EUBanana
Posts: 4552
Joined: 9/30/2003 From: Little England Status: offline
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Got up to the end of 1941 in a solitaire game. The Axis just got hosed. Poland fell in 1 turn. A winter of building (INF for France at first, then MIL) and France was attacked in May/June 1940 as soon as weather permitted. The Netherlands fell immediately, Belgium took 2 impulses, but then there was an epic slogging match with high casualties on both sides. The French held out until the weather went bad, despite the front line being literally packed to the max with Jerries (they had a sizable reserve but all the disorganised guys at the front were blocking them). Italy joined in but the Royal Navy parked carriers off of Italy and that was that pretty much. The oil rule was in play so reorging the Italian fleet for sorties was not easy and required Germany to pass up oil. Italy was buying the naval bombers and trying to use land based air but the British CVs always seemed to beat them. There was also 1 Hurricane at Malta pretty much from the get go. By summer 1941 there were 2 Hurricanes. France survived until late summer 1941. Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis at the same time and quickly fell, Greece was invaded but held out on the hexes around Athens until France was Vichy'd and they surrendered (they were aligned to France). Then the Soviets, who had been spamming INF from the beginning until there was no INF left to spam (and then they switched to armour) invaded Eastern Poland while the Wehrmacht was still railing back from France. They got as far as the eastern border of Germany before they were stopped. Meanwhile Chiang and Mao were doing a number of the Japanese. There were quite frequent low-odds attacks on the part of the Chinese, for every Japanese unit took a goodly while to come back again when you include the transport time from the Home Islands, while the Chinese units arrived right there (sometimes 1 or 2 hexes behind the front). Chiang got as far as besieging Shanghai but couldn't take it due to defensive shore bombardment. Mao was deadlocked east of Sian but kept managing to destroy Japanese units here and there, so he was contributing. Japanese air seems to be totally useless. Attacking the Chinese in the mountains is hard. I think I messed up here because the Japanese troops around Changsha in the initial deployments had no command HQ so supply was difficult. I didnt have Nationalist attack weakness on. I think Axis errors were the Germans buying a lot of synth oil (seemed like a good idea at the time, bought 2 of them in 1939, but this probably fatally denuded them of armour for France) and the Japanese losing too many units against the Chinese,and not using their HQ properly. I'm really not sure how Italy can beat the CW in the Med, carriers, even British ones > surface ships. Two of the better RN carriers in the Med made their lives horrible. Submarines were their only naval success, so they did clear out all the convoys from the Med at least but that was it. Then with the Japanese fighting around Shanghai, the USSR in strength in Poland, and the Commonwealth ruling the Med, I left it there. Allied hostomping. I find attacking quite hard I guess! either that or I am way too free with attacking with low odds as Germany. Oh, I also forgot about O-chits. If Germany used one in 1940 they probably woulda beaten the French with it. Pretty major mistake!
< Message edited by EUBanana -- 12/2/2013 12:21:16 PM >
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