[WarInEur] France 1940

[Kent & Sue Haunschild]

John wrote: So given that we already have a simulation for the French do as 
well as they could, I would like to see a simulation that would be more 
likely to produce the 9 week historical result


I agree with John: We already have a simulation in which the French do about 
as well as they could when we play without the historical rules and for the 
"campaigns" need one that more closely matches the historical result.  They 
only way I see to do this is to use some type of changing strengths for the 
French units. My suggestion for this would be turns 1-10 subtract one point 
from the combat factor.  Turns 11-20- face value, turns 20+ add one point to 
the attack factor.

John wrote: Perhaps requirements that certain number of divisions/BG must be 
deployed by the UK to France, a certain number of divisions/BG must enter 
Belgium after it's neutrality is violated, a certain number of allied 
attacks have to occur and a certain number of French divisions have to be in 
the Maginot.

John has pointed out the second problem with the France 40 campaign and that 
is usually the BEF is not committed in historical numbers.  The test group 
for CWIE2 has kicked around a number of ideas on how best to incentify the 
Allied player to adopt historical courses of action and tired to "intuit" 
what the political consequences would have been if the BEF was not 
committed.  One idea was to use political points as John has also suggested.

Basically looked at the France 1940 setup and notice that there were 10 
divisions and a couple of brigades in the historic deployment and said what 
if we charged a notional 10 political points for the BEF but that the Allies 
were rewarded with one political point for each division that was in Belgium 
on the third turn after the Axis invasion.  The difference would be the 
number of political points the Axis would receive if the Allies fail to 
deploy a reasonably historic BEF in numbers and keep them forward deployed 
into Belgium for at least three turns which was about the historical time 
table.  We also considered adding a French activation as a Axis Ally along 
with Spain and Turkey.

Something like this might simulate the historic rules without requiring 
their complete observance.  In the game this would prevent the CW army from 
being hoarded and saved to quickly invade Lybia other gambits and make 
Sealion a creditable threat.  Historically the CW had about 15 divisions and 
committed 10 of them to France.  They got back 10x2-10bg and spent the next 
year rebuilding.  When the CE army isn't gutted in France then the German 
Army goes into Russia weaker and the turning point is reached in 42 rather 
than 43.

As far as newbies go I let them play Axis, because that is the most 
interesting to start.  I don't play many three way games, so a combined 
Allied/Soviet side works okay for me.  You take your lumps but get to whip 
ass in the end.  By the time 44 and 45 are over, the German player has 
usually stopped gloating about how bad he whipped you back in 40 and 41.

Kent