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Does anybody have experience with how likely a Sealion is to succeed in 1940 with the Royal Navy threatening supply convoys to England? In a different thread it was commented that the UK is very low on PP at this point in the game and usually has her hands full in N. Africa as well.

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

no, however in the case of the UK, 1940: no pps!

I think if you get enough strong units ashore in a port, you can count on them surviving even wiithout supplies. Strong German units need "just enough" supply, just often enough, until you can get the naval situation under control. If you have 5 or 6 hexes I think the British will not be able to hurt you. Avoid sieges, obviously, and the British just can't bring up enough strong units to damage you. Later in the game you can exploit out of the beach head.

Chuck

I know I am going to hate myself for this, as I normally will be playing as the Germans

but I think Sealion is too easy

the biggest issue I think, is the Germans can buy too much shipping, when they needed it (now I am against the idea of a major change to the production system, but maybe costs should be different per Nation)

IE, you have your Amp points, enough to make your landing, and say you have 100 Transport points, you already have some troops in NA and a supply line there, you start a supply line to England when you make your landing

the English get frisky and sink 50 points of Transport points

so, next turn, you buy 70 points more (only 140 PP), again the English get Frisky and another 30 points goes down, no hassle, buy another 70 points worth

I mean, in RL, the Germans had to strip all of there inland shipping, and store it on the coast, there industry almost broke down, as nothing was being moved on the cannals, and major damage was done to there stored shipping by the English bombers

the Germans, just couldn't build massive amounts of transports, or replace large amounts of losses to there transport fleet

in 1940 if a tech 2 or tech 3 Armor Corps makes it ashore in England, they do not stand a chance

Sealion is easy. My game may not be typical though. For instance, I haven't moved any German troops into NA.  I accepted Vichy on January 16, 1940.  I believe my initial invasion of England occured in early March.  I'm not sure why but I haven't had any trouble at all with supply in England.  In fact, I've seen very little of England's navy and when I do see it I thrash it into oblivion.  I have not lost a naval unit thus far. In order to protect my navy, I moved all of it into ports until Italy joined.  I also bought an extra CV to enhance my detection and provide cover for any British air assaults.  I'm not quite finished with the entire conquest but I've encountered very limited opposition. It also seems that after having taken London, the Brits have huge supply issues while I have none.  I have a single convoy from LeHarve to London.  It requires 53 ST of which I can give it 50.

Yeah, it's currently way too easy.

Part of it is the naval system, I think.  As far as I could tell Great Britain never seriously attempted to confront my naval task force or supply convoys.  I did have air superiority, but air units don't appear to join in naval combat, so...

There also just don't seem to be enough ground units in England and some inland cities are left open as paratrooper prey (beyond the fact that you can easily vaporize a division in a port and drop a paratrooper on it).

 Maybe England needs some PP boosts and AI tweaks?  It certainly needs to be a lot more challenging for Germany to get units over the channel and keep them supplied.  There should be a serious risk of getting them cut off, even against the anemic AI.

In my experience, Sealion is way too hard. I wouldn't even try it, if I were you.

Gary, I see no reason why I shouldn't fully and completely trust your judgment here. You are playing the good guys after all (well, the one half that is Western anyways).

In my experience, Sealion is way too hard. I wouldn't even try it, if I were you.

[font="Times New Roman"]I think that Sealion should be very hard, since historically it would have been very unlikely that the Germans could have launched a sucessful invasion of England. The Germans were considering an invasion without much experience conducting invasions, without troops adequately trained for an invasion, without adequate time to train the troops or to properly plan the invasion, without anything approaching adequate landing craft and "accessories" (Mullberry Harbors for example; not a necessity, but dogone useful), without adequate transport for supplies and reinforcements, without naval or air supremacy, and with very little hope of obtaining any of these things in time to launch the invasion.

The German's plan seems to have been to destroy the British air force (the RAF) in order that they could use their own air force to destroy the British navy so that they could make an unimpeded channel crossing. They never even came close. During the "Battle of Britain" the British actually produced more planes than they lost (even berore the Germans switched from trying to destroy the RAF and started terror bombing London instead). The numbers of British pilots did decrease slightly during the time that the Germans were attacking the RAF, but the Germans also lost a lot of experienced pilots at the same time, and so they were little (if any) stronger relative to the RAF than they were when they began. The British also had a large, well trained, group of naval pilots and planes that were never brought into the battle, but could have been. Even if the German attacks had been much more successful than they actually were, they could still not have destroyed the RAF, since the German planes had only enough range to reach southern England. In extremis the British could have preserved their air force by simply rebasing it further north where the Germans couldn't reach them.

Overall then, the Germans were almost certainly wise to cancel the proposed invasion. [/font]