JJColorado

I am playing the 39 campaign on the expansion packet as the Axis. I'm into summer of 43. France is really tough and I took a few losses (a little more sloppy than I would normally play) and it took me until the late summer of 40 to finsih them off. He looked weak in GB and so I created an invasion force and stormed ashore in late 40 early 41. I committed about 90% of my forces in GB and then I get a "warning" that Russia is building up forces along the Eastern front and I need to increase my garrison. I send a single corp (seems like three always worked before in the old game). The very next turn the Russians enter the war. I refused to panic and so I ended up taking GB and slowly sent a battered army against the Russians. They push to one hex of Berlin before I have enough force to counter attack. It was touchy for a while and it seemed like he had endless units (I counted at least 6 armored corps on the board in one turn). But, their inexperience and the computer's constant need to "attack, attack" no matter what saved me in the end. Currently, I'm into summer of 43 with Leningrad taken and at the steps of a heavily fortified Moscow. Meanwhile, the Brits took Africa very easily as I was a little occuped with this huge Russian army knocking on Hitler's front door. The US entered but have been used piecemeal and without "thought". But, its been fun. Things I like: 1. I really like the artillery; it can be used on the offensive and defensive. If used right, a few artillery could really make defensive positions very difficult to take. 2. German garrison appears in Norway automatically to prevent GB from stationing troops offshore. Once Norway surrenders, three partial German corps appear in the North. Nice. 3. I like the AA units, but they can only be used once per turn. So, if 9 bombers bomb the same city, the AA only works the first time. However, you can increase the AA bonus in the city itself which is used each turn. 4. Armor units get two attacks per turn. Can be a good thing (usually is), but also means the armor can take casulties twice. 5. I like the Destroyer build. Nice compromise for the Brits and US. 6. I like the "sack" option where you can replace a HQ leader for a small fee. 7. I like the tactical bombers as well. Things I don't like: 1. Artillery units get way to powerful and are the best overall unit in the game by 42-43. They gain crazy experience because they never take losses (or rarely if you play it right). I have a few artillery corps with 15 points and cause 3 damage each and every time they shoot. They need to cut back on their power some I think. 2. Tactical bombers are also very powerful. 3. Scapa Flow in North GB cannot be taken by the Germans. Remains a Brit port no matter what. Some bug I guess. Overall, I like the choices you must make it turn, overall a good game.

Hi - I just mailed the elicense email support address w/ a license problem that I'm having. How long does it usually take to hear back from that email address? I'm dying to play the game. Thanks

Hi, I saw Terif mention something on the board a week or two ago about diplo-ing the Balkan Axis minors if Vichy and Spain are attacked in 1940. Is there any reason that these countries won't join as normal in this situation? Why would diplo be needed? Thanks

Hi, I've always wondered how to assign units manually to be commanded by an HQ. I know how to set the HQ to manual but can never figure out how to assign a particular unit to be commanded by that HQ. Can someone help? Thanks

Amazingly I think I'm able to answer my own question. I examined the partisan script - which I didn't expect to be able to read - and it appears that you only need to garrison the three cities in Spain. J

Hi - does anyone know off the top of their head how many units are needed to garrison Spain - and what hexes in Spain need to be garrisoned to prevent Partisans? Thx

1) Yes a Sealion in 40 is optimal imo. I think it's standard to start the battle for Egypt very quickly after Sealion launches or even before Sealion as you don't want the Brit capitol to be moved to Egypt then give them time to build up there - you want to be right on them quickly - you don't have long to take them out since US will be coming in and their supply will soon be high in Africa. 2) No particular tech advances are necessary. IW is the most useful I think. 3) No you don't need London on first turn - I've successfully invaded Britain w/o taking London on turn 1 - just be sure to get an HQ or two ashore and safe. Your 3 air units should be bombing London already so it should go down very easily when you do attack it. 4) No you don't need both. The more ships the better but I don't invest in my navy much if at all w/ Germany - you just want your ships to scout and screen - not really to fight. They are there to die instead of your amphibs - not to win. And yes the Kriegsmarine will be devastated in any Sealion. 5) You mentioned the main factors of new patch: I usually keep my Brit bomber as far south as I can and still have it survive - usually N or E of London. It can do heavy damage to anything at sea. If the RN gets well into your amphibs you are gonna lose a lot of troops - and an alert Brit will get his RN into your amphibs - expect losses. Finally I think Sealion is only a good strategy if the CW player is trying to get away w/ not defending England and is instead deploying his navy and army on the periphery in the main (Egypt, Norway, BOA, etc).

if in doubt I tech. It's also good to invest in production tech for any country that will be doing a pre-war buildup: Germany, USSR, USA imo.

Well I have to disagree about HQ's being safe from long range air-hunts. I had a landing in Vichy a few games ago. The Germans operated all 6 air units into the Paris area and proceeded to bomb to death my US HQ in a city, my Brit HQ in a mountain hex, then 2 more HQ's that I landed in the city. I could not keep my HQ's alive even though they were in protecting terrain. The air was able to hunt them down and successfully kill them. Eventually my entire invasion of at least 12 units was killed to the last unit once all HQ's including HQ's that I amphibed in as reinforcements were destroyed.

Someone wrote: --------- "I find air force is too effective against infantry. From my readings, I gather WWII air raids were very effective against armor, artillery (Rockets), and, supply (HQ's), but much less effective against infantry." --------- ANSWER: The game is a high level strategic game. When you bomb a unit you are bombing an entire corp or army. You are not necessarily eliminating the line infantry squads of the unit but rather are reducing the overall combat effectiveness of that corp or army - i.e. you can consider if you like that the "tail" is being bombed - supply, command/control, etc. When a unit is "eliminated" it can usually be rebuilt at reduced cost - this is because it has had its combat effectiveness reduced to the point that it must be rested and refitted (i.e. rebuilt) - it's not representing that you've bombed to death every infantryman in the unit. ----------------- "...My guess the main problem regards the way research increases affect infantry attack. Apparently as your planes get better, all attack strengths increase. This is not realistic. A better fighter was not necessarily a better tactical bomber." ----------------------- ANSWER: As planes get better all attack strengths do not increase. You can verify this by looking at the properties (right-click) of an air unit that has 1 or more air tech added to it. You will see that only air attack and defense values are changed by the tech increase - naval/soft/hard attack values are not modified. -------------------------------- "I guess the same is true of Hard (armor) attack. The deadliest tank killers were older planes like the Stuka fitted with automatic cannons. ...development in Anti Tank weaponry had more to do with Hard Attack for airplanes than anything else." ---------------------------- ANSWER: refer to previous answer - hard attack values are not changed by air tech --------------------------- "Ground attack values for Tactical Air Units should respond to different tech areas than "Advanced Aircraft"..." -------------------------- ANSWER: refer to previous answer - ground attack values are not changed by air tech - there is no way to increase them. There is also no way to increase ground units' defense vs air - so the relationship between air and ground/naval units is unchanged by tech throughout the war - only by experience levels of the units involved, and by terrain.

Usually when a unit is destroyed it can be rebuilt at a reduced cost but occasionally not. I understand that in a general sense if a unit is cut off it can't be rebuilt cheaply but must rather be purchased for full cost. However I've tried pocketing and destroying units and know that for example if I destroy them on the turn they are pocketed then they can still be rebuilt at reduced cost if there is a 10 point city inside the pocket (the city is reduced to 5 on the following turn due to (I assume) being cut off from the capitol). So - can someone describe the necessary conditions to cause an opponent to pay full cost to rebuild a destroyed unit? Also will any city cut off from the capitol be reduced to 50% on the following turn or are there any conditions that will protect a city from this penalty? Thanks for any insight

A friend and I are playing a mirror game of this mod. We started and then stopped because the Germans just seemed unstoppable as has been mentioned on this board. So we made the following changes: Soviets get: 1500 MPP tech chit - IW tech chit - AT Industrial modifier moved from 105% to 110% Industrial Tech increment moved from 20% to 25% Added 2 Siberian air units and 2 Siberian armor units to arrive in Dec 41 Added 1 engineer I'll let the board know how it goes

Some enterprising modder should put this one together - would be fun

It looks interesting - and I read one post that said Axis has a huge advantage - I'm interested in any other thoughts. Thx

Oh - I see how Gib fell - Spain was on Axis side. For some reason when I read the accounts above it gave me the impression that Gib fell _before_ Spain entered.

How did Gib fall? Just lots of bombing from Morocco?

Re: the rocket launchers west of Poland. I have NATO symbols turned on and they show up as an artillery unit for me. I think that unit is meant to be an artillery unit not a true "rocket" unit. It's true that artillery formations were integral to combat units in WWII but I think all countries had various independent artillery brigades and regiments that could be allocated to units going on an offensive. I don't mind having a separate artillery concentration unit that will let you put down an extra bombardment on a specific hex. The game is an abstract game- and the artillery unit just represents an artillery concentration rather than a separate stand-alone actual historical artillery corp. I also don't see how exactly Thrawn mod could add them to units without re-writing all of SC2. I could see SC3 incorporating it as an additional factor of units (artillery rating or something like that). Of course I don't know much about mods either.

I was speaking about Human actually. I think every game that I've seen the Germans start with their fleet around Konigsberg so it's easy for Russia to just on turn 1 do the invasion. I guess if the Axis parks their navy outside of Leningrad before the war that would work - I've just never seen an Axis player do that.

In my opinion it's way too easy for USSR to DOW Finland on turn 1 of war with Germany, amphib an army or two in and knock them out immediately. Plus USSR gets MPP loot and morale boost. The only negative effect is a slight impact on Sweden's diplo perhaps, at least as far as I know. Seems kinda silly when USSR had to fight an entire winter war with heavy losses and very minimal gains vs Finland in reality. Maybe putting the army in Helsinki and another unit on the coast next to Helsinki would fix it. [ December 03, 2006, 10:20 AM: Message edited by: JJColorado ]

When I load a PBEM turn it shows that it's in a directory called "_letstry" on the savegame load screen. I've never even noticed that there is a directory column there on that screen. Anyway when I load it the game pops up a message box that says the directory "_letstry" doesn't exist and it will be loaded "without customizations". Does anyone know what this means? The turns seems to still load fine and I can play on w/o problems but this message has me concerned....

Well Blashy - it may be best to do a parallel install of SC2 and patch it to 1.04 to play this scenario. Thrawn has added a LOT of scripting and events to it which you would lose if he does a quick version of it. Do 1.04 and look at the list of script events - you will be very impressed I think. Also interesting is that you can now transit ships to Persian Gulf or Red Sea and between those as well - not just now to Red Sea. Good stuff.

Thrawn - about point (10)....I was not complaining about Italy - I like the way you handled them - having a large army but a very poor army. Good job. In fact it might take until 42 or 43 to reinforce and tech up their army - not 41 - which is realistic I think.

I've been playing this solitaire some and have just started a PBEM game using it. If you don't have 1.04 you can reinstall SC2 to a different path (for example I named my new install folder for the v1.05 version "C:\Program Files\Battlefront\Strategic Command 2 Blitzkrieg105") then play either the 1.05 version or the 1.04 version depending on which patch you apply to the new install folder. I do hope Thrawn updates it to 1.05 though. Thrawn if you are really going to do it this weekend I might stop my PBEM game and restart when you have 1.05 out. During solitaire play as Axis I have some impressions: 1) There are a lot of units already scheduled to come in when the game starts (throughout 1940 they come in) but building a new unit is very expensive. For example to build a new panzer unit is around 800+ MPP. So I don't think I'll be building many new units - it will be a true effort to save up for a new unit while combat operations are on-going. 2) Max AT value of 4 seems like a good idea to somewhat counter the super-effectiveness of late-game tanks. 3) Armies are very effective now - faster than before. They feel quite powerful. 4) It's been fun to tech up and build up the 4 starting German U-Boats and try to sortie them into the Atlantic. 5) Poland - with 2 HQ's and a lot more units - seemed tough at first but I knocked it out pretty quickly (about 3 turns I think) anyway without too many losses. I think the Germans historically probably took a few more losses - of course this was against the AI. Maybe the city of Lodz could be added to the map to strengthen their center. 6) I was able to use my starting forces on the French border to take out Belgium within 2 or 3 turns. Then I just kept pushing forward into France and almost at Paris while still in 1939 - again this is against the AI of course - but the French seem to be a little bit too weak perhaps. 7) I'm not 100% sure but it seems like there are about twice as many turns - in other words each turn only passes about half the number of weeks in this mod. It seems that I've had a lot of clear weather turns in 1939 which is why I say this. 8) Having Egypt as a separate allied country is interesting. Egypt DOW'ed Italy and advanced on Tobruk. This battle is now very insteresting since there are 3 fortress hexes at Tobruk now. 9) Italy being a little wider seems good since not every hex is bombardable by ships in southern Italy now. 10) The Italians have a sizeable army but the unit and ship strengths are so low that it will take a looooong time (1941?) before they can reinforce each unit up to strength 10. Starting with better supply and an HQ in Albania is interesting. Italy has 4 or 5 air units - each strength 4. 11) I tried DOW'ing on all minors just to see what they get and it looks like a lot of fun to have HQ's for many of the minors 12) I used max diplo on Spain as Germany and was able to get them to enter on my side in 1939. I'm sure the AI didn't counter-diplo though. 13) Finland seems very low on units so it seems like maybe they should get another corp on the russian border or something - hard to stop the Russians from taking Petsamo and also advancing along the very wide front available farther south. I don't know much about the winter war or how the Finns were able to stop the Soviets other than that they fought a lot in the forest - but the Soviets should be able to easily bypass the very few Finnish units on this map if they try to defend in the forest. 14) The entire geography of the new map is so much fun to check out. A larger UK seems very interesting - with Southampton, Hull, Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham, and Belfast added the invasion of Britain would be more than a few hex advance now. 15) It's fun to see the French CV - Bearn - added as a tiny 3 point CV unit. 16) I love the addition of the islands (Faeroes, Azores, etc) in the Atlantic - needed now that the map is so much larger. 17) The map drawn near Leningrad seems to make it easier to cut it off. Historically the Soviets were able to hold open a tenuous corridor but the map east and south of Leningrad seems to make it easy for the Germans to cut off the city completely. This mod is really a lot of fun! [ November 28, 2006, 09:27 AM: Message edited by: JJColorado ]

I downloaded this mod from Panzerliga and am thrilled with the changes that have been made as an alternative campaign for PBEM. Has anyone tried playing this mod yet? I was absolutely shocked (in a good way) at the extent of the changes that have been made. The new triple size map is gorgeous and adds areas like Petsamo, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia. Does anyone have experience with this yet or has anyone tried PBEM? My initial impression is that it will help the Allies since Axis forces trying to go on the offensive in Russia will be at HQ supply 8 sooner and an offensive from Iraq or Turkey into Russian oilfields seems very tough with 5 HQ supply. Also taking out Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, etc will be tougher since there is more ground to cover and more supply problems. This is definitely worth taking a look at if you haven't yet. It just drops into the campaigns folder as another campaign in v1.04. Any thoughts/experience? P.S. Someone asked for name of mod - I think it's just Thrawn English It can be downloaded from the first link on this page on panzerliga panzerliga scenarios web page [ November 27, 2006, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: JJColorado ]

So - assume Germany knocks out France by April or May of 1940. What should Germany attempt to accomplish before war with Russia? Obviously Sealion is one option. But - assuming that the Brits defend Britain well - what should Germany try to do? I've read here that some people take a lot of minors - some of which surprise me - Switzerland for example. As a German what minors should be attacked and in what general order (assume Denmark is out in 1939)? How many Germans should be sent to north Africa and when should that offensive begin? Should Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia be attacked before going for Egypt? Any comments? And don't say "it depends on the situation and what the Allies are doing". Just assume the Allies are fairly passive and defending Britain well with some forces also left in Egypt. Thanks! P.S. I'm assuming Norway should be done as quickly as possible - maybe 1 turn after France falls since the German air is able to fly up there. quickly.