"Germanies fate": a modded WAW scenario

[xBoroNx]

Wehrmacht gets the well deserved revenge during our turn though. Reconnaisance spots a british fleet outside of oslo with 10 readiness, maybe out of supply. Our wolfpack torpedos them with overwhelming success [:D]

[xBoroNx]

This was already the August 1941 turn, in a couple of turns the war will escalate to a world war since then Japan has to dow the Usa in februar or march 1942 by houserule. Japan begins now to build an army for the soon to begin onslaught in China. Well at least Japan tries to do so but vs. the hordes from the east we are rather pessimistic .

[xBoroNx]

September 41 is probably the most peaceful turn of the year 41. Apart from some strategic bombing of the RAF and some tactical bombing of the Luftwaffe vs. allied raiding troops there is no fighting this turn. But it is only the calm before the storm. The total war gets closer and closer.

[freeboy]

raided Rome, just over 50 damage to the city.. I also caught some Germans out in the open country in France and slughtered them....
the china theatre is nill, no action.. BUT I await his attacks .. cannot waitto loss some seriously latrge troops numbers and get some pp, so I can build a decent factory base and airforce there ! I am now building machine guns and the thousands to supplies and troops are awaiting tha attacks that should come any turn now

[xBoroNx]

The calm is over. The Reich massed all of it's aircraft last turn in strike range for England. A massive air battle occurs over London. Literally thousands of fighters clash struggling to achieve/keep air supremacy.

Casualities are high for both sides. Overall though a tactical axis victory which might turn into an operational one the next few turns.

[xBoroNx]

Total Casualities of the 2nd battle of britain are (the first one a couple of turns ago we lost badly ) :

Axis 31 Fighter III

Allies 33 Fighter III, 1 Divebomber II, 12 Levelbomber II

No other combat actions this turn. The germans continue though to deploy forces to the staging areas in the east.

[JAMiAM]

Looking at the number of aircraft that you guys are putting together in one place just reemphasizes to me the imbalance that the various unit costs have in the basic game. I'm becoming more and more convinced that basic combat arms are too underrated for survival, and that the support arms are too cheaply and easily produced. I think I'm going to have break down and learn to do some modding...[;)]

[xBoroNx]

Japan though only inspires me to wail elegies . I might have strengthened the chinese too much.

[xBoroNx]

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

Looking at the number of aircraft that you guys are putting together in one place just reemphasizes to me the imbalance that the various unit costs have in the basic game. I'm becoming more and more convinced that basic combat arms are too underrated for survival, and that the support arms are too cheaply, and easily produced.

Jup i get this impression too and thus am currently working on various modifications .

One idea i currently have is to break down aircraft into those classes (examples for WW2-Aircraft in brackets):

-Interceptors (Focke Wulf 190, Spitfire)
-Fighter-Bombers (P-47 Thunderbolt, BF 110 Zerstörer)
-Dive Bombers/Tank attacking Aircraft (Ju 87, HS 129)
-Tactical Bombers (most german bombers, medium Us bombers like B-26 maurader)
-Strategic Bombers (B-17, B-29)

Interceptors have only extremely low ground attack capacity then, but are the best plane for air superiority.
Fighter-Bombers have some fighting capacity and some ground attack capacity, but excel in none of those fields.
Dive Bombers/Tank attacking Aircraft will excel in attacking Tanks.
Tactical Bombers will be average vs. all ground targets and be able to do some strategic bombing.
Strategic Bombers will have excellent strategic bombing and light tactical bombing abilities.

Cost for those classes will probably differ too then, interceptors and dive bombers i am currently thinking 2000, fighter-bombers 2500, tactical bombers 3000 and strategic bombers 5000.

I also plan to create 2 new flak subtypes:
Flak halftracks and flak tanks.
Those will be very mobile and as second role also useful vs. infantry, but they can only attack low flying enemy aircraft, so all of the plane types - strategic bombers and interceptors.

[xBoroNx]

Here are the stats of the chinese militia, an additonal unit i created for the mod, only the chinese can produce them. They cost 25 to produce.

They are even more horrible than conscripts, but extremely cheap. The 2 factories you see in the screenshot showing china i added, they both have 8000 production capacity but can only produce supply or those militia. They shall abstractly represent that the chinese with their huge population can easily create lots of paramilitary units for emergencies like the japanese attack has been.

Also this way China finally can exhaust it's manpowerproduction. I hope that those changes to china lead to a realistic stalemate in china in most cases. Both Japan and China should manage to defend and China thanks to the militia hordes has now also the chance to use their 2 cities to produce something else than conscripts. So China can do some limited research.

[freeboy]

airwar is a nightmare
PAtton getting ready to attack Europe
US entry nearing
Russia stockpileing flack and supplies! lol
but 150 fighters? ouch
Maybe I can invent the first abomb and nuke an airbase lol

[xBoroNx]

November is the last turn the Luftwaffe can directly attack London. 2 royal navy fleets have appeared. This turn the axis fleet could blockade them from entering London, but next turn they will get destroyed.

But those 2 turns should have been enough to greatly damage the RAF. For the next couple of turns we should have air supremacy over england.

[tweber]

I think the air / ground balance questions is interesting.  I think if you play aggressively and attack early, there is more value in mobile units (you can read my aar in the diplomacy game I am playing as the Balkans).  If you can keep attacking and moving forward, static lines do not develop and an opponent is not well served with building air power. 
 
Once a front stabilizes, air power and artillery suddenly become important.  In fact, heavy infantry (mortars and mgs) are more valuable than armor if you are near your objective and do not need to worry about manuevre.   Air power is especially critical given the range.  In WAW, a wing in London can cover Paris, Amsterdam, and Manchester so it pays to spend whatever it takes to control the skies. 
 
The trick, of course, is realizing what situation you are in and catching a transition before your opponent (and hopefully causing a transition).  This makes the production aspects of the game interesting.
 

[xBoroNx]

Apart the big battle in the skyline of london the Wehrmacht strategically bombs the british factory and manchester.

No other combat actions. But per houserule i have to attack the usa in february or march 1942, so the battle of britain which is currently raging was only act 1 and though already extremely ferocious will likely increase.

[xBoroNx]

Thanks for your interesting comments Tom .

I am not fully sure yet if i find air too strong or still okay. First if the enemy has air supremacy it is quite historic that you have trouble then. West front 44-45 is a good example for that.

My thoughts/impressions regarding your comments:
"I think the air / ground balance questions is interesting. I think if you play aggressively and attack early, there is more value in mobile units (you can read my aar in the diplomacy game I am playing as the Balkans). If you can keep attacking and moving forward, static lines do not develop and an opponent is not well served with building air power. "

In optimal conditions, read roads, if you have a couple of troops so that some of them can paint unoccupied enemy hexes, the maximum range which a tracked/wheeled unit can move is 10 hexes or move 8 hexes and attack with 20 ap then hex 9.
But those conditions are very rare or at least dangerous because the limit you to roads. So the enemy could use flanking detachments for example.
Mobilizing is expensive. And there is the problem that air attacks usually first kill the tanks or mobilizers of the unit.
As a rough estimation i would say that usually you can only advance about 4-5 hexes a turn unless you have really a 100% mobilized army, but this should be fatal in the long run too because you pay so much for the quickness of your units without increasing your combat power though.

But especially for WAW those considerations are rather unimportant because the west has GB as save air base and the axis central europe.

"Once a front stabilizes, air power and artillery suddenly become important. In fact, heavy infantry (mortars and mgs) are more valuable than armor if you are near your objective and do not need to worry about manuevre. Air power is especially critical given the range. In WAW, a wing in London can cover Paris, Amsterdam, and Manchester so it pays to spend whatever it takes to control the skies.
The trick, of course, is realizing what situation you are in and catching a transition before your opponent (and hopefully causing a transition). This makes the production aspects of the game interesting."

This is very true in most scenarios, but i think not in WAW. I think air supremacy is the most important thing in WAW. Either germany or the west will eventually gain air supremacy. Once the West gains air supremacy he can cripple germany by strategic bombing and tactical bombing. If instead germany gets air supremacy they can first buy enough time in the west for a couple of turns which should then be enough for a successful barbarossa and then they should be able to force a gamewin by eventually winning the attrition war and taking london. I have a nasty plan for the current game with freeboy, but i am not sure if it will be successful because freeboy is a very good player and i also slightly balanced the game in favor of the allies in my mod. Overall i think the axis has something like 20-40% winning chance in my mod, in the vanilla versions i think the axis win every game if they manage to take paris roughly in the historical timeframe. Only if the allies manage to successfully defend france they can win i think.

Overall i think WAW is the best AT scenario currently, it only has one real weakness imho: The scale is way too small for the complete world. I think to enable lots of maneuvring and lots of fronts for a worldwide scenario the map needs to be at least 400x200 or so. Otherwise especially the dimensions of the eastern front aren't simulated well.
In WAW the key distances are: ~18 hexes romanian border to stalingrad, about the same to moscow from the polish border and ~12 hexes from border to leningrad. With the garrison mechanism soviets are forced to deploy forward, so the germans should need 1-2 turns to kill the initial russian army and then 3-4 turns to reach stalingrad and moscow and thus killing russia.
One "exploit" i tend to use as russia is that i deploy all my important forces around leningrad, this way they count as forward deployment but are usually not destroyed by the initial axis blitz.
But the russian industry is too weak and the distances are much too small, so this only buys russia maybe 1-2 extra turns from my experience.

[freeboy]

I totally agree, since Russia seems uderstrength, I would add a city near Moscow to simulate rebuilt factories comint on line and add some distance hexes
 
between stalingrad and karkov
 
Tom, what is the actual limit in map size?
 

[freeboy]

ok, I am in a pinch as he has built all those level three fighters.. seems I should have insisted on Barberoosa as pre house rules lol
no worries..
I am prepairing for his attacks and hope to thwart his efforts...
In England, I do not think he can simply walk over the English, and He does have some large areas not under his controll in greece yugo and France
I am prepairing to invade in the MEd and have reduced Athens to a shell, soon there will be no toops there at all, or he will chase my fleets off with the uber artillery... I still have a large air force, just no fighters!

[xBoroNx]

December 41 is rather calm. 10 paratroopers seize the unoccupied british factory and we do some minor bombing on the 2 smaller british cities.

Freeboy is a really good defender though, i have to make tough choices in the next 2 turns as axis deciding which operational goals i will try to achieve with germany in 42.

About japan i should probably best simply be silent. They are just awful and suck .
China has already used ~4500 Manpower, that means they should have ~4000 militia ...... .

[freeboy]

does china even have a manpower limit?
no turn wwwaaa I want my turn lol

[xBoroNx]

Tom, what is the actual limit in map size?

There seems to be no limit in map size. I did create a blank map just to see if it works which is 1100x700 and in the quick test it seemed to work perfectly.

So maps of dimensions around 400x300 should be very possible and just a good size for strategic scenarios like WW1/2 in Europe or germany vs. russia 41-45 etc.. Very amazing Vic, thank you [&o] [:)]

P.S.: Just sent you the new turn