Balance is Good

[sveint]

Sure set it up, we can post it all here. As Germany your Luftwaffe will be eradicated and at best you'll take France in September. You'll have time to build maybe two more panzers for Barbarossa.

[ncc1701e]

As Germany your Luftwaffe will be eradicated and at best you'll take France in September. You'll have time to build maybe two more panzers for Barbarossa.

A small historical comment, Germany double the number of Panzer divisions from France 1940 to Barbarossa 1941 by removing a tank brigade in their TO&E. The game doesn’t reflect this. But the size of each Panzer was reduced to have more. Tank production would not have follow.

[sveint]

We can discuss history all we want but the UK and France having air superiority in France in 1940 is fantasy.

For their western campaign the Germans had available about 1,000 Messerschmitt Me-109E single-engine and 250 Me-110C twin-engine fighters, compared to a total of fewer than 800 modern French, British, Belgian and Dutch single-engine and 120 Dutch and (mainly) French twin-engine fighters.

Nevermind quality, even in quantity the German fighters outnumbered the UK, France and Benelux combined.

[ncc1701e]

For air units, I agree. The Germans are missing one or two air superiority units at 70% experience in their Deployment queue to arrive just before May 1940, like Japanese in WPP.

[ncc1701e]

But, I am not sure air units modification will be enough against big BEF.

The thing is that Germany can have 4 fighters, 4 ground support bombers and 4 tactical bombers by May 1940. Alvaro has said that bomber units contain fighters. But honestly, their impact are not enough in air to air combat.

If all German air units were at 70% experience at start on map, that would be a game changer.

[ncc1701e]

How are they making more aircraft? They can't stuff the mainland and make more aircraft to outnumber the Germans at the same time. They don't have the PPs.

Germany don’t know until the last time if UK will play big BEF or not. As such, usually, this is too late for the German player to buy landing ships. At this time, most of their shipyards are used to buy subs.

[AlvaroSousa]

So it seems while the Eastern Front is balanced the Western Front is out of whack.

I have also consulted my WPE expert that has played countless games for his input against human opponents. He is a very good player.

Let me see what Western Front adjustments I can make.

[AlvaroSousa]

Question... is this also all because the Italian hands are tied? If Italy were to have a free hand would it make a difference?

Thus the Italian Option scenario?

[redrum68]

Having Italy join the Axis in June or July regardless of whether Germany has taken Paris would probably help. This forces the Allies to put more units to defend southern France and Egypt. I believe this is how SC WaW handles it as Italy mobilization increases slightly each turn so they join sometime in the summer of 1940.

[ncc1701e]

Italians will not pass the Alps. And with French fleet, no naval invasion possible imo.

[AlvaroSousa]

Having Italy join the Axis in June or July regardless of whether Germany has taken Paris would probably help. This forces the Allies to put more units to defend southern France and Egypt. I believe this is how SC WaW handles it as Italy mobilization increases slightly each turn so they join sometime in the summer of 1940.

Ok Good to know. I might do that.

[AlvaroSousa]

How are they making more aircraft? They can't stuff the mainland and make more aircraft to outnumber the Germans at the same time. They don't have the PPs.

If you want to send me a hotseat game on the saved turn of may 1st 1940 so I can see what you are doing to stuff the Germans that would be the best help.

Also detail what the Germans are doing. I go after UK convoys from the start.
You can also take out Belgium and Netherlands in 1 shot.

I can create some hotseat games if that will help. But here are screenshots from AARs that show 1. Max BEF ground and 2. Balanced BEF air/ground. One thing to note is a number of the BEF units will trickle into France during May as that's when the Germans are tied up taking Belgium and the initial French units. So really it matter what UK can get to France by early June as that is when they start most of the fighting. Let me know if you want me to create a hotseat of either of these approaches.

Max BEF Ground: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6#p4932736

Balanced BEF Air/Ground: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 4#p4954514

Be nice if I had a screen shot of total forces for the Allies here so I can look at how I can adjust it and bind to historical considerations.

[redrum68]

Be nice if I had a screen shot of total forces for the Allies here so I can look at how I can adjust it and bind to historical considerations.

Ok. I'll try to create a hotseat game this week showing a max BEF ground build and post it here.

[redrum68]

@AlvaroSousa
Here is a quick hotseat max ground BEF (probably not totally optimized) and I only played UK and France. Just a few armor and the rest infantry. You could substitute building some additional armor, mech, or fighters instead of infantry if preferred. I would contend that good players will probably be able to take France in September as long as they take Brussels on the first turn that Germany DoW Belgium but will take a lot of casualties. If they don't capture Brussels on the first turn or are an average player, they probably don't take France in 1940.

Save game:

max_ground_bef.zip

(2.35 MiB) Downloaded 13 times

Screenshot:

max_ground_bef.JPG (203.29 KiB) Viewed 1089 times

[AlvaroSousa]

I assume this is without the subs going out.
Damaging convoys or raiders.

[redrum68]

Yeah, no sub raiding. So most likely UK would have lost a chunk of its starting MM at this point (I think in my 2 AARs that I had lost around 20-30 MM at this point) and not yet invested into any new UK MM/escorts. Usually I would have bought some additional escorts with Canada. I also usually send the few starting Canadian units to Egypt.

[Nirosi]

The sub raiding might, at the very best, mean a corps less in France. For most players it would require perfect play and some luck to get France before the rain in October against such a big Allied force. Going through the Brits would be hell and going sideway to bypass them would means a very hard/slow grinding of a ~2 hex wide corridor with 4-5 Allied armors ready to ponce on your flank and try to cut that vulnerable 2 hex wide corridor.

[AlvaroSousa]

You realize you don't need Paris to force a surrender.

So looking at all this I can't find a spot to lower the Allies. They are fairly historical.
The 1940 France is playing out very historical if the Allies didn't good like they did in history.

So next question. As is and the Germans take out France by October how does that impact the Russian Front and the Allies coming back in 1944?

I am trying to look for a non-unit adjustment solution and trying to avoid specialized rules. This is an example of when I say WarPlan is a wargame based on history, not a historical wargame. Because if it was based on history with the Allies doing everything right the Axis would have been crushed in 1942.

What I want is France to fall somewhere between June and September in the game depending on the skill level differences of the players.

Another question if the Allies are fielding more aircraft what if the Axis built more instead of more armor? Anyone thought of that? Tons of armor without air support is doomed to fail.

[AlvaroSousa]

Just ran a quick Germany test of builds. They can build 2 armor, 2 mech, and 2 air sups by the late May 1940. It takes some manipulation of building 1939 tanks then in April setting the purchased units to upgrade.

But that makes the total 12 air units to 11 allies.

With the forces at hand you can't get more historical than that.

The Germans can have 6 at this time.

What I am proposing to do right now is lower the French A/C experience by 10%. It matches WiF + A3R rules.
Follow SC3 in allowing Italy to automatically join the war in June 1940. This should force the UK to keep troops in Egypt or lose Egypt.
Also give the Germans some infantry corps in the production queue, like 15..... just kidding a couple of corps
And an increase in u-boat experience.

Small changes to encourage the UK to protect more of its stuff.

[redrum68]

Yeah I think that is about what most good German players are building (2 armor, 2 mech, and 2 air sups by the late May 1940). The struggle is if BEF goes full ground not sure Germany's starting units + 2 armor and 2 mech is enough to deal with all the ground forces I posted above. But if they don't build 2 air sups and the UK builds a few fighters then Germany looses the air. The challenge for the Germans is they don't know what the UK will build so have to plan for the worst case.

Lowering French air and probably ground experience by 5-10% is what I've suggested as I think that helps to counteract the buff they got by being able to garrison all their infantry and the new rules around overruns.

I agree that having Italy join sometime in June/July would force the Allies to have a bit more units in southern france and egypt or risk losing there.

Not sure a few German infantry corps in production queue really make a difference in France as the limiting factor tends to be that there just isn't enough space to maneuver them around. These will probably just make Germany stronger when they end up having to face the USSR.

Increase in u-boat experience mostly impacts 1941 as that is when the UK will start to feel the MM crunch so has little to no impact on the invasion of France. This will just make it more difficult for the UK to send LL to the USSR.

These were the original things I suggested earlier in the thread which I think some of your ideas line up with:
- Give UK less income in 1939 and early 1940 but then increase it mid 1940
- Freeze or require more units in Egypt/England so the UK can't send so many to France
- Have UK units added later in summer 1940 like the armor in Egypt to avoid it being sent to France
- Weaken France instead of UK by say decreasing their land/air morale by say 5 points

And thing I thought of (not sure how hard this would be to implement though) is preventing Allied units from being along the Belgium border until Germany DoW on Belgium. This helps to push the Allies towards historical play of defending the Maginot Line and avoid having lots of units ready for Germany's blitzkrieg through Belgium.