Ports and Invasion too easy

[PanzerMike]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

I was planning on reducing manpower production by 25%.

The double dip bug was on reinforcements which doubled manpower costs.

Ok, sounds good. Time will tell if that will do the trick.

[AlbertN]

UGH. That would be another awful change for all ends, making the game more 'static' as players are even more resource deprived.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: battlevonwar
The Allies can use lots of different ports all over the place!

Not really, you have to remember ports ability to supply units drops off rapidly beyond 10 hexes, so you only have enough supply for a small force when compared to a fully fleshed out German army. I crunched the numbers in my AAR and it was about 450+ points available at the front lines even though I controlled all western and northern ports in France.

That wasn't enough supply to even have enough units for a single thin line of infantry units to match the German lines, let alone expensive stuff like air and armor. Port supply simply isn't adequate to feed an invasion capable of taking on a German army that has reached its logistic cap.

The only way Overlord will work as the game stands now is if the allies can keep Germany from ever reaching its cap, or if things go very bad for Germany in Russia and the Soviets manage to destroy vast amounts of units in 43 and 44. Neither will be a common occurrence in the game as things stand now.

Edit: So people don't have to go digging for it, this was the max sized force I had in France vs. Flaviusx. He'll have to chime in and enlighten us if all Germans were corps sized units or not, everything I could see was so I assume it all was.

6 US infantry corps..........216
3 British infantry corps.....90
2 Armored corps..............84
2 HQ's.......................20
2 Fighters...................56

This is opposed by about 40 German land units in Western Europe, another 15 or so in Italy and countless Italians.

Jim

[AlvaroSousa]

ORIGINAL: Cohen_slith

UGH. That would be another awful change for all ends, making the game more 'static' as players are even more resource deprived.

I call that a healthy level of anxiety that keeps players trying to find more ways to play.

[AlbertN]

More ways to play = I've not enough manpower for my stuff, let's just pass the turn after few units fiddling / adjustments = Not healthy gameplay.

Anyhow I'll try to have a game going with the latest beta and see how it pans out.
Quite confident, unless luck blesses the Axis or a disaster happens in '41 Barbarossa (I'm not yet that good with Soviets) - the Allies win hands down.

[Michael T]

Reducing Manpower is a good idea. Maybe even more of a reduction is needed. But lets try 25% first.

[Almeron]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

Reducing Manpower is a good idea. Maybe even more of a reduction is needed. But lets try 25% first.

I belive there shoud be a PvP campaign, and player vs AI one. 25 % drop on manpower is a big issue, when we play on higher difficulty. On hardest difficulty, manpower matters, because those games are more like hiting the wall games (with +30 % experience on AI side, casulties are high, around 2X more, then normal).

With less manpower, the game could broke apart.

But of course, PBEM is a different animal.

[Flaviusx]

I've played the AI at max levels on both sides before the manpower bug was discovered and won with both. Admittedly, I solod this with diplo on, which on balance favors the allies, but even so.

Tempo of operations and casualties are just much higher with human players...and if PBEM games are finding manpower to not be a constraint at all, that will be even more true against the AI at any level.

[PanzerMike]

@Jim: you had all ports in France, but not Antwerpen or Rotterdam? No expert on Logistics but wasn't having one of those deemed essential IRL for supply of a massive allied army?

[ericdauriac]

As far as I am concerned, I will propose a change in the capacity of French ports which does not correspond to the reality of 1939 with:

Calais: 3 (dunkirk)
Le Havre : 4
Rouen : 6
Saint Nazaire : 2
Bordeaux : 2
Marseille : 7
Brest : 5 (military port)
Cherbourg : 4 (military port)
Toulon : 5 (military port)
Lorient : 2 (military port)

[AlbertN]

I suspect another problem is how 'mulberries' work.
Ships by the shores are meant to do some form of beach supply but to me it seems it works only on troops specifically pinned in the beach hex and not inland.

[PanzerMike]

I think you are right about that

[Flaviusx]

Jim didn't get those ports because the jerk Nazi he was playing against made it a point to deny them.

Although it was a moot point in our game, because we were playing with diplo on. He was able to flip Portugal, which provided him with a limitless and rail connected supply point. The he knocked out Spain and on to France and no more supply troubles. But this took time and I was pretty well dug in by the time he sorted it all out.

In most games the Allies won't have a friendly Portugal and if the other Nazis are jerks like me, they will hang on to those big ports. I am not sure what the answer to this is, tbh.

Maybe the allies need to go straight into the Low Countries from the getgo. With enough airpower backing them, maybe they can do it.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
Maybe the allies need to go straight into the Low Countries from the getgo. With enough airpower backing them, maybe they can do it.

My next allied game will be escorts only for the US, and probably half the British fighters as well. No way can the US take the low countries without massive fighter air over their armies and in our game I only built 3 or 4 escorts because I was thinking strat cover only for them.

You have to take the low countries with most of your air left in Britain, that means you get a 8-10 hex range from the eastern most Island hexes for air strikes, so you can't afford to put fighters along the coasts like I was forced to do. You need them all well in the back to give you as much air strike power up front as possible. I'd probably build far more tac as well, those extra few hexes are far more important than strike power. 2 or 3 cs for tough nut hexes, the rest would be tac.

Problem is once you get well into the low countries, you'll be well past 21 hexes from western France so even with those new ports your army will not come close to matching 40+ German land units. And getting a large airforce ashore to help push into Germany proper will probably still be impossible. This is going to be a major issue when games start hitting 44+. The supply is just not there to face a fully fleshed out logistics capped German army.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: PanzerMike
@Jim: you had all ports in France, but not Antwerpen or Rotterdam? No expert on Logistics but wasn't having one of those deemed essential IRL for supply of a massive allied army?

They would have helped, but with 40+ German units, the allies were never going to get close to matching those numbers. At best the low countries would have let me get half a dozen more US inf ashore and maybe half a dozen more air/armor units. Not enough to sweep into Germany in less than a year as was done historically.

You have to remember, Germany reached its logistics cap in late 42 early 43 and was hammering the allies with all that power for well over a year. In the mean time the allies barely reached their cap by mid 44 (Soviets never came close and were about 1500 shy in mid 44 of their cap) and they are suddenly supposed to turn around on a dime and shatter Germany's maxed out VERY high experienced forces with less than 1/3rd of the units they face? Balance is way off in the end game.

Jim