Strategic bombing exploit

[Wushuki]

In my current game I captured Sweden with the allies and used some strategic bombers to hit the northern cities of Germany. To my surprise, after bombing Berlin and Koningsberg to less than 5 strength, every German city was treated as if it was disconnected from an industrial center. In the screenshot below the devastation of this strategy becomes obvious: despite the fact that Germany still controls significant territory and could possibly have survived until the end date of 1947, the minor strategic bombing has halved its income and destroyed its supply in both Russia and Europe. Germany has little chance of stopping this, because the bombers can easily be escorted and even upgrading the AA capability of the cities won't stop them from losing those 5 points of strength.

If you know this trick it becomes fairly easy to use it every game, because taking Norway and Sweden as the allies is quite easy to do, even very early on in the war. So can this be considered an exploit? And should this be fixed by, for example, making Munich another industrial center, in addition to Koningsberg and Berlin? Or should this be considered fair game and a viable strategy?

Note that this was tested in Global Conflict Classic, not in Gold.

[Bill101]

Thanks Wushuki.

This would be a lot harder to do in Gold as with Italy being a Major a connection with Venice would keep German supply up. Providing Mussolini hasn't thrown in the towel of course!

Perhaps adding in Vienna as an Industrial Center might be a backup solution?

Bill

[Wushuki]

Thanks for the reply.

I guess adding Vienna as Industrial Center would help the situation. It is possible to hit Vienna from Sweden with a strategic bomber while escorting it with a fighter unit also stationed in Sweden, but that does require putting a strategic bomber closer to southern border of Sweden. That bomber would then be exposed to German fighters counterattacking from northern Germany. Bombers attacking Vienna from Sweden can also only be escorted by a fighter stationed in the southernmost square of Sweden and so only a single escort is possible.

Munich would be another option. Although Munich can be attacked from Sweden, Norway and England with a strategic bomber with 2 upgrades in long range aircraft, it cannot be escorted by fighters when attacking from any of these locations as it is removed by 8 squares from each of these countries. Either Munich, Vienna or a city like Venice would make it much easier for the Axis to defend against this strategy however.

Do I understand correctly that another patch might be made for vanilla? If so, I would also be very happy to see a decision event that gives the Axis the option to split the Soviet Union into a Japanese part and a German part upon surrender. That would greatly reduce the problem of getting Japanese or German units trapped inside their allies territory once the USSR surrenders.

[Colin I]

This bombing strategy can work in Gold too - Dragon did it to me.

Its part exploit though if allies do get such dominance over German skies the axis should suffer.

Agree both with fixing the strategic bombing - perhaps some improvement in air defense would be nice too.

Also agree with the need for partition script for Russian surrender. I've seen Germany lose several games as it takes too long to extract your armour to face a western Allied invasion. It makes no sense that German held rail works less well after Russian surrender than before.......

[Wushuki]

I agree that strategic bombing an enemy that neglects air defense should pay off, perhaps even more so than it does now. The issue here though really is that it is so easy to reach Germany's only 2 supply centers from Sweden, regardless of how much air defense you have.

If you escort your bombers you barely take any damage to them. In the situation above, Germany had 4 level 5 fighters with maximum long range aircraft upgrades stationed around Berlin and these were not able to even damage the bombers due to the escorts. You would think that you could counteract this by directly attacking the allied bombers with your fighters. However, the fighters could not attack the bombers because the bombers were very far back into Sweden, well beyond the range of the German fighters.

The only way for Germany to attack the bombers would be to place their fighters into Denmark. These fighters would then be extremely susceptible to enemy aircraft and ships as you can only place like 2 or 3 units in Denmark, whereas the allies can place a dozen or so in Sweden.

The difficulty of countering strategic bombers from Sweden wouldn't be such a problem though if it didn't cause Germany to lose half of its income and supply due to the loss of its only 2 industrial centers.

[Colin I]

It would be handy if escorting fighters evaded on rare occasions (perhaps more chance the better the attacking fighters are) thus exposing the bombers to damage. its true, escorting is too efficient right now.

[mcaryf1]

I am not 100% sure whether having fighter intercepts prevents AA from intercepting as well but I think an AA gun would engage the bombers rather than the escorts. Historically Germany had some enormous FLAK towers in Berlin loaded with 88mm. Personally I edit an upgrade to AA units in my games and give them two strikes like fighters as well as heavier hits and I find these are quite effective at making bombers pay a price for their mission.

If you have read my series of posts on using the editor to improve naval realism you will see I have provided some information on the true cost of the Allied Air offensive which was enormous. Heavy bomber units should really cost many times the price of a BB unit in the game. Every heavy bomber squadron needed a dedicated all weather airfield and each of those cost approximately 10% of the cost of building a real battleship. The bomber units in SC equate to at least 25 real squadrons of heavy bombers so before you build any actual planes a heavy bomber should be more than the cost of a battleship!

Regards

Mike

[Hubert Cater]

I like the idea of adding in another Industrial Center and probably Munich and I can likely add in the Decision event to split the USSR as well... most likely only for GOLD though as I doubt there will be another patch for Global vanilla.

[SeaMonkey]

And....how about that supply reduction siege mode for Gold?

[Clausewitz]

Is there a list of Industrial Centers under scripts or other location?

[Hubert Cater]

Hi SeaMonkey,

The new supply model is unfortunately only available in the newer releases and was not something that would have been easily retrofitted for GOLD.

Clausewitz,

The Industrial Centers locations can be seen in the Editor under Edit Country Data, you'll then see the list in the lower right corner of the dialog for each country.

Hubert

[Bill101]

Hi Clausewitz

If you open up a campaign in the editor, go to Campaign -> Edit Country Data and then select the country in question that you want to look at.

In the bottom half of the screen you'll see a list of Cities*, Capitals, Industrial Centers and Supply Centers.

*This list actually includes towns as well.

Edit: I didn't see that Hubert had already replied!!

[SeaMonkey]

Hey Bill and Hubert, np with that new supply model, I'll assume it'll be available for SC3, which, of course, I'm looking forward to, perhaps in a year or two.

But I do have one question, or a hypothetical about how this supply model will work for an HQ(supply source) surrounded by 4 enemy units while occupying a primary or secondary supply source.

Given the above conditions, would the HQ be able to reinforce to strength 8 if the occupied source has value of zero(since HQ has integral supply of 5); strength 10 if value is >1?

And thanks for the previous answer, you guys' effort is always appreciated. SC has gotten so good over the years, I'm truly astounded that y'all have hung in there with this superior product.

It's not often you see this depth of dedication.

[Bill101]

Hi SeaMonkey

If that is the HQ's only source of supply, then it's bad news for the HQ. But it does take quite a few turns for the resource to reduce to zero from the presence of the 4 enemy units alone (one turn per strength point) so hopefully there should be time for a withdrawal or counter in the meantime.

Thanks for the comments too. It's come along way over the years, with more to come!