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Wow, that East Front is a farce, no wonder Allies are getting nowhere. Every Panzer and nearly all PzG divisions are committed to the West. Russians are still behind!

I won't play any game with EF Box on at this point, on either side

Russians are not behind. It looks like the Soviets are 1 month ahead of schedule, and the German situation is very bad, so it's likely the game will end between 1 and 2 months ahead of schedule.

Are the victory points right? What was going on that the Allies built up nearly 4000 victory points early? Did the German player ignore the garrison limits? This is going to end up a big Allied Victory if the score is correct.

Victory point screen for the WA at this point:

Appears someone had a "sweet tooth" for the EF box! I'm betting this was one of your first games, and managing garrisons is tough.

This is the first PBEM full campaign for both of us. Scott was very "liberal" with bringing east front divisions west. In the beginning there seemed to be little penalty and the result (if you look back through the AAR) is that I have been completely stopped with now way our of my invasion areas. Pretty much every German stack I face has >100 defensive value, and they are 3 deep everywhere. There is really no way to mount an attack of any kind. The only good news is that he's been mostly unable to break my beachheads.

Now that I say that my southern France invasion was defeated and I withdrew, and I just withdrew from my tenuous hold on the Netherlands. There are just too many Germans to fight. However, it appears that it's finally all catching up. It will be interesting to see where the East Front line is at the beginning of the next month (3 more turns).

It could be that what the WA have done is tie down a large portion of the German army so that the Russians could win the war. The Cold War boundary between future NATO and Warsaw Pact may end up being drawn on the Westwall rather than East and West Germany.

Wow, the Axis gave up a lot of VPs in the Garrison category. That will win the game for the Allies right there. That more than offsets the lost VPs for the UBoats and VWeapon targets.

4000+ Garrison VP!?
I don't understand being able to drain the EF box but still suffering garrison penalties unless the player was just ignoring them entirely.

We're still looking at an Axis minor victory if the garrisons were actually managed, right? Waiting on the final results, but EF robbing has only cost the Germans 250 VP thus far. Seems negligible considering what he has pulled.

EF box was tweaked during this game, but I think trying to balance the game with the EF box is looking futile. The Allies might well win on VP, but this can't have been a very fun game for them...
For fun's sake I think I'll continue playing without player managed EF.

ORIGINAL: Seminole

The Allies might well win on VP, but this can't have been a very fun game for them...
For fun's sake I think I'll continue playing without player managed EF.

Yes, you are right. Very frustrating as the Allies. We started another without the EF box with the same sides. We've gotten to about turn 32 on that one. I've taken Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, and invaded Italy around Taranto, and there is now a German defensive line north of Naples. Looks much more reasonable so far.

Couple of silly questions .....
1) Why does the German turn VP chart map Alliied VP's ? I figured (wrongly) that those per turn and campaign were german pts ..... Not that it matters as we're completeling this game at Joels request ...... Just thought the Germans were way away ..... ? May have been my bad ....

2) Yeppers .... had issues with the first several (10+) turns relative to thegarrison issue ...... penalty seems kinda steep given then was damn near ZERO impact to railway movement .... would have thought that a natural target to garrison issues

3) Not a question .... Soviet advance kicked in over the last 3-4 turns .... prior to that was MIA ........ So drawing conclusions as to ahead or behind to current position seems out of place ..... They have kicked ass recently ..... before hand ...... DOA .....

1) Why does the German turn VP chart map Alliied VP's ?

There is no such thing as "Allied VP's" in campaign game. There is a single scale system. Positive gains go to WA, negative to Axis.

The V-weapon and UBoat points are probably due to a conscious decision on my part to ignore everything else in an attempt to break out of my invasion areas by bombing the ever-loving crap out of the units surrounding me and the rail lines leading in at the expense of some strategic bombing. It didn't work but it seemed worth a shot to try to soften up the line facing me.

Expanded the beach head just south of Rome a little bit and brought in some more reinforcements. Going to be hard to kick us out of this one, but it appears there are some German reinforcements headed north from the Cassino line. He can still hold that line easily and spare units to contain this beach. So I need to try to break a hole pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, as the German turn was running and I happened to have it zoomed out looking at hex ownership, I notice the East Front front line changed. Grabbed a quick screen grab of it. Game turn is 87, Feb 24, 1945.

The Russians are oh, so close to Berlin. With a little luck this misery will be done with in a few more weeks as Russian armor rolls into Berlin.

Eastern front moves ever closer to Berlin. We gain one hex in the Le Havre beachhead. Whoopee, but in this game, any gain at all is cause for celebration. Something actually happened. The snowy weather moderated just a little allowing better air support. Pounding the Germans facing the Le Havre area seems to have been slowly weakening them. Not slowly enough.

At this rate though, the Russians will reach Berlin only just ahead of the historical dates, which seems too late considering the German's gutted the Eastern Front to fight in the west. So I'm not sure that there was a huge effect of me updating to the beta for Tunisia testing after all.


Eastern Front Mar 3rd, '45

The biggest impact of the update wasn't on games where the Germans had already pulled out. It would be on games where the German player hadn't yet pulled units off the East Front. IIRC, the biggest hit was on all units in the East Front that remained when units were sent west. This is a one time hit, which then snowballs over time (in theory). The other impact was making sure that the morale hit was having an impact on artillery and flak units, which were not being impacted in the past. You might have seen a small drop in some artillery values in your game, but not enough to have a major impact. The idea is with the update, if the German player starts sending units west, then the remaining units will be much weaker, the artillery and AA units will now be hit along with the others, and those gun type units won't have as big of a CV value as before. We won't really know how much impact this has until someone tries it, but the value of this game for us was to see the baseline including if things progress any faster at the end given the situation in the east. I hope the Axis player is not sending units east in your game now because that would get a bigger bonus than what he lost when he took them out and impact the baseline. I appreciate your sticking it out this long, although you might be able to do this on autopilot now until the end since it doesn't look like you will make much progress. You and the German player could agree to leave things pretty much as they are and just end turns and see how it comes out, or just fight the air war until the end. IIRC the front line can move about 1-3 hexes per turn on average, so you can guestimate how many turns it will take to get to around 140 if you know where the front line is now.

Gotcha. So that makes sense then that the Russians reach Berlin approximately on time.

It's the air that takes up all the time in running turns for me. Maybe I'll just cancel the missions and we can agree to just leave things static on the front lines and just run it out until the Russians take Berlin. It looks like there are only 4 or 5 hexes to go to Berlin. Should have looked more close up at the hex possession. Hard to tell from the wide view. Not far in any case.

Scott is not sending anything back east as far as I know. I'm sure he would have said something if he was.

Absolutely nothing has gone back to the East Front ..... I would lose all the popularity I've gained with the common soldier if I did that ... Would you want to go back to the East Front ?

outta curiosity ..... Does the game just end when Uncle Joe reaches the Brandenburg Gate ?

Turn 90, March 17, 1945. Russians enter Berlin, advancing 5 hexes that turn. We'll see what happens next. Saved and uploaded for Scott.

The Russian's have the victory hex. Why is the game not over?