Agreed.
Is Switzerland the stepping stone to victory?
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Makes a lot of sense KimRYoung.
I am all for restrictions, but as I have said it is my best friend who needs persuading.
I think he is all for making it impassable. -
I like those rules. Ill try them my next playthrough and see what happens. I predict people arnt going to be attacking the swiss in the first couple of turns.
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Switzerland is just fine exactly the way it is. It’s temptingly easy to invade, but whoever does invade will find their front too long and their forces stretched too thin. In every game we played where Switzerland was invaded, the invader regretted it.
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In our last game, we left all neutrals alone and the CP ended up winning.
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Switzerland is just fine exactly the way it is. It’s temptingly easy to invade, but whoever does invade will find their front too long and their forces stretched too thin. In every game we played where Switzerland was invaded, the invader regretted it.
If that is true, then game-balance wise there is no problem. However, the mountainous terrain should indeed make an invasion costlier/ more difficult for whoever attempts it for historical reasons (.e.g the Italians and Austrians also fought each other in the Alps without any significant breakthroughs).
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In our last game, we left all neutrals alone and the CP ended up winning.
That’s something I’ve wondered about too. It should at least have been an optional rule: neutrals are neutral (or alternately this could have been the standard rule and the optional rule to allow neutrals to be invaded).
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Or maybe allow only infantry to pass. Terrain is especially difficult for heavy guns to move trough or planes to land.
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Or maybe allow only infantry to pass. Terrain is especially difficult for heavy guns to move trough or planes to land.
You could still shove 20 plus infantry through, that’s enough.
Kim
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First of all, A&A doesn’t make any allowance for terrain. Second of all, Switzerland would be no harder to get through than the Isonzo front. It has numerous passes. Hannibal got through, Suvorov got through, Napoleon got through. The Germans could have gotten through - with their guns.
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First of all, A&A doesn’t make any allowance for terrain.
Yes they do, they have impassible terrain and they have control restrictions for moving through straits.
As for whether any nation could have, would have, or should have gone through Switzerland, the historical facts are that in two world wars they were right in the middle of it and NO ONE attacked them for whatever reason.
To overrun Switzerland every game with ease by whoever just doest seem right to me. The Sahara isn’t really impassible, just damn difficult to get thorough.
In Global 1940 Switzerland is impassible, where every other neutral can be attacked and get money from. Why didn’t they let you attack it there?
Kim
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In Global 1940 Switzerland is impassible, where every other neutral can be attacked and get money from. Why didn’t they let you attack it there?
Uhh, Switzerland is passible. It raises 6 infrantry and doesn’t give you a single point of IPC.
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Plus it makes all the rest of the true neutrals turn to the other side. This basically made it unpassable.
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In Global 1940 Switzerland is impassible, where every other neutral can be attacked and get money from. Why didn’t they let you attack it there?
Uhh, Switzerland is passible. It raises 6 infrantry and doesn’t give you a single point of IPC.
Oops, confused with the other version, my bad.
Kim
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@Quintus:
Plus it makes all the rest of the true neutrals turn to the other side. This basically made it unpassable.
Well, it effectively makes it unfavorable to attack it, and thus inadvisable. But it’s wrong to say it’s impassible. Unpassible is an okay work, like you used.
Kim; you’re fine. Understandable mistake. Just used wrong terminology. ;)
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To model the almost impossible terrain and not make map changes, Switzerland defending land units should take either two hits each and or a fixed deployment based on a value of 4.
Nobody would attack them.
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Switzerland should be 4.
My map also has the Arabian desert impassable, with “Southern Arabia” the British ally tt.
Also has the Pripet marsh - cutting Poland off from Ukraine.
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People are not going to mark up their maps. Keep it at one, just make it for deployment purposes, a 4.
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Also has the Pripet marsh - cutting Poland off from Ukraine.
The map does not have that, forget about Pripet marsh. The territories are too large anyway for such an insignificant area to be represented.
No weather
No terrain
No winddrift rules
Nothing. -
I’d like to see you try marching a modern army through there.
If you readjust Switzerland to 1 IPC, 8 units then do the same for Norway.
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The conversation has gone in a very different direction, but I still want to reply to something Quintus Fabius said on the first page about Austria helping out in Switzerland. If you don’t want to adjust Switzerland’s status, that is probably the best way to minimize the negative effects on the CP’s early game.
I tried something of the sort in the last game my group played before introducing the house rule in which Switzerland mobilizes six units instead of two.
Austria activated the territory on its first turn and Germany reenforced it with the Munich stack. This meant the allies were unable to contest Switzerland without risking the complete anihilation of either the French force from Burgundy or the Italian force from Piedmont. It certainly succeeded in protecting Germany’s southern territories.
However, for the move to work Austria had to send its forces from Trieste into Venice and send at least half of its forces in Vienna to Trieste to protect it against an Italian attack from Albania (which is usually activated by the French unless it was attacked by Austria, which isn’t possible when Trieste attacks Venice). In order to cover Austria’s southern front (Serbia and Albania) Austria had to divert troops from Budapest that would otherwise have gone to Romania and then Russia. While we’re only talking about 6 inf and 2 art this had a noticable impact on the eastern front.
In most of the games I’ve played so far, the CP’s had very few units left in the east by the time Russia fell. In the game I’m describing here those 8 units from Budapest that didn’t go into Russia were sorely missed. It took the CP’s too long to defeat Russia and that gave Britain the opportunity to send reenforcements through Karelia and Afghanistan. While the CP’s eventually captured Moscow (we don’t use RR rules, because it limits CP earning potential. Though perhaps the CP’s would’ve been better off if we had used it in this game) the British army outnumbered them and would have reactivated Russia and driven the CP’s back. Meanwhile the western front had started to crumble as well.
So while the Austrian help in Switzerland saved the western front from early collapse it compromized the eastern front. All that said, I only tried this strategy once. With a little tweaking a more determined and experienced player may be able to make it work.
And on a side note. I like your idea of movement restriction Kim! Because the larger mobilization protects the CP’s early on, but it really screws France later in the game when Austria is making decent money and can afford to send large armies into Burgundy. Allowing just one unit to pass at any one time feels a litte too restrictive though. I’d make it five or six. That way invading Switzerland is still a viable tactic, but its impact wouldn’t be quite so dramatic.
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