Flash Gordon

I've usually attempted Sea Lion after the USSR was conquered and out of my hair. I am now playing a game where after the fall of France, I immediately launched into Sea Lion. So far, it's 1942 and I'm still stuck in the southern tip of England and the Brits are chewing up my men as fast as I'm transporting them to the beach-head although I've got total air superiority over Southern England. Plus, I had to strip my eastern garrisons to the bone to feed the British meat grinder. And wouldn't you know it - the USSR just declared war and has invaded . And all I have defending the eastern portion of my empire are a couple of a handful of German units (only one Panzer) and a small Bulgarian, Romanian, Hungarian and Italian task force. I think I'm hosed .

...my definition of "gamey" is something which is unrealistic being forced upon me by shortcomings in the game engine. One thing that is gamey is that you can save up MMP's and suddenly "buy" an air-craft carrier when it reality, it would take quite a while for the keel to be laid down for the ship and for it to be completed. Another thing that is gamey is that you can saturate an area with surface ships but only submarines seem to do any commerce raiding. Invading Canada (which I did) is not gamey if you have the means at your disposal to do so (I had a powerful navy and troops to burn so I did). However, I find the actual conquest of Canada in the game gamey because only the eastern tip is modeled so as soon as you take the first major city, the Canucks fold up and quit - I think bloody not...Canada is a land mass almost as big as China. It would be a nightmare to capture as the Canadians would have tons of real estate that they could give up in order to buy time to call up reserves. It would also be a nightmare to keep since you'd have to have a lot of troops garrisoning it. But IF you had the means to transport the troops across the Atlantic Ocean and IF you had supremacy of the waves (which I did, having sunk the Royal, US and Free French navies) and IF you had the sufficient number of troops, yes, I suppose you could conquer Canada.

My copy came wrapped up in plain brown paper - I was almost expecting to find a Jenna Jemeson interactive DVD in there instead of SC.

Italian scientists seem to be exceedingly clever - they seem to outpace the German ones despite having less MMP's devoted to research. I wish something could be done to take into account the Suez Canal - without it, there is NO way for the British to even mount an offensive in the desert unless they catch the Allied player flat footed and manage to slip some transports by Gibraltar.

Actually, "Faith", "Hope" and "Charity" were names of three Gloster Sea Gladiators (bi-plane fighters that were being phased out of the RAF at the beginning of WWII - some units fought in Norway, France and there was one squadron during the Battle of Britain") that the enterprising defenders of Malta supposedly dug out of the storage and kept going with cannibalized parts from other planes and which defended Malta until they got reinforcements in the form of Hawker Hurricanes. However, there is some doubt as to the authenticity of this story and it seems that it was just the result of war-time propaganda. But it makes for good print, though . As for how to knock out Malta - when I did it, I had Sicily PACKED with air fleets as well as two in North Africa. I also had three Italian air-craft carriers parked off of Malta as well as two battle-ships right next to it. I didn't have any HQ units (either German or Italian - some of the air fleets that I based on Sicily were German) present in this battle as most of them were involved in staving off an Allied landing in France (and were later used in Operation Sea Lion) as well as in the Ostfront against the Red Menace. I had to POUND Malta mercilessly but I finally killed off the RAF air fleet there, paving the way for a victory march down the bombed streets of Victoria by Italian marines. In hindsight, I probably should have bought a HQ with the MMP's I used to buy those air-craft carriers. But it was fun having a kick-ass Italian navy!

I've made two so far: #1 - after invading France, I began to lay seige to Great Britain while expanding into Yugoslavia and Greece. I was building up for Sea Lion while SLOWLY building up troops on my eastern border - suddenly the USSR declared war on me and swept through what few troops I had there and before I knew it, Europe had been liberated by 1942! I learned at that point that when it says that the USSR is preparing for war, IT'S PREPARING FOR WAR. #2 - after invading Poland, took Denmark...then got bogged down in an invasion of Norway courtesy of the Royal Navy running amock among my invasion barges. Before I knew it, France suddenly INVADES Germany through the low countries. I couldn't believe my eyes when it happened. France actually violated Belgian and Dutch neutrality to get to Germany!

Just finished a campaign where it ended with Germany having conquered the USSR and Canada and working on an invasion of the USA while embroiled in down-n-dirt fighting in the British Isles with the Italians have conquered Yugoslavia, Greece, Malta, Alexandria and Turkey and looking towards Vichy France's holdings in North Africa and the Middle East as well as break out of the Mediterranean when the game ended. I thought Canada surrendered rather quickly given as only the eastern-most tip of the country is modeled. Does the USA surrender as easily?

Oh yeah - I was using the Italians as anti-partisan troops and to garrison various cities in the USSR as well - but the thing is, in the games I played, Italy ended up getting level 5 industrial technology fairly early so it was able to spew those units out rather cheaply...leaving plenty of moolah left over to buy half a dozen air-craft carriers and some nice shiny jets.

I've only played the game a handful of times (only got it recently) but I've been starting with the invasion of France and the Low Countries. When I first got the game, I started with the invasion of Poland - this ended rather badly as I invaded Poland and then was in the process of invading Denmark and Norway when France INVADED Germany through the Low Countries, taking me quite by surprise (I had assumed that the Drole de Guerre would have been enforced somehow). Anyway - it'd be interesting to go back and try the game starting in 1939 now that I've got a few games under my belt.

Hmmm...I began building up Italy's navy after the first game in which the Italian Navy wacked the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean Sea - at that point, the Italian Navy had nothing to do so I figured I might as well put them to good use in the Atlantic - unfortunately, you can't to the Atlantic without dealing with Gibraltar so that meant having at least one battle-ship to bombard it and having a ton of air-craft carriers to launch air-strikes against it. In the end, I also had to to park a German battleship and air-craft carrier on the west side of Gibraltar and hammer it from there as well. So my expansion of the Italian Navy came about because I wanted to put it into action in the Atlantic and in order to do so, I had to kill of Gibraltar...which necessitated having a strong navy. Yeah - I know - sort of a self-circular argument. I guess the main reason I did it was because it was fun .

Hi, all! I recently got the game - I ordered it after playing the DEMO. It's a lot of fun although there are some shortcomings. I was wondering if the developer(s) was eventually going to do a "World Theater" version of the game? I think that would be fun. Some oddities - research is handled a bit strangely - R & D in real life involves constantly shoveling resources into research but not in this game. Also, I wish Atlantic and Mediterranean convoys had not been abstracted - basically, the only way to destroy those convoys are with subs but sometimes I ended up with an area SATURATED with surface vessels but the convoys still got through! However, I concede that this was probably a gameplay decision since that would've probably saturated the game board with merchant ships. The low number of MMP that the USA gets seems odd but I figure that some of that is going to the UK (in the form of lend-lease) and it probably also reflects the fact that the USA if also fighting against Imperial Japan. So far, I've played three games as the Axis against the AI. In all cases, I started with the German attack against the Western Allies. Fog of War was on. 1st game (AI set at default) - the war ended in 1942 after the USSR maliciously broke our non-aggression pact and invaded, over-running Germany (Italy held on a bit longer) and liberating most of Europe (the British liberated Norway) by 1942. The US contribution to the war effort was a series of bombing raids against French and Dutch coastal targets - the beginning of the US strategic bombing campaign which turned out to be a drop in the bucket in the face of the Russian Bear. My mistake was thinking I could finish off the UK at my leisure and then engage the USSR. I got caught flat-footed by the invasion . 2nd game (AI set at one notch below default ) - this time, the game went the distance and ended in a stalemate with a negotiated peace. The Western Allies invaded France in '43 but were pushed back into the sea (my U-boat fleet also ended up getting destroyed wreaking havoc among the Allied landing craft before getting wacked by the US and Royal navies) and they invaded again in '44 and managed to get a foothold that I was in the process of whittling away when the game ended. Malta and Alexandria were over-run by the Italians leaving the Mediterrean Sea as an Axis pond and a gigantic Italian carrier fleet was laying seige to Gibraltar when the game ended. In the East, the game was close fought, with things going back and forth. I managed to capture a couple of cities and pushed Germany's border a bit eastwards but not by much. Basically, a stalemate. A strange thing that happened was that the USA developed jet technology very quickly (they had level 4 jets in '42!) and for a while, had COMPLETE air superiority over much of France until German and Italian technology caught up. 3rd game (AI set at two notches below default ) - Axis victory . The USSR fell in '44 leaving me to concentrate on the Western Allies. The Western Allies landed troops in France in '44 but I managed to beat them back (just) and push them back into the sea. Then I invaded, landing troops in Northern and Southern England. The game ended before I could finalize the conquest of Great Britain, though. Malta and Alexandria fell as did Gibraltar, allowing a gigantic Italian fleet to swarm out into the Atlantic. I was looking forward to engaging the US Navy with my Italian carrier fleet but the game ended before that could happen. The USSR fell in '44 after hard, bitter fighting. Anyway, playing with the AI at this low of a level is probably a 'cheat' - the only reason I did so was to see if I could actually do it. The "funnest" game was #2 - there were some great back and forth battles on the Russian Front as I would advance then try to consolidate my forces only to have the USSR attack and drive me back again and again. #3 was more an exercise in "is it possible?" and #1 was a seal clubbing when I got caught flat-footed (won't happen again, that's for sure). A very fun game and very addictive. Are there plans for a sequal (covering the entire war) in the works? I would buy it in a flash . [ October 27, 2002, 07:32 PM: Message edited by: Flash Gordon ]