Scorpion_sk

The conditions are that the Russians bomb Helsinki and thus declare war on Finland. Then, Finland must retake the territories they lost to the Russians in the Winter War (looks like the finns are conveniently situated there at the start;). Hehe, just kidding. Anyway, don´t expect wonders from the Finland of SC : their troops are just as crappy as the Hungarian, Bulgarian and Romanian troops. Of course, you could edit the Finns to have 2 exp at the start but then you´d have to activate Finland from the start....but it´d work ok for the later campaigns.

Ok, let´s not say "If it hadn´t been for Hitler" rather than "If only some of the more intelligent german types had organised and pulled off the assassination of Hitler....." We all know that it wouldn´t have been exactly hard, what with the man man(iac) appearing in public so often! However, what a public assassination of Hitler would have done for the people we do not know...perhaps they could have masqueraded it to be an assassination by the allies! Now wouldn´t that have done wonders for the morale... I believe the "correct" time for doing this would be just before Hitler ordered the Panzers not to destroy the Dunkirk pocket I´m not saying it would´ve been a sure-fire win, not at all, but things would´ve been muuuch different.... (Disclaimer : Of course I don´t EVER hope that this would´ve taken place or that the war would have had any other kind result (I like Europe the way it is) But I do acknowledge the fact that Germany saved Finland during WW2.)

Yeah, in my idea units would be able to reinforce when next to a city hex, too. And maybe if you were engaged to an enemy you couldn´t reinforce to full strength, just something like 8, to represent the newbies getting slaughtered Anyway, the gameplay effect I was looking for was to think about a way to prevent those "oh no, 1 strength point left - ZAP it´s at full fighting strength again"-things.

Air power, as it is, is partly ruining the game for me. It is much too powerful. Sure, air support was vital in WW2. But not because it could cause horrendous casualties, but rather because it disrupted the enemy´s operations. Air attacks causing "casualties" against armies seems strange. Yes, I know strength points represent unit cohesion & readiness too, but why is there a readiness value then? The fact that several - as many as you want - air units can attack a single unit, when usually only a few land units can, leads to the fact that the most effective strategy in the game is to invest heavily in a LARGE airforce, demolish the opposition´s air force (and this usually means that the Luftwaffe will be taking its jets against russian biplanes.....) and then just keep on buying more and more air fleets to bomb the opponent´s units. Land units become secondary in value, being used to "soften up" or "finish up" units being demolished by air power, but of course primarily for taking ground. This has happened in enough PBEM games that I know what I´m talking about.... It just seems a damn shame. It´d be a bit better if only the heavy bombers had such devastating anti-army properties, but as it is they are not worth it at all compared to the regular air fleets (which I agree could cause losses to tank formations, but not really to corps and armies, at least in the way they currently do....) Why couldn´t air forces do damage primarily to readiness and supply? That´d fit the bill perfectly. However, strategic bombing against strategic targets should be made more effective, and you should still be able to bomb a strategic objective regardless of whether a corps sits on it or not! (This is another one of those ridiculous things).... Not to mention the compulsory interception when facing certain defeat......

I have a solution that you can implement in a PBEM game.... Limit maximum tech level to the current year-1940 That way, tech advances should come in at more or less historical dates....with jets being available (rather, becoming the norm as in this game) in 1944 at the earliest. There is still some amount of luck involved, (you might get that boost of the aircraft level several months before the opponent does) but you won´t be able to make a gap of 2-3 levels by luck alone. I take it we all agree that the problem is the greatest with the aircraft.... Air power being much too strong in this game and all (think CoS, ie. readiness and supply could be devastated, but not the whole damn army, tank units could even suffer some hits). This way there´s much more strategy involved in the placement of the research points, and it becomes a real question of how many points you are willing to spend? If you only really need the industrial tech and the aircraft, are you going to buy all the 10 research points to get those yearly advances ASAP, or.....?

Yes, exactly - lucking out and not lucking out will do much to determine the winner of the game. I have experiences both as the "lucky" side and the "extremely unlucky" side. And yes, the opponent lucking out and me not lucking out at all was the one major reason I found myself in a simply impossible, unwinnable situation, and we both agreed on it, and that was that game. (As you might have guessed, it involved the Luftwaffe flying around in level 5 jets for well over a year before the USSR got there - and by then it was obviously much too late, the Luftwaffe having 2-3 exp per average per airfleet, and there were about two dozen of them)

This "really bad luck" happens too often for me to just be "really bad luck". Even I am not THAT unlucky.... Or else I might have misunderstood the research system.... You see, I thought that when you have say 5 points in a research field, your chance of getting an increase is 25%. Well, to me it seems that it generally takes me 6-12 months to get the first increase....and then I think the 25% thing starts working. But I´m hard pressed to believe that in all those games where I´ve been for a year or more with level 5 research and no advances, it´s only been bad luck.....

Whoops!!! Better to edit it this way before everyone realizes I forgot to move it to the Southern Corsica hex and escape to Sicily.... I must be tired. Hehe I bet this will be the most read post on the forum for a while because of the new topic header [ August 13, 2002, 05:10 PM: Message edited by: Scorpion_sk ]