Opening Game Question - Italian Navy

[Edwin P.]

In SC2 can the Allied (UK and French) naval forces still execute a decimation of the Italian navy in the opening game turns, at the risk of an Axis Sea Lion?

And can the neutral Italians move their navy to the Adriatic to avoid this early game death that prevents any subsequent invasion of Egypt?

[pzgndr]

With only one PBEM playtest game so far, my experience as Allies indicates the old SC1 strategies need to be re-evaluated. The Atlantic is much larger now, so it's no longer a given that the Allies are going to quickly find and kill the German U-boats. So either you ignore this convoy raiding threat to go off on some other adventure in the Med or North Sea, or you spend more time than you'd like searching for those damn subs. In SC1 you could pretty much deal with the subs first and then shift your naval forces to take on the Germans or Italians. No longer. Hard choices are now required.

We're still wrestling with the role of neutral majors. They can move their forces around, so don't plan on many canned strategies to take advantage of them. For neutral naval units, we're trying to limit any movements to home ports or adjacent to home ports. We had a problem with neutral fleets being able to block "enemy" movements and that isn't right. Also, there are some spotting issues we're considering. We should be seeing another build soon, and then we'll get into another PBEM playtest game. This time, we'll probably offer a running AAR commentary.

[Edwin P.]

Thanks for the update. Looking forward to the AAR and information on any limits on the movements of Neutral Major units, especially for Russia. Is their any incentive or restriction that influences how many units they must have on their Western Border? As the Russians I would not want to make the mistake of Stalin and station the majority of my armies forward along the border with Germany.

[ September 21, 2005, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[pzgndr]

I've been campaigning for an event script regarding USSR's border garrison, sort of opposite what the German player has. Short of freezing units in place, what prevents a player from withdrawing deeper into Russia? Assuming the historical setup which led to gradual increases in activation, having MORE forces forward deployed would be aggressive and should result in faster activation, while having LESS forces forward deployed would be passive and should result in slower activation.

So. Allied player would now have a choice. Since MPP collection for the neutral majors is also related to activation level, if you delay activation you might take fewer initial invasion losses but would have less MPP along the way to build up for eventual war. If you speed things up, you risk provoking war before units in your production queue have a chance to arrive. Methinks these are fair tradeoffs, and should result in some interesting gameplay decisions.

Another wild card in all this is diplomacy. Allies could use a chit to increase USSR activation, perhaps to offset the penalty of a deep defense strategy, or Axis could use a chit to keep it low so they can focus on the west or the Med first. Who knows? SC1 provided some suspense regarding war entries; SC2 is bound to provide a lot more suspense and keep players guessing. Won't that be fun?!?!

[Edwin P.]

It surely will. More Suspense = More Fun

I assume that the stationing of Russian troops or lack thereof will not affect their annexation of the Baltic states, or does it?

And does Russia have to annex the Baltic states? or is it a choice? - ie Can Russia DOW Baltic States while neutral or is it an automatic annexation as in SC1.