Trouble taking cities, forcing surrender.

[mavraam]

My last couple of games I've suddenly run into 2 problems I never hit before:

1) Playing as the Allies, it took me forever to take Berlin. I was hammering it

with about 8-10 squads of level 5 planes and could hardly make a dent. Then followed up

with level 2 infantry and level 3 armor. It literally took about 10 turns to finally

take the capital.

2) When I finally did take Berlin, Germany didn't surrender. I took every other city

in Germany and held it for about 5 or six turns before she finally quit.

So I have the following Q's:

1) What technology is the AI developing that suddenly makes it almost impossible to

damage units in a city from the air. (In another game, I don't think I'll ever be able to

take the Russian Capital in the Urals, I can barely knock it down to a strength 7 or 8

from 12 before I'm out of attackers). I can tell this is a technology issue because usually,

I can easily take cities if I have enough air support.

2) What can I do to counter this?

3) What determines when a country will surrender? Why do the Germans quit sometimes when

I just take Berlin, and other times hold on for 10-15 turns? This delay in surrendering

killed my final score.

[Esquire]

Prehaps there should be a unit bearing the image of the head of state for each particular country. That unit would have no value. It would just be moved around its territory as the player wishes, prehaps offering support. No country would surrender until the head of state unit is captured/eliminated.

[Moon]

I am pretty sure the manual mentions that surrendering depends on the number of still active units from that nation on the map.

Martin

[Guest Mike]

Yep - I recently played my own "World at War" Scenario and foolishly left Madrid open for hte English Corps in Portugal to take. The Spanish had lost one army to the French by this point.

The Spanish took 5 or 6 turns to surrender, all the time bashing away at that one corps, along with a couple of German armies - then they suddenly surrendered - obviously they'd had enough!!

Then the Germans retook Madrid!! lol

Also there's an Anti-Aircraft technology that helps defend agaisnt a/c attacks in cities.

[Straha]

Originally posted by Mike:

Yep - I recently played my own "World at War" Scenario and foolishly left Madrid open for hte English Corps in Portugal to take. The Spanish had lost one army to the French by this point.

The Spanish took 5 or 6 turns to surrender, all the time bashing away at that one corps, along with a couple of German armies - then they suddenly surrendered - obviously they'd had enough!!

SNIP

So this is actually the original problem reversed: trouble retaking cities, avoiding surrender.

Straha