AAR: Diplomaticus vs Morris--Morris welcome!

[supermax]

Quite funny how things got heated up here

Diplo, thanks for the praise, but i dont deserve that much... Rest assured that i cant wait for my revenge its gonna be as sweet as the first candy i tasted!

Dont hotseat too much, i'll be the one setting the pace of the game anyway

Just posturing, of course . A little bit of psychological warfare before the game wont hurt me will it?

hehehe

[Diplomaticus]

Quite funny how things got heated up here

Diplo, thanks for the praise, but i dont deserve that much... Rest assured that i cant wait for my revenge its gonna be as sweet as the first candy i tasted!

Dont hotseat too much, i'll be the one setting the pace of the game anyway

Just posturing, of course . A little bit of psychological warfare before the game wont hurt me will it?

hehehe

See what I mean, Max! This is exactly what I've been talking about.

Fine. Be that way then. I was going to open with my Insane Psychedelic Gambit, but now that I see your approach I will open with the standard Boring Predictable Opening. So there.

[supermax]

Send in the first turn the allied high-command is ready

[rkr1958]

Dont hotseat too much, i'll be the one setting the pace of the game anyway

As the allies! Ouch ... if I were you Diplomaticus, I'd be scared --- I'd be very scared indeed.

[Diplomaticus]

Dont hotseat too much, i'll be the one setting the pace of the game anyway

As the allies! Ouch ... if I were you Diplomaticus, I'd be scared --- I'd be very scared indeed.

I'm petrified. No lie.

[Crazygunner1]

Ha ha ha...good going guys

Give him hell Diplo....he deserves it No offense Max....

[supermax]

Ha ha ha...good going guys

Give him hell Diplo....he deserves it No offense Max....

all good guys.

Its actually not that bad. Really, what the allies can do to upset Germany's plans if she plays conservative?

Nothing much, i am just posturing come on

[Cybvep]

Germany is a she? What happened to the Fatherland? O_o

[supermax]

Germany is a she? What happened to the Fatherland? O_o

In my game against Dilpomaticus its the motherland , since, of course, i will be playing the allies.

I do root for my own side

hehehe

[Cybvep]

Forward, comrades!

Don't forget to make an AAR out of it.

[Clark]

Yup. Germany is a she: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Germania_figur.jpg

[Cybvep]

This is Germania, a broader term . AFAIK unlike Russia (Mother Russia), Germany is described as the Fatherland (quick check - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatherland).

[Clark]

This is Germania, a broader term . AFAIK unlike Russia (Mother Russia), Germany is described as the Fatherland (quick check - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatherland).

I know, I was being silly. And technically, both Deutschland and Vaterland are neuter, since "das Land" is a neuter noun. Then again, the German word for masculinity ("die Männlichkeit") is technically a feminine noun.

[Clark]

Finland only surrenders if there are too few Axis units in Finland and Finnish cities + rail depots are captured by the Allies. Tallinn (the capital of Estonia and not a rail depot) is also counted. If you read the history of the Finnish surrender you understand why. Tallinn is very close to Helsinki so a Soviet presence there means the Soviets could land or bombard Helsinki.

[...]

I don't think this is something bad with the game. If you forget to garrison your cities then you face the consequences. I always garrison mine. Morris is known for not garrisoning his cities. If you empty a minor ally country of all their forces then you have to blame yourself if the country surrenders if the enemy appears there. The real Finns would never allow their entire army to leave Finland and fight somewhere else. Most minor countries only sent a few of their units to other countries to fight.

I don't think it's crazy to assume that the Finns would not surrender if A) the entire Soviet Union had surrendered to the Germans, and B) the Brits raided one Finnish city other than Helsinki. Tallinn's pretty meaningless if there's no Soviet Union to use it as a staging ground.

And if Finland wouldn't have allowed their units to fight in a distant theater, why not actually restrict them to Finnish territory + a few hexes of Soviet territory?

[Diplomaticus]

Finland only surrenders if there are too few Axis units in Finland and Finnish cities + rail depots are captured by the Allies. Tallinn (the capital of Estonia and not a rail depot) is also counted. If you read the history of the Finnish surrender you understand why. Tallinn is very close to Helsinki so a Soviet presence there means the Soviets could land or bombard Helsinki.

[...]

I don't think this is something bad with the game. If you forget to garrison your cities then you face the consequences. I always garrison mine. Morris is known for not garrisoning his cities. If you empty a minor ally country of all their forces then you have to blame yourself if the country surrenders if the enemy appears there. The real Finns would never allow their entire army to leave Finland and fight somewhere else. Most minor countries only sent a few of their units to other countries to fight.

I don't think it's crazy to assume that the Finns would not surrender if A) the entire Soviet Union had surrendered to the Germans, and B) the Brits raided one Finnish city other than Helsinki. Tallinn's pretty meaningless if there's no Soviet Union to use it as a staging ground.

And if Finland wouldn't have allowed their units to fight in a distant theater, why not actually restrict them to Finnish territory + a few hexes of Soviet territory?

On your first point, I agree with Borger. This is just so easily preventable. Just make sure you take all of Estonia (there are no Estonian partisans, so once taken you're good) and do some basic garrisoning. The British gar floating in the Baltic Sea was known to the Axis, so the problem was foreseeable. And since we're speculating about what the Finns would/wouldn't have done, let's remember that the whole reason Finland surrendered was because commandoes landed and captured a Finnish port, and that was only possible because the Allies had seized the Kiel canal and had moved several strong naval units into the Baltic. Under those circumstances, I don't think it's reasonable to think that the Finns could read the handwriting on the wall and sue for peace. If you look at the AAR, you'll see that Germany itself surrendered just a few turns later, so why suppose that it's so unrealistic?

On the second point, I will point out that in AH's Third Reich (3rd ed.) I believe the Finns were restricted to w/in 6 hexes of the Finnish border.

[Clark]

OK, thinking about it a bit more with the context you've provided, I'll concede the point, especially considering that if someone is counting on Finnish units to save them from defeat from the Western Allies in 1944,they've probably lost anyway.

I'm still wondering in a broader sense if it might be smarter to just let things slide for Finland (IOW, repeal all specialized surrender conditions) if the Soviets are defeated, or go all out by restricting Finns from going any further east than Cheropovets or further south than Talinn. The middle ground might be automatically recalling Finnish units to guard Finland if a Finnish city is taken by foreign troops. Of course, I'm not the one coding the changes, and it might be a lot of work for a situation that's not likely to arise in more than a handful of games.

[Diplomaticus]

I think we all agree that the game allows the Axis (and the Allies, under certain circumstances) to make use of the minor allies (and the Italians!) in ways that are not historically plausible. However, this is so built into the game as it now stands, that to impose a set of restrictions on the use of these troops would very likely skew the game balance in all sorts of ways. Life is already so tough for the Axis, I'm not keen on the idea of adding even more burdens.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I think we should not add limitations to where minor country units could operate. That will complicate the game for little gain. People are allowed in GS to try ahistorical strategies and we don't know how minor powers would react to what-if strategies. So better let these countries have freedom to where they send their units. If you take the risk and empty their home country then you have to accept they surrender quickly if an enemy sneaks in a paratrooper or partisan into the minor country capital.

[Clark]

This is true, but Finland has restrictions that others do not.

[JimR]

Hey, guys, after a very long hiatus, I'm posting an update on our ongoing game.

First, an explanation: Right around the time that my armies were getting truly overwhelmed by Morris's attacks, I was also getting truly overwhelmed by RL. The several CEAW opponents who have been very patient with me for the past couple of months have sometimes had to wait and wait for my turns. I thought that this AAR had already served its purpose anyway, so with time short I didn't see much point in adding to an AAR that was based on now obsolete data (we began it in RC11).

Then something happened in the last move, and M asked me to please post the latest results for general discussion. Here they are:

1) It's now November 1942, and the Russians are at death's door. After the complete collapse of my attempted defense line in 1941, leading to the loss of both Stalingrad and Moscow, the Russians were in desperate straits. In the summer of 1942, I attempted to form a defense of the rough terrain near Omsk along the lines of what Joe Rock did, but the Axis got fair weather all through October *and even November* 1942, which led to this awful picture:



2) But on the bright side, the Allies have a quite strong landing in southern France (no Overlord yet), and here comes the big thing--look carefully at this screen shot:



The Western Allies hold Sardinia, Tunis, Tripoli, and are about to land in Tirana (Albania). Our partisan friends had taken Trieste a couple turns previously. Voila! Italy surrenders.

In an email, Morris wrote: "Tirana again ! If you read the AAR , you should know I met the same situation in the AAR with Doug . You should also know the reason for it ,also the comments! ... We always criticize others gamey . But as there are no allies troops in any  Italy city but a Patisan  who is almost die on a rail rub , Italy surrender ?/!! It is really unreasonable !!!! It is a gamey point !"

Well, you be the judge. On the one hand, M makes a sensible point. Should partisans really count in the surrender conditions? And this cheesy little gar grabbing Tirana?

However, I don't think it's a glitch or gamey. Picture this: Germans are running rampant all over Russia. Yeah! Meanwhile, their Italian "Allies" have been stuck on garrison duty in France. Oh, and they got kicked out of all of North Africa with zero help from their "allies". Oh, and they lost Sardinia too. Oh, and the Allies have liberated Corsica and have a very large force in Marseilles-Nice, and that force has begun to move into northern Italy. Hitler, Mussolini's "friend" couldn't even be bothered to send some old men & Hitler youth to stop a Yugoslavian partisan force from entering Trieste (which, btw, did actually happen late in the war). Don't you think under these circumstances that a coup d'état might overthrow Il Duce?

I'm late to the discussion, but I don't think it's "gamey" or unreasonable for Italy to surrender in these circumstances. In a game I'm currently playing (as the Axis) I got distracted and didn't pay attention to a Yugoslav partisan that moved into Sofia, triggering a Bulgarian surrender (actually, Bulgaria switched sides). That was my fault for leaving Sofia empty. In the case of this AAR, the Italians had suffered major territorial losses, were pressed on all sides, and didn't defend one of the cities that they started the game with. The British walked in. It's reasonable that Italy should surrender in these circumstances.