINAL: macroeconomics
... I used the massive material aid provided to the Finns to buy a new fighter wing and about 20 infantry divisional equivalents....

What!? Historically there were 16 Finnish divisions, and it grew only by one after the Winter War. From a a population of 3.5 million people, how can one raise so many divisional equivalents? Are they sending cyborgs to help?

[macroeconomics]

ORIGINAL: Keke

What!? Historically there were 16 Finnish divisions, and it grew only by one after the Winter War. From a a population of 3.5 million people, how can one raise so many divisional equivalents? Are they sending cyborgs to help?

The economics here aren't going to exactly replicate what you see in wargames like Fire in the East/Scorched Earth. In general, I think you'll see bigger ground force structures. It's pretty easy for Slovakia, for example, to field 4-5 corps in time for Barbarossa, while in r/l they were able to get only a single under strength corps into Russia, and that for only a few months before they were functionally down to a single division. The flip side of this is that ground casualties are tremendously large. Countries like Hungary and Rumania easily suffer 100k casualties per month in the first year of Barbarossa, which in r/l would have extinguished their entire army before September 1941. The easiest way to think about this is that stated casualties aren't all KIAs and include disrupted formations. And that correspondingly, the cost of new formations isn't really the cost of building a unit from scratch, but draws upon available but disorganized manpower and material.

None of that explains the mass of Finnish skirmishers swarming over the Karelian pennisula, but frankly that wouldn't be an issue if the Soviets would just start attacking down south. For whatever reason the Soviet AI isn't attempting to attrition the Finns to death down there and that's why the Finns have the excess units to mess with the Sovs up north.

[Flaviusx]

The game requires some suspension of disbelief, Jyri. It's frankly impressionistic and as a result tends to fall apart if examined closely. So, don't.

I'm okay with this. It doesn't have to be WitE, which, point in fact, I'm taking a break from. It's a grand strategy title with the big picture in mind.

[JJKettunen]

ORIGINAL: macroeconomics
None of that explains the mass of Finnish skirmishers swarming over the Karelian pennisula, but frankly that wouldn't be an issue if the Soviets would just start attacking down south. For whatever reason the Soviet AI isn't attempting to attrition the Finns to death down there and that's why the Finns have the excess units to mess with the Sovs up north.

If it followed historical lines, the Soviet AI would also attack all along the border (albeit with smaller forces) trying to outflank the southern positions...

[JJKettunen]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

The game requires some suspension of disbelief, Jyri. It's frankly impressionistic and as a result tends to fall apart if examined closely. So, don't.

I'm okay with this. It doesn't have to be WitE, which, point in fact, I'm taking a break from. It's a grand strategy title with the big picture in mind.

No problem. Was just surprised with the seemingly massive aid to the Finns.

[macroeconomics]

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming - the invasion of Holland is nearing its end as the defenders are pushed aside from Amsterdam by 3 attacking German corps assisted by another 4 air strikes (3 AA casualties again...doh). And further south, Luxembourg falls to German invaders. It might take another turn to position the Wehrmacht properly, but Belgium is next on the list.

A note on neutral countries. Some air recon located the Anglo-French airbases/aircraft that have been harrassing the assembled German armor. It was located near Calais. Clearly they were operating by flying over neutral Belgian (and originally Dutch) airspace. We know that because once located, German counter air superiority missions could fly over the same. So neutral airspace is a free fly zone. Good to know.

And a footnote about naval activity and Norway. Six infantry divisions were transported up to Norway. The Royal Navy was unable to intervene. As noted above, your transports must spend at least one turn at sea vulnerable to interdiction. But it doesn't have to be in the sea zone nearest to your destination port. And if fact you shouldn't wait there if that's a dangerous area. For example, a German mountain division needed to be transported to Narvik. But rather than sit in the sea zone next to Narvik (East Norwegian Sea), which is quite vulnerable, I moved the transports to the Skagerrak sea zone, which is within movement range of the Narvik port on the next turn.

It also turned out that while the RN didn't intercept the assembled Kriegsmarine in the Skagerrak, we did sight a RN cruiser in the North Sea. So I decided to test out the naval system and went into that sea zone with a big force, 4 BBs (actually 2 BCs and the 2 obsolete pre-WW1 dreadnaughts) and 18 CAs (more than half are actually raiders and captured Norwegian and Danish boats) and 21 SSs. Didn't get much more than a few pot shots at the British CA before it ran, but we've been sitting there in that sea zone for about a month now. Occasionally the RN shows up with a few ships, but no real combat to date. I'm encouraged enough by this that I've spent 100 PPs on amphibious assault transports. And of course prior to that I spent perhaps a couple hundred PPs on the raiders and repairing/refitting all the German ships. Sea Lion, here we come!

The situation in the Low Countries is shown below:

[macroeconomics]

With time ticking away, the attack on Belgium commences without all the German infantry in their optimal jump off locations. In particular the swampy ground of southwest Holland isn't occupied by German landsers. Nevertheless the attack goes off fairly well. Only Brussels must be captured in order to force Belgium's surrender. Unfortunately it's behind a double layer of troops. As is the case with many multi-phase movement/combat games the standard operating procedure is followed: attack first with units having low movement (AP) rates, and save the fast units for attacking the deeper layers of enemy lines. A speedy panzer division is the last to go and dashes into Belgium's capital with no APs to spare.

Elsewhere, a new phenomenon has emerged. Multiple recon mission intercepted (you take a step loss to your fighter wing each time this happens), so making it difficult to find the enemy fighters to target with air superiority missions. It seems as if the further behind the enemy lines you attempt to send a recon mission, the worse the chances of success. That may just be anecdotal evidence, but it certainly is frustrating to see your fighters wings ground down that way. In fact while the fighters are busy, the Luftwaffe bombers have much less to do. That just confirms my suspicion that early Luftwaffe builds should be heavily weighted towards fighters.

The situation after the attack on Belgium:

[macroeconomics]

Up in northern Finland, the Soviets have moved major reinforcements into the Murmansk area. Although cut off from rail supply, the city itself provides sufficient local supply and the Finnish forces are attempting a controlled retreat in the sector.

In France, the Wehrmacht spends a week moving into the space vacated by the surrender of Belgian forces. The screenshot below shows the situation just before the Germans resume their attacks on the following turn.

[macroeconomics]

The first week of the advance into France went fairly well. Much of the French airforce was destroyed on its runways by advancing panzer units. The RAF fighters however remain a major threat. Believed to be based in southern England they intercept and shoot down Luftwaffe bombers in northern France. Attempts to locate their exact position by aerial recon are difficult as they tend to shoot down the recon planes. Large numbers of Luftwaffe fighters have been moved from Southwest Germany to newly conquered Holland/Belgium to deal with this issue. Additionally Luftwaffe leaders are being redeployed from bomber squadrons to the those fighter wings to increase their efficiency.

The other big development this turn (July 9, 1940) was the entry of Italy into the war. Triggered by the arrival of German units near Paris, this causes an event which allows italy to enter the war without spending the required Diplomatic Points (DP). Italy was otherwise short of DPs to make a DoW, and probably wouldn't have had the required DPs until late 1940/early 1941.

On the Finnish front, the Mannerheim Line remains intact, but Finnish forces are in full retreat in the Karelian pennisula. It's likely that some Finnish divisions won't make it back. There is alarm in Helsinki as word filters back that Petsamo may not be defensible.

Below is the situation in France, prior to this turn's German attacks.

[macroeconomics]

All the Luftwaffe fighters along the Channel were used. Five step losses via recon attempts intercepted before the location of the RAF fighter bases was finally determined. Three RAF fighters just East & Northeast of London. All available Luftwaffe fighters are sent on air superiority missions against the RAF fighters and the British are simply overwhelmed by the numerical advantage. In the ground campaign, an undefended Paris falls to the panzers as well as a stubbornly defended Lille. Reims is fully surrounded as the consequences of a lack of French ground troops now starts to become apparent.

The Italians advance forward into southern France, but no combats occur. The Italians do pick off an French division in Tunisia as shown below. The more important question will be what opposition the Italian army of Libya faces as it advanced into Egypt. Additional Italian tac air wings are being readied to be sent there.

[macroeconomics]

Some events triggered this turn (July 16). One gifted Germany about 70 PP for having occupied a large chunk of French territory. No French surrender yet though. The other oddly was a message asking how the occupied territories of the USSR should be administered. Not clear to me if this was just an error in text message files and actually referred to France, or whether the single Soviet city occupied by Finland (Petrozavodsk) triggered that event. In any event I choose a moderate/medium policy. The Wehrmacht's casualties in France so far have been negligible. The formations are ready to push further west as shown below. Dunkirk is an objective this turn because if we pocket the French units along the coast, they would be without local supply if Dunkirk is German occupied.

[macroeconomics]

An Unexpected Result

After the odd message about Russian occupation, the Germans merrily went on their way, seizing Dunkirk, destroyng another RAF fighter wing, and even using their new Airborne division to complete an encirclement of the Maginot Line forces. All seemed set for a slow finishing off of the French, paced with deliberate actions to minimize German casualties. Then the Italians continued their march east into Egypt and west into Tunisia. They had received an event reducing the efficiency of troops in Libya because Malta was British held. Upon examination of their troops, the efficiency hit was indeed large (25-30%), and extended not just into Libya, but also into the troops now in Tunisia and Egypt. So the Italians immediately bought an Amphibious Assault point (50 PPs) and loaded a tech 2 infantry division onto it. Two Tac Air wings are in Sciliy and the entire refitted Italian navy is ready to sail and bombard the island of Malta.

And then something entirely unexpected happened. Messages began flashing on the screen indicating Soviet troops were attacking lonely German divisions garrisoning Poland! Once the Soviet AI was finished, it was the Finnish player turn. Checking their diplomatic status showed that they had now joined the Axis, thereby bringing the USSR into the war! Egads. Some more checking showed that Rumania had also entered the war of the Axis side. Of course their troops are all on the Yugoslav border, off rail lines and not ready to strat redeploy. Well that answers the question of why the Russian occupation option triggered. Germany is simply not ready for a fight with the USSR. It's been sitting on a huge PP stockpile thinking it wouldn't buy new ground units until it reached tech 2 in infantry and armor. Now it's clear that wad of PP will have to be blown on soon to be obsolete units. And even those may not be deployed in time. East Prussia is certainly lost as the Soviets are already three hexes from Konigsberg without a German unit in sight. The Russians are adjacent to Warsaw, with only a single division garrisoning it. Perhaps the Soviets can be stopped at a line from Breslau-Poznan-Kolberg. Perhaps. Perfidious Finland!

The only country ready for this result? Finland of course. They kick off their turn with a quick charge south from the Mannerheim line destroying a Soviet Mech Corps and even destroying the unprepared Leningrad garrison, although the Finns lacked the APs to enter the city.

[macroeconomics]

To make matters worse, at the start of the next German turn, an event triggers. Because the German PP stockpile is so large, 50 PPs are wasted. Doh, there goes the equivalent of three infantry corps.

In the west, the Wehrmacht is in a panic. The forward panzer divisions are ordered to make a mad dash for Tours, the city whose occupation will break French resistance. Everywhere else all the prior plans are ignored. The Maginot Line pocket, the out of supply French units along the coast, all are ignored. The only thing on the mind of the Wehrmacht solider in the west is to make a wild sprint for the nearest functioning rail line so he can be redeployed to face the Soviets.

However amongst the Luftwaffe, a more calm mindset is present. There's no need to redeploy bombers to the east since we won't be making ground attacks there and air superiority probably won't be achieved for months if ever. Instead reinforcements are assigned and the few full strength tac air wings are rebased further west to help in the desperate lunge for Tours. The Luftwaffe fighter wings continue their dogfights over the Channel against the RAF, destroying yet another enemy fighter wing.

The situation in the east is shown below:

[Flaviusx]

The Soviet will be crippled by the effectiveness reductions. You can overrun his stuff with ease once those kick in. He's not going to get very far into Poland. A few lansders will smoke whatever intrudes.

The real danger for you is in the long run. By the time the Wehrmacht is ready and redeployed fully to the east to advance into the USSR, the hit to the Red Army will be gone. So it probably will turn into a huge stalemate until you can get a big enough edge on tech and land warfare doctrine. You'll be 2 doctrines ahead of the Sovs for years, tech not so much.

[macroeconomics]

It's worth taking a breather right now and contemplate the sequence of choices and events that led to this early Soviet entry into the war.

The main pivot point was the decision of the Finns to resist the Soviet demands for land. I've also played the Finns previously and given in to the demands. That led to no Finn-USSR war, Soviet demands on land from Rumania, and no entry by Finland into the war once Germany launches Barbarossa (i.e. no Continuation War). The conclusion from this is that if you are playing as Germany and want Finland on your side, early Soviet entry seems to be a given. At which point one might ask, why bother with the Molotov-Ribbentropp treaty? Don't know if rejecting that changes the trajectory of Finnish-Soviet events however.

Another consequence of having Finland resist Soviet aggression is that it's pointless to wait for the attack on the Low Countries events to trigger. Might as well start chopping at Holland in Feb or March and then Belgium/Lux in March/April. That gives you a couple of extra months to deal with France. In fact, given the fairly easy conditions to force Vichy formation if you attack Poland first, I think it's doable to finish France in June and at least get a decent force structure back to Poland in time for the Soviet entry.

Another thing I've learned is that the Vichy events can cause some pretty harsh PP wastage on the Germans (I just lost a second batch of 50 PPs). You want to burn your PPs down to zero on the turn prior to Vichy formation because you'll get two events that both boost your PPs in addition to your normal PP industrial production. In general, saving up PPs is a bit dicey unless you've spent time reading the event script files.

[macroeconomics]

France asks for an armistice and Germany grants one. Vichy is formed. The conditions to trigger this sequence are that Germany control Paris, Tours, two of Reims/Lille/Metx and one of LeMans/Caen. Once Vichy was formed, all British expeditionary forces vanished. Presumably to be freely redeployed by the British. Which makes Sea Lion much more difficult seeing as about 10 British divisional equivalents were trapped without supply outside Le Harve. Drats.

I've decided to keep a large Luftwaffe force facing southern England.The amount of RAF fighters being produced is fairly awe inspiring. We are killing 1 or 2 fighter wings per turn. Which means that six turns ago GB committed to an impressive production run of fighters. The losses to the Luftwaffe in contrast are spread across many fighter wings, so we don't have to rebuild our losses from scratch. If it weren't for the consistent recon interception losses, we'd have a good loss sink built for the RAF here. As it is we need full strength fighter wings with our best Luftwaffe leaders in order to keep the RAF suppressed with a very slight PP loss ratio in our advantage.

The German and Italian amphibious assault transports have been trawling around the seas looking for a good target. The Royal navy is not active and has not been a threat. However the Italians found that neither Malta hex can be used by disembarking amphibious transports. Evidently Malta can only be seized by airborne infantry. Italy immediately spent the money to build a parachute division. The German parachute division is still moving back to a rail line, from whence it will need to decide whether to also head to Malta, threaten southern England or head to the Eastern front.

The German fleet is headed for the Channel where it will size up the possibility of a Hail Mary attempt on Dover. From what I've seen, Sea Lion is quite difficult to execute in this game. You need to grab a port, but in order to do so, you'll have at best a couple of infantry divisions in AAs and two parachute divisions. That's not a lot of firepower with which to take a defended city hex (and GB will garrison all its port hexes). Naval bombardment of the British ground troops will at best disrupt the defender's efficiency by 50%, no matter how many ships you have. I think your best shot is to concentrate all your tac air in northern France and hope you can blast away the Dover garrison with air strikes. It's a long shot.

Meanwhile German infantry continues to rail into Poland. The front is mostly stabilized with one exception - Rumania. With Hungary neutral, we have no rail link with Rumania. And the Rumanian forces on their own are not capable of dealing with the larger Soviet formations currently entering their country. So the first location for an offensive, once we get troops in place, will be south along the Soviet-Hungarian border to seize Lviv and get a rail link with Rumania. Below is the situation in the east after German moves for the turn have been completed.

[macroeconomics]

Well I've found the first hole in the AI's strategy routines. The Italian fleet with its single infantry division in amphibious assault transports decided to land next to Alexandria. It had no garrison. So the Italians walked in. The British defenders of Egypt were meanwhile surrounded by the grand Italian army of Libya. Depending on what the British have around the Nile and Suez, they can still salvage this setback but it is AI defensive deficiency that needs to be fixed.

It's actually surprising to me that there haven't been AI hiccups prior to this. That is, if one excludes the Soviet AI's inability to attack Finland as simply a subtle ruse to gain early war entry. But in general most big WW2 strategy games have fatal defects in (pick one, or most of the time pick many): defense of the British home islands, German attack on Scandinavia, French defense of the Italian border, etc. So far ToF has evaded those pitfalls. But here's the first. Time to crank up that British AI difficulty setting to easy...

[macroeconomics]

Sweden has entered the war on the Axis side, enraged by the Soviet attack on Finland no doubt. Either that or it was Germany spending all its Diplomatic Points, in particular the ones it got from the formation of Vichy, to turn Sweden. In retrospect, it probably would have been better to use all those DPs on Spain instead. Combined with a latter Italian DP spend on Spain, I think it's possible to bring them in on the Axis side.

The problem with bringing in the Swedes, is they really don't add anything. They haven't been able to build anything this year since they were digging themselves out of a negative PP hole from gifting all those PPs to Finland. They have some infantry divisions that will be used to free up about 6 German divisions garrisoning Norway and Denmark. But that's pretty much it. Their navy is all old stuff that needs to be refitted to be combat ready. At least they have an obsolete fighter wing that can be used to help intercept air raids against Helsinki. Contrast that to Spain which could change the strategic direction of the war in the Med. Not really a very close contest. Oh well, next time it'll be Spain!

[macroeconomics]

Some other minor points about how ToF handles situations that commonly occur in WW2 big strategy games. W.r.t. Vichy formation, Italy does NOT get to keep any small territorial gains it makes prior to the armistice. Any Italian units in France once Vichy forms are simply put in the "available to be redeployed bin". So there's no point in making mini offensives in Tunisia, or even towards Marseilles for that matter. ToF's French AI isn't stupid enough to leave southern France barren, so if you are playing as the Italian, simply accept that France is there for you to enter the war with, and go from there.

I'm in the middle of making my Hail Mary pass attempt to capture Dover and I have to say I really like how ToF structures its land/air/sea interactions, at least as far as amphibious invasions go. In a lot of WW2 strategy games you can sneak in an invasion force without air cover, or without taking out enemy air. Not in this game. You must have your bombers help take out the port defenders. And they won't be able to do that without enemy fighters prevented from intercepting them. So first you need to go in with your fighters. Then your bombers, then drop paras and the invasion infantry. It's a really nice overall structure that makes intuitive sense. Now they just need to get that Royal Navy more active.