Bill101

I think the effectiveness of Brest depends on when in the game you try to make the most of it, as the U-Boats you deploy there can be very effective at dealing with the enemy carriers, or at least at making them keep a respectable distance. Consequently in my experience it has been pretty useful up until 1942-3 when Allied airpower based in southern England can get a bit too hot to handle, but it also depends on your opponent too. Later in the war the upgrade doesn't help you at all, but by then you'll be lucky to have Brest anyway!

Brest is the port, Nantes is the city adjacent to it. As far as I'm aware it's the biggest city in the area, and Saint-Nazaire (which was important to the U-Boat campaigns) was just to its west in real life. Nantes itself is inland. Here, Nantes has the advantage of not being too close to the UK so that paratroops without long range air could just drop in and capture it, while also acting as a good garrisoning point for a unit to guard the port of Brest.

The port is a sea tile, which is why the airfleet can't occupy that hex, and because of that the airfleet won't benefit from any bonuses from the port. However, if the airfleet is in a city it will benefit from any bonuses the city provides, including supply, and as a result it can be a good idea to put your air units in cities - unless of course they are in the front line!

On a positive note, if you are able to reduce that HQ to virtually zero each turn it will be costing the Axis a fortune to keep repairing it. In the long run the Allies will benefit more from this, both due to the loss of Axis MPPs in repairs, and in the valuable experience they'll build up.

I see that five of us have posted in the time I was writing up my message. That must be a record! Hopefully together we've helped.

Yolo Please could you tell me what settings you're playing at? For instance, have you given the AI any experience bonuses (presuming that you are playing against the AI?). You can reduce the attack values of Tactical Bombers by going into the editor, opening up the campaign you want to change, selecting Campaign; Edit Country Data; Edit Combat Data. You'll see a list of countries down the left hand side and unit types more towards the middle. With the UK selected, click on Tactical Bombers and then using the up/down arrows reduce their Soft and Tank Attack values from 2 to 0. You will need to do this for every country in this list, but it shouldn't take too long. Once you've finished, click on Ok. Now to reduce the price of HQs you will need to click on Edit Unit Cost Data and again using up/down arrows you can reduce the cost of HQs for every country. Now go to File; Save as; and choose a new name for it. It will take some minutes saving, but you will now have a new campaign created to your requirements and ready for playing once you've closed the editor and gone back into the game.

The seasons are all the same length, and each turn is 14 days, hence both sides have about 13 turns a year.

Hi Robby1 Those subsidies are created through Decision events but they aren't actually decisions for people to make as they are the price of peace between the USSR and Germany, and between China and Japan which set up the situation at the start. Perhaps we could add in some specific Decisions to the AoE scenario. Soviet agents stirring up the nationalists in South East Asia perhaps? Any other ideas?

Hi Flu Within the port literally does mean within the port, so units next to the port do not benefit. You're right in saying that the factors refer to the attacking unit type, so for example an air defense bonus of 2 gives a unit in the resource a bonus of 2 when attacked by air.

Hi Xwormwood I'm not sure about this, because I have wargamed the Battle of the River Plate a number of times with people who know their naval history and the Graf Spee was a good ship, a pocket battleship which had to fight one heavy cruiser and two light cruisers, and the British ships didn't come off lightly. Thus in my opinion it is a unit that really should require more than a DD to be taken out with.

You're right, as well as providing a strategic base for moving into Indo-China, the capture of Nanning does damage China's income slightly. I think it's actually probably more beneficial than taking Foochow.

I remember trying out various strengths for the Graf Spee and anything below 8 just didn't really create a "fear factor". Anything weaker was just too easy to sink. Although it is, as a unit, overstrength at 8, its strategic effect does overall represent all of the scattered Kriegsmarine units that operated in numerous theaters (e.g. in the Indian Ocean) and which aren't represented. That said, if there is a consensus in the long run for a lower strength then let's go for it.

When attacking across a river the attacker's values are halved, which is why it can be quite expensive doing so. The Air Def bonus provides all units within the port this bonus when they are attacked from the air.

Not all countries can evacuate their forces and expect them to fight on after surrender. The Filipinos are ones who need to stick it out for as long as possible and fight on to the bitter end. Even for those countries which may fight on from exile, it isn't necessarily the case that all evacuated forces will continue the fight (think of the French, where only a small minority at first followed De Gaulle) therefore it is rarely best to evacuate a country's forces.

I'm no expert on Vista but previous posts on similar Vista related issues have generally suggested not to instal it into the default directory, but into a different folder, such as under My Documents or My Games. Could this be a solution?

Additionally, any changes to who is attached or detached to a HQ have to be made before the unit in question is moved/upgraded/reinforced etc.

Hi Xwormwood With respect to the scripts, early on in the beta testing stage we found that if too much freedom were given then players would be complaining that they were unable to recreate history, let alone change it. The problem being that we all have the benefit of hindsight and Allied players played accordingly, smashing up the Japanese invasion forces and, better still, pre-empting their invasions of neutrals like the Dutch East Indies with ones of their own. Such activities could be, and were, real game killers. Obviously we couldn't allow this too much, because the game would have seemed ridiculous if the best moves were always to act in a totally unhistorical manner. Another reason for the scripts is that the bigger the campaign, and the more countries involved, the more complex the scenario and the harder it is to design. There are so many variables too in such a scenario that some constraints are needed because ultimately too much freedom would really make programming the AI impossible. The reason why some countries are neutral before Japan strikes is that they pretty much were that. The British hardly invested a thing in the Far East prior to December 1941, they couldn't afford to and their focus wasn't on these areas. Given the hindsight that we all have, allowing them to be active from 1939 would enable the Allies to make any Japanese offensive impossible. In early playtesting this was the case and we quickly realised that this didn't work. The same applies to Hawaii where the US Pacific fleet is stationed and until the US is at war it cannot be moved. This is in line with the political reality in the US prior to Pearl Harbor, and any moves to strengthen their forces in the area would have met with political opposition due to the strength of isolationism. Having said the above, we certainly do think about all feedback and where possible will implement changes. I also second SeaMonkey's suggestion that you try the Alliance of Evil scenario, or either of the 1942 or 1943 scenarios because most of what you've mentioned only applies in the 1939 scenario.

Good to hear it, and the compression makes perfect sense!

Hi Yolo In both Russia and North Africa the maximum resource strength for the Axis is 5, so the Malta effect doesn't need to do much to lower it below that. In Russia, have partisans struck or enemy forces blocked your supply lines to the rear? Only these will have a big effect on your supply, just as in real life. You can turn off scripts when starting a new game. To do so, once you have selected the scenario, rather than clicking OK to start the game, click on Advanced. Next click Scripts. On the left hand side the types of scripts are listed. Click on Supply and scroll to the second page. Near the top is one called Malta AF Effect (Tripoli, Tobruk). Click on the white cross to its right and this will stop that script from working in your game. You can do the same with any partisan scripts in Russia you don't like, or literally anything else. Once you've finished, just click OK to go back to the previous screen. This is how you can reduce the effect of scripts on your supply lines, and therefore continue playing with the game quickly and easily modified to suit your requirements!

This can be done to a certain extent already, by just saving one script file at a time, and updating that particular type of script. Admittedly sometimes the editor wants to check them all at once (e.g. on opening up the Events) but at other times when we're working on them this can be avoided.

Hi Cantona The Flag being zero means that it's not a default event, so changing it to Flag= 1 should make a lot of difference. Although you've said that the historical date was 1935, the date for this Decision to fire is in 1938. Is that correct?

Hi Flu It's the same everywhere, because if an Airfleet is fighting in the air then it doesn't benefit from any entrenchment or defensive bonuses from the hex it is in. However, if it is attacked directly, e.g. by a Tank Group, then it will benefit from the defensive bonuses of the terrain. The bonuses in the table do refer to the defender, so the defender benefits by these factors.

Hi Yolo It's made this way so that the game can be easily modified in the editor, and as long as you remember that mines and oil are worth more than cities and capitals, you'll be able to pick the best targets for attack. The actual maths doesn't matter so much as knowing which places are worth more than others. I suspect that there would have been a pop up which mentioned the Malta effect - do the Allies hold Malta? If so they are reducing your supply in North Africa.

If the port is either the source or destination of a convoy then once its strength is less than 5 then the convoy stops running. The best planes to do this are by far Strategic bombers, but other aircraft can have an effect. Whether planes or subs are more cost effective depends also on whether or not you can target a convoy with your aircraft, and some will probably be out of reach of air attack. Although subs don't always live very long (though in a recent game I had a U-Boat operating for a long time in the Indian Ocean which returned home safely to Brest) the damage they can inflict on the enemy naval units that sink them can be rather expensive. It's really the case that subs are better in some situations, and bombers in others.

Yes. Multiply the resource strength by either 2 or 3 (depending on whether it's a mine or oil) and that is the number of extra MPPs a turn you will receive. There are certain conditions when this might not apply, such as if the conquered country sends its MPPs to you via a convoy, and if the convoy isn't working because the enemy have bombed the port it sails from then you won't receive anything. But generally the above is correct.