What if I dont want to do it larrys way?

[Brain Damaged]

SZ is sea zones

[Captain Beremir]

SZ means Sea Zone

[Brain Damaged]

Is there an echo in here?

[maverick_76]

*Puts hand to ear*

[SgtBlitz]

So seririously I have to (assuming I am axis) take over almost all of europe. and THEN go after america? I like games where I can do a lot of different things (the 1941 scenerio in AA50 comes to mind). It just sounds so forced for the axis player...take france...then take britian....oh no! now I have to fight russia. Then comes america. I dont think poor little italy will be much help at all...

Heh is it a wargame simulation based on historical objectives after all...  I'm just wishing that different alliances/treaties could be made after all, like where Germany and Russia remain neutral and Germany with Italy can go after Britain and USA after knocking out France...  Or even better, no USA war declaration at all.  Technically, for about a year's worth of the war from Jun 1940 to Jun 1941, Germany's only real enemy was Britain (with minor flareups in the Balkans that delayed Barbarossa)!   The rest of WWII was declared by the Germans on Russia and the USA, so if the Germans hadn't declared war on more than one foe at a time, there very much likely would have been a very different outcome.

[maverick_76]

I would like to see that as well, or make the game play out as if there is no way to avoid it but for the US to enter the war, say since Japan and Germany make an alliance, if Japan attacks the US then it is on! Or make a bonus for either the Russians or the Germans if they can capture and hold the Middle East oil fields, the life blood of the blitz, fuel. That would be sure to instigate conflict between the two at some point.

[Captain Beremir]

oops, didn't see your reply when I posted Brain Damaged

[idk_iam_swiss]

that certianly would add a diplimatic element to this wargame...unfortunatly if germany and russia remain neutral your just going to have russia stack all sorts of non infantry and then take you out when you are at your weakest...(like after a sealion failure)

[Twigley]

Just to say - do not be fooled by statistics.

The reality is that due to the purges and loads of other issues the Russian army was not an effective fighting force in June 1941. By December of that year Stalin had given plenty of lee-way back to his generals (unlike Hitler who tightened his control of the army yet further). The Germans lost half there forces by mid 1942 in Russia and they were still a long way from being booted out.

[SgtBlitz]

Just to say - do not be fooled by statistics.

The reality is that due to the purges and loads of other issues the Russian army was not an effective fighting force in June 1941. By December of that year Stalin had given plenty of lee-way back to his generals (unlike Hitler who tightened his control of the army yet further). The Germans lost half there forces by mid 1942 in Russia and they were still a long way from being booted out.

Yeah, Hitler was his own worst enemy; he was lucky throughout the majority of his career and it bred a sense of egotistical megalomania where he could do nothing wrong, which lead to his downfall in micromanaging his armies when they started encountering actual resistance in Russia.  There was this alternate history novel I read back in the day called "1945" where Hitler got put into a coma from a plane crash in Nov. 1941 and it was the best thing ever to happen to Germany, since the generals were able to regain control and set up a defensive perimeter instead of going all out for Moscow in the winter.  It was a pretty interesting read culminating in a Nazi sneak attack on the Manhattan Project in Tennessee in America, which isn't entirely unplausible if Germany had won its war against Russia.  (This is also how I view Axis and Allies, where essentially you're taking over control at a certain point in history where just about anything is possible.)

What I'm saying about alliances is couldn't it be possible for Germany, Italy, AND Russia to go after Britain and the US in 1940?  Technically they were in a non-aggression pact but the US and Britain were the imperialist capitalists the Reds were eternal enemies against.  I mean, its not impossible; the Cold War proved that Allies' alliance during WWII was just a alliance of convenience to defeat fascist Germany and Japan anyway.  Also like Germany and Japan's alliance as the Axis powers, as their end goals would have had them squabbling over spheres of influence and control if they had taken over the world between them.  If Russia helped in taking out Britain, wouldn't that be end game scenario right there?  (Of course, this would then end up like a big game of Risk, with Russia and Germany continually sizing up one another across Eastern Europe...)

[maverick_76]

I think to do it that way you need to have National Objectives in the game, according to Hitler's Mein Kompf (sp?), the Germans needed room to grow, which could be found in the Russian countryside. I think if we made an objective that both could fight for, one being that Russia wanted to expand it's sphere of influence further into Europe while Germany wanted to increase the size of it's empire Eastward, well that will inevitably cause a conflict at some point in the game, just as it did in real life. Japan's NO would be to increase it's sphere of influence throughout the entire Pacific and Asia, while Britain's would be to liberate France and keep their colonial holdings in Africa, the Pacific and Asia. The US's only NO would be to become the strongest economy by the end of the game, which can only be achieved by taking back the Pacific and liberating Western Europe to allow the export economy of the US to grow. So if we take these simple objectives and these are the only rules that the game has as far as treaties and such are concerned, we see that we get games that will be similar to WWII but also different at the same time. I think everyone wants that, games that follow the spirit of WWII but end up differently, especially if you are an Axis player, lol!

[idk_iam_swiss]

idk...that makes every nation sound selfish. There isnt neccesarilly a "bad guy" if you play that way.

[Brain Damaged]

I'm more for the pointless killing with no objective but to win the game

[maverick_76]

But if you think about it all the nations had a goal in mind when fighting in WWII. This only makes the game show people how they would have played out the motives these nations had at the time. Churchill once wrote in his diary that the allies had won after all when the US decided to enter the war, the UK and US are allies but first and foremost they want to see their nations be the best or have the upper hand in their own way by the time the fighting is over. The reason that Britain and USA are natural allies is they share a common economics system and both profit off each other regardless of who is really making the money. There are reasons that we are natural enemies to communism and fascism, our economies don't mix well and therefore we don't see eye to eye. There are reasons we care so much about the state of North Korea or Iran but could really care less about states like Darfur or Somalia. N. Korea and Iran are right next to huge economic interests for us, which can be used to better the lives of American citizens. Dafur and Somalia have nothing that begs our presence, so there are no troops there. So we see that wars are fought with real reasons in mind, remember we were not even going to battle in Europe until Hitler declared war on us because at the time our economy was pretty self sufficient and we really didn't care one way or the other who ruled over there.     

[Brain Damaged]

Politics, politics, shmoliticks, let's just play a game where we can play with cool plastic pieces and try to kill each others forces and take over the world.