David Brown

Re: Japanese supply The Japanese doctrine was for individual soldiers to concentrate on carrying ammunition and let the enemy supply everything else. The Japanese had, by far, the lowest supply needs of any army in the war - at least an order of magnitude smaller than the Americans. This gave the Japanese unparalled mobility in difficult terrain, such as jungles. In Burma, for example, the Japanse constantly outflanked the British by moving through jungle and took the supplies left behind when the British retreated. Once the British figured this out, however, this Japanese strength turned into a major liability. During the defence of the Admin Box near Arakan in 1944, the British stood firm even when surrounded. Resupplied by air the British held out so long that the attacking Japanese troops literally began to starve and were forced to retreat. The important point here is that the British (finally) figured out how to deal with the Japanese tactics. The Japanese, on the other hand, were unable to come up with a response to the changed British tactics. (See "Last Stand!", by Bryan Perrett for its excellent discussion of the battle of the Admin Box.)

SeaWolf_48 wrote: I love a stimulating intellectual debate! Facts, theories, citations flowing all around us as we grapple with the important questions of the day! For all the examples I gave, I first clearly stated, "this depends on your definition of 'Democracy'" -- which you have not yet provided. I also stated, in reference to the American Civil War, "If you consider the Confederacy to have been a legitimate democracy..." If you don't, and I don't, that's fine too. Please recognize that I qualify my statements where discussion or debate may be appropriate. Sorry, I couldn't tell by your style of writing that you were being facetious. Let me point you to a reference that may be of some use in this discussion: a review of Prof. R. J. Rummels "Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence" by Ted Galen Carpenter. Rummel is a big proponent of 'democracies never go to war with each other'. Carpenter pokes some holes in that (discussing, interesting enough, both Wilhelmine Germany and the American Civil War), although both Rummel and H-C Peterson have rebuttals. See Democracy and War. Again, it is clear that it depends on your definition of democracy. Rummel, for example, concedes that Wilhelmine Germany as certainly a democracy at least for domestic politics -- so even he sides with me. Carpenter writes: As far as Hindenburg's dictatorship, Hindenburg was a figurehead for General Erich Ludendorff and their power, although greater than even the Kaiser held, was never total. Further, they didn't gain their influence until 1917. Also, Hindenburg was elected president of the Weimar Republic twice, in 1925 and 1932. Weimar was certainly a democracy, although a weak one, as its overthrow by Hitler amply demonstrated. A further example is the Boer War, where a democratic Britain (do you believe Great Britain in 1900 was democratic?) fought with a democratic pair of Boer republics (do you believe that states with elected leaders but limited franchises are democratic? The Boers allowed only white males to vote, similar to the US at the time). So what's your definition of democracy, SeaWolf_48? Oh, and I almost forgot: what about my example of Britain and Norway in 1940? You have not addressed that. [What bearing does this have on the Low Countries Gambit? Not much, but it could influence your belief of how much of a penalty the Western Allies should suffer for attacking the Low Countries in a future version of SC.] [ January 03, 2003, 05:51 PM: Message edited by: David Brown ]

SeaWolf_48 wrote: A couple of comments: first, I suppose this depends on your definition of 'Democracy'. In 1914 France, Britain, and Germany all had representative democracy (certainly far more than Russia), and yet still went to war. If you consider the Confederacy to have been a legitimate democracy (and its political structures were similar to those of the North -- i.e. white males were allowed to vote) then the American Civil War can be seen as a war between democracies. As to whether France would invade Belgium, it's not outside the realm of possibility, if France thought such an invasion gave it a significant military advantage over Germany. The difference between the German invasion of Belgium and a possible French one is that a French invasion would be a temporary one, forced by circumstances as opposed to an invasion of conquest. At least that's certainly the spin France would have put on it. Don't forget as well that Britain mined Norwegian territorial waters without Norwegian permission and before Germany attacked Norway (normally cause for a declaration of war) and was prepared to land troops in Norway -- except that Germany beat them by a day. Again, Britain intended to do so in order to gain a military advantage over Germany. It is not clear that Norway would have put up the same resistance to a British invasion that they did to a German one. As far as the US siding with Germany in either of the above cases -- not likely. First, the US was still highly isolationist -- it took an actual attack on US soil by the Japanese to get the US to join the war. Secondly, Roosevelt despised Hitler. He knew what Hitler stood for, and at worst would have blasted the Allied powers in speeches and in writing, while recognizing the 'necessity' of such moves behind the scenes. Remember that the British, as disgusted as they were by the Soviet Union's unprovoked attack on Finland in 1940, did not declare war on the Soviet Union, and when Russia was attacked by Germany in 1941 allied with her. The Winter War was conveniently forgotten. Would the Allies attacking neutral countries be a 'nice' thing to do? Of course not. Would it be outside the realm of possibility? No. The Allies had to make a lot of hard decisions and do some difficult things in order to win the war. Lastly, would France's taking of Belgium have held up the German invasion? Here I agree completely -- probably not.

One of the problems that I see is the open ended nature of unit purchase. There's no good reason not to buy dozens of air fleets if you can afford it. I happen to dislike arbitrary limits on unit numbers because they're, well, arbitrary. So is there another, 'natural', way to keep a limit on unit numbers? [The following idea has probably already been suggested -- I know I've posted it before, but without feedback -- but I haven't read *all* the forum postings -- so forgive me if you've seen this one already.] Change the economics model of the game so that MPPs have to be spent on maintenance of forces in the field with costs increasing from corps to armies to armour to air fleets. Every turn the computer automatically deducts MPPs from a country's total for every unit in the field. Should a country have more units than it can support economically it would have to disband units or drop their supply to 0 until it reached the economy's limit. Players would then have a 'soft' ceiling on the number of units they could have in the field. You could build as many units as you wanted of any type so long as you could support them economically. Because of the higher costs of supporting air fleets someone who built a great number of them would be forced to build fewer ground units and naval units in exchange. Further, this might make MPP centres just that much more important. A player may not expend extra effort to take a 10 point city because it won't allow him to expand his army significantly faster, or hurt his opponent that much, but it may be worth it if it makes the difference between keeping the units they have already alive. A player who built right up to their economic limit and didn't keep any MPP reserves is asking for trouble. As well, this would cut down on the total number of units in the field, making for, to my mind, a more interesting game. Being able to flood the board with corps allows for lazier play. Some of you may remember playing the board game "Hitler's War", by Avalon Hill. Each of the Axis, Soviets, and Western Allies were limited to 10 counters. That really kept the Axis on their toes. (Yes, I know that's an arbitrary limit, but it was inherent to the game design, which is not the same thing as arguing from a historical perspective about limiting air fleets). Some units would need special rules -- for example, partisans. (I could see a player praying, "Don't give me partisans, I can't afford them!") Alas, I don't have a suggestion on how to handle them right now... The drawback to this approach is that it would involve a large rejigging of the economic model. The current numbers in terms of unit costs and MPPs gathered per turn by the different sides have been designed for an economic model that does not include maintenance. This change would perhaps would best be saved for SC2.

SeaWolf_48 wrote: That's one possibility -- however, one of the reasons I like SC a great deal is that it doesn't have a huge number of different counter types. (I for example, believe it would be possible to have only one infantry type rather than two, but that's for another day...) I think the game nicely simulates sea transportation (and landings) through the use of MPPs, costs varying with the unit type being transported and the tech level, rather than the creation of new units. The biggest problem to my mind is that the cost is so relatively low that it becomes easy to throw vast numbers of troops at a coastline -- all you have to do is save up for it. I have a suggestions to deal with this difficulty: An incremental increase in transportation costs per unit in simultaneous transport. i.e. it's cheap to sea transport one unit, more expensive for the second, even more expensive for the third, etc. Do this by giving a 25% or 50% surcharge for each succeeding unit put into transport mode. Thus moving the Canadian army to Britain still costs 12 points (or whatever), but if the Germans try Sealion with eight armies, the cost goes something like this: 12 for the first, 16 for the second (25% increase), 20 for the third, 24 for the fourth, etc. This represents the relatively rarity and expense of sea transport and landing craft -- it's easy to transport a few units about, but as numbers increase, so does the relative expense. Yes, you can put your entire army to sea -- but it's going to cost you really big.

I would be very surprised if they didn't know how to reproduce. As to why the seeming lack of growth, first, 50,000 is a rounded estimate. Second, I don't know what the population growth rate for the Jews of Bulgaria were in the pre-war years for comparison purposes, but population growth currently ranges between roughly -0.5% in some industrialized countries like Japan, and roughly 3.0% in some third world countries. These figures include both births and deaths, and I don't have any reason to doubt that the Bulgarian Jewish community had both births and deaths during the war. If I assume a growth rate of 1% for Bulgarian Jews between 1941 and 1944, that would mean a population increase of just over 1500 people during that time period. Given that the 50,000 figure is an estimate in the first place, 1,500 is not a significant change. What kind of population growth were you expecting?

Finland had an almost exemplary record with respect to its Jews. Its pre-war Jewish population was approximately 2000. Of that total only seven were sent to Germany (all but one died in Auschwitz) -- they were refugees who had been extradited on criminal charges. The Finnish government apologized for this in 1997. No Jewish property was expropriated. When Himmler raised the 'question' of Finland's Jews with Field Marshal Mannerheim, Mannerheim said "Not even one single Jewish soldier will be taken from my army to be turned over to Germany. That cannot happen except over my dead body." Three Finnish Jewish soldiers were awarded (but declined to accept) Germany's Iron Cross for valour during the Continuation War against the Soviets. Of course Finland was an ally of Germany throughout the war rather than a puppet state and could set its own policies. Italian Jews were relatively safe in Italy until after the Germans assumed control, at which point many of them suffered the same fate as their compatriots in the rest of German occupied Europe. A short reference regarding Finland can be found at Finland.

Since the title of this thread is 'Bulgaria', and I talked about Denmark and its Jews, I should add a bit about the role of Bulgaria in the Holocaust. In short, the Bulgarian government and King opposed the transportation of its Jews to concentration camps during the war. There were 50,000 Bulgarian Jews when the war started, and 50,000 when the war ended. Bulgaria introduced anti-Semitic legislation under Nazi pressure (Jews had to perform forced labour, had to wear the yellow star, and other such indignities), but not fiercely so. On the other hand, Bulgaria did expel Jews from the areas of Yugoslavia and Greece they helped Germany conquer. Overall, however, Bulgaria performed well. Two links I can suggest: Bulgaria for an overview, and The Righteous Among Nations: Bulgaria for biographical notes.

Re Denmark in WWII: Another stirring, but alas, untrue story about the Danish King, Christian X, has to do with the persecution of Jews in Denmark. In 1943 Germany completely took over the Danish government after allowing it a great deal of self-rule after the 1940 invasion. The Germans ordered that all Danish Jews had to wear the infamous yellow stars identifying them as Jews. The next day the King wore a yellow star while out on his morning ride, and shortly thereafter much of the non-Jewish population followed suit. The Germans were forced to rescind the order. Alas, no such thing happened. The story is indicative of Christian's character and of the feelings the Danes had for him, but the Germans had decided for various reasons not to issue the order. On the other hand, the Danes did rescue the vast majority of their Jewish population. When the Germans decided to round up Danish Jews Danes from all walks of life spontaneously managed to help over 7,000 Jews flee the country to Sweden. Only about 460 were eventually deported to a concentration camp, and most of them survived the war. A short article on this can be found at The King of Denmark and the Yellow Star.

GDS_STARFURY, the real question is: have you actually tried this against an experienced human player or not?

[The following idea has probably already been suggested -- so have been, but I haven't read *all* the forum postings -- so forgive me if you've seen this one already.] Change the economics model of the game so that MPPs have to be spent on maintenance of forces in the field, with costs increasing as you move from corps to armies to armour to air fleets. Every turn the computer automatically deducts MPPs from a country's total for every strength point in the field. Should a country have more strength in the field than it can support economically it would have to disband units (player's choice) until it reached the economy's limit. Players would then have a 'soft' ceiling on the number of units they could have in the field. You could build as many units as you wanted of any type so long as you could support them economically. Because of the higher costs of supporting air fleets someone who built a great number of them would be forced to build fewer ground units and naval units in exchange. Some units would need special rules -- for example, partisans. (I could see a player praying, "Don't give me partisans, I can't afford them!") The drawback to this approach is that it would involve a large rejigging of the economic model. The current numbers in terms of unit costs and MPPs gathered per turn by the different sides have been designed for an economic model that does not include maintenance. This change would perhaps would best be saved for SC2.

In one of my recent games against a competent human player -- or at least I thought so (Hi Bill!), I found Italian subs to be very useful. I built five or so in the Med, used them to help wipe out the Allied fleet there as well as do (small) damage to British production. Then, after my Italian surface fleet battered the Gibraltar port to 0 they did an excellent job of hitting British production, stopping American units being shipped across the Atlantic, and sinking the Allied navy. So subs weren't immediately useful to me, but with patience, and sufficient numbers, they became very useful. I could, at that point, have added German subs to the mix, but they weren't needed. [ October 25, 2002, 09:00 PM: Message edited by: David Brown ]

Ah, monster games. A couple of times I set up "Terrible Swift Sword" (4x6) and played it with a dozen people. Over a weekend we never got much past the first day (i.e. the game took longer than the actual battle), but it was fun. I kind of miss that, but I doubt I'll ever see those days again - I can't even think of a dozen people with the time or interest to play. That's why computer games like SC are a godsend. A decent AI gives me a chance to actually play the game, as opposed to standing forlornly in the wilderness crying, "Won't someone play with me?" Someone metioned AH's "Hitler's War" - a very good game with a fair amount in common with SC. Nicely balanced and few enough pieces (30 land units) so that you didn't get bogged down in the minutae of just moving the damn things about. It had a very nice research system (similar in many ways to SC), and, dare I say it, paratroops (which were very expensive and easily destroyed if not used wisely). It was also designed as a three player game (Western Allies, Soviet Union, and Axis), which was fairly rare in wargames at the time. Another board wargame with some similarities to SC was SPI's "World War I". A very nice design. It had very few pieces - the board was not crowded (no stacking) and it was rare to lose an army, as opposed to games where gobs of pieces regularly went to the dead pile. Instead you spent resource points to satisfy losses. Only when you ran out of points would you have to retreat or lose armies. The designers got the mixture of points down to a T. It got very nailbiting when you had to decide where to risk your last 6 resource points in an attempt to reduce Germany's last 4 resource points to 0 - it could go either way. With the way the production system was set up, this kind of thing happened often. You could also transfer points to some of your allies, possibly reducing your ability to hold your own front line. (Wait - did I just say 'nailbiting' with respect to a First World War game? Wow, those SPI guys really did a good job on that!) I reminded of this when attempting to defend France against the Germans in SC. So long as I have MPPs left, the line generally holds, but once I run out the Germans pounce on the weaked units and its all over. "World War I"'s biggest problem was its graphics, which were horrid - SPI's trademark grey, blue, and brown of the time. Damn, now I want to dig these games out of my basement and play them again. If SC were shipping, I wouldn't have to do that... [ July 29, 2002, 10:08 AM: Message edited by: David Brown ]

I think it best if I simply recognize that we are not going to have much give and take on this particular topic and give it a rest. Thanks for tuning in! (No subs here either!)

Husky, You said, referring to one of my points about Overlord, "But not strategic finesse, it was intelligence finesse." You are making a false distinction. Strategy is defined as [Websters], amongst other things:" "1. The science and art of using all the forces of a nation to execute approved plans as effectively as possible during peace or war. 2. The science and art of military command as applied to the overall planning and conduct of large-scale combat operations." An effective, good, and dare I say, 'finessed' use of intelligence is good strategy. The Western Allies did not, in the case of Overlord, rely strictly on overwhelming material force to get ashore. Without the proper use of intelligence, in a strategic sense, I do maintain that Overlord might have failed - it was never a given. You wrote: "None whatsoever, tanks do not fare well against BB and CA main guns." Remember that the landings against Salerno did not have the same success, despite local air and sea superiority: "The Allies failed to break out of the Salerno beachead due to overwhelming enemy numbers and tough German defenses. The American and British forces remained pinned to the coast until the British Eighth Army threatened Kesselring's troops from the south and forced them to withdraw up the peninsula. A week after the Salerno landings the British Eighth Army made contact with the American Fifth Army ending the greatest worries of the Allied leaders." [Dr. Robert M. Browning, Jr] For Overlord itself, there were serious problems at Omaha beach. High seas and shore bluffs greatly reduced naval gunfire accuracy. The point is that as significant as naval gunfire can be, it is no guarantee of success. After all, Rommel had 34 divisions under his command to face 5 Allied divisions. Had the Germans handled their forces better, and had they not been spread out due to the Allied deception, Overlord might have been a disaster. You wrote much earlier, "the allies didn't use finesse". I don't think that anyone is disagreeing with you that the Allies certainly did use their material superiority to win the war, but I, amongst others, are simply claiming that there were indeed cases where the Allies did show good strategic planning and execution sometimes (as well as showing poor strategic planning and execution sometimes). You asked for examples of finesse: I gave Midway as an example. Your response was to claim the whole Pacific war was mishandled. Even if that is true (and I don't intend to argue it), that doesn't invalidate the Midway example. I'm still going to read Ellis as I earlier offered to do, and perhaps he'll convince me of your case better than you. My main contention is simple: as important as Allied material superiority during the war was (and it was important), it did not, in and of itself, predestine Allied victory. The Allies had to fight. Did they fight as well as the Germans? Perhaps, and perhaps not, but in the end they fought well enough. (All that, and nothing about U-boats again. Except this bit).

A few things - and none of them about u-boats First, the 'overwhelming force' thesis is a common one, and there is some truth to it. As a counter-balance, Husky, I suggest you read Richard Overy's "How the Allies Won the War", a book I've mentioned before. You've mentioned Ellis a few times (a book I now intend to read), but you might find Overy has good counterpoints - reading the book will be better than trying to argue it out here in the forum. Having said that, I'll argue a few things anyways: Clearly the Allies learned to fight, and fight well, by the end of the war. (It is debateable as to whether their small-unit tactics were ever at the level of the typical German unit, but they were good enough.) The Soviets went from losing seven or eight tanks to every German loss at the beginning of the war to a one to one ratio by the end. Someone mentioned 'luck' at Midway. There is luck in every battle, but at Midway the American leaders made their luck. They planned well, took advantage of their intelligence, and defeated a numerically superior, well-trained foe. I think Midway was a fine example of finesse in action. The Allied deception regarding Overlord (convincing the Germans that they were going to land in the Pas de Calais rather than Normandy) was an excellent example of finesse. Remember that despite overwhelming air superiority during the Overlord landings the Allies still only landed five divisions, nowhere near overwhelming ground superiority. Had the Germans concentrated forces at the landing sites they would have had a very good chance to throw the Allies back into the sea. The Overlord deception was an excellent example of finesse. After the horrors of the trenches in WWI, the Western Allies were determined to defeat the Axis with material rather than human lives. This does not seem to me to be a particularly bad thing. It can lead to mistakes - but of course the Axis powers made huge errors as well. Lastly, someone mentioned the two-front problem. Remember that in WWI the Germans successfully fought a two-front war. They weren't defeated in the west until after they had converted it into a one-front war by defeating Russia in 1917. Given that the German army suffered 70% of its casualties on the eastern front, and devoted most of its men and material there, it's likely that the Soviet Union would have eventually defeated Germany without the intervention of ground troops in the West.

I think that Richard Overy puts it nicely in "Why the Allies Won": "When the war came they [Germany] tried to speed the process of development up, to win the war with the weapons of the 1950s. The result was a technical disaster... The Allies - except for the Manhattan atomic project - stuck with the weapons of the late 1930s, and pushed them successfully to their limits, in most cases overtaking the performance of Germany's move conventional weaponry." Advanced subs and whatnot are only useful if you can produce them in quantities large enough to be useful. As well, prioritizing your weaponry is important. It is possible that pushing the development and mass-production of the Wasserfall ground-to-air missile could have taken much of the sting out of the Allies bomber offensive, but Hitler preferred the (significantly less useful from a military point of view) V-weapons, and the program languished. Arthur C. Clarke wrote a nice little science fiction story back in the Fifties called, I believe, 'Superiority', which was based upon the idea that merely striving for technical superiority could cripple a war effort.

Why not? Here's a quick description of the capture of the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael in 1940 (from http://www.expage.com/page/west4): There are a number of other sites about Eben Emael on the Web - just check with Google. I think the key point here is no matter how fearsome Switzerland's fortifications were, or look today (just as I assume the Maginot line looked in 1940, or the Liege fortresses did in 1914, or Singapore in 1941), they are immobile. The enemy either knows where they are, or can find them soon enough. They are vulnerable (esp. in 1940) to night attacks, or just being bypassed. They can slow up attacks, but they are no substitute for a mobile defence in depth (think Kursk here). Had Hitler been determined to take out Switzerland, he would have, and it's not clear to me that these fortresses would have been that much of a problem.

A couple of things: First, don't mistake gameplay for simulation (or visa versa). The game may be turn based, but is it supposedly simulating simultaneous movement by both sides. What looks like transports sitting off the cost for weeks on end isn't really. Of course it isn't 'really' anything. As someone else pointed out, it's fun, but it ain't history. As for the invasion of Sweden, the parallel is Norway, not Sealion, and Germany got the drop on Norway pretty good. The economic arguments for not invading Sweden are good, but only applicable because Sweden bent over backwards not to antagonize the Nazi regime. If Sweden had said, "You're a bunch of loonies, and we're not selling you our iron ore", you've got a whole new ballgame. Although I always find arguments based upon "Hitler wouldn't do that because it's irrational" rather suspect. Hitler irrational? Nahhhh. Lastly, because someone else mentioned it, the British invasion of Madagascar started from the Clyde in Scotland, but picked up two aircraft carriers and some other ships in Cape Town. The entire force then gathered at Durban in South Africa before moving onto Madagascar. So, you were right, they didn't invade directly from the British Isles.

My question is did they run riot at night historically? Even today with significantly improved technology night actions tend to be rare and small in scale. I don't think it fits the scope of this game either, and certainly not with the effects suggested.

A book I recommend is "Why the Allies Won", by Richard Overy, Pimlico, 1995. He discusses the economic, moral, leadership, and martial factors that led to the Allied victory in WWII. He concentrates on Germany, the USA, and the USSR, and is weak on Britain, Japan, and Italy. His thesis is that an Allied victory was not a forgone conclusion. Certainly the odds were on the Allied side, especially as the war drew on, but (all things being equal - an important caveat), more mistakes by the Allies and fewer by the Germans could have led to a different outcome. Other people have talked about the vast economic disparity between the Allies and the Axis during the war, and one of the interesting sidenotes to that pointed out by Overy is the relative efficiency of the two sets of economies. For example, in 1943, the USSR turned 8 million tons of steel and 90 million tons of coal into 24,000 tanks and 48,000 heavy guns. German turned 30 million tons of steel and 340 million tons of coal into 17,000 tanks and 27,000 heavy guns. (The full story is of course more complex, but this is a nice snapshot of the relative economic situation). As for the disparity in armoured vehicles, and the 'unbeatable' battlefield doctrine of German combined arms, I've always felt that question was answered quite nicely in May of 1945. [ July 06, 2002, 11:02 AM: Message edited by: David Brown ]

Hubert, It may be redundant to add to the eloquent encouragement already posted here, but what the heck. I'm incredibly impressed by the SC beta, and even more so when I read that it was your work alone. I'm looking forward to the game. My $25.00 (an great price for a product like this - even in US dollars) is burning a hole in my pocket. Don't let the bastards grind you down. I'm serious about the beer, by the way - heck, I'll make it two. Allen's on the Danforth? Great selection there. Keep up the great work!

Well, I'll settle for that change in SCII then and live with it in SC. If you do take it out, since I live in Waterloo, I'll drive to TO and buy you a beer.

Ah, yes, excellent point! Had I not been so distracted (I even used 'distracted' twice in my original post), I would have remembered that. I'll look into that. Thanks!

I've had fun with the SC demo and eagerly look forward to the full release. I've come to the game and this too late to make substantive suggestions for changes - perhaps for version 2.0, but I do have one small request: When I ask to turn off the sound effects, could you please, please, also make it turn off the clicking noise the game makes whenever you click a mouse button on a unit. The sound drives me to distraction. Or have a separate option to turn it off. I find the clicking sounds drive me to distraction without providing any extra information. I hate to have my first post consist of a whine about an otherwise fine game, but if I don't say anything now, I'll miss my chance!