Shaka of Carthage

Edwin P Agree, since Oil and Manpower were the two most important strategic constraints the Axis had. Problem is, within SC, there is no easy way to reflect this. If you are thinking in terms of a future SC, then I believe you have to add an additional economic unit (along with MPPs). With this additional economic unit, you now have more creative flexibility to start limiting the number of units and/or the economic growth of a nation based on the amount of oil it has. And now the strategic options you mentioned become critical for the Axis.

France How to turn the Blue's into French Summary Combat divisions by year ............. military manpower Nation ......... '39 ........'40 ..... K = 1,000 France ......... 86 ...... 102 ...... 5,000K Units 3e Armee ....... 5 Str ...... Maginot 4e Armee ....... 2 Str ...... Maginot 5e Armee ....... 5 Str ...... Maginot 8e Armee ....... 8 Str ...... Mine 2e Armee ....... 8 Str ...... Ardennes 9e Armee ....... 5 Str ...... 25,14 hex 1re Armee....... 8 Str ...... 24,14 hex (1 Bar Experience) 7e Armee ....... 7 Str ...... 24,13 hex GC1 Armor ...... 1 str ...... Paris Alpes Armee .....9 str...... 1 Bar experience Gamelin HQ ......5 str ...... outside Paris CEFS Corp .......7 str ..... French Expeditionary Force to Scandinavia, located in England. XIX Corp ....... 10 str ...... Algeria CSTT Corp ....... 7 str ...... Tunisia GFML Corp ....... 2 str ...... Syria 1e de l'Air ..... 10 str 2e de l'Air ..... 6 str One or two naval units added. Techs: Air 1, Indus Tech 2, Flak 2, A/T 2, Tanks 0, all others standard numbers. Details Army equals 8 divisions, Corp equals 4 divisions. Armor unit has the DCR divisions. Fortress Divisions, which had no heavy artillery and no organic transport, if they are in one of the Maginot Armies, I included it. If they are not in the Maginot, I did not include them, since no major combat power. There are also two quickly raised Polish divisions. Armor units are hard to deal with. French had about 1500 or so infantry support tanks assigned to Infantry Divisions. There are six armored divisions with about 1000 or so tanks. About half of those are equal in mobility to the German tanks. But they were not concentrated into Armor units, instead were spread out. But there was a 1er Groupement Cuirasse unit that had the 2e and 3e DCR divisions. Thats what I included. Could just as well subsitute the 6e Armee instead of the GC1. France was "war weary" from WWI. It did not have the manpower numbers that Germany did. Normally this would be represented by a surrender after lossing a certain number of units. In SC, all we have is the fall of France if it losses Paris. So it may be appropriate to lower the number of units they are intially given to reflect this. Some of the French units were motorized. Concept was, that along with the motorized British, they would "race" the Germans in the Low Countries to take up defensive positions inside the Low Countries (since the Germans were slower). Can't reflect that here, but it may not be a problem, since very few players will recreate the same strategic mistakes that the French made. The Dutch Gambit. Still can occur. French have the units, including HQ. Historically, the French should be spending there MPPs to "mobilize" the units they have to full strength. But no French player is going to sit until May '40 like the historical French did. Unless... and maybe this is the solution ... the strength points of the French units are lowered even further, forcing the French player to spend quite a few turns building his units up. But the problem with that, is that a German player could operate units over on turn one and attack France turn two. That is why the strength numbers are were they are now. Have to see how it goes.

United Kingdom How to turn the Khaki's into Commonwealth. Summary Combat Divisions by Year.... military manpower Nation...........'39.....'40.........'41.....K = 1,000 UK ................9 .......34 ........35......5,120K Canada .........0 ........1 ...........3........780K Australia........0 ........7 ..........10........680K New Zealand...0 ........1 ...........1........157K South Africa....0 ........0 ...........3........140K India.............3 ........5 ..........10......2,150K Units 8th Army ..... 4 Exp .....1 Str ..... Egypt XIII Corp .....2 Exp .....6 Str ......Egypt MiddleEast Corp ... 0 Exp ....5 Str ....Syria Wavell HQ ..........0 Exp ....2 Str ....Egypt BEF Army............2 Exp ....6 Str ....England BEF Corp............2 Exp ....6 Str ....England 5th Army............0 Exp ....1 Str.....England 1st Army............0 Exp ....1 Str.....England 2nd Canadian Corp...3 Exp ....1 Str.....Canada Gibralter Corp......0 Exp ....3 Str.....Gibralter Malta Corp..........0 Exp ....3 Str.....Malta XII Corp............1 Exp ....3 Str.....England RAF.................2 Exp ...10 Str.....England AASF................2 Exp ....1 Str.....England Carriers are gone, except for the one in the Med. Replaced with Battleship unit, same name. Few other naval units added, including ships being built. I did not work out the Strategic Bomber numbers, but I tend to believe it is no more than two (2) units. Techs: Air 2, Indus Tech 2, Flak 3, A/T 2, Tanks 0, Grnd Radar 1, all others standard numbers. Details Army equals eight (8) divisions. Corp equals four (4) divisions. No Armor units, since the British never mastered combined arms doctrine. The combat divisions are world wide. UK has other committments than just the ETO. That is why I used '41 as the cut off point (max number of divisions was 39, in '43). As it is, I have used 34 of the British divisions. Slightly higher than I should, but I believe I am underusing some of the CW divisions. BEF had the "professional" British soldiers. The rest of the British units that were raised were either Territorial Army or conscript units. Don't forget that once a Division goes into a Corp or Army, is stays there, unlike the way it is in real life. BEF's, 5th and 1st Armies are all British divisions. 8th Army has six (6) CW divisions, XIII Corp has two (2) CW divisions. Middle East Corp has no British divisions. 2nd Canadian Corp is all Canadians. XII Corp has 2 CW Divisions (1 Canadian, 1 Polish). I would have liked to put the 8th Army into the Suez Loop, since it really represents the CW units that were sent to Egypt, but I can't figure a way out to do that. Middle East Corp is there to "capture" Iraq from the Axis. I would have liked to make the pro-Axis coup in Iraq to occur in 4/41, but cannot setup an event. So it will have to occur in 1939. The Gibralter and Malta Garrisons really should have no more than Brigade strength (3 str points), but nothing prevents the player from increasing the strength. I'll either edit in the manpower numbers per unit (including the support elements) or post a seperate topic. Increased Gun Laying Radar by one, since I can't increase the spotting range of a Naval unit. Added a few other naval units as well, plus a few 1str point units representing naval units layed down but not completed. Kept the Middle East Carrier, mainly because Egypt, Malta and Gibralter had air assets not represented in SC. If I could have increased the spotting range of those units, I would have done that instead. One other problem. Movement speed. The British units are fully motorized. So the horse drawn Army/Corp units should be moving slower. But have no way to reflect this in SC. More about this when I get to the horse drawn militaries.

One of the things that SC does in my opinion, is remove the charateristics that made the various nations act as they did historically during WWII. That is why I refer to those nations as there colors, not the historical nations they represent. So here is my attempt to restore those characteristics into current SC, without having to wait for any updates or future releases. I have created a custom Campaign using these concepts. I'll cover the general information in this post and then a specific post for each nation. In eac post I'll provide a Summary that gives the SC specific changes and then a Detail section that provides the reasoning behind the conclusions. ================================================== Summary Each nation will start with the maximum number of units that it can build. If the unit is destroyed, it can be replaced. Exceptions will be noted under each nation. Experience bars represent the various levels of leadership, training and doctrine of each nation in addition to actual experience. Industrial Tech cannot be invested in. USSR and US have a certain build and MPP balance schedule they must follow. Axis cannot perform any amphibious operations, unless they are attempting Sealion. Axis transports can only unload in a port. Iraq pro-German coup of April '41 occurs in 1939. Readiness percentages changed. Detail Units ... I'll cover some more specifics within each nation, but basically I used the number of combat divisions a nation had during the 1939 to 1941 time frame, determined how many of those divisions made up a SC "generic" unit and then created those units. That gives me the manpower used, but unless I asked the player to keep track of those numbers (which I am unwilling to do), I can't use those numbers to reduce the national manpower pool. Hence, back to a "force pool" concept for units. The "penalty" for recreating a unit, is the loss of the experience. That is a major loss. Experience ... The leadership, training and doctrine of certain nations (mainly German) allowed it to produce units that were superior to other nations. As units gained combat experience, they learned. Slowly feeding new replacements in will allow more of that experience to be kept. This, in conjunction with the limited number of units, makes it a wise decision to keep a strategic reserve and rotate units out of combat. Industrial Tech ... I am using this, in addition to the unit mix and the other R&D techs, to represent the manpower limitations. For example, if Russia and Germany both earn 480 MPP's, it is "cheaper" for the Russians to replace there losses. While I am not allowing investment in this, someone made the suggestion, that perhaps that limit should be lifted at a certain year. I have to consider this, as it does appear to be a good suggestion. USSR / US schedules ... These two nations and the Italians I could not modify the intial starting units. With Italy, it worked out ok. With the USSR and US, since certain units where not available until after they had entered the war, there is no other way for me to have those units enter other than asking the player to follow a certain schedule. I have tried to keep it as simple as possible, but am willing to hear anyone elses ideas on the matter. Axis amphib operations ... Other than Sealion, they just weren't possible. For that matter, some would argue the Axis couldn't conduct a Sealion. Still doesn't solve the Allies ability to conduct bogus amphib operations, but have not figured a way out of that one. Iraq pro-Axis coup ... This is a counter to the Axis getting control of Sweden, since I can't partially convert certain Swedish or Norwegian hexes to German control. I'll probably end up going the route JerseyJohn advocated... Portugal and Ireland to Allies as well. Readiness percentages ... Italy, US and USSR were entering too soon. But changing these may be the wrong reaction, since the unit limits may restrict the reasons they were entering early. Won't know for sure until it is playtested.

Trying to use the campaign editor, but seems to be a problem. One of the campaign mods we have allows the Swedish mines and a couple of other hexes to be under German control. I can't seem to do that with the current campaign editor. Was there a change? What I would really like to do is have the Norway port of Oslo under German control. That way, a transport unit could move and unload into Norway... in an attempt to recreate the "surprise" attack by German forces on Norway.

Don't you think the scale is off for decoy units to be employed? We are talking about Corps and Armies here. With the FOW and the inability to see the unit strengths (unless you have ground units within range) what we have would seem sufficient. And the reports, which I hardly ever use, but others use to good effect.

Bill Macon LOL Such pearls of wisdom from yourself and JerseyJohn.

Bill Macon LOL Such pearls of wisdom from yourself and JerseyJohn.

Bill Macon Do you have to ability to create PDF documents? If not, maybe it would be a good idea to see if anyone on the forum does, since the end product in a PDF format would be very nice.

Bill Macon Do you have to ability to create PDF documents? If not, maybe it would be a good idea to see if anyone on the forum does, since the end product in a PDF format would be very nice.

Sorry Rambo. Shaka (Axis) concedes to Rambo (Allies), bid of 125 and air limit.

This Russian Corp would have had at least a one (1) entrenchment. That would account for one of the air attacks. The second air attack (since you don't mention anything about enemy air) had to be bad luck, hence no damage. Two Corp attacks are probaby related to terrain (ie you attacking from a river hex) and/or bad luck. Two Panzer attacks... his anti-tank value is two, and if your Panzers are still tech level 0, thats a 5:2 attack ratio. If you hit him from a river hex, your attack values would be halved. This and again, the possiblity of bad random factors, may account for no damage to the enemy unit. Even though you mentioned you had a HQ unit, I would still presume that your readiness factors on your units was low, or perhaps those units were not being supported by that HQ at all.

I believe Jerge88 was refering to the strength points of the HQ. As others do, I believe he feels it is too strong, since it is not easy to elminate the unit. On the other hand, I tend to believe that the HQ's have units equivalent to a Corp, that are in "reserve" status. Hence, no attack. But they can defend, as well as what provides the "combat bonus" the HQ's give units.

The Italian Army sufferred from the following: Poor Leadership ... Officers felt they were superior to there men and got priveliges while the enlisted me suffered. Support of Govt ... Majority of the military believed there loyalty was to the House of Savoy, not Mussolini. Weren't very enthusastic for any adventure Mussolini got them into. Shortage of NCO's ... There weren't enough to support the number of units they had. Organization ... In an effort to raise more divisions, the number of infantry battalions was reduced from nine (9) to six (6). Tried to make up for some of this loss by adding Black Shirt units to the divisions. Equipment ... What they had was old, and quite a few of them had little or no equipment. All of the above resulted in the overall poor performance in Africa and the disasterious showing against the British, even though they outnumbered them. Once Rommel showed up, he put some of them back into a triangular division structure (ie 9 bn's), and combat provided on the job training for the NCO's (as well as weeding out some of the worst of the officers). If they got a chance to reorganize and had some combat to shake themselves out, they were competent, even good, infantry. [ March 14, 2003, 06:22 PM: Message edited by: Shaka of Carthage ]

Bill Macon Excellent idea. Glad you are willing to spend the time to put that document together.

Bill Macon Excellent idea. Glad you are willing to spend the time to put that document together.

ArmenianBoy You are correct. But do understand that those people who have learned those techniques learned them the hard way, just like you. And for some of them, it was even worse in the beginning, since only by trial and error did some of these strategies get figured out.

Terif I want to congratulate you. You are doing a good thing by giving out this advice. It should help alot of us as we play SC. I thought about asking you to write something like this up for the Strategic HQ webpage, but you got to it before I could ask you.

Terif I want to congratulate you. You are doing a good thing by giving out this advice. It should help alot of us as we play SC. I thought about asking you to write something like this up for the Strategic HQ webpage, but you got to it before I could ask you.

Bill Macon I agree that SC should take the best features of previous systems and employ them in current SC and future SC. COS is a good one to look at, as well as High Command. And while its long in the tooth, the design concepts behind 3R should not be forgotten also. HOI is a different beast. Alot of the requests for a "global" future SC where basically asking for a scaled down version of HOI. I am of the opinion that due to the huge differences in scale between the PTO and ETO, that this is something Hubert should consider years from now, if at all. Like you mentioned, if future SC just tried to implement some of the features that current SC is lacking, it would take quite some time for Hubert to accomplish just that.

Sir Wiskers A few other (myself among them) have advocated that air attacks within current SC only effect readiness. For the very reasons you stated.

I like KDG's ideas for current SC. Also think that both of them should be incorporated, not just one or the other. But it still doesn't solve the carrier having the ability to perform like an air unit. As an addition to the above, how about simply removing the carriers ability to air attack anything at all, and have its function purely be to increase the spotting range?

JeseyJohn Where were you forty years ago? Then again, I wouldn't have listened to your advice regarding a wife and mother-in-law, since I was too busy "sowing my oats". There is alot a truth in what you say, maybe some of the younger group will listen to it. I've given up looking for the wife bit (two failed ones), my thing now is that when I die, I want a couple of twenty year old women crying on my casket, missing all those moments of lust that kept the house lively and realizing her love bunny is gone forever.

santabear Let me extend your argument for a moment... so even if Russia fell to Germany, WWII would not have been over. That one I have a hard time with. If Russia had fallen before the western invasion of Europe, Germany would have had time to pull units from the East Front to guard against any western invasion. At that point, I believe that UK and US would have tried to negotiate a settlement. If Hitler had acted within reason (a big if), the war would have been over.

arby Lack of understanding does not mean that the economic model is completely out of whack. Its like the complaints about weather. A unique approach was used to handle various issues. Once we understand the method, then the arguments we have are really all about how many MPPs the nations are getting. You've raised some good points about the existing combat model. But this is not the cause of the too many units problem. Yep. But only when they are on the receiving end of it. Everyone has the potential to have too many air units. US, Italy and UK can raise more units than the economic design should allow. Germany and France can raise more units than realistic. Russia, usually just ends up with the wrong mix. And as far as making the costs different for each nation, you are correct. That is one of the ways of making the Greys into Germans. [ March 10, 2003, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: Shaka of Carthage ]