Suggestion for future unit types

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I think CeaW has good and varied unit types, but I miss 2 types of land units. Those land units are:

* Marine
A Marine is the same as a regular corps unit with the exception it should be able to invade from transports into enemy occupied hexes. If it clears the hex it will land in the land hex. If it doesn't clear the hex it should remain on the transport. When the marine attacks the enemy occupied hex it should use the land based stats, but the defender should get defense bonus because the assault is amphibious.

Marines should be a bit more expensive than regular corps units and can have approximately the same stats and tech increases as the regular corps. So its main benefit is that it can unload from a transport into an enemy occupied hex and trigger a combat. It will still be vulnerable onboard a transport to naval or air attacks, but it will be able to deplete land units defending the shore. Using marines would be a great way to break a contiguous coastal defense line of garrisons. The attacker can chose to attack a coastal hex that's adjacent to several sea hexes so several marine units can attack the defender there. That would make sure it's possible to get a beachhead on defended coast lines.

Marines usually fought a bit better than regular infantry corps so they could have starting stats a bit higher than infantry corps, but follow the same tech advances as the regular infantry corps.

Maybe a sensible price for marines could be about 50 PPs?

* Paratrooper
A Paratrooper is the same as a regular corps with the exception it can load and air transport and then be transported within the attack range of the air transport (or maybe half the attack range if you use the stats of a tac bomber for the air transport) to another land hex and be dropped there. You can make this easy by letting the air transport have the same stats as tac bombers. This should function the same way as a sea transport. You load the paratrooper unit and then the paratrooper is converted to an air transport (with same stats and icons as the tac bomber). Then you can move the tac bomber within attack range (or half attack range) and drop the paratrooper there if the land hex is empty. The air transport should be possible to intercept just as regular air units attack a hex. So when you drop a paratrooper in a land hex it's considered an attack and enemy fighters will intercept it and damage it. A paratrooper should not be able to attack an adjacent enemy unit the same turn it drops.

Paratroopers should also have a higher supply level of 1 instead of standard 0 the after it's dropped. Paratroopers were often dropped with some supplies as well. I think a good rule would be to let the paratrooper have supply level 3 the first turn after it was dropped. Each further turn it stays out of supply should drop the supply level by 1 until it reaches 0. This means an out of supply paratrooper unit can fight quite well for a few turns.

Paratroopers would be great to break river lines or capture terrain behind enemy lines.

Paratroopers should be quite expensive because of their great potential and should have stats a bit better than the infantry corps. Paratroopers used to be elite units so they should have stats more like motorized units except for movement. Paratroopers could get tech advances the same way as motorized units.

Maybe a sensible price for paratroopers could be about 60 PPs?

You could have a cost of maybe 10 PPs each time a paratrooper embarks an air transport. This is the same as a land unit pays 4 PPs to embark on a sea transport. This way you don't paradrop the paratrooper just for fun. You do it when it's important.

Is it possible to have these units for a future version of CeaW?

[vypuero]

Both good ideas

[davetheroad]

Marines - not used in europe ww2, players will use them as cheap shore bombardment units. make them cost 100 points and restrict to ONE corps

Paratroops - players will scatter them all over the map in suicide missions. Make them cost 100 points and restrict to ONE corps, also automatically out of supply

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Marines - not used in europe ww2, players will use them as cheap shore bombardment units. make them cost 100 points and restrict to ONE corps

Paratroops - players will scatter them all over the map in suicide missions. Make them cost 100 points and restrict to ONE corps, also automatically out of supply

You can call the marines amphibious corps units if it's better. Amphibious units were used in Europe. Just look at Overlord. I just used the word marine so people know the purpose of the unit.

Why would they do that if loading a marine on a sea transport or a paratrooper in an air transport will be expensive? Remember that a marine on a transport can't repair damage. So if it becomes seriously depleted it will have to get back home and unload to repair. Then it will have to embark on the transport again and pay maybe 10 PP's once more. This is the same reason we don't let regular land units load and unload all the time in ports. It spends PPs.

A paratrooper will also spend PP's to enter an air transport and after it lands it will have to reconnect to with the other units to be used again. You can make the loading of a paratrooper can only happen if the supply level is 3 or higher.

As long as the paratrooper units are more expensive than the regular units, but fight just marginally better, it means it's poor economy to drop them behind enemy lines and fight the enemy land units. They will suffer losses and can't repair them as quickly. So if e. g. Germany wants to build lots of paratroopers then he will not have many other units.

The key to both the marine and the paratrooper is to let them pay to enter their transports just like regular land units. That means people won't use them without a plan.

[stalins_organ]

Why have paratroopers fight better at all?

They had the best recruits because they were lightly equipped - they are elite light infantry - just give them the same stat's as regular infantry IMO.

[Happycat]

Why have paratroopers fight better at all?

They had the best recruits because they were lightly equipped - they are elite light infantry - just give them the same stat's as regular infantry IMO.

I disagree with the assertion that the paratroops obtained the best recruits because they were lightly equipped.

Firstly, they were not lightly equipped--they jumped with less weight, because their heavier stuff was dropped separately (with the exception of D-Day, when some idiot came up with the idea of "jump bags" which carried equipment and were attached to the paratrooper's leg by a rope---the freakin' bags ripped in most cases, spilling their contents all over Normandy). In any event, on the ground the paratroops carried approximately the same weight as a regular infantryman.

Secondly, regardless of the weight of their equipment, the attraction for most recruits was the glamor, the jump boots, the privilege of tucking one's trouser cuff into said jump boot, and the prospect of belonging to something that was, as you point out, "elite".

Extra stats in the game would translate into a reasonable reflection of the real-world capabilities of WW2 paratroops (including the Germans---although the severe losses suffered by the Falschirmjager on Crete convinced Hitler not to utilize airborne assaults in future, the German paratroops continued as an elite infantry force throughout the war).

I think Stauffenberg's idea is great, although perhaps the paratrooper could just change modes to airborne, rather than utilizing a tac or strat. Make it a rule that the paratrooper must embark in a hex adjacent to a friendly city. Additionally, the paratrooper should be in full supply during the turn it drops, in half supply the following turn, and if still isolate, in deep shit the third

[davetheroad]

If marines cost less than battleships and cause more casulaties in amphibous combat there is a incentive to build them rather than battleships! It is important that any new unit type should not have unintended consequences. Making them very expensive, say 100pp means they should be used for their intended purposes. Follow up regular infantry and armour will then exploit the invasion. The 'marines' will also be very expensive to repair, reflecting losses in amphibous and support equipment.

The problem with paratroops is players dont use them historically. there were no deep suicide missions by corps sized units and IIRC only 3 or 4 airborne operations. They were incredibly expensive to build and maintain, plus VERY vulnerable in combat to anything equivalent to a panzer kampfgruppe!. Players WILL use them in suicide missions, spreading them all over the map like super partisans popping up in the most awkward places. Actually paratroops should be WEAKER than regular infantry. Again they should be very expensive to build and repair.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

If marines cost less than battleships and cause more casulaties in amphibous combat there is a incentive to build them rather than battleships! It is important that any new unit type should not have unintended consequences. Making them very expensive, say 100pp means they should be used for their intended purposes. Follow up regular infantry and armour will then exploit the invasion. The 'marines' will also be very expensive to repair, reflecting losses in amphibous and support equipment.

The problem with paratroops is players dont use them historically. there were no deep suicide missions by corps sized units and IIRC only 3 or 4 airborne operations. They were incredibly expensive to build and maintain, plus VERY vulnerable in combat to anything equivalent to a panzer kampfgruppe!. Players WILL use them in suicide missions, spreading them all over the map like super partisans popping up in the most awkward places. Actually paratroops should be WEAKER than regular infantry. Again they should be very expensive to build and repair.

Marines SHOULD inflict a lot more casualties in amphibious landings than battleships. Battleships are used for shore bombardment and the main purpose is to lower the efficiency of the defending unit. People have been debating on this forum that battleships inflict too much damage in shore bombardment because it's not very historical.

I don't think you can compare amphibious units to battleships and say amphibious units should be even more expensive than battleships (they cost 80 PPs). Batlleships are great for naval combat and that's the main reason they were built. Amphibious corps units can't do anything at all at sea except sail to a coastal hex and invade the hex.

Do you really think people will build amphibius corps units to protect against enemy naval units? How can you inflict damage upon DD's, CV's and BB's with an amphibious corps? You have to distiguish between naval warfare and land warfare. For land warfare amphibious corps SHOULD be a lot more efficient than BB's.

Also remember than an amphibious unit ashore will defend at sea like a transport. So a BB, DD or sub attacking it will almost destroy it before it gets ashore. Air units can also seriously damage these units.

The main reason to have an amphibious corps unit in CeaW is that regular land units can NOT invade occupied coastal hexes. That is not very historical. Just look at all the amphibious invasions in WW2 (Overlord, Husky, Anvil, Iwo Jima, Okinawa etc.). But instead of letting every land unit being able to invade occupied hexes I think it's better to make a marine unit with the special purpose of invading occupied hexes.

Remember that if a marine enters a coast line and see an empty hex it will invade there instead because it will be guaranteed to get ashore. So the need for marines will only be where the defender has placed garrisons in every coastal hex to prevent landings. E. g. the Channel coast in France or Southern Italy. How can the attacker get ashore if the defender has garrisoned each coastal hex? You have to use BB's to bombard the coast and then use tac bombers and fighters to DESTROY the defender so a land unit can get ashore. But if you fail this during one turn the defender can retreat this depleted unit and place a new full strength defender in the hex. So it will be very very difficult to form a beachhead even if you have very superior forces both in naval, air and land.

It's not historical that naval and air units completely kill defenders. The reason the Allies got ashore in Normandy was because the land units stormed the defended coast and annihilated the defenders there. BB's and air units were used as support units.

You write that a player can produce hordes of units. CeaW is made in such a way you can normally build only one good unit each turn. So if USA builds a marine corps he can't at the same time build a BB or a fighter. He must do it the next turn. So if a player puts too much effort into one type of unit he will be weak in other types. If you look at the real WW2 you will see that the Allies in fact had several amphibious units for Torch, Husky, Overlord, Anvil etc. You should remember that as soon as the amphibious unit gets ashore it will be like a normal infantry corps. So if you built hordes of amphibious units it's the same as building hordes of infantry corps. You can do that now. Why would an attacker invade an occupied coastal hex if he can land adjacent to this hex and attack it from land? So the big need for amphibious units will be when the defender has placed defenders in most coastal hexes to prevent landing.

In my playtest game against Happycat he has taken Sicily and I expect an invasion into mainland Italy. But I know I can just place land units in all coastal hexes and hexes adjacent to them. That means he will not get port supply if he lands. I also have armor units who can reach all coastal hexes he can land it. These armor units have total tech level 14 and will kill the invader easily. I wonder how he will be able to get ashore. I have lots of air units in the area who will bombard his battleships who try to bombard my coastal land units. I have already killed 2 of his battleships. So he can't kill coastal units by bombardment only. His invasion would have been a lot easier if he could use amphibious corps to create Anzio or Salerno. So I'm exploiting a shortcoming of the game so the Allies can't get ashore. Remember that he will only have supply level 1 if he gets ashore in a hex far from a port. That means he can only repair 1 step per turn. My armor units will deplete him so much that if he survives the first turn he will for sure be destroyed the second turn.

So amphibious units are very important to be able to get ashore in defended areas. I don't think for a second people will build them instead of BB's.

You write about the use of paratrooper that they will be used as super partisans all the time. Then you forget about some very important things. Partisans are FREE, paratroopers will cost a lot of PPs. If you drop a paratrooper behind enemy lines it will lose its supply after 2 turns unless yoy can link up with your other land units. That means you can't repair losses or move far. So the defender can easily kill them off. You also forget it costs PPs to get the paratroopers airborne. You can make the drop range the same as the attack range of fighter units. That means 6 hexes or 9 hexes when you get tech increase in strategic warfare. If you must start in or adjacent to a friendly city it means you can't paradrop far behind enemy lines.

I would be happy as the defender if my opponent wasted lots of PP's on paratroopers and dropped them behind my lines to perform what you call suicide mission (e. g. try to attack my air units). First these paratroopers need to land. My fighters can intercept them and them they will land depleted. A good defender will always have reserves so my reserves should be able to kill these units. So if the attacker built several paratroopers it means he doesn't have built lots of armor or tac bombers. That suits me fine.

I think paratroopers should be a bit stronger than regular corps because they can also be used in the front line without using their paradrop ability. They were elite soldiers who fought better than regular troops even when grounded. Germany had fallschirmjägers who fought very well even though they were never used in paradrop missions.

A good attacker will use a paradrop as a surprise to break a key defense line (e. g. to get across Dnepr). Just having paratroopers means that the defender will need to consider being attacked by paradrops and keep reserves.

Paratroopers will be excellent attackers for e. g. Overlord. Then you can use the paratrooper to drop inland and attack the coastal defender so the amphibious unit has a better chance to get ashore. If you use paratroopers wisely they will be a good asset. But if you waste them as super partisans on suicide missions then you will lose the game. Remember what I wrote above for the amphibious units. If you build many paratroopers you will not be able to build many other units. That means you will be weaker elsewhere. Paratroopers won't be super units you can drop and attack and then drop and attack again. Each time you makes paratrooper become airborne it should cost a sum of PP's similar to the cost of embarking a transport. Letting it cost e. g. 10 PP's per paratrooper will mean you will run out of PP's quickly if you misuse this ability. Since you need to start adjacent to cities it means you can't use paratroopers to get airborne, drop and repeat the process to leap-frog far into enemy territory. After you've landed within enemy territory you need to link up with the other friendly units and then get adjacent to a city to be able to get airborne again. If you also have the rule you need to have supply level 3 or better to become airborne then it means you can't capture enemy cities isolated from your front and use this city to get airborne again.

All things you mention about misuse of amphibious and paratrooper units can easily be fixed by setting the right cost for these units and also the right cost for using their special ability. I only think it would be a problem if these units were very cheap and it didn't cost anything to load these units to a sea or air transport. But why make them in such a way they will be misused. Make them in such a way where they can have a vital role to play.

I think the main objective to implement them would be that Slitherine would need to reprogram the AI to use them. The easy part is to make these units for the game. The hard part is to program the AI for them.

[Happycat]

If I was playing against someone who used paratroops as "suicide partisans", I would re-think my choice of opponents. Most people I have played wargames with, via any medium, have been reasonably well schooled in history and tend to make reasonable/realistic choices.

But a few house rules never hurt, regardless. Even Stauffenberg and I, who seem to share a similar sense of history and what should and should not occur in a wargame, have adopted a few house rules.

Rejecting the idea of new units simply because someone might use them ahistorically doesn't seem reasonable to me.

I suspect someone who spends 80 or 100 pp's on paratroops, drops them into the Pripets Marshes, and thens watches them starve to death will soon enough come to appreciate the bankruptcy of that approach

[mrdozer2379]

maybe even have an option to have paratroopers or marines ussable or not in game, kinda like the oil rule.

[stalins_organ]

The trouble with having battleships not cause casualties (which I agree is moire realistic - they should lower readiness and destroy entrenchments and maybe do 1 casualty) - is that it's not really feasible to have battleships bombard an enemy unit the same turn as another unit tries to land 'cos there's no stacking.

without looking at the map, I expect that most hexes you can get 1 ship bombarding from an adjacent hex to something trying to land, but in a number you won't get any at all.

In this case IMO function has to follow form - the form of the game is no stacking and so any unit occupying a hex has to be able to do real material damage to the enemy or it is a waste of space.

[davetheroad]

If marines cost considerable pp they might be a useful addition IF they were used for their intended purpose, LANDINGS!. What I would not like to see is a marine unit lending fire support to another marine unit with no intention of actually landing inself. Several corps worth of marines just sitting opposite a beach waiting a chance to land does not seem realistic in any way. If the defending hex was vacated due to casualties or retreat the current attacking marine MUST itself land, no player choice of a new fresh unit, the unit which actually performed the assault must be the one to land. Marines who do not successfully land after combat should also lose their attack ability until disembarked and re- embarked, e.g. you have to return to port to reorganise/replenish after your debacle.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

If marines cost considerable pp they might be a useful addition IF they were used for their intended purpose, LANDINGS!. What I would not like to see is a marine unit lending fire support to another marine unit with no intention of actually landing inself. Several corps worth of marines just sitting opposite a beach waiting a chance to land does not seem realistic in any way. If the defending hex was vacated due to casualties or retreat the current attacking marine MUST itself land, no player choice of a new fresh unit, the unit which actually performed the assault must be the one to land. Marines who do not successfully land after combat should also lose their attack ability until disembarked and re- embarked, e.g. you have to return to port to reorganise/replenish after your debacle.

Those are good rules. A marine corps storms the beach and can't suddenly decide to get back at sea if they get a foothold. If they decide to get back at sea it means they lost their landing craft and must get back to port and pay the PP cost again to pay for these landing craft.

So I agree that amphibious corps units who eliminate the defender must get ashore and then can't get seaborne again until it gets adjacent to a friendly port.

I think amphibious units who fail to get ashore can continue to invade the SAME hex from the transport. But he should not be able to sail to another enemy hex and try to invade there before he has disembarked and embarked again paying for the landing craft. He should be allowed to land into friendly hexes. The reason for this is that an amphibious unit trying to land in a hex will end up in the beach and have left their landing craft. So it can't easily get back to sea and invade some other hex. The landing craft units are stuck in the beach. Therefore I think it's possible to continue to attack the same hex even if you didn't get ashore. That means you're stuck on the beaches and can't advance inland into the hex. This is what happened to the Omaha invaders for some time.

Slitherine can do this easily by having 3 different buttons for load / unload of units.

1. Load / unload a transport. This can be used by any unit. And it costs 4 PPs to load.
But you can only unload into a friendly hex.

2. Load / unload an invasion transport. This can only be used by a marine corps. It costs 8 PPs to load.
If you use this method you can unload into an enemy controlled coastal hex or a friendly hex if you prefer that. But if you use this ability to unload your marine this button will only light up if you continue to invade the same hex if unsuccessful the first turn.

If you move while inside the transport this button will be greyed out. You need to disembark into friendly territory using the first button and then embark again adjacent to a port to get another chance to invade.

3. Load / unload an air transport. This can only be used by a paratrooper corps. It costs 12 PPs to load.
Paratroopers can only land into empty hexes within range of the air transport. An air transport use the same range as the land spotting range of a tac bomber or strat bomber (so tech advances will increase the range). The reason to use the land spotting range is that you can then sea all hexes you can reach and know which will be empty or not. That means you don't paradrop into occupied hexes. So the air transport will have the same stats as the tac bomber or strat bomber. The game will draw small circles in all hexes within the land spotting range of this air transport. You click on the hex you want to drop into and you fly there just like a tac bomber. Enemy fighters intercept and you counter intercept. After all interceptions are completed you drop into the hex and can attack adjacent units.

Paratroopers can only load an air transport if it's located in a hex with supply level 3 or highter in or adjacent to a friendly city or air unit. A paratrooper will have full supply the turn it lands, half supply the turn afterwards and no supply 2 turns afterwards unless it manages to reconnect to friendly controlled territory. A paratrooper should be able to attack an adjacent enemy unit next to the hex it lands. Paratroopers on board an air transport can be intercepted by enemy fighters and damaged.

[James Taylor]

How about keeping this simple, when you purchase a marine or paratroop unit from the build Q you pay the appropriate cost for the transport since the unit will be used in that capacity.

Once the unit has been used in the intended feature it will have to be returned to the Q for repurchase at 50% before it performs another mission of its designated capacity. You could use a sort of "disband" feature.

If a marine unit is unsuccessful at a landing attempt to dislodge the enemy simply it returns automatically to the Build Q (unit cadre) for repurchase at 75%.

Any paratroop unit cut off from a line of communication/supply will not be able to "disband" and will be subsequently rendered combat ineffective(automatic Q return) in a certain number of turns, say 3, unless communications are restored. You will have to repurchase at 75% of full price.

[stalins_organ]

"Marines" should not be a separate type of unit IMO - any unit could land amphibiously - what was required was the gear to do it - the allies spent a massive amount on landing craft, the mulberries, pluto, etc to put ashore some standard infantry units that had had a bit of training on how to get out of boats - they had to do research to figure it out, and the experiences of Torch, Husky and Dieppe to show where they were going right and wrong.

To me this scrams out to be a tech that heeds to be researched, and a type of embarkation that can be used by any land unit at a cost.

[Redpossum]

"Marines" should not be a separate type of unit IMO - any unit could land amphibiously - what was required was the gear to do it - the allies spent a massive amount on landing craft, the mulberries, pluto, etc to put ashore some standard infantry units that had had a bit of training on how to get out of boats - they had to do research to figure it out, and the experiences of Torch, Husky and Dieppe to show where they were going right and wrong.

To me this scrams out to be a tech that heeds to be researched, and a type of embarkation that can be used by any land unit at a cost.

Predictably enough, I'm going to majorly disagree here. (Ack, no! Possum disagreeing with S_O?!?!?! Heavens, that's never happened before!)

While the USMC wasn't used at all in the European theatre in WWII, if you look at the performance of Marine units versus Army units when both were used in the same amphibious operation in the Pacific theatre, the difference is glaringly obvious. When faced with heavy opposition, Army units simply stalled in place. Marine units under the same circumstances went forward regardless of casualties. Okinawa is the best example of this.

I'm not pretending that Marines were any kind of supermen; something like 1/3 of the first wave ashore at Iwo Jima died before even reaching the beach. It was mainly a difference in training and indoctrination, although the issue of volunteers versus draftees probably had something to do with it.

So when you say "any unit could land amphibiously", well, yes that's true as far as it goes. But landing amphibiously is not the same as conducting a successful amphibious assault.

[Happycat]

But landing amphibiously is not the same as conducting a successful amphibious assault.

True enough. Washing up on the beach technically speaking would be landing amphibiously, albeit not to any great effect.

[stalins_organ]

While the USMC wasn't used at all in the European theatre in WWII, if you look at the performance of Marine units versus Army units when both were used in the same amphibious operation in the Pacific theatre, the difference is glaringly obvious. When faced with heavy opposition, Army units simply stalled in place. Marine units under the same circumstances went forward regardless of casualties. Okinawa is the best example of this.

I'm not pretending that Marines were any kind of supermen; something like 1/3 of the first wave ashore at Iwo Jima died before even reaching the beach. It was mainly a difference in training and indoctrination, although the issue of volunteers versus draftees probably had something to do with it.

All of which can be replicated by other means - if Marines are better motivated then they can be some sort of Elite infantry - along with the SS, russian guards, etc.

However that's a completely different issue to how to conduct amphibious assaults in a game of CEAW's scale and mechanisms.

[/quote]So when you say "any unit could land amphibiously", well, yes that's true as far as it goes. But landing amphibiously is not the same as conducting a successful amphibious assault.[/quote]

and the vast majority of successful amphibious assasults were carried out by units that were NOT marines - in the Pacific there are numerous small actions by the likes of australian, New Zealand and British forces and probably many US ones I'm not familiar with, in the European theatre there are the 4 big allied landings of D-Day, Husky, Dragoon, torch, plus Salerno, Anzio and the invasion of the toe of Italy, plus numerous landings in the Greek Ilsands in 1943-44 and several large landings by the Russians in the Black Sea - some successful, some less so.

Marines as a unit are not needed - the ability to amphibiously assault with any unit is what is required.

[rkr1958]

I'm enjoying (and learning) reading through older threads. The ideas presented here by Stauffenberg and others concerning amphibious units/functions and paratrooper units/functions are appealing to me. Has there been any activity or thoughts on the development front for including these in CEaW?

My 2c's on amphibious landings. In all the history that I've read and historical documentaries that I've seen about WWII amphibious in both the Pacific and Atlantic air and naval pre-landing bombardment was usually ineffective with respect to large invasion (e.g., Normandy, Iwo Jima). This seems reversed in CEaW. If fact, the only way in CEaW to invade an occupied coastal hex is to blast the defending unit out of it. So in mind, while not explicitly represented in these actions, this "blasting" essentially represents amphibious & airborne invasions operations against the occupied hex. If successful, i.e., the unit is destroyed or retreats, this action is followed up by units loaded on transports. Anyway ... that's how I justify what's going on in the game mechanics. However, if the suggestions of Stauffenberg and others in thread could be implemented then in my opinion that would make an already enjoyable CEaW game more enjoyable and historical. Similar to what I read by someone in another post, I play CEaW not for gaming but for exploring the history and of WWII in Europe.

Another couple of things about amphibious invasions ... in the current game unit can "transport" from the US directly to hostile shores (e.g., France, Italy) and all coastal hexes can be invaded. If amphibious & airborne operations are more explicitly modeled in the game as suggest in this thread another consideration might be that only certain coastal hexes can be invaded.

[rkr1958]

Two or three of thoughs occured to me when playing the Allies vs Axis AI on the subject of invasions and naval transport. By the way, the Axis AI does a lousy job protecting France against invasion. I was able to invade in mid '42 and capture Berlin in December '42 knocking Germay out of the war. I was able to hold on to France until late '40 at which time I evacuated the BEF consisting of two crops from Brest. I sent them directly to Africa and captured Libya by late '41.

The evacuation was finished one turn after the capture of Paris. As such the Brest was under British control. The Axis AI never bothered to capture Brest even though the BEF was long gone and fighting in Africa. Anyway, I was able to stage an unopposed landing back into France via Brest initially. As the recapture of France advanced I did "invade" at Normandy and points east even in Germany itself. Again, these "invasions" were fairly easy and I "invaded" with many troops that stage directly from the US via transport.

During the game the following occured to me (a lot of which has been discussed before).

1. Make transport and invasion separate functions, with invasion costing more and possibly with a lower max movement (vs transport). This would make "invading" from the US more costly and time consuming.

2. Allow transport from port to port only (you might need to add more ports).

3. Allow invasion only against certain costal hexes (e.g., the ones with beaches that could support corp size units.) In this case you might have to allow invading units to occupy water hexes next the invadable hexes for one to two turns. After that time the owner would lose them or would have to pay an evacuation cost (and hit to unit effectiveness/strength too) to convert to a transport.

4. Also, an evacuation transport function might be nice/fun. In this case units could evacuated from any beach/invadable hex for a certain cost and loss of effectiveness/strength. Again, this would also be nice to save units involved in failed seaborne invasion.