1939 Scenario and Loss of England

[AlbertN]

Checked, it's 45 and then ups to 50 as they gain war experience.

[Journier]

Ah there must be another event around 42 then

[kennonlightfoot]

I am not sure what "war experience" is. What displays it?
I do know that Advancement isn't accelerated which is why my US units are so weak. Just a few have gotten to 1942 level.

[AlbertN]

The baseline Experience troops are produced / replacements come in as.

Some nations depending on how much they fight, raise that level gradually. (Like Italy starts at 40% and can get up to 50% for land and air units). It's a variegated process and depends on how much they combat.
Like in your game Italian troops that are newly produced come in with 42% experience.

[kennonlightfoot]

Resigned our game. Made a error in figuring movement that doomed my England re-invasion. Unfortunately, the main reason I was playing this one out was to see if Britain regained any of its production and manpower when England was retaken. There were no indications that this was occurring. It will make a big difference on whether Axis invasion is a good or bad move depending on whether this loss is permanent. Maybe someone else has gone through the loss and reconquest of England can confirm.

The lack of British economic aide to Russia definitely hurt Russia. Also, it looked like Axis air based out of England did major damage to the convoys.

If the Axis decides to put some mobile units in England, the Americans have a major problem retaking it. They don't produce landing points fast enough to land a large force. They also have serious air support issues if the Axis have a large air contingency in England. Ireland doesn't have enough supply capacity to support countering it. Also, invading Ireland delays the USA's ability to get enough Landing Craft to take England.

But I spent to much time finding out what didn't work, to be sure of what will work.

[AlbertN]

That was understandable. In my opinion it was not the British business but more like the Soviet trouble you had that costed the game.

British economy does not recover unless you take production cities, and you got none of them back. On the other hand - I think you were overly aggressive as you may have realized. Your tanks exhausted themselves in multiple attacks and then got counterattacked.

Convoys - airplanes do not sink convoys at all. That was the surface navy of Italy once it gets out in the Atlantic.

Port capacity is definitely a potential issue for the overload of troops that happens to be (Also why I think in the other Sealion game my opponent simply went to reinforce Russia instead with a bucket of Allied troops.)

And it's normal to spend time understanding how things go - I've called off an amount of games in the early times as well due to getting swamped in Belgium, or failing to do this or that and suffering tragic losses. One does not learn well against the AI (besides the Belgium business! And still luck can screw one over)

[kennonlightfoot]

I've been watching the AAR with the US in Russia. While it probably helps the Russians, I am not sure that offsets the number of troops tied down by the lack of invasion threat and a Western front. It also takes a long time to move troops from US to the Russian front. Also, not sure if Russia has enough supply sources to handle more troops.

Next game I play I will keep more detail log of how the various values are changing. Although I am still not sure how to determine how many Units a supply source can support.

[AlbertN]

If it's a National City, infinite (ie, Moscow or Stalingrad are an infinite supply source for Allies).
Pratically the US troops there have absolutely no supply issues. And they can arrive from both Persia rail or Murmansk.
Given - that's due to a bug that is bound to get fixed in next patch (already in Beta)

A port has its capacity * 20 in terms of HP, but units consuming oil counts a bit more.
So a port with 9 can supply up to 6 Large Infantry Corps for instance. (Besides potential interdiction).

You noticed for instance how much your US troops in Scotland struggled, with only a level 1 port supplying them.

[kennonlightfoot]

That then assumes the Russians can hold Moscow and Stalingrad until the US can move enough troops in. But I am still not sure that would offset the number of Axis allied Corps that could be moved into Russia since they aren't needed to garrison Europe.

[Flaviusx]

I'm having real doubts that Sea Lion can be stopped if the Germans go all in. The only question is how expensive this is going to be and how much it derails their efforts elsewhere.

The basic problem, imo, is the British economy starts too weak.

[kennonlightfoot]

There is nothing in the release notes for 5 but it looks like they changed things in 39 Scenario that will make Sealion very difficult.

They don't seem to have that many more points but they are distributed into smaller units and it looks like UK may start with more production available for new unit creations. Running the game against AI with minimal action by UK give the following unit distribution:
In England (less Scapa Flow unit) By March 1st turn:
British Div 9 Small Corps 3 Large Corps 4 HWs 2 (this group is 30 points under strength).
Canada Adds: Div 1 Small Corps 1

In addition, Production has 3 Br Div and 2 Canada Div that will be available in Mar and Apr.

That gives the British 20 Units in England with 5 more coming. This gives the UK enough units to garrison every port and still have six units to block invasion hexes. Along with fleets that might be enough to shut down any attempt to capture a port on the first invasion turn.

This could make Sealion sufficiently risky that the odds are high enough that the invasion might totally fail to stop its use. Except maybe as a "Hail Mary" every once in while to keep the British on their toes.

[PDiFolco]

In my '39 game (latest beta) in Sept 40 I see UK having like 800 land strength... hard to invade , and it seems a bit high, Germany don't has many more ...

[sveint]

Britain can easily stop Sealion if they build and deploy for it.

Problem is most Allied players build and research things like strategic bombers instead.