My first full game, thoughts, (long)

[Jon Patrick]

Hi All,

Okay, I got IT Friday, and actually managed to spend time with my wife and kid on Friday night...but Saturday was used conquering the world! Please keep in mind I was using the easiest setting.

First, I am NOT the military genius some of you appear to be. I've never taken Greece with Italy in 1 or 2 turns..nor Holland in 1 turn. I tend to be more methodical. More Montgomery than Rommel, I guess

Second, after playing the demo multiple times, I had a framework of how I wanted to play the full game.. Namely, take through france, then focus on Tech and Italy. _I_ was the guy who'd posted about giving France to Italy, and just for posterity, I did NOT do it.

So, I start off with poland, denmark, and then Took Sweden and THEN norway (I liked this combo better..)

I invaded France, and tried a new strategy where I kept my corps one grid off the Maginot line to spare them the constant beating, and hoping to sucker the French into moving into germany. Bad idea!! They pulled their troops off the Maginot, and back into France. It took me forever to take france, and England was very aggressive with their BEF. But France Fell (in 1941!! I don't remember the month!).

NOW, here was my first surprise and lesson from the AI: My plan was to take my booty from France, build up the luftwaffe and pound/outspend England into submission. I garrisoned the Russia border with corps and one HQ (no response from russia??!) and began to think about Sea Lion...

THEN!, I noticed that the British airplanes had a cool 'swept wing' design. OH ****! I lost 4 air fleets in 2 turns. The glorious German airforce was no more! Needless to say, I invested heavily in jet fighter tech., and within a few months I was competitive. I then rebuilt the Luftwaffe, and blasted the RAF out of the sky.

Phase 2- I built a crap-load of subs and reduced the English Fleet to 1 little ship I never did hunt down..I formed 2 picket lines: 1 off the USA/Canada coast for my 40MPP hit on england, and one blocking the transports from getting to the british mainland. I landed 2 forces on english soil, and it took a while (with the american armies there...), but my airforce could destroy 1 army a turn, and with no reinforcements, it was just a matter of time. (no word from russia...).

I took canada, and invaded russia. (where the crap is Spain!!) I had also allowed Italy to take The middle east, turkey, greece, Vichy France, Algiers, and they were moving into S. Russia... My german forces seriously outnumbered the Russians, and my Jets were destroying 1 or 2 units a turn.. in addition that I could outspend ALL my oponents by almost a 2-1 margin. Russia was doomed. I had 3 airfleets in canada blasting away american HQ's, with 3 carriers on the way, transports full of armies waiting, and 4 battleships blasting away inland. My combined 6 airfleets (with carriers) could probably destroy 2 units a turn, and the US's pathetic 180-ish MPP's couldn't buy a unit. It was a war of attition, I had full tech in jet, industrial, sub, long-range, heavy tank, and anti-tank...

And time ran out. (weep, weep.) Peace negotiations my butt, I had them on the ropes!

I'm embarrassed how long I played for, my child is neglected ( ),and this game is seriously addictive. As another poster put it, it's too easy to say "just ONE more turn.", and 2 hours can pass!)

[Sol Invictus]

I was up till 4 am last night fighting for the Russian steppe.

[gunnergoz]

This goes to confirm what I've seen so far...the beginner level is just that.

Also, the 180 points given the USA must take into account a dual-front war being waged, with enormous resources being devoted in MPP equivalents towards the construction of the Pacific fleet and the B-29's. Surely the US total production must be closer to 360 points/month?

Which brings up the second point...if the USA historically had seen Nazi forces off its shore following the defeat of both UK and USSR, then surely more of those "360 MPP" would have been devoted to the Atlantic war. The game does not give the Americans the option of switching production priorities in a two-front war.

Admittedly, the US did historically place priority upon defeating the Nazis, but it still devoted 40-50 per cent of production capacity and total forces fielded, to the war against Japan.

What skews the picture is the fact that only about 1/3 of US Army divisions served in the Pacific. However, 2/3 of the US Navy served in the Pacific. The manpower went to Europe, but the production largely went to the Pacific.

The game must also be factoring in the resources that the US bled off for the Manhattan Project. Surely that was the equivalent of another 40 MPP per turn.

The race for the Bomb is one thing that is curiously left out of the game. It would have been another area to devote production resources for.

This would be handled a bit differently than other weapons used in the game. First of all, the odds of developing the weapon in any given turn would be very low. Second, many reasearch points (probably 5) would have to be devoted to have any realistic hope of achieving production. Third, the product would be a single-use weapon, limiting the player production capability to one or two at most during the entire war.

Finally, the dropping of such weapons on an enemy state would trigger a "surrender threashhold" that would ramp up quickly after one bomb has been dropped on an enemy city. No one likes to be nuked!

Perhaps this has been covered before, but I've not spend much time in this forum before aquiring the actual game.

The resulting weapon would presumably consist of a super-expensive "bomb" icon that could be transported by air to a target, then totoally destroying everything in the hex, with no possibility of later "resucitation" of production points from that hex.

[Carl G. E. von Mannerheim]

i considered the 'a bomb' to be a level 4 bomber or higher..

[Andrew H.]

I think that the decision not to include the atomic bomb in SC is right, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it's hard to estimate the real military effectiveness of the A-bomb. People tend to think that, well, the US dropped two bombs on Japan, and Japan surrendered, therefore, the atomic bomb is hugely powerful. It is hugely powerful, of course, but you have to consider that Japan was pretty much on its last legs by August '45 anyway. I don't think, for example, that the USSR would have surrendered if Germany had dropped a couple of atomic bombs on, say, Kiev and Minsk in 1944.

I do believe that using the atomic bomb saved a lot of US (and Japanese) lives by obviating an invasion of Japan - but I think it would have a much reduced effect on a country that was not already on the verge of defeat.

You can sort of see this by looking at death tolls from conventional bombings - in some cases - dresden, some japanese firebombings, the death toll was close to the death toll caused by the atomic bombs. You can also compare the power of the atomic bomb to that of conventional bombs - even though the 14kton bomb dropped on Japan is not very devastating by modern nuclear bomb standards, it was very powerful by conventional bomb standards - 14,000 tons with one bomb is much more than the 9 ton max payload of a B-17 or the 10 ton max payload of a B-29. That means it would take a bombing raid by 1,400 B-29s or 1,500 B-17's (approximately) to equal the destructive power of one atomic bomb.

However, 1000 bomber raids were not that uncommon later in the war, and there were about 4000 B-29s and 12,000 B-17s built, so the capacity was certainly available. It's also worth noting that the Manhattan Project only produced 3 bombs; after that, the estimate was that it would take 6 months to make some more.

Finally, I think that if the atomic bomb was a regular research path, the end game would end up being a lot more like science fiction, with both sides using advanced rocketry to fire nuclear missiles at each other. Which looks less and less like WWII.

[Carl G. E. von Mannerheim]

Good point

[windstarz]

I played as the Axis in my first game with the default setting. beginner , +0. I got overrun in 1943. Spread myself way too thin.

In the second try once I conquered France I left a very strong force there with lots of air wings. I never attacked Sweden. I took all the usual suspects and then attacked Russia as I was in the process of taking Greece and Turkey. Turkey took quite a while. Russia was a slug fest and taking Malta was a huge undertaking. After finally taking Russia I took on GB and methodically eliminated them but again it was a long process.

I enjoyed the game a great deal and look forward to pbem and online games. SC has the dreaded wargame disease. Just one more turn which goes on and on till the eyeballs start to fall out.

Great job Hubert. Excellent game.