Transferring the Luftwaffe to theater boxes?

[hpalmer]

Tried this in my most recent game, but essentially I just moved the bulk of the LW to North Africa, then secondarily western Europe and Italy theater boxes. Got naval over 300% in North Africa which led to events most turns where I had a naval success which delayed the fall of North Africa. Similar events for being over garrison in WE.

I basically shifted all my recon, most bombers, and then kept fighters for the most part on the Eastern Front with very little usage, and new formations generally sent to theater boxes.

Overall, seems gamey [:D] of course, but I still slaughtered the Soviet Airforce in the air when they came up to support their ground forces and I didnt see much impact on CV and reached Leningrad in August, captured it in September, and was encircling Moscow by early October and had reach a line of Tula - Kharkov/Kursk - Stalino - Rostov also and hit the 700 auto win which I candidly didn't really want to do. I was super aggressive with motorized/panzers and didn't worry about getting them isolated, just bypassed soviet formations and pushed them way out in front and had estonia secured in 3 turns and to leningrad from the west (Talinn) and south by Pskov - Novgorod with separate spearheads.

Interested in any feedback or perspective on this approach, particularly the air war decision as I was hoping to see stable secondary theaters longterm which would prevent italian collapse and allow more emphasis on beating the reds.

[xhoel]

I am going to guess that this was a game vs the AI and it seems that you clearly outmatched them.

Against a human player that tactic would not be very wise. Nevertheless, the event pushbacks that you got in NA only delay the Campaign for a day or so. Joel or loki would have to chip in on this as they know the event system more but basically you arent gaining that much from the move.

All you can do with the TBs is just delay the inevitable and maybe score some VPs but eventually Italy will collapse and the WA will land in France. It is just a matter of time.

[hpalmer]

thanks for the insight. I would have liked to see it be possible to turn things around in a secondary theater through massive injections of troops, seems like that should be feasible, but good to know its not a major impact. I was also hoping to limit allied strategic bombing of germany through beefed up AA and air units, but not sure how much it changes things to move all the heavy AA into W. Europe theater box...

[xhoel]

Sure thing. Well we have a HvsH StB game in internal testing now that just entered August 1944 and the WA have still not landed in France, so you can delay things in the TBs as long as you plan for it properly.

You can limit strategic bombing by moving assets to the WE TB, give it a try!

[Karri]

I haven't run the tests yet, but I was likewise wondering about the support units. Seems like they contribute almost nothing to the garrison requirements, so most should be easily moved to Eastern Front. Not sure what that would look numberwise, or what effect it would have.