Ivanov

I agree that US MMP output is very small and maybe it should grow steadily to the point that the US and UK could face the Axis after the fall of Soviet Union. Right now, if USRR is defeated, it means game over because US and GB with roughly 300MMPs' each cannot face Germany with more than 1000 MMPs'. Another idea would be some script that would increase quickly US industrial production after Soviet Union is defeated. If the USSR is still in play, then the 300MMPs of the US industrial production is quite a lot actually. With that kind of cash, you can purchase almost each turn, a tank group or an air unit. It's worth remembering that, because quite often the US forces won't be engaged in any direct combat for some time, so there won't be a need to spent any cash on reinforcing of damaged units. If it comes to the naval transport, I agree that it's slow, but the loops from East Coast to the Northern Atlantic may be quite helpful. The other thing is that the cost of transport is just too high and this should be changed.

I disagree about the balance in this campaing. I changed my mind after playing it twice. Obviously the Axis have an initial adventage ( which is correct historicaly ), but still it is very dificult to win the war. Of course all depends on the players and long term strategic planning. Both sides have to be very careful. Try to conquer Russia or get to the Suez Canal - these are really tought tasks to accomplish. The balance is not always achieved along the historical lines ( for example the Red Army in 1941 is usually weak numerically, rather that poor in qualitive terms ), but the general result of a balance is quite similar to the history. The campaign has also very cool decission events. For example if Germans don't sign amstice with Petain, France keeps on fighting from Algiers and when it finally gets defeated, Spanish entry to war on the side of Axis is guaranteed. One word of advice - it may be a difficult campaingn for the beginners, because early mistakes in the war planning may result in premature disaster, like German defeat in January 1941 At the end of a day, it is a great scenario and you just need to get use to it after WWI warfare. It's time to unleash the Blitzkrieg!!! :mad:

Hi Bill! That's the good news indeed. I have to ask my opponent if the Axis unis suffered any losses due to the winter strike. Thanks for looking into this:)

I'd go for the Polish-Soviet war. It was a very important campaign that stopped Soviet expansion for another 20 years and it is virtually unknown in the West. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish-Soviet_War

Anybody can enlighten me how to modify the scripts, as I'm not very programming literate? Anyway, this was a suggestion to the game creators and the script responsible for "Russian Winter" should be changed in the new patch.

In one of my games Red Army went on the early offensive and as a result, the frontline at the beginning of 1942, was established well within ex Polish territory, or if you like Western Belarus and Ukraine. Despite of that, Wehrmacht got struck by the "Russian Winter". I think this should occur only if the Germans venture much deeper into the Soviet Union. I'd say beyond the Dnepr line and east of the Balitc republics. The climate in Western Belarus and Ukraine is not so severe and German supply lines there would be shorter. Due to that, Wehrmach schould be less vulnerable to the impact of weather and General Frost.

Nice one! That's the way it should be The Bolshevik agitation is a nice conterbalance to the numerical superiority achieved by the CP in the West, after the Brest Litovsk treaty is signed.

What is affecting the balance right now, is the fact that Italian ships can be reinforced to their full strength in the ports of their home country , while Royal Navy can't do it in any of her Mediterranean bases. It should be acctualy the opposite, because the main weakness of Regia Marina was chronic lack of fuel, while the British had it in excess.

If that is the case, then it represents a very serious flaw of the current supply model... Royal Navy should be able to reinforce her ships in the Med to the full strength and the fortress should provide more than 5 supply. That is essential in case of Gibraltar and Tobruk, because when they are attacked from the land and cut off, it's not possible to place any HQ next to them. In case of Malta, it's nearly impossible for the Axis to capture it, but any air unit based on the island has automatically supply 5 and it's morale and readiness are reduced. I'm not an expert in technical aspects of the game mechanics, but is it not possible to set supply values of each city, port and fortress individually? For example small cities in Western Europe should provide supply 5 but the towns in Russia 4 or 3, while the fortress and big cities always 8 or 10 regardless the rail lines. Ports like Alexandria, Cairo,Malta or Gibraltar should definitely have their supply values increased.

I don't see how Entente warships could block the transport of milk and Edam cheese from Holland to Germany via land? The whole point of the naval blockade is denying Germany an access to various raw materials essential for the war effort, transported by sea. Food products were also considered of "strategic" importance and the lack of them had direct impact on the morale of German army and the civilian population. It makes sense that if Holland switches sides, it has severe impact on CP morale but if from the other hand Germany conquers Netherlands, I don't see why it should have any negative consequences, appart from loss of some MMP? As mentioned at the beginning, Entente cannot block the land rountes between Germany and Holland.

I have noticed that none of the important British naval bases in the Med ( Alexandria, Malta or Gibraltar ) allows to reinforce damaged ships to their full strength? Is it intentional? Another thing that suprises me aswell, is the fact that fortress like Malta, Gibraltar or Tobruk provide just 5 supply to the defendig units. It's quite strange as those fortress were very well prepared for a prolonged defence and as showed the example of Tobruk, were able to hold out for a long time being completely cut off.

Right now, Germans don't need to have any subtle plan to defeat France, because it falls quickly due to the loss of national morale. Doesn't matter how big and strong French army you build, after the blitzkrieg finishes off Belgium, the French NM drops by 50% and then it is further reduced when the panzers approach Paris. So the recipe to win in the west is to conquer Belgium and then just drive decisively towards Paris - doesn't matter if you do it through the Ardennes or you just repeat the Schlieffen plan. There is now way Frech can stop the assault even if you predict correctly the schwerpunkt of the upcoming assault. Anyway, good luck guys with what you intend to do.

Hi Glabro! I am sorry but I completely don't get your point here:) First you say that Poland and France are to weak, so I guess that you are talking from the Allied point of view and then that it is not possible to perform blitzkrieg warfare, so in this case you are talking about two completely different issues? Poland and France are weak which reflects correctly the historical conditions under which those countries were defeated quickly and decisively, but in my oppinion Poland should be provided outright with an army to defend Warsaw. It's worh mentioning that Germans didn't manage capture the city. It surrendered on 28th of September in order to spare civilian lives, after a terrorist attack performed by Luftwaffe on 25th of September that killed and wounded about 45000 people. An army unit to defend Warsaw would probably allow Poland to hold one and two turns more and it would make much more difficult for Germans to attack in the West in 1939, which would be correct historicaly, because Wehrmacht was to exhausted after the Polish campaign. I regards to France, if we make it stronger, then it would be really difficult to defeat the French army along the historical lines, so I would live it as it is. If it comes to the Blitzkrieg- I disagree. The supply values of captured French cities, don't drop to zero, so Germans can continue their drive towards Paris and complete their conquest quickly. The other thing is, that Storm Over Europe is too balanced in favor of the Axis big time and that in my oppinion makes it the weakest campaign of the Great War series. I will elaborate on this subject more when my current game will be over so I could have more complete view on it.

Thank you Hubert for your prompt reply. So I guess will need to face the Axis without the air reinforcements, that would be quite useful right now, because Germans have invaded Spain and will probably take the Gibraltar. Anyway, I am working on an extensive post regarding Storm Over Europe and I will publish my observations after the current game will be over.

According to the Storm Over Europe manual, "in late 1940 the Western Desert Air Force will be formed in Egypt". In my game we are already in 1941, yet the Brit air units haven't appeared so far. Why is it so? By the moment Axis forces were passive in the Norh Africa and 8th army has been able to capture without any fight nearly all of the Libya. Is it the reason why Mr Churchill deicided no to sent those air units to the Middle Earth? Also, according to the US DE 301 "One strength 10 Tactical Bomber will deploy at Liverpool, a strength 8 Strategic Bomber will deploy at St. John’s in Canada". The TAC unit deployed correctly, but there is no sign of the Canadian bombers. Do they deploy at the later stage?

I'm not sure if the occupation of Eastern territories was a result of greed on the part of German leadership. I think it was more of a necessity. By the 1917 Central Powers were already half starved by the naval Allied naval blockade, so establishing and maintaining the control of Ukraine and other Russian provinces, was crucial in order to preserve further ability of waging the war by the forces of Kaiser. True, some German historians claim now, that leaving behind one million troops in the East contributed to the final failure of the 1918 spring offensives. But how could Germany leave such a huge vacuum just behind her Eastern border? After the Brest-Litovsk treaty was signed, none could really tell with any dose of certainty, what would happen with Russia next and if the treaty would have any long lasting effects. In reality, it was just a tactical move, made by the Bolshevik leadership in order to buy some time and Germans were probably well aware of it. What were the true colors and intentions of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( known also as Lenin ), was proved soon enought after the withdrawl of German troops from the East. A Polish-Soviet war broke out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War Just to not leave any space for the doubt, this is what the commander of Bolshevik forces Mikhail Tukhachevsky had to say before the upcoming offensive: "Over the dead body of White Poland shines the road to world-wide conflagration". The dream came partly true 25 years later.

But if we make Austrians weaker in the game, than accordingly the same should be done with the Eastern Big Brother. Russian army is more numerous than the combined forces of France and Britain and if the Entente player performes well, it is much more dangerous to the CP than the Western Allies. The Tsarist army was performing historicaly very badly on every level ( appart maybe form the usual toughness of an average Russian foot soldier ) and if we would like to be exact, most it's units in the game should have very low readiness and morale just to reflect the permanent problems with the supply and lack of ammunition. If that was be done, than yes, I would agree that Austro-Hungary should be weaker, but right now strong Russia requires strong A-H just to keep the balance right.

This is a superb piece of work! I think this campaign is better balanced than the Storm Over Europe ( of course in regards to the historical accuracy ). If German player wants to conquer USSR, it should be very hard, nearly impossible task due to the enormous Soviet reserves. Thumbs up!

Right now, in the best case scenario the enemy's arty may suffer a strength loss due to your counter-battery fire, but you wouldn't be able to suppress it and it will keep on firing, until it spents all the amo. It makes more sense to target the infantry because the defensive fire may inflict up to 50% strength loss on the attacking unit and stop the attack in it's tracks.

There is actually a counter-battery fire in the game, but as you said both of the arty units have to be within each others range. To be honest, I don't like this feature too much. I'd always prefer to target enemy's infantry instead of wasting amo on the counter-battery fire. There should be an option to set your arty to the defensive fire and choose if it should perform counter-battery fire or target attacking infantry. It would also help if players would be able to indicate which unit will be targeted first in case of the attack. That would help to target the strongest and most dangerous unit. It makes sense in situations when the amo is low. An example: The Turkish arty has only one shell left and it will automatically fire when the first Brit unit attacks. In this case, it would perform the counter-battery fire, after which there will be no amo left to support further defence. It would make more sense, to set the arty to target the British corps when it attacks, instead of wasting amo on counter-battery fire.

Well, I don't know. The Russians performed really badly aswell, yet in one of my games I managed to capture Berlin in 1916. Both Russian and Austrian infantry units have lower parameters than the German, French and British counterparts. Also their HQs' have usually quite low ratings and their NM pools are low enough, so both countries may be out of the war quickly enough. In my opinion those pre-set conditions reflect well the A-H and Russian weaknesses and at the end of the day, the outcome of the game, depends on the individual performance of each player.

I think the key issue for the outcome of the game, is what happens with the German troops in the East, after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is signed. It has been already well elaborated in one of the posts by Hyazinth von Strachwitz. Germans should be forced to leave in what would be the ex Eastern Front, a force of about 10 corps. If not, their units and the German NM should be seriously affected by the Bolshevik agitation and that in result could lead to the quick surrender of Germany and A-H, due to the communist revolution. So leaving a considerable force in the East, should be essential in order to preserve the further ability of CP to maintain the war effort. I also completly don't understand why the units are "teleported" from the East for free. If the CP player decides to transfer his troops to the West, he should pay for the operational movement as always, or march/force march the units to the new theatre of war.

I do understand that even the Gods Ov War need some weekend rest. Let's wait until Monday

I don't see this idea to practical, at least for me. Usually the MMP pool per turn, isn't big enough to reinforce all the units. The players have to prioritize and select carefully which units should be upgraded and reinforced. In my opinion that is the key to the effective performance of your troops. I really check each unit individually and decide if it's worth to reinforce or upgrade it, or if it should stay in the reserve waiting for the better times. This is a serious strategic game, not a fast food restaurant...

That's a good one:) Let's see what the Gods Of War have to say about this subject:)