Help invading USA, rookie

[M113]

My 1st game. Knocked out UK and Soviets. Went to invade canada and US in spring of 44. Every hex in North America has a unit on it.

My CV's and BB's blast away. I can't get a unit ashore. If I manage to destroy a unit the cpu will spawn a new unit or move a unit into the space before I can get a unit ashore.

If I develop long range, heavy bomber or rockets will they reach across the ocean? When will the game end if I can't get ashore in north america?

Any help will be apreciated.

[Bullwinkle]

Forget the BBs. Just use CVs and blast them by air. Canada provides an excellent aircraft carrier for your jets.

Knock out the US airforce and then plaster the land units, having transports ready to drop in as soon as a space becomes available. With repeated bombings the US will weaken.

Only bombers in Spain can hit the US. Forget that. Rockets can't as far as I know. I do know that rockets cannot be transported.

The game automatically ends May, 1946 - don't ask my why, I've often lobbied for a longer time period.

When I play the Axis I usually quit the game after defeating the UK. The rest is mop-up. In fact after defeating Russia, the UK is mop-up too.

Hope this helps.

[Bullwinkle]

One other thing - be sure that your aircraft in Canada have a HQ with them. Otherwise they aren't as effective.

[Wachtmeister]

Also, afer you kill off the USAF wipe out the HQ's so that the remaining ground units are less effective. Thereafter, the US weakens quickly, and once you take any city and can reinforce fully, it's all over.

[M113]

Thanks I will build more CV's. But I can't get ashore in canada either. Every hex is occupied.

[JerseyJohn]

If your navy is strong enough pound the shore hexes with battleships and place carriers behind them -- it may take a few turns to accomplish but neither the Canadians nor Americans should be able to replace their losses quickly enough.

I have a strong feeling it won't be possible to launch these invasions too much longer. Going back through past forums you'll see tons of entries focusing on how unrealistic all of this is.

The earliest one that I know of is eight or nine pages back by now, "North America" which had a bunch of players howling at me when I posted it because apparently none of them had tried invading Canada. Then it turned into a more serious discussion and the idea has been popping up regularly ever since.

Before anyone gets ticked at me for saying I had the first posting on it -- that's not what I'm claiming, what I'm saying is it's the first one I know of. By the number of people who were livid about the idea of Germany crossing the ocean I got the idea it wasn't a popular notion. Since then it's been discussed almost routinely -- at first Canada and more often lately with regard to the U. S..

The details of it's impossiblity was gone over in tedius detail in earlier forums that I won't repeat here --

"Amen and Halleleulyah!"

-- I don't think it should be possible within the present game structure. For one thing, the Atlantic as shown is far too narrow, for another the abstraction of North America does not represent the actual difficulties -- especially supply and replacement problems -- that would have been involved in transatlantic lifelines.

Hubert commented on it at some point and it was obvious that the two Western Hemisphere land masses weren't intended to be targets of German invasions, but in the game mechanics it's unavoidable when Germany becomes strong enough.

:eek:

In the "Just say no" spirit, a few guys have made entries like, "Just don't do it!" Sorry, if I can I do, which I suppose is the way most of us are.

[ November 25, 2002, 07:39 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[blackbellamy]

all my games have a house rule that you can't invade the americas under any circumstance

if you find yourself ready to do it then it's time to call it and start another one

[Desert Dave]

As originally posted by blackbellamy:

all my games have a house rule that you can't invade the americas under any circumstance

if you find yourself ready to do it then it's time to call it and start another one

And that's the way that I play it as well.

Just because something CAN be done, doesn't mean that is SHOULD be.

This applies to gaming, and, in the interests of harmony and balance and this-worldly contentment, just about anything else that can be named.

Besides, with the small ocean, and equally under-represented North American continent, to do otherwise is taking advantage of a quirk, in that USA and Canada are merely place-holders for MPP production, and not genuinely intended as strategic targets.

Though, perhaps some might enjoy doing in the game what would be IMPOSSIBLE in real life, whether 60 odd years ago, or now.

The USA is not a collection of states, or even a geography --it is a sort of unique Utopian IDEAL, as Plato once spoke about in his Republic and those are not so awful easily conquered, true?

[JerseyJohn]

House rules are fine but there are a few quirks like this one in the game and hopefully they'll simply be corrected.

I have nothing against doing something different from the historical model as long as there's justification for it -- and, even though I carry out these invasions in the game [i really dislike playing according to house rules] I've written several very long tracks on the impossibility of Germany carrying out such invasions historically, as have others, and think the option itself should simply be removed. Period.

The only Atlantic operations Germany could have conducted, if Hitler had expanded his fleet a bit, were limited landings such as taking Reykeyvaak Iceland and possibly Tully Greenland. The reason would not have been to conquer either the US or Canada but to provide air and naval bases to destroy the convoys.

A look at the map makes this obvious.

[there should be a map of the North Atlantic here]

Helps put things back in perspective!

Instead of Canada and the US, what I'd like to see is Iceland and the Canary Isands (Spanish possession off the Northwest African coast, not visable on the above map) with the Western Hemisphere entirely ommitted, as it should be in the game scale.

Showing the Canaries and Iceland on the game map can't be done within the map's present dimensions, but I'd preffer that abstraction to the one we have now.

Unfortunately, with the map as it is now, it would be virtually impossible for a German expedition to get past Scapa Flow, makeing some sort of off-map rule necessary -- along the lines of allowing Germany to attempt an Iceland invasion if it possesses Norway.

But there we go again with the sort of off map rule Hubert was apparently trying to avoid.

Also, if the Western Hemisphere were removed I don't know how the U. S. and Canada would enter units.

The way it was done in COS, where there had to be a link to England, is only adequate but not really desireable.

If the U.K. is out of the game the AI and the Allied human player should have the option of conductine landings similar to Operation Torch along the Euro-African coastline. Unfortunately, this would create a whole new set of problems, such as does the U. S. continue fighting in Europe even if Germany's conquered everyone else?

Possibly if the U. S. is on the verge of winning, maybe having retaken France or Italy with units inside Germany's original borders. Otherwise, I think an armistace would have been agreed upon with the Axis, in effect, being left the victor. A revised set of victory conditions would need to be considered.

[ November 25, 2002, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]