A World Ignites... (AAR)

[Orm]

In Libya I am placing my fort hex sides in Tripoli. I place three land units in defence of Tripoli. The remaining two units I place on the Egyptian border but they are in danger of being out of supply once Italy enters the war. So unless Italy can contest the sea areas in the Mediterranean they are of little use.

[Orm]

I place all but one of the land units I must place in Italy and/or Albania in the north-west of Italy. I designate one infantry corps to defend Albania.

[Orm]

I place the entire Italian navy in the port La Spezia except one CP that begins in the Italian Coast sea area to transport the resource from Sardinia to Italy.

Now I have just a few units left to place and I am allowed to place them in any of the Italian set up areas.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Easo79

ORIGINAL: Neilster

It may be obvious but the "Flyout" is a quick on-map representation of the units in the Odessa hex. When more than one unit occupies a hex they are said to be "stacked". There are various rules for how many and what kind of units can stack. Note that the number of units stacked in the hex is represented by the number above. For Odessa it's 5.

Cheers, Neilster

Thanks for bringing here this point, because I was a litte ashamed to ask. The "flyout" appears when you hover over the stack with the mouse or when you click on it...doesn't it? I ask this because many times I have seen here the expression "adding a flyout" and I was wondering if it is a Photoshop thing added to the image "a posteriori"

Because Flyouts are only visible for one hex, for posting screenshots authors will often take several screenshots with different hexes showing the Flyouts. Then then cut and paste the different Flyouts onto one image.

[Orm]

Since I have not yet decided on a strategy for Italy I decided to place all the free units in the NW part of Italy. The reason that I placed them there is that there they can be used for an offence against France or embark for transportation to Libya. And the air force has potential targets in southern France and can fly missions into the western Mediterranean or into the Italian Coast sea area.

[warspite1]

Orm can you tell us a bit about the oil counter, at high level how this option affects the game and why place the counter where you have. Could this have been placed anywhere in Italy or does this need to be close to the Italian units?

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

Orm can you tell us a bit about the oil counter, at high level how this option affects the game and why place the counter where you have. Could this have been placed anywhere in Italy or does this need to be close to the Italian units?

A oil counter can be placed in any city or harbour that you control during set up. After you begin to play there must be a railroad to the hex where you want to place the oil counter from the oil resource. Or a sea path with convoy points (CP).

I place it in what I deem to be the safest location in the country. This may change over time. I do not want to lose any oil at all during a game.

In the case of the Italian oil I place it in that hex since there is two factories in the hex. The reason that I find the number of factories important when I place oil is that strategic bombardment can destroy saved oil resources. And factories shield the oil counter from destruction.

The priority order that a strategic bombing affects the target hex is as follows:
Production Points (factories) -> Synthetic Oil Counters -> Printed Oil Resources -> Saved Oil -> Saved Build Points

So if the hex I have a saved oil has two factories then a strategic bombing mission on that hex needs to have a result of three or higher to destroy the saved oil.

In order to use the oil for reorganisation the unit (if it is oil dependant) to be reorganized must be able to draw a path, of any length, to the oil. So if CW blockade Italy then the Italian units in Libya can not use the oil located in Italy for reorganization.

Plying with oil significantly changes play in MWIF and the oil rule, in my humble opinion, is a option that hugely favours the Allies. With that said I usually play with the oil rule regardless of side.

When playing as Italy, without the oil rule, you can use their forces as much as they want and at the end of the turn all units will be reorganized. But when playing with oil this is, often, not true.

For example: If Italy the first turn sail out their entire navy into the Mediterranean and give air support with two fighters and a naval bomber and at the end of the turn return those forces to port. In addition they Italy has used both HQs for reorganization purposes. If oil is not in play all those units will be reorganized. When playing with oil then Italy can not afford to reorganize more than the two HQ and leaving the entire fleet disorganized for the next turn. The aircraft remains disorganized as well. Or Italy can reorganize a combination of ten of the aircraft and/or ships and leave the two HQ plus half the ships/aircraft disorganized.

Italy can seldom afford to use their fleet at maximum capacity. CW on the other hand can usually use their fleet and other oil dependant units as much as they want. And if CW, due to Axis pressure, begins to have oil trouble then US can begin to send oil to CW. I am told that some Allied players have to little oil late in the game (end of 1944) but Axis often has to little oil the entire game. And by 1944 Axis can be out of oil.

Playing with oil reduce production of new units as well. This affects Axis more than the Allies since Axis more often has more factories than they have resources. Without the oil rule all the oil resources can be used for production.

Edit: This was more text than I intended. Please ask and I can attempt to clarify things.

Edit2: I did as Composer99 suggested. Thank you. [:)]

[composer99]

If you edit that post again, Orm, you can snip out the duplicate text. [:)]

[Easo79]

ORIGINAL: Orm

Next nation to set up its forces is Italy. And as with all nation the set up begins with scrapping old units if that option is in play.

I think I my scrapping policy with Italy is fairly common. I suspect that some do not scrap those two transporters. But I prefer to to make sure that I have the four movement point TRS on the map from the beginning.

As I envision them, units in the pool are empty ghosts that need to be invigorated by the industrial power of a nation to become real fighting units. Therefore, the rationale for scrapping some units is: to do that when you know you don’t have the economic ability to resuscitate o create every unit in the pool, and therefore is advisable to delete the worst units in it, improving accordingly the average quality of your “ghosts”. (Please correct me if I am completely mistaken)

I suppose than when playing the game several times, and when talking with experienced players, one develops a feeling about how much each country’s industry can achieve. But I also suppose that there is some maths behind that decision (or shared wisdom).

I have seen here at the forum some charts including building costs for several units: but what I do not know is the other part of the problem, the industrial income of each country. Has anyone posted somewhere the BPs each country can expect in a year-by-year basis…(or, from that matter, for the whole Grand-Campaign).

Orm, if you are planning to make some comments later about production matters, please do not interrupt now the flow of your narrative. I can wait until that part of the turn arrives.

[Orm]

I plan to cover the production matter in detail when it arrives in my AAR. But that is a long way ahead at the end of the turn.

I made a picture of the sequence at play. The left column shows the main steps of the play sequence. The right column shows the subsequence in the step that is currently active. Now we are in the "New Game" part of the sequence with the subsequence "setup" Italy. "Production" is a substep of the step "Turn End".

What you envision works for me. But although the different countries has different industrial production potential so is the number of units available for production. It is a rare thing for a country to produce all units available for production.



And the picture shows a undefended Malta. How Italy wish it would remain undefended after CW has set up its units.

Edit: Replaced picture.

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: Easo79

ORIGINAL: Orm

Next nation to set up its forces is Italy. And as with all nation the set up begins with scrapping old units if that option is in play.

I think I my scrapping policy with Italy is fairly common. I suspect that some do not scrap those two transporters. But I prefer to to make sure that I have the four movement point TRS on the map from the beginning.

As I envision them, units in the pool are empty ghosts that need to be invigorated by the industrial power of a nation to become real fighting units. Therefore, the rationale for scrapping some units is: to do that when you know you don’t have the economic ability to resuscitate o create every unit in the pool, and therefore is advisable to delete the worst units in it, improving accordingly the average quality of your “ghosts”. (Please correct me if I am completely mistaken)

I suppose than when playing the game several times, and when talking with experienced players, one develops a feeling about how much each country’s industry can achieve. But I also suppose that there is some maths behind that decision (or shared wisdom).

I have seen here at the forum some charts including building costs for several units: but what I do not know is the other part of the problem, the industrial income of each country. Has anyone posted somewhere the BPs each country can expect in a year-by-year basis…(or, from that matter, for the whole Grand-Campaign).

Orm, if you are planning to make some comments later about production matters, please do not interrupt now the flow of your narrative. I can wait until that part of the turn arrives.

I can give a few general ideas. There will be lots of production posts later to thrash it all out.

The Force Pools represent industrial and manpower potential. For example, China just doesn't have the industrial muscle to produce much in the way of motorised or mechanised units but they have a vast pool of manpower. So you are restricted in what you can build by the realities of the period.

Basically you scrap poor quality units and these tend to be old (from 1937 or before in 1939). It prevents them turning up as reinforcements. Getting Heinkel 51s for the Battle of Britain isn't fun. Each power has inherent strengths and it is usually best to produce units of that type. Italy's army is quite poor but has good Naval Air and navy units. As a result it is best to leave the production of armoured units to Germany and concentrate on those.

Production uses Build Points. When a resource reaches a factory it generates a Production Point. Production Points are multiplied by something called the Production Multiple to make Build Points. The Production Multiple is a measure of readiness and efficiency and is different for each power. They start low and increase with time and with events such as major powers entering the war. Thus, at the production phase each power will have a certain number of Build Points to "spend" on building units that arrive at some point later on, depending on how many turns they take to construct. The Force Pool limits what can be constructed but there is another factor called Gearing Limits. You can't suddenly produce lots of a certain unit type. This reflects real-world "gearing up" of production.

The Allies especially have to think ahead with production. All those lovely Essex class aircraft carrier units take two years to build, so unless you lay them down early enough they won't arrive in time for the drive across the Central Pacific.

Cheers, Neilster

[Orm]

Now is a good time, I hope, to show and explain the reserve pool.

In the reserve pool there is three kind of units.
1) Reserves. Land units that becomes available for set up once the nation goes to war with another Major Power (USA, Germany, France and so on).
2) Aircraft that has no designated pilot.
3) Factories that are enemy controlled but not destroyed

There are also a count for the number of Pilots and Offensives a nation has available. Each time a aircraft is shot down and the pilot survives the number of pilots listed here increase by one. Each time a pilot or offensive arrive as a reinforcement the corresponding number increase by one.

Newly produced aircraft gets placed here as well. When it is time to place reinforcements and you have pilots available you can pick a aircraft to be placed on the map and the number of pilots gets reduced by one for each aircraft that gets placed on the map.

Once a nation goes to war with a Major Power then you may call out your reserves and place them on the map as reinforcements. They are disorganized when they are placed. The only exception is some of the USSR reserves. Those units can only be placed when USSR goes to war with Germany.

When setting up a nation you should take in count where you plan to place your reserves. Especially if you know you will enter the war at once. Like Germany, CW and France.

Note that Japan and China has already called out their reserves so they have no land units in the reserve pool.


I underlined where it shows on the unit information that it is only available once USSR enters a war with Germany.

[Neilster]

Disorganised units cannot move or attack. If they are land units they defend weakly. They can be reorganised by an HQ or are reorganised automatically at the end of each 2 month turn. As a result it is best to keep them out of harm's way when placing them, if possible.

Offensive Chits are a special kind of unit that can be produced and represent a vast store of supplies and organisation of some sort. When employed they make a certain kind of action, such as a land offensive, much more potent.

Cheers, Neilster

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Easo79

ORIGINAL: Orm

Next nation to set up its forces is Italy. And as with all nation the set up begins with scrapping old units if that option is in play.

I think I my scrapping policy with Italy is fairly common. I suspect that some do not scrap those two transporters. But I prefer to to make sure that I have the four movement point TRS on the map from the beginning.

As I envision them, units in the pool are empty ghosts that need to be invigorated by the industrial power of a nation to become real fighting units. Therefore, the rationale for scrapping some units is: to do that when you know you don’t have the economic ability to resuscitate o create every unit in the pool, and therefore is advisable to delete the worst units in it, improving accordingly the average quality of your “ghosts”. (Please correct me if I am completely mistaken)

I suppose than when playing the game several times, and when talking with experienced players, one develops a feeling about how much each country’s industry can achieve. But I also suppose that there is some maths behind that decision (or shared wisdom).

I have seen here at the forum some charts including building costs for several units: but what I do not know is the other part of the problem, the industrial income of each country. Has anyone posted somewhere the BPs each country can expect in a year-by-year basis…(or, from that matter, for the whole Grand-Campaign).

Orm, if you are planning to make some comments later about production matters, please do not interrupt now the flow of your narrative. I can wait until that part of the turn arrives.

This will raise more questions than it answers, but augments some of the answers to your question provided by others in this thread.

[Easo79]

ORIGINAL: Orm

I plan to cover the production matter in detail when it arrives in my AAR. But that is a long way ahead at the end of the turn.

I think that more or less I have the basic concepts inside my head, and, yes, I need to see how that works in practice, and I think it is appropiate to put it in the context of real decision- making.

To put it in mundane terms, now I know I can go shopping every two months and I have a catalogue of priced products which I can buy. I still don`t know how much money I have in my credit card [8|]. But I have now the page left here by Steve to educate myself a little bit more...step by step...

[Orm]

And now I set up the Chinese. The Chinese sets up in two separate phases. First the Nationalist Chinese set up their units and then the Communist Chinese sets up. But I made the pictures after they both had placed their units.

I only scrapped one unit with the Chinese so I did not make a picture of that. I scrapped a 3 strength fighter (FTR2) with a range of four. It is marginally worse than the best fighter China has and I picked that one for set up.

China is the country I have the most trouble with deciding on how to place the units. I am never happy with the result. I change my mind almost every time I place the units. This set up is a bit different than I usually do it. I mixed Nationalist with Communist in the north and that is the first time I've done that. There is a danger with that since they are not allowed to stack together. But I felt a need to strengthen the defence in the north. The communist is very weak with so few units available.

Anyway. This is it. I am ready for critique. Bring it on. [:D]


Southern half of China.

[Orm]

The northern part of my Chinese set up.

[Orm]

And a close up of the center with flyouts.

[lomyrin]

I have in test games placed a cheap unit, the Cungking Mil, in Chengchow to cost the Japs an impulse delay in reaching the Communists.

[lecrop]

Very nice aar! suscribed