Finland

[Tuomas Seijavuori]

Hi! A new SC player here saying hello.

Phew! What a thread. I very much dislike heated WW2 pro-Finland or which-ever-country-discussions myself, so I only read a little past the point, when the disucssion moved completely out of the scope of this forum. (Except Konstantin's great post above: As a Finn, I could not have put it better myself. Like our leadership during the war, I'm only happy to play down our role in the Axis!)

Yes, I do have a Finland-problem of my own with Strategic Command. This is also quite easy to change with the editor, I believe, and I wanted to hear whether someone has already tried this: In my opinion Finland is way too eager to declare war to the USSR. I've only played two campaigns so far, both as the Axis powers, and both times there has been no winter war. Instead, Finland has declared war unprovoked, without anything to "claim back" from winter war. From the patch readme file I found the likelyhood for this to happen is 40% / turn. To put it mildly, this would seem politically unrealistic to me. This is speculation in an alternative universe, of course: I'm not saying there would not have been Finnish nazi-symphatizers in this alternate reality (one without winter war, that is) but what kind of a government would have attacked USSR just to support Germany? What would its agenda have been? Expand Finland to the Urals?

Opinions on this and tips on how to do it with the editor?

[Konstantin V. Kotelnikov]

Welcome Tuomas.

Actually part of your post is the subject of a whole'nother thread.

There isn't a winter war in the game. The border pretty much stays the way it starts.

Historically Finland had only joined the "axis" to reclaim what it had lost to the soviet union in the Winter War. They intended to go no farther than the 1939 Russo/Finnish border. Best of all they told Germany this, especially when Germany wanted the Finnish forces to come around Lake Ladoga and completely Isolate Leningrad.

One problem in the game I noticed is that to knock finland out of the game is also not in line with history. You have to smash their forces and march into helsinki, and that can be a problem if the germans send some units to Finland.

I wonder how hard it would be to set up conditions that if german doesn't meet XYZ qualifications that Finland quits the Axis and either becomes neutral or joins the Allies.

Perhaps someday down the line all the Axis minors will have a set of conditions were they can quit. Cause I'd like to see this with Italy too.

Of course we all know how history ended.

-dave

[Tuomas Seijavuori]

Originally posted by Konstatin V. Kotelnikov:

Actually part of your post is the subject of a whole'nother thread.

That's right. I found the other thread after posting.

I thought about the Axis minor's role in the game some more and thought it would probably have been best to leave Finland out of SC altogether and use the map space for North Africa. Fighting there is rather crowded - just one strip of coastal hexes. It would benefit the game more to move the map south a few rows instead. Then again Bergen, Norway is up north too. It would be a shame to leave it out. Oh well. Back to playing.

[JerseyJohn]

Tuomas Seijavuori

"I thought about the Axis minor's role in the game some more and thought it would probably have been best to leave Finland out of SC altogether and use the map space for North Africa."

Thanking you in advance for what should be an interesting response from my young friend, Carl von Mannerheim -- a near-crazed advocate of including the Winter War and allowing Finnish operations right to the Arctic! And, of course, welcome to the insane asylum; it's always good to have somebody who posts his views and has good ideas to ponder over ad neuseum!

I sympathise with your idea, but cutting off the northern part of the map isn't the solution because we'd also lose Sweden, Norway and Scapa Flow.

To me the basic problem with North Africa is you can maneuver till you get to either Alexandria in the east, or El Agheila in the west; at both those points there are natural bottlenects like the Qattara Depression or the narrowing effect of the Gulf of Bizerte, and suddenly it's back to a narrow front with WW I tactics. While Auchinleck was losing to Rommel in Cyrenaica he was also preparing defenses hundreds of miles away at El Alemain!

Instead of cutting parts of the existing map out, wouldn't it be better to have a very large map and be able to scroll everywhere from the Arctic Circle to Ethiopia and east of the Urals to the (true proportion) coasts of North America, encompasing places along the way like the Azores, Iceland, Greenland, the Canary Islands, Faroes, etc. & etc.?

There have been dozens of entries on this topic in recent weeks alone. Aside from the Finland Forum you might want to backtrack to a forum I had the privledge of initiating Hubert -- The North Atlantic! to read opinions on this and related topics.

[ December 12, 2002, 08:16 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Carl G. E. von Mannerheim]

and use the map space for North Africa.

But then your getting off the 'War In Europe' aspect. The fighting which took place more than 80 miles inland from the African coast is not worth representing in this game. However, many large combats took place above the arctic circle during ww2. I think that N. Africa is modeled pretty well in this game, especially with the inclusion of suez.

More North less south.

"You read the Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane"

"Whats is about?"

"The Civil War"

"Well, who, should I say, Won?"

"You went with the North..."

-Great scene from the movie Camp Nowhere.

CvM

[ December 12, 2002, 08:42 PM: Message edited by: Carl Von Mannerheim ]