World in Flames is the computer version of Australian Design Group classic board game. World In Flames is a highly detailed game covering the both Europe and Pacific Theaters of Operations during World War II. If you want grand strategy this game is for you.
ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
The use of rail lines through neutrals is permitted for getting resources to factories. Spain provides a conduit for French North African resources through Gibraltar using only rail lines and the straits hex - no convoys required.
Whaaaat? There's no railway in Gibraltar, and in WWII the border with Spain was crossed only by pedestrians. No commercial traffic came through Gibraltar: it was purely a military base. Exports from North Africa would have gone from Ceuta to Algerciras.
But, in a game with no ZOCs on the impulse of invasion
In my experience, this option is never used. The few times we've tried it, it was fairly obvious the game isn't remotely balanced around this rule.
ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
The use of rail lines through neutrals is permitted for getting resources to factories. Spain provides a conduit for French North African resources through Gibraltar using only rail lines and the straits hex - no convoys required.
Whaaaat? There's no railway in Gibraltar, and in WWII the border with Spain was crossed only by pedestrians. No commercial traffic came through Gibraltar: it was purely a military base. Exports from North Africa would have gone from Ceuta to Algerciras.
Marcus, the Gibraltar hex contains more than just Gibraltar. Algerciras for example is in that hex too.
But Gibraltar is the only thing named in this hex, so we use that names when it is about this hex.
Yes, there is a slight inaccuracy on the map, due mostly to the courseness of the hexgrid. The small tongue of land in Limberg is not represented properly.
Fixing said hex by giving it *all* to Holland creates more problems then it fixes.
I'm serious when I say France is too strong in 1940. In my opinion it is even worse than the 'Russia too weak in 1941' problem. Competant play and average luck will see France usually last until very late 1940, and with 1 or 2 unlucky rolls on Germany's part can easily last til 1941. This is not uncommon.
Any change that makes Germany have to a) DoW more minors to get the same start position, or b) spend extra impulses trying to dig Brits out of Belgian hexes they normally could never get to in time is in my opinion bad. The difference between Brussels defended by a single Belgian unit, or defended by a double stacked BEF is huge. With the Limberg hex being Dutch, Germany can only get 1 hexside on Brussels in the first impulse(assuming cav set up in Liege and both inf in Brussels), as opposed to at least 2 as it currently stands. Germany is looking at a 2-1 attack at best, and if they dont kill both units, they are looking at a double stack of British in Brussels the next impulse. That alone will slow down the campaign at least a couple impulses at a time when it most hurts the Germans.
Or, it forces the Germans to attack Holland early in snow or mud. This limits strategic options for Germany and US entry would be hurt as well. The Germans in Amsterdam and Rotterdam also now have no air cover from British ground strikes, unless they were able to capture Limburg hex and rebase a fighter forward there.
Changing that hex would require adjusting the balance of forces on the Western Front. It is already imbalanced compared to historically, lets not try to make it worse.
ORIGINAL: Norman42
I'm serious when I say France is too strong in 1940. In my opinion it is even worse than the 'Russia too weak in 1941' problem. Competant play and average luck will see France usually last until very late 1940, and with 1 or 2 unlucky rolls on Germany's part can easily last til 1941. This is not uncommon.
Shouldn't you then address that problem by letting France start with slighly fewer units or maybe weaker units?
When you look at the real map Patrice provided you see that the Belgian / German border is very narrow. It's very hard to blitz Belgium attacking from such narrow corridor. So Germany attacked the Netherlands as well.
I don't see a problem with Germany attacking the Netherlands a turn before attacking Belgium or an impulse before DoW'ing Belgium. If Germany can attack Belgium from the Netherlands then they can easily blitz most of Belgium and get their units to the French border befor the British can respond and send units deep into Belgium.
What really happened was that the French and British DID move into Belgium to defend against an advance there, but the Germans attacked through the Ardennes and crossed the Meuse near Sedan and trapped the Allied units who moved into Belgium. But this is very hard to accomplish because no Allied player will defend the Ardennes as poorly as they did in the real war. Most strategic wargames have this same problem. You defeat France by attrition rather than a blitz breakthrough who trapped a large portion of the Allied army. I remember all the times I played WIF5 and WIFFE I felt France was too strong and it was ahistorical that the Germans needed to attack with heavy losses to both sides. You gained territory by destroying the defenders and occupying the hexes. You didn't gain territory by mobile warfare surprising the Allies. WIF5 was even worse than WIFFE. I seem to remember that one reason for changing the WIFFE hex size was to have a broader front to attack in France. In WIF5 you only had a few front hexes outside the Maginot you could attack. So if you rolled some 1's as the Germans then you were in big trouble. In WIFFE you have more hexes to attack so it's a little bit better.
I've always felt this problem should have been addressed by doing something with the strength of the demoralized French army instead of changing the map in an ahistorical way so Germany had an easier task. We've tried with the MWIF map to make everything as accurate as possible and then it's strange we don't see if it's possible to rectify the obvious mistake of making the front line between Belgium and Germany too wide.
Can something be done to make the French less stronger? I seem to remember that it was particularly tough to get to Paris if you played with all the extra units as artillery, engineers etc. Then you had even more units you need to kill before you get a shot at Paris. But the problem is probably not the French units, but the strong British units you can send as an expeditionary force into France. What are the limit to the BEF deployment in France according to the rules?
Has this WIFFE balance issues been discussed with Harry? Something is not right if France regularly survives till late 1940. Then this is a sign you need to do something to make sure it's possible to capture Paris during the June/July turn.
First off, playing with "no ZoCs on surprise" is not very common, to my knowledge, in table-top WiF:FE. It is a game-breaking option that favours the Axis very heavily (set up a Barbarossa campaign with No Zocs on Surprise and you'll see what I mean). Further, I don't believe it is even being made available as an option in MWiF. At any rate, setting up a Belgian defence when there is no ZoCs on surprise is a futile gesture because there is no effective defence: the Germans can run into any empty Belgian city, envelop and crush the tiny Belgian army in its entirety without the slightest risk, and push up to the Franco-Belgian border.
On a general note, provided the Germans have good weather, decent rolls and their paratrooper corps, they can typically dismantle any Belgian defence on the surprise impulse, taking all three cities. Antwerp if defended is difficult to take unless the Germans are attacking from Rotterdam as well.
The default Belgian defence is to put one corps (usually the CAV) in Liege and two in Antwerp, leaving Brussels empty, almost without exception. There are three simple reasons:
- the unit in Liege protects Brussels from being seized thanks to its ZoCs. Liege is too easily seized no matter how many units you have with all the vectors for the Germans to attack from.
- the units in Antwerp can prevent the Germans from taking it if they do not attack Netherlands.
- Spreading the units out makes them easier to attack, and putting any in Brussels makes it possible for a regular overland attack to take place, guaranteeing the fall of Brussels during the surprise impulse.
All of the above assumes that the Germans are attacking Belgium with the present WiF:FE frontage. Note that if the Germans attack the Netherlands first, regardless of their frontage on Belgium, the Belgian response is pretty well as above since the Germans will be able to get to both clear hexes north of Liege.
If, on the other hand, the "Maastricht" hex becomes Dutch, the German frontage against Liege goes from a potential maximum 5 hexes at all times to a potential maximum of 3 unless they attack the Dutch in advance of or in conjunction with an attack on Belgium.
A simultaneous attack on the Netherlands and Belgium almost certainly means the CW gets to stuff either Antwerp or Rotterdam (or both if anything goes wrong) unless the Germans spend an o-chit on a supercombined. This is the case in WiF:FE as it stands, and the change of control of the "Maastricht" hex would not alter that as far as I can see. CW units in these hexes is bad news for the Germans.
If the Germans attack only Belgium and the Maastricht hex is Dutch, they cannot hope to seize Antwerp unless it is empty and they paradrop in, and they would have a maximum 1 hex on Brussels (+ maybe a paradrop). Therefore the Belgians' best response is probably to put the two infantry corps in Brussels and hope for the best and leave the cavalry in Liege to slow the Germans up.
However, at the end of the day, there are I think three compelling reasons for the "Maastricht" hex to remain German. They are related to the historical situation and how WiF varies from that:
First, the Allied armies facing Germany were very ill-led and badly organized, which is one of the reasons why France fell so quickly. Since Allied players cannot be expected to replicate the incompetency of their historical counterparts, any change in the map in this area that negatively affects Germany's flexibility and tactical situation (especially fighter cover as Norman42 notes) is a big edge for the Allies.
Second, the main German thrust historically was through the Ardennes, not through Flanders. This option does not exist in WiF: thanks to the ZoC mechanic the Germans cannot push to the western edge of the Ardennes and breakout into the open terrain of France: there will always be French troops in the way. By default the main German thrust must go through Flanders if they want to blitz their way through clear terrain. A Dutch-controlled Maastricht hex makes it harder for them to do this.
Third, as Norman42 states, the German campaign in the Low Countries and France takes a very long time to do properly, far longer than historical, and especially so if the Germans roll one or two bad land attacks or get bad weather during May/June. If they get fantastic weather, good turn ends and double impulses over the winter they can wrap things up early, but that is atypical. Typically France lasts through to August and even into September, and the Germans have had to attack the Dutch or the Belgians in March/April. Once again, a Dutch-controlled Maastricht hex adds to the time required for the Germans to polish off France, and all the more so if anything goes wrong.
Shouldn't you then address that problem by letting France start with slighly fewer units or maybe weaker units?
I've always felt this problem should have been addressed by doing something with the strength of the demoralized French army instead of changing the map in an ahistorical way so Germany had an easier task.
Absolutely. The trouble is, they have to go hand in hand. You can't fix one without the other for play balance reasons. As you said, the Western Campaign becomes a World War One style war of attrition and unit destruction...completely unlike the real campaign, and taking far longer to accomplish.
Fixing the map without fixing the overpowered 1940 French doesn't work. As well, reducing France's power while leaving a too-broad front to defend also doesn't work.
Truth be told, 90km per hex doesn't do justice to the fairly small Western Front. WiF has never done that campaign well. Belgium was what...4 hexes in WiF5? No room for manauever at all, just blunt force pummelling attacks til you reached and assaulted Paris. WiFFE helped somewhat with the enlarged scale, but still its not the battle of maneauver that it truely was; it's still mostly smashing through ring after ring of French til you reach Paris. The addition of artillery/anti-tank units only made the situation worse with now triple-stacked defences.
Oddly, the most successful Western Campaigns I've seen lately have been cordoning Poland and attacking France in 1939 (in conjunction with Italy) before they can build out their forcepool, transport their overseas forces home, and swamp the Germans in attrition warfare. It's very high risk, however. You either get lucky on your O-chit attacks and cap Paris in J/F 1940, or you lose the war.
In many games of CWiF both defending and attacking France, it has usually fallen in May/Jun or July/August without the Germans O-chit usage. Oncein a while Frnace has lasted a turn or 2 longer but because of Germany going for Yugoslavia eraly on.
When the Germans use a both Poland and the West attacks in 39, France often falls in March 40.
I do not see the French as being too strong.
Lars
the way I see it, is that as well all know what the attacks happened where and when in history, without re-writing the rules or tinkering with the strength of units.
shouldn't the allied player man the franko-german border safe in the knowlage that holland and belgium are neutral.
as we know the french responded to late to stuff the belgium border so in a solitare game could/should this be an option?
in a pvp game the allied player will know the germans intention and be able to man the positons for the best defence so both players will have to think up cunning plans to dirvert attention to where the main thurst is going to take place.
i for one can't remember any opponent in a world conflict game attacking germany from france (as they did) when germany invades poland.
again could/should this be an ai option?
as politics in flames won't be in this product, but with luck in a future additon, perhaps in pvp bluffing your oppenent into beliving you won't attack would be the most practical method.
Shouldn't you then address that problem by letting France start with slighly fewer units or maybe weaker units?
I've always felt this problem should have been addressed by doing something with the strength of the demoralized French army instead of changing the map in an ahistorical way so Germany had an easier task.
Absolutely. The trouble is, they have to go hand in hand. You can't fix one without the other for play balance reasons. As you said, the Western Campaign becomes a World War One style war of attrition and unit destruction...completely unlike the real campaign, and taking far longer to accomplish.
Fixing the map without fixing the overpowered 1940 French doesn't work. As well, reducing France's power while leaving a too-broad front to defend also doesn't work.
Truth be told, 90km per hex doesn't do justice to the fairly small Western Front. WiF has never done that campaign well. Belgium was what...4 hexes in WiF5? No room for manauever at all, just blunt force pummelling attacks til you reached and assaulted Paris. WiFFE helped somewhat with the enlarged scale, but still its not the battle of maneauver that it truely was; it's still mostly smashing through ring after ring of French til you reach Paris. The addition of artillery/anti-tank units only made the situation worse with now triple-stacked defences.
Oddly, the most successful Western Campaigns I've seen lately have been cordoning Poland and attacking France in 1939 (in conjunction with Italy) before they can build out their forcepool, transport their overseas forces home, and swamp the Germans in attrition warfare. It's very high risk, however. You either get lucky on your O-chit attacks and cap Paris in J/F 1940, or you lose the war.
I did something like this recently where I attacked netherlands on impulse 3, destroyed poland by end of turn, and attacked belgium in snow of Nov/Dec 39. With o-chit on a land action, I disrupted the french terribly in the beginning of jan/feb 40 in snow (unexpected by the french who had initiative). Snow turned to mud and the French couldn't respond quckly enough to the breakthroughs with so many movement 3 units. After failed bloody counter-attacks I pushed into Paris with a bit of luck.
Best I've personally done. If Jan/Feb didn't finish them, Mar/Apr would have.
Most men can survive adversity, the true test of a man's character is power. -Abraham Lincoln
ORIGINAL: Norman42
I'm serious when I say France is too strong in 1940. In my opinion it is even worse than the 'Russia too weak in 1941' problem. Competant play and average luck will see France usually last until very late 1940, and with 1 or 2 unlucky rolls on Germany's part can easily last til 1941. This is not uncommon.
This would be quite bizarre, because it rather would reflect German anticipation of the campaigns in France (hard) and Russia (walk in the park) than history.
Shouldn't you then address that problem by letting France start with slighly fewer units or maybe weaker units?
If France is really hard too crack for Germany in WIF, wouldn't it be better, instead of just correcting the map or instead of weakening French units, to give Germany an additonal O-Chit plus correcting the map?
Maybe there are four choices: 1. Leave everything as it is: this would not exactly fit to the historical-geographical realities (small defendable Belgian Border delaying Schlieffen-Plan in WW1, resulting in the too obvious "lesson" of a German DOW towards the Netherlands in WW2 for Schlieffen No.2. Exactly this worked in favour for the Manstein-Ardennes plan.)
2. Just change the map (making the hex Dutch) This might overpower the Wally defence in 1940
3. Change the map (making the hex Dutch) and weaken the French units This would reflect geo-strategical realities and German military superiority. But maybe it would destroy the delicate balance of WIF land unit strengths.
4. Change the map (making the hex Dutch) and add a German O-Chit. This would reflect geo-strategical realities and German military superiority without destroying the delicate balance of WIF land unit strengths. It would give Germany some sort of added strategic flexibility. A wildcard for creativity.
>>Patrice, the thinness of the Limburg salient is not a relevant factor. Cross neutral territory, however small, and it's >>war! (Consider Portugal and the tiny sizes of East Timor and Macau!) Therefore there has to be some sort of penalty >>for attacking Belgium through that hex.
Are you sure? I do not think Portugal was ever involved in the war with Japan. Wikipedia, I know, says Port stayed neutral and the Timorese co-operated with the Allies, but the Governor of Timor declared himself a prisoner to preserve neutrality.
IF Germany had crossed Southern Neth into Belgium, I doubt whether Neth. would have aligned herself with the Allies.
Ok, let's stop with the discussion about the Belgium/Netherlands/German borders.
I appreciate all the comments, which seem well thought out and worthy of consideration. But there are clearly different viewpoints on this topic and we are unlikely to reached a consensus. It is not my purpose to provoke controversy, and this topic appears to foment controversy instantaneously.
So, I am going to leave this portion of the map as is and let all the blame/credit for its weaknesses/brilliance go to ADG.
Writing code is vastly more important to me - and to you, unless I am mistaken.
In many games of CWiF both defending and attacking France, it has usually fallen in May/Jun or July/August without the Germans O-chit usage.
If Germany attacks West at historical times (ie may/jun clear weather) are you saying Netherlands, Belgium, and France all fall in that same turn? I never, ever see a one turn conquest of France.
Or are you talking about a '39 DoW on Belgium and Netherlands followed by a winter/spring fight through J/F, M/A, M/J, J/A to conquer France? If so then thats much more believable. Attacking France in 39-early 40 meets less resistance. But again, this is neither historical, nor particularly good for US entry. It still is taking you 6-10 months to accomplish what was historically accomplished in under 2 months.
Having to start the campaign 2-3 turns (4-6months) early to be able to get France to fall "on time" isn't right, hence my statement that the West campaign is very biased against Germany in 1940.
Yes, France can fall in M/J 1940. No, it won't if the historical attack time is used. Ergo, France is stronger then it historically was.
Ok, let's stop with the discussion about the Belgium/Netherlands/German borders.
I appreciate all the comments, which seem well thought out and worthy of consideration. But there are clearly different viewpoints on this topic and we are unlikely to reached a consensus. It is not my purpose to provoke controversy, and this topic appears to foment controversy instantaneously.
So, I am going to leave this portion of the map as is and let all the blame/credit for its weaknesses/brilliance go to ADG.
Writing code is vastly more important to me - and to you, unless I am mistaken.
Hurrah!
Most men can survive adversity, the true test of a man's character is power. -Abraham Lincoln
I think the Benelux map area was carefully studied, revised, compromised, and most importantly, playtested heavily, before the Final Edition map came out. There used to be a swamp in there, iirc. ?
The length of the French campaign is one of those areas where 1d10 CRT WiF is a totally different game from 2d10 CRT WiF. Sorry 'bout the acronyms. What would the Germans have to give up to get the French ARM reinforcement changed to something a little more real?
There have been some well argued points made here about Maastricht, but it really isn't a minor matter when one-and-a-half hexes are portrayed as four. A little bit of wiggle-room is fair because of the coarse hexgrid, but hex-inflation at that level (140km portrayed as 300+) is ludicrous.
My reading of the arguments is that it is normal practice to invade the Netherlands a little before invading Belgium, in which event who controls Maastricht initially has no adverse effect on play. Where it does count is when the Axis player chooses to leave the Netherlands alone. But this gives a significant (and, in my opinion, undesirable) 'surprise' advantage to Japan against the Netherlands East Indies, which we might view as the reward for accepting a harder time in Belgium.
In parallel with the debate about Maastricht, much has been written about the unrealistic strength of the French in 1940 with which I completely agree. This is a problem with very many games. Indeed the only game in which it is not a problem is Dunkirque 1940 which shrewdly starts after the breakthrough at Sedan has occurred and the Allies have finally woken up to what is going on.
Whatever solution is finally adopted, it has to be simple. I think Wosung's fourth suggestion in Post 352 is both simple and effective: give Maastricht to the Dutch but in compensation allocate Germany an extra O-Chit so that the historical blitzkrieg can actually happen.
I agree with most of the comments made by Marcus, but I also realize we can NOT implement any changes in this area (give the Maastrict hex to the Netherlands and maybe give an O-chit to Germany to compensate) without Harry's consent. We can't let MWIF be different from WIFFE here.
So if anything will change here then it will be because Harry accepts that this needs to be addressed, maybe after a discussion among the die-hard WIFFE fans on the official WIF forum. Our job in this forum is to simply draw this "problem" to Harry's attention so it has a chance to be considered. Then we will await his reply. Patrice has already sent an email to Harry so I propose we just wait to hear what Harry says. If MWIF will change the map in the Netherlands then it will be because WIFFE will change and make an official errata about this.
On the issue of a purportedly over-strong France: Picture the French player unfamiliar with the rules, more interested in whatever food and drink are on the go than in the game, slightly drunk, and very distracted. Then picture him (or her, although I've yet to meet a woman-WIFer) rolling nothing but ones and two. Except in air combat, when they clear the Stukas through every time.
Meanwhile, the German player is a dead-keen, highly experienced, extremely focussed WIF machine. And rolls nothing but nines and tens. Except when they need ones, when they get them.
That is how the historical result happens, and thank goodness, say I, that the game allows for the possibility, in fact probability, of a different result. Isn't that the point of a WW2 game?
