Matrix Games Forums

Playing the Axis 1939 campaign, Italy AI, v1.10, intermediate difficulty, no bonus.

On the first turn of the latest Fall Gelb iteration (late April 1940), I manage to land paratroopers on The Hague (who then destroy a Dutch naval unit just for the heck of it), clear and surround Brussels although I don't take it (my mistake, I'm still learning the game [:)]) and make in-roads in the Ardennes.
At the end of the turn, as expected, Luxembourg surrenders, Belgium doesn't, but The Netherlands don't surrender either although I have a unit in their capital hex.

In fact, the Netherlands didn't surrender at all (their fighter unit did some interception action later on) until the fall of France, although the paratroopers and later a corps were parked in The Hague the whole time and the hex was marked as under Axis control from the very first turn.

MPP plunder only occurred when France surrendered, of course.

Did I stumble on an extremely rare bug or did I miss something regarding the behavior of the Low Countries?

You might have missed that surrender is not governed solely by control of a capital. You must also destroy units and capture resources [:)]

Ah, thanks. I never read the fine prints. [8|]

Seriously though. I thought this was only the case for the Majors Powers. I didn't realize it was also a requirement for Minor countries.
I took Brussels in an earlier game (when I didn't mess things up) following the fall of Eben Mael and Belgium surrendered immediately. Ditto, if I'm not mistaken, for Yugoslavia. Destroy the unit defending Belgrade and voilà! easy surrender.

I must have been doing things differently before. [:D]

There could be some variability involved. Whatever the case, I like the way it is set up because you never know when a country will surrender, which is nice.

Indeed. A bit of unpredictability is always welcome.

I may have been fooled though because I'd played on the easier difficulty settings up until then.

My experience has been that Luxembourg, Belgium and Denmark always surrender when their respective capitals are taken. Netherlands and Greece seem to have a chance of holding out for a few turns, assuming they still have units in the field.