ORIGINAL: CBoehm
My point was that a successfull sealion almost always comes from improvisation ..ei. switching TO a sealion ...ei. if CW has been quick to reinforce Afrika in 39 ...and end up getting the BEF annihilated in France ...then a quick switch to a sealion ...perhaps even a landing in UK BEFORE fall of france can be successfull. However a deliberate strategy of "now I will build towards and force through a sealion" will almost always fail if CW knows what he is doing.
While an impromptu Sealion in 1940 might be achievable, it requires a rather good deal of luck on the part of the Germans - the CW has to empty England out to the BEF and/or Africa, the BEF has to get destroyed, and the CW has to have been negligent in not building land units or fighters in 1939 or early in 1940. Furthermore, the Germans will have to get rather lucky in avoiding having their only sealift in 39-40 (1 trs & 1 amph) getting damaged or sunk, as they will have almost no invasion capability and (on the turn of the invasion) absolutely no follow-up capability. The RAF also has to prove incompetent on ground strikes to pin the attackers to their beachhead.
Furthermore, I disagree that a pre-meditated Sealion is doomed to fail.
Sealion, in WiF, is not really about conquering England (if you can manage it, great, but don't bet on it). Sealion in WiF is about three things: (1) damaging or destroying British production and convoy pipelines such that they are incapable of building up adequately in the late-war in conjunction with the Americans to crush Germany in the West or to stretch German lines beyond breaking point throughout Europe; (2) prevent the Allies from concentrating on and hence destroying Germany's weaker Italian ally; and (3) by drawing British and (later) American attention and forces to England, give the other Axis powers (especially Japan) the freedom to expand with minimal resistance from the Western Allies, earning the objectives the Axis needs to win the game (the Indian Ocean handshake).
Germany needs two things to get a pre-meditated Sealion going. The first is to build out its long-range bombers, naval bombers, and fighters to exhaust CW airpower across the UK and to contest the North Sea and maybe even also the Bay of Biscay from the invasion turn on - the Germans are committing to spend at least a year, possibly longer, trying to duke it out with the Royal Navy.
The second thing is enough sealift and/or airlift to invade or paradrop into two or three hexes right away during the invasion, and then be able to bring adequate follow-up forces in during the turn of the invasion. That sealift and airlift has to be able to continue shipping in troops for sometime after in adequate numbers to overwhelm the British defences.
If those two things are in place, then even a strong British defence may not be enough to throw off the initial invasions (three hexes for preference, four if you can manage it) - at which point the Germans might be able to get ashore in force somewhere in England. Even if the CW completely builds out their army in 39-40, they probably won't have enough army to fight the Wehrmacht toe-to-toe if it can really get ashore in force.
Finally, to reinforce a point, remember that a Sealion isn't a failure even if the Germans don't get on the beaches (or even if they are promptly booted off) if they have bought time for the Italians to secure the Suez Canal and Malta and for Japan to conquer wide swaths of CW territory (especially Australia/New Zealand and maybe even India or South Africa).
The point is that an improvised Sealion is very likely to fail in all three ways discussed above if launched in 1940 unless an extraordinary number of things go Germany's way, and an ad hoc Sealion launched in 1941 is pretty well doomed to failure unless the CW player is both truly incompetent and very unlucky.
Edit: I should point out that one reason I am a very conservative WiF player and will argue in favour of a conservative AI is because I am described by one of my fellow WiF players here in Ottawa as the "unluckiest guy he knows". [:)]
