It's not a great stretch to imagine Japan fixing their management errors and getting a SYNTH program working.
But surely a “shortage of alloying and catalytic metals for the synthetic oil plants” (if that was the case) is more than management errors?
With Synths, I have always wondered why they remain essentially 'free' once constructed - wouldn't they be diverting a great quantity of coal otherwise on it's way to other sectors of the economy?
Probably because it was a board game with 30,000 pages of rules [:D] – there are plenty of things that would make it more realistic but at some point there is so much number-crunching the fun starts to escape….. Of course with a computer game the number crunching goes away, but given the basic game has yet to be finished, probably not sensible to go down that route....[;)]
Re: Spain and Hitler, etc., I think the true cost of aligning Spain to the Axis would be not just economic (with military knock-on effects), but political (with military knock-on effects). Hitler could not ally with Spain while Vichy France existed, to be able to give Morocco to Spain. First, one would have to instantly change all of Vichy France - everything, both territorial control and all military forces, including in mainland France - to Free France. The Empire was non-negotiable for Vichy.
Yes, there was a lengthy debate on this a while back and the above was the point I raised then. I like Joseignacio’s house rule because one of the problems I find with strategic games is they massively over-simplify Spain. Yes there was the economic cost to Germany – as Joseignacio’s house rule sets out to cover off - but there was also as per the above, a political cost.
1. Spain, 2. Italy and 3. Vichy France.
1 and 2 (in this scenario) are allies of Germany. They are also weak and potentially unreliable. France is not an ally (and regardless of what Petain thinks) and is going to get what’s coming to her at the end of the war. HOWEVER, of the three, Hitler is fully aware that Vichy France is also the best placed to defend her colonies from the British / Free French. But Hitler knows that he will have to commit troops to assist Spain and her defence if she becomes an ally.
And all of that does not even begin to cover how Hitler manages the three powers. The moment Hitler starts carving up Vichy, the game is up, and Petain’s whole plan (to save France and her Empire so she has a prominent place in the post WWII world) is seen as being for nothing.
Mussolini is already cheesed off that the easy spoils he joined the war for have not been forthcoming. Suddenly he sees bits of the French Empire handed out to Franco. That will go down like a cup of cold sick.
So potentially you would have the colonies of Vichy France (which has just been sold down the river) suddenly getting warm and fuzzy feelings about the Free French. Senegal (and its key port of Dakar) and Syria are beyond the immediate grab of the Axis, but Tunisia, Algeria, Corsica and Nice (all were in Mussolini’s demands to Hitler) are suddenly ripe for the plucking – and Mussolini can say that he is occupying these to forestall a move over to the Allies – and move as far west as Toulon to stop the French fleet sailing to North Africa. But the French in North Africa – already full of hate for the Italians – aren’t just going to invite them in – and neither are the French in Morocco when Spanish troops come a calling.
Hitler has eyes on his raison d’etre, and Lebensraum in the East, yet suddenly, in exchange for getting Gibraltar, the Germans have now got a mini war in the Mediterranean on his hands – none of which involves concentrating on or attacking the British – and he has, almost certainly, going to have to put troops into Metropolitan Vichy France because Petain’s Government is now a busted flush. Surely under this situation EVEN Laval isn’t going to be stepping in….
As kids nowadays love to say, that is just a mess - and a series of complications that Hitler did not need.
