Cheese Panzer

The Germans are roughly one capital ship per unit (plus, one assumes, a light cruiser and some (6-10) destroyers). Everyone else is 2 (carriers 3) capital ships and proportional numbers of escorts. Cruiser units are one battlecruiser or two cruisers for the Germans and 3-4 for eveyone else. So a fleet unit, in game terms, is a pretty major collection of resources. Ships should be expensive to replace - it's take 20 years to create a navy that can be lost in an afternoon!

"Coastal Defenses" covers a lot of different systems, not just big guns. Properly designed, the big guns are just part of a total package. In addition you are going to want mine fields, anti-submarine nets, small ships like torpedo boats, searchlights, rangefinder towers, and ideally some on-call aircraft. You can't do this everywhere since it's very expensive and takes time and men, so you usually limit it to important areas like ports and obvious beach sites. Historically, both Finland and Russia got a lot of use out of their Baltic shore batteries - one of the goals of the Winter War was to capture enough territory so that Finnish shore batteries could no longer reach Kronstadt and Leningrad. Whether this can be applied at the level of SC2 is good question. I'm inclined to leave the current system in place since that's what entrenchments are for. I might allow units on open terrrain costal squares to entrench one level higher than normal (3 vs. 2) to reflect this, but I'm not if that can be modded with scripts.

Yes, but Allied units are eliminated. It seems pretty draconian.

Well, there is the Canadian "Prince Edward" cruiser unit. There was no "Prince Edward" and for all intents the Canadians never operated anything large enough to show up in SC2. But they sailed about 40% of smaller ships used in the Battle of the Atlantic. Perhpas this unit reflects that? Lend-Lease my foot! Did you see the terrible things they did to the Campbletown? Shocking!

Which wasn't a bad career plan in the pre-WWII American Army. For those who aren't familiar with American promotions, you advance in ranks in a pretty predictable pattern (time in grade, length of service, a few specific jobs, and a good report) until you get to Colonel. To be promoted past Colonel requires an act of Congress (no kidding!) although the services usually present their lists and Congress rubber stamps them. But it is an acknowledged fact that to be promoted to General/Admiral requires political clout and friends in high places. One of the backhand effects of this system is that all General officers have to be approved by Congress so each service tries to make sure it has lots of jobs for Generals/Admirals that just HAVE to be filled. And they are contantly asking for more jobs that need to be filled by Generals . . . you tax dollars at work!

(in refering to medals) Napoleon I said - "With such baubles are men led."

This was in SC1 as well. It must a counter to a gamey playtest tactic as there is just no way the Vichy could have forced the surrender of a coherent army right after the fall of France.

Looking at your screen capture, I notice the French units are still French and not Free French - Free French units have their strength number turned to UK khaki instead of French light blue. It appears the game has left two French units alive after the fall of France, probably because it did not check for units in tranport/anphibious assault mode when France fell. Can someone move this to the bugs and tech forum please? Hubert will want to see this. Or you could go back and liberate Paris . . .

Airfleets, bombers, and rockets if you are really determined to take Malta.

Hubert mas mentioned that these tiles are being examined (see the tech questions forum). Some are deliberate gameplay reasons and some are just coding issues - like being able to bombard with ships across the Danish peninsula.

Keep in mind that strength point losses for ships don't always represent hulls lost. Damage to a ship will remove it from use for weeks or months - some of the Pearl Horbor survivors weren't back in the line for almost 3 years. So storm damage represents general wear and tear as well as the occasional outright sinking from bad weather.

I'd go for the game myself - the game cost real money but you can get our opinions for free Thanks for the kind words.

I should have been more specific: That was a piece of trivia.

My experience has been with investing pretty much exclusively in IT and PT in the early days, with maximum MPP's to the UK after Lend Lease starts. It works, bu that long slow build up through 1940 and 1941 can be very disheartening, espeically if the IT increases don't come regularily. You make some good points about historical US capabilities; on the other hand the US took a long time to get rolling even after the war started - the Torch landings weren't until November of 1942, almost a year after the war started, and I don't recall a major bomber deployment to Europe until something like early 1943. Someone who knows how to work the scripts could try adjusting US forces - I think it wouldn't be a bad option if you received a US HQ as a reinforcement, perhaps at reduced strength, a few months after the US enters the war. I also think the US really is justified in having a CV unit (the RANGER, but also representing the vast number of CVE's used not only to aid the Torch landings but to help beat the U-boats), again as a free unit a few months after the war starts and at reduced strength. Just a thought.

Glad you liked it, guys. To be honest, I love to speculate, but I also know when to yield the floor to experts, and Commonwealth Corps commanders are NOT an area of especial study for me. I'll also point that while both men were made field marshalls after the war, Blamey was only knighted after the war while Freyberg was knighted in 1942 and made a Baron after the war ended.

Which is why I didn't recommend doing so. Personally, I'm happy with the compromises SC2 makes to address US Production and commitments to a 2-Front war.

Keep in mind that early US production in SC2 is linked to its % commitment to the Allies - the US at 20% pro-allied is only producing 20% of it's MPPs. This leads to a VERY slow start for the US and takes some getting used to. Also keep in mind that Europe is 90% of the US production of ground troops, about 1/2 of the aircraft, and maybe 10-15% of the naval resources, the rest is going into the Pacific - the US is building the equivalent of one to two ships a TURN for the Pacific, plus repairing damage. Total US resources should be about 700 at full rip. What people may not like is the inabiity to apportion US resources between Europe and the Pacific. I have no idea if this could be addressed in the scripts.

My best luck against partisans is: cover the cities, as mentioned above, make sure that the swamps are covered - this requires one unit to cover the swamps near Odessa (can be done by the Odessa garrison if they move NE one square), four units in the Pripyet marshes (the big swamp in the middle of the map) and three near Leninigrad. Yugoslavian Partisans appear in Mountains and cities and thus require four units to completely cover the country. French, Egyptian, and Iraqi partisans will not attack a city/resource that is garrisoned. The Greeks will (which is REALLY annoying!). Anyway, keep in mind that invading Russia means lots of extra back area troops to keep the Partisans out of your hair. You can use HQ's and airfleets to do the job in cities just behind the front lines but don't forget to garrsion them when they move away!

Dave, I'd love to, except to be honest I don't know anything about Sweden's WWII era generals. All anyone can do, of course, is speculate on the matter. Not sure how high the Australian and NZ commanders rose, but I guess corps commanders would have been tops, and it's almost equally hard to judge here too, as I don't think any of them ever operated independently except during the early days of the war, on a very small manpower scale, in the defense of Port Moresby against the Japanese. Sorry I'm not of help here. </font>

It's not unique - happened to me as well. I think the AI retains the production from before the fall of France and then starts it back up again after any hex of France is liberated. Obviously a bit of a pain since until you actually take a city back and have a free square adjacent to it you cannot place the new troops.

That's about right. Early war UK carrier planes were bi-planes, and while the Swordfish was a good plane when unopposed it had a very short life-expectancy against fighters. Keeping in mind that carrier units represent about 1/10 the airplanes of an airfleet, and that the UK did not use naval planes to perform ground attacks in Europe, in game carriers perform pretty historically. I would really like to a game mechanic where carrier planes cannot kill ground units but do lots of supply and morale damage instead.

To the best of my knowledge most of the minors really never had a chance to upgrade - after being overrun by Germany what forces they had left were essentially equipped by the Allies and in many respects (in SC2 anyway) are represented by the additional corps the British can raise if they want. Only Romania and Hungary really made major improvements in equipment and organization as the war progressed. Partly, of course, because their pre-war forces were shattered in Russia and had to be rebuilt with German assistance! I'm not as well read about Finnland - my impression had always been that the Finns got the short end of the stick in equipment, but that the Russians weren't pushing them very hard either until 1944 when it was too late.

Just a question - do you think the US carriers should be somewhat larger? In comparison to European carriers (actual and planned) they had much larger airgroups, better planes, and a lot more experience conducting operations gained during the pre-war fleet exercises. Just a suggestion, but would two medals and starting strength of 12 be too much?

Cheese Panzer, [... somehow... those two words don't go together very aptly... "cognitive dissonance" I think they call it... JK! Is cool. ] Very true. What to do? Just one game player's take: 1) You just GOTTA get that U-boot out there in Atlantic, using French and Canadian ASW, so to minimize RN losses. 2) You might blockade Kiel, and slim area between Norway and Denmark. Bismark doesn't arrive until August 24, 1940, so you should have time to set up tough defenses. 3) Assuming lower AP's for the amphibs (... which you could change in Editor, anyway, if need be) RN might elect to decimate the smaller sized Kriegsmarine first, meanwhile 4) Attacking ONLY those "valuable" amphibs, IE, HQ and Armor. 5) No harm in letting a few Corps land... which will serve you quite well, Diplomatically, with increases in war readiness for USA and USSR. Can be picked off at yer leisure, what with low supply. Adds experience to yer UK units which will later be sent to Egypt? 6) Also presuming that you as UK player have ENOUGH Corps (... if lucky, WITH I/W) purchased by now (... you are up against some certain Foe who you suspect is actually gonna TRY this VERY risky invasion) So to protect London AND Air Fleet and Bomber, placed precisely, so as not to be vulnerable on first turn of invasion. 7) Going back a bit; do you re-inforce France with BEF to DELAY the potential ETA of GErman amphibs, IE, France can hold out a turn or two longer, OR... keep yer only Army MAX entrenched in London? Well, Should be interesting to see how The various Players elect to play out this VERY challenging invasion scheme. :cool: </font>

I'm one of the 80% that plays the AI - specifically to avoid egomaniacal microencephalics like you. Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass.