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In a recent game, at the end of the WA turn both WA and Germany had a large stack of transports left in the West Med. Germany had taken Gibraltar amphibiously, and then WA had just taken Rome (both sides had some oversights in defense here).

Next German turn, 5 planes came from Spain to sink the 5 WA transports. And sink them they did. But the German transports retreated to frozen Vichy France!

I don't know that this is a bug per-se, but very odd. The transports are now frozen and useless, handy for me (WA) since I'm worried about Sea Lion.

At the very least, the German transports should have retreated to Gibraltar, an unfrozen adjacent territry. But even more to the point, why did they retreat at all? There were no WA units of any kind left in the sea zone after the combat.

The retreat to Vichy bug is sadly well known. However, in the save I sent to Paul Vebber it does not repeat itself even if the same actions are repeated. So if you have a save before the retreat to Vichy that can reproduce the bug I am certain Paul would love to have it. When I had it happen it was also in a PBEM game. My opponent and I agreed to retake the turn rather than play on with the bug. Luckily that solved the bug as the retreat did not go towards Vichy again.

Wrt repeating at all my guess is that when the planes retreat the transporters also decide to retreat. I will need to run some testing to confirm that though. I will report back when I have. Well spotted.

Edit: After a little testing and some rules pondering I have come to the conclusion that its not a bug but rather a flaw in the logic with naval combat.

After a naval combat you determine if the attacker took the area. You do that by counting HS and LS. As the attacker does not have any of those present after the combat he is forced to retreat as per the rules. The fact that the enemy only has TRS left or even nothing left does not factor in. Mind, when only TRS are present there is no combat and hence no check for who retreats. So, its odd but its not a programming bug as it simply follows from the combat logic.

ORIGINAL: JanSorensen
Edit: After a little testing and some rules pondering I have come to the conclusion that its not a bug but rather a flaw in the logic with naval combat.

Well explained. It makes sense now.

I knew about the Vichy retreat issue (though somehow I thought it was fixed already). That alone wouldn't have surprised me. That combined with the fact that they retreated did surprise me.

Too late now to go back and play that turn. I'll ask my opponent to send the save and his password to Paul.

The Vichy bug was believed to have been fixed but sadly it showed up again and is back on the bug list.

What the German player can likely do to avoid the retreat problem entirely is the following
- move his transporters to port
- move the airforce out and kill the WA transporters
- move his own transports back to sea (maybe he can even undo move still)
Voila