Minty

Ah too True Desert Dave, too true. Still there seems to be an oil argument kicking off elsewhere. Getting back to the Thread though. By limiting the number of US combat units but providing the chance to massively increase IT the US forces in SC2 do mimick history by the time they hit fortress Europe. There are also lots of HQs to buy. There may not be that many fighting troops but with plenty of HQs and can be very well supplied and reinforced straight away. It means you can have Ike keeping the beaches nicely supplied but you can also afford to get Patton too, kick some German butt and even if you take big loses can be back on the offensive at full strength very quickly. The average Gerry soldier had to spend a lot more time on the front line compared to the Americans who could reinforce and rotate frontline troops keeping them fresh for the fight.

Is this the Rambo war that I predicted at the end of this thread?

Thanks Lars I'll look it up.

Sorry if this isn't quite game related but a couple of months ago I posted about a book called "why the allies won" Well I've found another even more fascinating one. It's by Liddell Hart and is called The History of the First world war and also known as the Real War. Now before you say that's WW1 not the big Dubya Dubya 2.... hold on. It was written in the 1920s and updated in the 1930s. It deals extensively with the strategic plans of boths sides and how tactics changed rapidly during WW1.There was alot more to it than just walking slowing towards Machineguns. And being written before WW2 it makes some eerily accurate predictions on what tactics might be effective in the future ie WW2. I think it is out of print now but was republished in the 70s. The analysis of the strategy is incredible and frankly even offers some good advice for the SC2 player. With so many slow moving army units in the game, a lot of the Russian campaign or in areas such as Turkey and Italy can often resemble WW1 where tactics that evetually worked had to overcome the enemies ability to reinforce and operate troops in quickly. Also the full author's name is Sir Basil Liddel Hart and it is written in a very enjoyable boy's own adventure old school way but is superb none the less. sorry if this is off topic.

Realy depends on the game and what is going on but generally; Loads if Germans. At least 5 I'd say by 1942 if you want to get your objectives. At least 2 for the Americans. US can get some nice and devastating moves going if they have some Amphib tech but need to keep in supply. Russian I usually end up with about 4 right at the end but 3 is normally enough to hold the line, depends if they go off to Iraq / Finland or not.

Taojah / Jolly guy. What happened in Eygpt? My guess is that if Taojah took it then he's got a fighting chance. Leningrad is always a great city to take, such a pain to take and always a thorn in the side versus Human or computer. Think smart money is probably on jollyguy though. Sounds like there is a Lot of Russia left for Taojah to eat up but if he's got big fast tanks... Taojah - quickly surpise him with a late winter 41 Sealion before the Yanks arrive in London to impregnate British women. Sounds like the Brits are busy faffing in the Med. I guarantee he won't be expecting it!

Doesn't this debate come up about every 2 or 3 months or so? Someone says why can America only have a brigade of boyscouts in the game? (or points out that the RN should have 25 cruisers and 12 battleships or America should have 26 Zillion Aircraft) Then someone else says because if the production was realistic the Axis wouldn't have a chance. Then a bigger debate starts about "No if the Axis had made better decisions they could have secured their aims with a smaller army" Someone else says that Production is the be and end all. Then other historical examples are used to prove and disprove this and say why the Allies did win / Axis lost. Someone will then post the following words "In one word: Oil" then it will kick off into a debate about the Iraq war now. Then the whole Topic will have to be shut down by Hubert as Rambo takes on all challengers. Sigh. Normal dude has it spot on. Want realism then go and watch the History Channel.

units lost in port (amphib or transport) cannot be rebuild at the discount in my unfortunate experience.

How about at first you can't really damage them only slow them down as they do X amount of damage per turn to various units. The aim would be to slow them down and stop their pods (cities effectively) linking up in SC2 terms their supply stayed low and would not go up to 10. The Martians get very limited units (albeit massively powerful) at first (maybe just 2 or 3) BUT they slowly but steadily increasing MPP supply as they link up AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!! And / OR MPP could represent their Energy. So yes the Martian is indestrucible at first (link a LV5 5 bar strength 15 panzer but even that needs tobe in supply). a drop in strength would represent their supply running out , not enough martian energiser batteries perhaps. So even if they can' be damaged at first if they just go on a non stop rampage without thought for plugging in again they will eventually run of of juice for their death ray and shields (represented by their Strengthc dropping as they use death beam energy hit to blow up puny earthlings - not much of perhaps none at first but as earth units got better it would take more martian energy to destroy them). If they weren't reinforced they would run out of power. Meanwhile brave Victorians nations band together and research tech to increase their defence bonuses, motorisation to send troops on suicide missions faster them , some limited weapons which could reduce the Tripods effectiveness the whole thing would be a race against time (or high level biowar tech if you want deviate from the book but make it a little more fun). Can the martains meet up? build and wipe out Human resitance before the Germs kill them ( with minor and major victories depending on how much of Planet earth they destroy / conquer) Can the puny earthlings hold out and block the Martians long enough for the common cold to kill the Martians.

@ Rambo. All I am saying is that your post seemed to revel and celebrate civilian bombing and orphaning of Children. Fatherless Buntas? No need for that language, you are more than able to make a point without causing offensive

Mr Rambo, your last post is tasteless in the extreme.

Don't worry about rebuiding the ships at this stage Vector. His Majesty's Royal Navy is there to protect blighty and if half of it sinks then it is just doing it's job. Trick is to make the Russians angry while the nazis are wasting time in the UK ... then the real fun begins

True in Napoleon's day,not so sure it wouldn't have been a much bigger problem in centralised Soviet times

Problem with homebuilds is that it limits landunits too. I see no problem with raising or training land units, even panzers, elsewhere as they can operated easily or the factories , barracks etc can be easily built outside Germany which is just what the German did too, examples being the Skoda works in Czechoslovakia or Aircraft factories in Poland, or SS Divisions made up of local Belgiums and Norwegains. But not the capitol ships, it's not just a detail, The Bismarck and Tirpitz are the two hardest naval units in the game (assuming no further tech advances) and can swing the balance of power in the Med easily. Getting them there should be a challenge. The Royal Navy put huge resources into sinking the Bismarck when it came out to play and never kept fewer than 3 battleships at Skapa flow to prevent the Tirpitz from breaking out of the North sea. On another note, Can we please have surface raiders? If a ship is in an enemy convoy it should be doing some serious damage, as much or more than subs. Again the Tirpitz and the Scharnhorst sank a lot of land lease going to the USSR.

Hi Guys, Just a quick one but a major naval bug, couldn't find any previous mention of it so here goes. Can I suggest that countries can only place new ships in their own ports when built and not in the ports of their new friends. ( Bismarck / Tirpitz / Prinz Eugen all can be built in French or Spanish ports) I know the idea is to be able to put subs in the pens at Brest but I'm in the midst of surprsiing a very perplexed (and soon to be dead) British Admiral with 50,000 tonnes of German steel in the Med despite the UK still holding Gibraltor. Great Fun for me but a little unrealistic. Did the Germans carry it over the mountains of Northern spain? Or find a very very big train? Perhaps quickly build a canal 20 times the length of the Panama from Kiel? Can anyone explain to me how production can be moved for a 50,000 tonne keel that takes 3 years to lay down? Got to be a bug surely.

Wicky, I haven't read the book but I know the Author. He's a bit of quack / conspiracy theorist in my opinion. If Halifax has been that clever and he'd have made PM. If not then it implies he was churchill's emmissary and confidant which he was not as the 2 men loathed each other. churchill really was in danger of being overthrown as his power was based on a tory part that hated him and an allaince with the labour part that hated him more. With dunkirk happening a mere 2 weeks into his PMship he was toast. Yes Hitler did believe he could get peace with the UK hence the dunkirk call off for 2 days and Hess. But the irony is that he could only have got it with Halifax as PM and with the BEF pulled out then it would never have happened. actually I think Chruchill would have not stood down even had the BEF been trapped. He'd have started a civil war rather than hand power to Halifax and with that to hitler.

Jeresy John, being a Brit I am biased but hell my grnadad fought at Dunkirk so I'm allowed to be. for me the single biggest 50/50 turning point of the war happened in May 1940 when Sir Winston Churchill, an outspoken old has been, narrowly pipped Lord Halifax as replacement to Neville chamberlain. It was very very close. The king wanted Halifax, chamberlain wanted halifax, the conservatiive party wanted Halifax, hell everybody did! Really it is astonishing that Sir winston got the job. The only reason he did is that the conseravtive party had no outright majority in parliament and Lord halifax would have had difficulty (as a member of the house of lords - for my US friends that is like the senate/supreme court vs parliament which is Congress but from which the PM is appointed) forming a Labour coalition. In truth Halifax took a senior role (foreign secretary - again for the my US buddies - secretary of state, condo Rice) thinking that he could still influence events. Had he been appointed PM he would surrended in Summer 40. No doubt. He nearly did anyway. As PM he would never have had the same influence on the US as the Half American ( actually by today's citizen rules Sir winston would have held both UK and US passports - yes he was American!) and total americanphile Churchill. UK quits in 40. No El alamein. No USA in the war. US only get involved in Pacific war. No USA support for USSR that's for sure.Hell FDR might not even have won the election in 1940 as he fought on a platform to keep the US out of the war (so politicains lie form time to time). With no War in November 40 to get into then what is FDR going to stand on? The increasing disillsionment with the New Deal? It's all over in Europe. And going into that meeting in early May 1940 it was fully expected that Halifax would come out PM. Winston got the job on May10th but nearly lost it two weeks later when men like my grandfather were scrambling for a way out of Belgium. Halifax and his colleague Boyle were commiting borderline treason talking to Hitlet via the Italains to come up with a ceasefire agreement and surrender terms. They would have been very generrous as AH really wanted peace with england. Scrap a few battleships, a few colonies and limited arms production. Nothing much. No SS marching down whitehall just stop meddling in europe. Fortunatley the british public went for an alcholic, fat,bald,old, cuban cigar smoking bombastic, ego maniac instead. Close call. Very very close.

with a knife.So as to not wake the german guards. slit the throats of 40 oil engineers in their guarded barracks without waking anyone up. Horrible, brutal but devastatingly effective. It shows 2 things. One that the partisans were not a rabble but at times equal to the highly traines special forces of today. Best Dubya wishes he could get delat force into Iran to do that to some nuclear engineers. But he can't. And secondly that they (the partisans) were instructed from high command to cause maximum impact at a strategic level as well as low level nuisance and crucial information gathering. a few knives meant no oil for german panzers and no counter attack to retake stalingrad, the rest it history. Ok 400,000 trucks and jeeps and a zilliion tins of spam from the US helped the soviets but don't ever write off little things like this.

I agree with Yogi, am playing as Axis at mo in a game and yoda gave some good advice but the whole "dow everyone just for a boost" is simply exploiting the game too much. I haven't done it and maybe I will lose ( took lots of his other advice though) but I feel like I'm playing ww2 not simply learning which bugs haven't been fixed yet.

I'm trying to get it back on topic although taking in certain pride as newbie poster to getting such a long running one past the censors and still going. Why did allies win? All of you pick just one word to sum it up. Mine was leadership

Oh bejesus he's onto religion, just when I thought the topic was turning back to the War! So in one word before this topic collapses under the weight of bigotry, nationalism and anti americanism. One word that explains why the Allies won. Mine is Leadership what's yours?

Jeresy John, Woh there cowboy, all I was doing was correcting your statement that the debt was written off.It was not. To your new enemies the USSR and china, yes, but to us No. you said to let you know if it was otherwise so I did. I did not say that the US declared war for business reasons of course it didn't. All i did was state that it was not as generous as you had claimed, you asked if the land lease had been repayed and I'm telling you that Britain, as a grateful and honourable nation, is still repaying it AND that the money at the time did the US a lot of good NOT that the decision to go to war was based on it.

Nope sorry you weren't that generous.Not in the slightest. It was agreed that the UK had to pay for everything in full, every damn bullet. It was actually a big issues in the late 70s when the UK (and world)economy was going through a rough patch, the oil shock sent interest rates high and we were paying you more in interest than the loan. It was good business for the US and you made a lot of money out of us. All our gold at the time, and a hugh amount of interest in the last 64 years! Really serious money, in a simple sense the UK's vast gold reserves from 200 years of empire went into building up the huge economic might of the US, London financed your second "new deal". Warships were even diverted by the US from active service to go and pick up British gold reserves from arond the world. We still owe you nearly $100 million that is the last payment this year! Take a look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4970720.stm

I'm so proud of this little topic I started..... like a father watching his son grow. Top post Retributar! The US contribution and thorough cooperation of all allies was vital. Nothing can be taken in Isolation. And I'm with you Jersey Jon, for the most part the US's intentions have been mostly honourable and did a lot for the end of imperialism. Tis not without mistakes but to put it simply the good far outweighs the bad. The present admin is making some big mistakes but lets not let that tar US history. but as for your NEVER statement, you're wrong. Millions was given in aid for Katrina last year by the EU alone, both government and individual contributions. Adn there were collections in every high street in the UK after Sept 11th for things like the NYPD/Fire widows funds etc.There's still a lot of goodwill over here in the Old world for the yanks.

when the Nazis took Maikop oil facility in the 42 it had of course been destroyed. It alone could produce more oil than the reich had annual access to in 42. The Germans quickly shipped in 40 engineers to assess the damage and start a rebuilding programme to get the oil flowing. They were heavily guarded but Partisans crept into their barracks and slit their throats. A minor action that demonstrates how partisan ativity had a huge impact on supply and was intelligently coordinated.