WW2 in Europe scenario need work?

[SMK-at-work]

I was really looking forward to this.....right up until my opponent smashed the Maginot line in a couple of turns.....which tells me there's something wrong with the game, or, more likely the scenario.

Are there any grogs out there working on a more "historical" version??

[ravinhood]

Maybe you just played bad defending the Maginot line and there's nothing to fix or make historical.

[tweber]

Did you defend with you air force?  In the AAR game, I was able to break the line but my opponent pulled his AF to the UK.  Also, it can be argued that it is better to give up in France and resist in the UK more effectively.
 
Likewise, the Germans often take lower casualties if they wait until April and go through the Low Countries.

[freeboy]

I took Warsaw and raced West in t1 t2 shelled and attacked taking serious losses, but took Mag line hex number on, Northest corner.. attacked againt3 with art planes and then multiple attacks driving throu the line into france.. If he would have move to block, and used his air maybe he would have forced winter, and then you HAVE to wait do to the winter penelty, till Aprill

[seille]

Nobody said the scenario is 100% realistic.
If you think the maginot attack is too easy i suggest you play against tweber as German.
He´ll show you how to defend and that the loss of France is a thing that will ALWAYS happen
if the Axis player know how to use his units.
Germany NEED that success to have a chance in this game.
 
In my game vs Tom the breakthru of the Maginot costed the german a lot of troops.
Probably the same in your game, so where is the problem ??

[Vic]

i have had a dream about a ww2 europe scenario competititon
no seriously it was just a dream and i realy like toms scenario

[SMK-at-work]

He rolled right over hte Maginot line on T3 - I did attack the hex where the French get 3 stacks....but he went over at the other end by Belgium.

The French AF gamely attacked a couple of times....and then ceased to exist.

Pulling the FAF back to the UK is a historical nonsense I'd like to prevent if possible.

[seille]

Ok SMK. Tom is sleeping now. Since i did most of the tests with him i´ll try to explain.
 
The scenario is not set 100% historical to keep it playable and fun for both players.
We both agreed that the scenario must be balanced and both players must be able to win.
 
Some things are important to know.
 
1. Germans have absolute air superiority with 15 fighters at 100 XP (!!!!)
2. German initial army is nearly unbeatable with also 100 XP (except the west front guards)
3. Allied only advantage are the ships (100XP). Overall 4 fleets which are extremely powerful if used well
 
Germans have to win or get a bigger advantage before USA joins the war in 1943. After that the power of production
will win the war.
In case you think a 100% realistic scenario here is fun for both players i can´t await to see it.
The problem with the realistic setup is imho it could become very frustrating for one of the players and that can´t
be a thing a scenario designer should aim for.
 
Reading the scenario description and studying the own and enemy OOB is very important for that scenario.
Don´t expect to play that one well in your first attempt !! Your opponent just copied the AAR strategy which will usually work.
Don´t waste your air units in a hopeless fight. Don´t start fighting before you have level II fighters and at least 20 of them
and keep an eye on how many planes and which level your opponent has. I could give you 100 more tips here for that very
complex thing. A last and important one is the right pick of upgrades. Rifle II is the most important in the start to make sure the enemy
will pay for getting thru the Maginot.
Even my ass will be kicked again in the AAR game i LOVE that scenario.

[SMK-at-work]

Yes that "playability" thing where everyone has to have an equal chance of winning is a constant theme in strategic scenarios that I find disappointing - \\i think of it as wargaming "political correctness" and it's what has stopped me playing a lot of games.

If I'm playing Germany then I consider victory to be lasting to 1946......for me victory is doing better than history....Germany winning WW2 by conquering Spain, Russia and the UK is just fantasy - I have no more interest in it than I have in wargaming with elves or centaurs.

I'm well aware that not everyone shares my prediliction for believable alternate history, so I'm just hanging out here on my own[:(]

[Hanal]

I understand your point SMK but in my case, having played Peoples Tactics, quite a bit, I was already aware that the scenarios, though set in a historical framework, were always tweaked for play balance purposes. I guess the issue can be raised if the game description could make this point clearer.

[seille]

Ok, a question. Would you play the side which will not have any chance in a historical scenario ?
 
Btw, i think exactly that you can play your own way in that scenario is part of it´s charme.
And it´s the way the complete game goes, too. Flexibility.
Did you find any 100% historical scenarios in this game ? I would wonder.
 
And what "believable" is or not that´s the question. First getting control over england then
attack russia is not believable ?? Sorry, but i think it is !
 

[SMK-at-work]

Define "not have a chance" please?

Would I take a side that will surely lose the game in terms of being dfeated - you bet.....as long as the victory conditions were such that I could win the GAME by doing better than "history"......


Beliveable is in the eye of the beholder......it is opinion....... I'm prepared to state why I think some things are and are not believable.  I dont' mind if you disagree, but I'm not going to change my mind unless there's good reason to.

Germany could never have succeeded in invading England in 1940.......they simply lacked the naval resources to do it - they only had 1 set of ships to take the troops and supplies across.....they were going to anchor off the English coast for 3 days to offload the 1st wave, then go back, load up the 2nd wave, take a day or 2 to unload them, then go back and pick up the 3rd wave......

Even just attempting to use Rhine river barges to transport troops made a sizeable dent in Europe's economy due to the lack of transport in late 1941......

In the mean time the British had 80 or so light cruisers and destroyers that could have sailed into the landing zones each night...Germany barely had 40 ships in its entire navy, and many of those were substandard....the Bismark, Gneisenau, Scharnhorst and Tirpitz were not yet ready and half of their "destroyer" fleet was small ships termed torpedo boats - about Frigate size.  Most of the U-boats at this stage were still small Type II's....and hte British had more submarines in home waters than the Germans did anyway!

Coastal command was practiced at torpedo bombing too.....

Sealion would have been a massacre........the Royal Navy might have lost a lot of ships....but Germany would have lost an entire army.  All the angst about the state of hte British Army, lack of equipment, etc is pretty irrelevant, because much of the German army would not get ashore, and those that did would be out of ammunition, fuel and food inside a week.

If Germany was going to successfully invade the UK it needed to start planning about 1937 in order to get enough transport and naval escorts in place by 1940. 

So as long as it takes a couple of years to get together the rsources that's fine........but most WW2 games let Germany easily move most of its army into the UK in 1940.....and that's pretty much indefensible as beliveable history unless you also change the history of the previous 2-3 years.

[seille]

I think we should stop that discussion. We both see the things completely different (not only the chance of sea lion).
You want a hardcore scenario with full realism and i want much realism as possible while keeping the scenario playable.
Maybe someone will later create the kind of scenario´s you want.

[Panzeh]

I think if you're going to keep a 'historical' balance, then you have to use victory conditions to balance the game.  While I don't disagree with this method of balance, a lot of wargamers think 'artificial' methods of winning such as not conquering all enemies before you and hearing the lamentations of their women is a copout.

[tweber]

If you want to tweak the scenario to make it tougher to go through the maginot line.  You can make fortifications much more difficult to attack:
 
- Go into editor
- Disable the masterfile (in settings)
- Go into sfypes and select the units you want to modify (different levels of rifle, smg, mortars, mgs, light and medium tanks)
- Go into landscape combat modes
- Make attack number for fortifications lower
 
You can play around with this to tailor to what you want.
 
Also, there are scenario variants.  You can give the West an extra 20 pp or let them produce experienced aircraft.  If you toggle these and play an equally experienced opponent and win as the German player, you are doing well.
 
The initial draw of the game to me was the ability to modify things. Instead of arguing how closely or not closely a campaign was to the actual campaign or whether unit x should be 10% better, you can go in and change things.
 
If you do come up with an interesting variation of the scenario, you should post to the scenario bank.

[mtvaill]

The Maginot line was never really tested (nor was it ever intended to be impregnable), so reports of its impregnability, especially in light of how fast "impregnable" Eben Emael fell to paratroopers, are probably overrated at best.  But I digress...

In the end this is a game, which is supposed to be historically-themed fun, not necessarily BBC-Documentary-accurate.  Just have fun!

[Punzer]

[8D] Yeah, man, I only play for fun myself. [8D]
 
I've not looked at the editors yet, myself, but I plan to when I get better at the game. So far I've yet to beat the AI {ahem}.

[SMK-at-work]

Fun is different things to different people.......for me fun is a good believable alternate history.  Take out hte beliveability bit and it stops being fun.

YMMV.

sure the Maginot line was never really tested...but they didn't have enough troops to Eban-emal any large part of it, and it was a major obstacle regardless.

Actually I sort of got off on the wrong foot - I don't mind the Maginot line being destroyed....the problem was really that he had enough troops in the West to do it so early - starting turn 3 - so it seemed to me that he was able to transfer troops to the west far too quickly - he was able to do this because he only used the East Prussia troops to conquer Poland - none of the others were required......so the problem for me wasn't the Maginot line so much as the setup in poland.

At least it's getting me familiar with the editor!

[SMK-at-work]

ORIGINAL: seille

You want a hardcore scenario with full realism and i want much realism as possible while keeping the scenario playable.

Now you're being insulting and saying that I'm not interested in playability - what I'm not interested is in pampering the Axis side so they have a mythical 50% chance of winning WW2........that's not playability for me...that's laziness.

[tweber]

There are many design points around a theater level WWII game that spans the entire war in Europe (e.g., when the Soviets / US enters, how to handle Italy, the Balkans, quick victories in the West, Soviet initial surprise, partisans, uboat and strategic bomber).  Many of these things become interelated.  It is easy to make adjustments for any given point (e.g., stiffen up defenders in fortications, take some trucks away from the German initial setup).   These suggestions are helpful.  I hope you are able to play this scenario through a couple more times and provide more feedback.