France totally useless

Narvik

After reading some more, it looks like the Germans captured the French Capital, and since they had nowhere to go, they surrendered, and the armistice treaty said that all French territories that was not occupied, should stay strictly neutral. And the evidence support this.

After Paris fell in 1940, Japan wanted to occupy French Indochina. Since FIC was now a neutral state, the Japanese had to combat move into it and kill a lot of French foreign legionares until they finally surrendered. If FIC had been pro-Axis neutral, this fighting would not have happened.

US and UK wanted to visit Morocco in 1942, but since Morocco at this time was a strictly neutral state, Patton had to fight his way into it. Then the Germans combat moved into, yes correct, the now strictly neutral Vichy France, and the French sailor now scuttled the French Navy at Toulon. If Vichy had been pro-Axis neutral, then the Germans could have non-combat moved into it and turned the French ships into German ships. This did not happened, just because Vichy was strictly neutral, and not pro this or that.

The OOB rules are wrong.

CWO Marc

@Narvik:

The OOB rules are wrong.

The OOB rules admit this: the rulebook says that “This game doesnâ€™t deal with the German installment of the Vichy government in France.”

Global 1940’s concept of pro-Allied neutrals, pro-Axis neutrals and strict neutrals is potentially tricky to use when describing France (and many other countries) in WWII because it’s an abstract mechanism that crams into the same category countries which were actually in very different situations during the war. Just as an example, the game designates three countries as “pro-Axis neutrals”: Finland, Bulgaria and Iraq. Finland participated actively in the invasion of the USSR in 1941, as an Axis co-belligerent fighting a nominally separate war, and held the Kerelian Isthmus for two years. Bulgaria symbolically declared war against the US and the UK, but not against its neighbor the USSR, so it essentially did nothing militarily. Iraq briefly sided with the Axis following a pro-Axis coup, was promptly invaded by Indian troops, and within a few weeks had been put under new management by the Allies.

Politically, France and its territories (and its leaders) were a disjointed and contradictory mess after the June 1940 surrender. The Vichy regime maintained an affectation of neutrality, to try to convince itself that it was a free and autonomous nation, but it was in reality a puppet state of Germany, with whom it collaborated in many ways. Some of its leaders, like Pierre Laval, were outright collaborators; others, like Darlan, were unprincipled opportunists who changed their allegiances to fit the circumstances of the moment. I always think of Darlan when I hear Capitaine Renault in Casablanca say, “If you ask for what my convictions are, I have none. I blow ith the wind. And right now the prevailing wind blows from Vichy.” He switched to the Allied side when the Allies invaded North Africa, and soon thereafter was assassinated (possibly by a Frenchman who wasn’t impressed by Darlan’s sudden conversion to the Allied cause). The Allied invasion of North Africa did indeed involve some fighting, but beforehand it also involved some back-room negotiations with nominally-Vichy officers so that the fighting would be kept to a minimum. Even the Free French side was a mess: General Giraud and General de Gaulle were blatant rivals (notwithstanding their famous Casablanca handshake), and the history of the submarine Surcouf is another example of how murky the Vichy / Free French situation could get.

So in essence, any depiction of France in WWII in practical gaming rules is bound to involve a lot of simplification (even to the point of being completely unhistorical) because otherwise you’d need some very complicated political rules.

calvinhobbesliker

Actually, Bulgaria never bordered the USSR…Romania was in the way.

CWO Marc

@calvinhobbesliker:

Actually, Bulgaria never bordered the USSR…Romania was in the way.

Good point. I was referring to Bulgaria and the USSR both having a shoreline on the Black Sea, but I should have been more precise.

CWO Marc

@General:

I understand the novelty of adding France to a large scale European map, but can someone remind me why they use USSR sculpts for so many units that they won’t build? Once liberated they used British and American equipment so they may as well have blue American pieces. Or just cut their piece count and give them to the British and American piece pools.

My guess is that it’s related to the large power / small power pairings in Global. Except for a game with two players (one Allied, one Axis), the number-of-players chart always pairs China with the US and always pairs ANZAC with the UK in games involving three or more people. The USSR and France each get tacked on to one of those pairings in 3-player games, but get tacked together in the 4-, 5- and 6-player games. The rules say that US artillery and aircraft units should be used for China, which reflects the US / China pairing. ANZAC’s equipment pieces are of Commonwealth – and sometimes specifically of British – origin, which reflects the UK / ANZAC pairing. The leftover Allied powers are the USSR and France, so they form a similar major / minor pairing and their sculpts reflect this. Also, France has sometimes (but not always) been an ally of Russia, for instance as was the case during WWI. And a few years earlier, during the Russo-Japanese War, European naval specialists watched the naval side of that war with great interest because the Russians were trained in the French naval tradition while the Japanese were trained in the British naval tradition, so the conflict was seen as kind of rough analogue to what a Franco-British naval war might theoretically look like. The British Admiralty was no doubt happy from that perspective to see Japan utterly clobber Russia at sea, even though Japan’s rise as a major naval power did have some uncomfortable implications for Britain.

MakeMaps

@calvinhobbesliker:

Yeah, France is mostly useless, though sometimes you can use your fighter and your North African infantry to skirmish against the Italians, or you could use any remaining ships and the fighter to kill some small ships.

But mostly, you’ll be using your units to boost the defense of important territories.

You know something. If Axis ever declares war on true Neutrals, Turkey would make a great forwarding base to set up a FreeFrench forces HQ against the Axis.

calvinhobbesliker

@MakeMaps:

@calvinhobbesliker:

Yeah, France is mostly useless, though sometimes you can use your fighter and your North African infantry to skirmish against the Italians, or you could use any remaining ships and the fighter to kill some small ships.

But mostly, you’ll be using your units to boost the defense of important territories.

You know something. If Axis ever declares war on true Neutrals, Turkey would make a great forwarding base to set up a FreeFrench forces HQ against the Axis.

I think I’d rather have Russia take Turkey, since they can actually use the money and the inf to invade the Balkans and take advantage of their +3 per Axis territory NO.

MakeMaps

@calvinhobbesliker:

@MakeMaps:

@calvinhobbesliker:

Yeah, France is mostly useless, though sometimes you can use your fighter and your North African infantry to skirmish against the Italians, or you could use any remaining ships and the fighter to kill some small ships.

But mostly, you’ll be using your units to boost the defense of important territories.

You know something. If Axis ever declares war on true Neutrals, Turkey would make a great forwarding base to set up a FreeFrench forces HQ against the Axis.

I think I’d rather have Russia take Turkey, since they can actually use the money and the inf to invade the Balkans and take advantage of their +3 per Axis territory NO.

Of course.
However, we are speculating on the subject about France’s uselessness….

Nippon-koku

I’ve got it

1. Get a Frenchman on a UK transport

2. Bring him around to Hawaii

3. Have America strike Japan and clear out the island

4. Move the UK transport up there

5. Unload the Frenchman on France’s turn

6. France takes Japan

7. ?

8. Profit

teslas

9: Liberate Paris with US + 4 free frech inf pop in

10: Non-com in as much UK support as possible

11: Survive Italian counter-attack on Paris

12: France can actually spend that Japanese money, building 3 units and upgrading its mIC to a major, saving rest for 10 units on the next round.

13: Survive, somehow, a German attack on Paris.

14: ?

The only thing stopping you is common sense, your own inhibitions, and more common sense.

Narvik

I suspect this belong in House Rules, but how about joining France and Canada as one Power with two Economies ? Not very different from the case with UKE and UKP.

Canada got 7 IPC and France 19. After France is captured, Canada get the colony income.

I start a new thread about this in the HR section, so stay alert, man…

calvinhobbesliker

But that weakens the UK a lot, in exchange for a country that can only build in faraway Canada…

Narvik

never satisfied, are we ?

General Veers

@CWO:

@General:

I understand the novelty of adding France to a large scale European map, but can someone remind me why they use USSR sculpts for so many units that they won’t build? Once liberated they used British and American equipment so they may as well have blue American pieces. Or just cut their piece count and give them to the British and American piece pools.

My guess is that it’s related to the large power / small power pairings in Global. Except for a game with two players (one Allied, one Axis), the number-of-players chart always pairs China with the US and always pairs ANZAC with the UK in games involving three or more people. The USSR and France each get tacked on to one of those pairings in 3-player games, but get tacked together in the 4-, 5- and 6-player games. The rules say that US artillery and aircraft units should be used for China, which reflects the US / China pairing. ANZAC’s equipment pieces are of Commonwealth – and sometimes specifically of British – origin, which reflects the UK / ANZAC pairing. The leftover Allied powers are the USSR and France, so they form a similar major / minor pairing and their sculpts reflect this. Also, France has sometimes (but not always) been an ally of Russia, for instance as was the case during WWI. And a few years earlier, during the Russo-Japanese War, European naval specialists watched the naval side of that war with great interest because the Russians were trained in the French naval tradition while the Japanese were trained in the British naval tradition, so the conflict was seen as kind of rough analogue to what a Franco-British naval war might theoretically look like. The British Admiralty was no doubt happy from that perspective to see Japan utterly clobber Russia at sea, even though Japan’s rise as a major naval power did have some uncomfortable implications for Britain.

I see, I never made the connection between major/minor pairings for sculpts. It makes sense, but it is funny that this pairing is loaded with naval units that will never be purchased by neither the USSR or France unless the game is already decided.

CWO Marc

@General:

It makes sense, but it is funny that this pairing is loaded with naval units that will never be purchased by neither the USSR or France unless the game is already decided.

In a certain sense, the “naval units that will never be purchased by neither the USSR or France” element could be said to represent the historical position of both countries as frustrated naval powers. For such a huge country, Russia has surprisingly little access to the sea: its huge northern coastline is ice-bound most of the time, as is the upper part of its eastern coastline, leaving basically just the Baltic, the Black Sea and the area rougly around and south of Vladivostok. Russia’s performance in naval warfare hasn’t been very good as far as I know, with its low point being the Russo-Japanese War of 1905-1906. One particularly embarrassing action during that war was the Dogger Bank Incident, in which a trigger-happy Russian battle fleet opened fire on some British fishing boats in the North Sea (in waters roughly halfway between Britain and Denmark) because the Russians suspected that they were combat vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Russia almost ended up at war with Britain because of that little debacle.

As for France, it has excellent access to both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and it also has a long naval tradition, but its problem is that its neighbor Britain – which as an island nation depends on naval trade – has historically had even more reasons than France to be a first-rate naval power, with the result that France has often ended up in second place compared to Britain. This explains in part why French naval thinkers have tended to be open to unconventional approaches to naval warfare (such as guerre de course, or the use of “equalizers” such as destroyers and submarines) in attempts to neutralize Britain’s superiority in traditional fleet combat. Unfortunately for France, Britain’s approach to dealing with this problem has often (though not always) been: let other nations be the first ones to innovate (since there’s no point in rendering your own fleet obsolete), then adopt the same technologies and overtake the other nations by using your superior industrial base to out-build the competition.

calvinhobbesliker

Interestingly, at the end of the war, the Red Navy was the third largest in the world (after the US and Royal Navies).

CWO Marc

@calvinhobbesliker:

Interestingly, at the end of the war, the Red Navy was the third largest in the world (after the US and Royal Navies).

Yes, though by some estimations it was the Royal Canadian Navy that was in third place. Admittedly, part of the reason for the RCN’s high numbers was that it had a large number of small combat/escort vessels like corvettes, and another part of the reason for its place near the top of the world ranking was that much of the competition – the IJN, the Krigsmarine and the Regia Marina – had been eliminated from the game.

Nippon-koku

@teslas:

9: Liberate Paris with US + 4 free frech inf pop in

10: Non-com in as much UK support as possible

11: Survive Italian counter-attack on Paris

12: France can actually spend that Japanese money, building 3 units and upgrading its mIC to a major, saving rest for 10 units on the next round.

13: Survive, somehow, a German attack on Paris.

14: ?

The only thing stopping you is common sense, your own inhibitions, and more common sense.

I think we’re onto something!

ghr2

@calvinhobbesliker:

But that weakens the UK a lot, in exchange for a country that can only build in faraway Canada…

Not really.

calvinhobbesliker

@ghr2:

@calvinhobbesliker:

But that weakens the UK a lot, in exchange for a country that can only build in faraway Canada…

Not really.

The British lose 8 IPC’s from Canada, which is about a third of their Europe income…

France totally useless

Featured Topics

T-shirts, Hats, and More

Suggested Topics

Occupying Southern France in Balanced Mod

Losing France Capitol on First Turn.

Strafing France with Germany and taking with Italy

Germany - Attack France, UK, and Soviets on G1?

G1 Total BLITZKRIEG.

Italy takes France with Germany's help

France Disaster

DO NOT retake the Capital of the UK, France or Italy just to hand the IPCs back

41

17.0k

39.3k

1.7m