Exel

German army suffers a catastrophic defeat at in the last defensive line north of Münich, and the High Command sees no other choice but to accept unconditional surrender. Italian corps take control of Münich, and some fierce fighting takes place near Torino. Balbo's army crush a Soviet army in Iraq, but the Red Army rushes armor to the scene. Italy still controls all of its own main land, Greece, Egypt and Syria.

Germans withdraw southwards and unite front with Italians. Stalemate in northwest Italy. Hungary is finally subject of Soviet invasion. Soviets in Iraq suffer heavily but total victory is not achieved. Allies threaten southern Italy with amphibious invasion.

Counter-offensive of Berlin provides some heavy casualties to the occupying Communists, but final breakthrough is not achieved. Troops withdraw from Cologne and Praque to form a strong pocket of resistance in central Germany. Münich is retaken from the French with Italian support. Allied troops storm Italy from France, and Soviets are driving Italians out of Balkans. Iraqi campaign still continues with Balbo's troops repelling yet another Soviet army.

Advance after combat has been suggested (by me among others) for tanks as a new "blitz breakthrough" option. That'd increase the significance of tanks as breakthrough exploitation units they historically were. But I wouldn't allow other units to do the same, only tanks. EDIT: Of course the above would be possible only if the unit hadn't already moved, so it couldn't move-attack-move, only move-attack or attack-move. [ May 05, 2004, 03:56 PM: Message edited by: Exel ]

Finland and Germany had a common enemy, but they never were in a formal alliance (if we disregard president Ryti's personal promise to Hitler not to make separate peace in 1944). Germans helped Finland in the effort, and they took the front responsibility in the northern Finland, where the German troops also got some Finnish units under their command. In the south (where most of the fighting took place), however, the Finnish army was completely autonomous. Mannerheim refused to attack Leningrad, and also rejected Hitler's constant requests of attacking the Murmansk railway.

Just remember that Finns didn't call him with the prefix 'von'.

HoI tried grand strategy with individual divisions, and it sucked (not the game but the unit and combat system). Although the province and stacking systems may have been bigger factors there than the unit sizes, but still.

On a related note, will the minors still be as dependent on their major as in SC1? Can they reinforce and build new units with their domestic MPPs even when there is no supply route to the major? Or will the minors be directly attached to a major at all?

Mannerheim is the ONLY thinkable choice for a Finnish HQ. And make sure his rating is high enough as well.

May I suggest that, especially if the minors can't make research of their own, the techs of the dominant majors (Britain and Germany.. at least in SC1 ) automatically transfers to the minors with a delay of one level. Thus the minors would gain tech but would be one level behind the majors. This would simulate the fact that the majors did share their tech advances to their allies, but only their second-best and not their state-of-the-art equipment (Finland could only buy Bf109s after Germany got FW190, for example). With this system the minors wouldn't fall too far behind in the tech race without still having top-notch units.

So very true. It's kinda funny to think about it actually, since both the French and the Soviets gave the high commanding positions to their veteran "grand-old-men" heroes of WWI, while the Germans appreciated the fresh modern thinking of the new breed of generals and gave them influential positions. And the rest is history. I wonder how successful Germans war efforts had been if Guderian, Rommel and Manstein had been facing DeGaulle and LeClerc instead of their seniors.

German HC wires a message to Sir Arngrim: "Shove those carriers into your ass, please." They wreak havoc on an unprecedented scale, and the troops on the ground are most fed up of getting the RN bomb deliveries on their heads.

De Gaulle was France's best general already in 1940. He was one of the few French generals who realized the importance of armor, and who wasn't stuck in pre-WWI methods. So he should be in from the start, but should automatically transition to the Free French when Vichy is created.

Despite losses suffered, the Germans cause major casualties to both the Brits and the Soviets. Italy withdraws in the Balkans in the face of Soviet pressure. Balbo's Elite Army Group Iraq achieves another lightning victory of the Soviets, regardless of the loss of one army.

Hamburg is evacuated after intensive bombing, and a breach in the eastern front is closed. Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe pound a Soviet Armor near Berlin, but fail to knock it out. American GIs are finally thrown into battle in the west, where they battle with German corps. Italians switch to defence and evacuates Vichy when American invasion becomes imminent. Desperate naval battle in the Med continues, and an American battleship is sunk while Italian battleships suffer heavy damage. In Iraq the Italians destroy yet another Soviet army, but more keep pouring in.

While the eastern front holds firm despite heavy casualties, holding in the west proves a much harder task, thanks to the Allied air supremacy. Italy fights off another Soviet Iraq expeditionary corps and maintains its positions in the Balkans, but suffers a decisive defeat in France. With Allied air cover moving into reach of the German main forces, the war might soon well come to an abrupt end.

Italian war success is varied. In the Balkans they establish a firm defence and the Soviet advance comes to a halt at the gates of Belgrade. In Iraq the Italian troops quickly maneuver to counter the Soviet relief corps, destroying one of the two units. In France however, the Italians fair poorly against the advancing Brits, suffering heavy casualties. British corps retake Gibraltar and Allied fleets prepare to re-enter Mediterranean. Soviets are building up an overwhelming force on the German front, but the line holds.

They've been saying that PC gaming is dying ever since the first PlayStation. As a matter of fact, PC should never have become a gaming platform in the first place, according to the analysts. Mac, let alone Atari, Amiga & Co. were far superior, but yet PC prevailed. So PC gaming aint dying. Of course consoles have gained market shares, but you ought to remember that the whole business is growing. So the growth of consoles isn't off of PCs, they're mostly new markets they're gaining. Also, consoles simply aren't suitable for certain game genres, like strategy games, simulators and first-person shooters. The latter is arguable, since consoles do have a vast range of fps games, but as long as keyboard+mouse doesn't come standard with consoles, PC will remain as the main fps gaming platform.

We have specific surrender rules: - Axis player may not surrender before either Germany or Italy surrenders and the remaining major has Allied troops on its soil. - Allied player may not surrender before USSR surrenders. The latter could be refined for the next game to be less strict, so that the surrender of UK would also give the right to surrender if Axis also controlled Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow. Anyway, back to the AAR. Yugoslavia surrenders and Bulgarian corps occupy the capitol. The Soviets and Brits join fronts north of Hamburg, counter-offensive against the Brits provides little results both in Essen and in France. A fleet battle ensues at Gibraltar - Italian battleship capsizes and British marine invasion fleet suffers moderate casualties in a sub raid.

The defenders of Belgrade and Bagdad refuse to accept their defeat. Northern Home Front takes a new shape while the Soviets advance along the coast, but it firmly holds. Southern Home Front in Czechoslovakia remains still, while counterattack destroys a Soviet army. A Soviet corps is also destroyed in the north. Own losses are limited to the Paris garrison that gave up on the pressure of heavy air bombardment by the RAF and RN. A British battleship that was severely hammered by Italian subs near Gibraltar (in Italian control) withdraws back to the Atlantic. Italy retakes Malta. [ April 30, 2004, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: Exel ]

No, it is exactly the contrary. Future generations accept history, with the goods and the bads, and don't try to tone down certain unpleasant facts. No one has denied the symbology of the Nazi swastika, but neither should anyone deny that it was there, it did exist, and the Third Reich did use it as their flag. The attrocities wont come undone by wiping the history. If we ban the flag, why not ban the word "nazi" and "fascism" as well? In fact, why not ban all the historical writing from the years 1933-45 and just pretend nothing ever happened? And do not forget that the German/French ban of swastika does not only include the Nazi swastika, but every other swastika in the existence. They consider the Finnish von Rosen cross just as illegal as the symbol of the NSDAP. There is no excuse for that, other than overreaction and hypocricy. Also, look at games like HoI. The game is allowed to portray the Nazi government to every detail, and practically places the player (if he chooses to play Germany) on the place of Adolf Hitler, giving him the power to name Göbbels and Hess into the government, and with Soviet Union, player may personally decide about Stalin's paranoid "purges", but at the same time the game is not allowed to show historically correct flags for Germany or Japan. Doh.

Iraq and Yugoslavia make stubborn resistance in the face of overwhelming Italian attacks, but so does Germany and Bulgaria in the face of Soviet onslaught. The situation in Germany is worsening though, but the combined Axis forces still outpower the Red Army. The UK is weak on land, and can't pose a serious threat to the French garrison for now. Their naval and air superiority however forced the evacuation of Benelux, and Essen falls unguarded to a British raid invasion. USA joins the war, so the odds in the west are expected to turn in the Allied favor.

You took the words out of my mouth, comrade. But it's the usual, victors write history, and no one wants to create "unnecessary" tension with another superpower. I guess Germans are touchy fools when it comes to their 1933-1945 history - and while it is understandable to a point, I really can never understand the ban of historical facts, be it a symbol or an actual event. The ban of all swastikas, even in a historical context, is a clear overreaction. What good does it make to anyone if we try to tone down or forget history? After all, that's what the ban is all about, whether their law-makers have intented it or not. But hey, it's not like we can change that sillyness here.

Vichy goes down, but not for the Italians as planned - the creation of the New Roman Empire may step aside in favor of the defence of the Third Reich. The Soviets have advanced to the gates of Berlin and Prague, and reinforcements are desperately needed. Italy prepares to issue the final blow to the resisting Yugoslavia, while hastily organising defence in Hungary, Bulgaria and Greece for the oncoming red onslaught. Luftwaffe struggles for its survival against the numerically superior Red Army Air Force - western Allies have achieved air superiority above France, and their air raids are seriously hampering the garrison defences there. Jersey John: There will certainly be a revanche - I couldn't live without one after such a humiliating defeat.

Romania has fallen, but alas, Hungary and Bulgaria have joined the struggle against communism! The German economical situation isn't a too great one, but so far the Soviets have made no progress in their advance towards Berlin nor Prague, and the Red Army has suffered great losses with minimal sacrifices from the Wehrmacht side. Though with garrisons in western France the Allies seem incapable of invading with any significant force in the west. I'll just hope it will stay that way in the future as well.