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Started another game and found something not mentioned in the scenario notes. Europe 1939 Steam 1.00.25, PBEM. Italy joined the Axis when the Middle East was abandoned by the UK. However the Mid-East was not abandoned, What I did was move the unit from Cairo it remained in in Egypt and the unit in Aman to the Port Said.

I have no issue with the mechanism but I wish that I had known about this before.

I would like to know what are the restrictions on the UK units not in the Britain, Wales, and Scotland. Specifically, those units in Gibraltar, Malta and the Mid-East. Is there any flexibility on placement and will moving any of them trigger Italy to move towards, if not outright, join the Axis?

I am preaty sure there are no other requirement than the ones in the scenario note for UK units. And from my many experiences, just moving units around inside the same border (Palestine, Jordan and Egypt as "one country") should be no problem.

So my guess is that it is one of those three things :

1) maybe a bug
2) a unit in Egypt embarked by mistake (I doubt it would count if loaded on ships even if in a Middle East port.)
3) two units were merged, so the requirement for units are not meet anymore.*

* The engine checks for number of units, not their size. For example, Germany is OK with 6 divisions in Poland, but not with 2 large corps even if is is the same size.

So if not 2 or 3, probably 1. But I have never seen it happen yet.

It is the way the event is done that is causing your problem. The event is saying the following:

---

//Egypt left ungarrisoned if attacked by Allies - Italy +200 Axis
$ChangeEntry
if_Date=1/1/1939
if_Country=7
if_Alliance=Neutral
//if the UK has less than 6 units in Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan Italy can declare war
landUnitInRadius=193,8,-6,10,Allies
targetCountry=7
lifespan=tillTrigger
text=Italy enters on the Axis side as the UK leaves the Middle East under garrisoned
addReportTo=All
entryShift=-200
$End

The definition of the line landUnitInRadius=193,8,-6,10,Allies is:

landUnitInRadius=x,y,+units,radius,alliance ― returns true if the number of land units in the area is equal to or GREATER than the number from the specified alliance that are within the radius. If set to zero radius it checks the x,y hex only

So here:
6 units must be within 10 hex radius of Cairo (hex 193, 8). And this is your problem.

Since you have moved from Cairo to somewhere in Egypt, if the somewhere is more than 10 hexes you are screwed. The same thing happen to me when I move a unit from Egypt to Cyprus.

Maybe changing landUnitInRadius=193,8,-6,10,Allies to landUnitInRadius=193,8,-6,20,Allies would limit this problem.

---

I'll put this on my fix list

Now I remember why I put it at 10.

So the UK just doesn't pile on the Iraq border without triggering Italy intervention. The capital of both Jordan and Palestine is reasonable. I will update the notes.