Global 1942 scenario - European side

Active Nations:

USSR: 45 IPCs
Would include all starting USSR territories, plus the following:
Germany, Poland, Slovakia Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania

Western Europe (WE) : 23 IPCs

Portugal, Portuguese Guinea, Angola, Mozambique Holland Belgium, Suriname, Belgian Congo Greenland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway Northern Italy, Southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia Turkey, Greece, Crete

So in E&W, a bit ahistorically (as the game is set in 1948) Greece and Turkey are part of WE, despite not joining NATO until 1952. For now I’m lumping them in here, but my other preference would be to have them as strict neutrals – more on that later.

Also in E&W, Greenland and Iceland are treated as US territories; since both are worth 0 IPCs on the Europe 1940 map, the only real important distinction is whether they are hostile or friendly, so I wanted to include them under WE instead.

UK: 31 IPCs
gains the following territories:
Italian Somaliland, Tobruk, Libya, Western Germany

UK loses Trans-Jordan, Egypt, Alexandria to the Arab League UK loses Iceland to WE

US: 38 IPCs
gains the following territories:
Greater Southern Germany

US loses Southeast Mexico to the OAS US loses Greenland to WE

Neutral Powers:

France (pro-NATO) : 16 IPCs

France loses Syria to the Arab League

What I’m proposing for France would be sort of a hybrid rule between the activation rules for pro-neutrals, and a house rule I proposed for China, in E&W.

Essentially how this works is that France would contribute income to WE, based on the IPC value of French territories containing NATO troops (WE, UK, or US) at the end of Western Europe’s turn. If France is attacked by the USSR, all French units and territories would convert to WE ownership.

The reason for doing this is primarily to keep France as part of NATO, without making WE so huge economically that they don’t need any help. Also, by weakening NATO a little bit in this way, I’m hoping to avoid needing to use the E&W rule whereby USSR gets infantry for 2 IPCs instead of 3 IPCs.

Organization of American States (OAS) : 9 IPCs
(Essentially, all of the neutral South American countries except Suriname, plus Southeast Mexico)
If the OAS is attacked by the USSR, all OAS units and territories would convert to US ownership.

Arab League: 8 IPCs
(Alexandria, Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia)
If the Arab League is attacked by the USSR, all Arab units and territories would convert to UK ownership.

…
So, in addition to possibly including a diplomacy mechanism similar to classic E&W, I was wanting to incorporate one of the house rules I had suggested for E&W and apply it to this scenario:

All remaining neutrals are considered “strict neutrals”
However:

The USSR may attack any neutral at any time. If the USSR attacks a strict neutral, rather than having ALL strict neutrals side with NATO (as in classic Europe 1940) instead NATO gets to shift either the OAS or Arab League one step on the diplomacy scale.

Now, if Greece and Turkey are kept as strict neutrals, rather than being part of WE, this rule could potentially have large consequences if/when the USSR chooses to attack them.

I was thinking instead of the classic E&W diplomacy scale, it’d make more sense to have it like -8/-6/-4/-2/0/+2/+4/+6/+8

Strict Neutrals:
Probably a good “hard and fast” rule would be that if attacked by the USSR, strict neutrals in Europe would join WE, while strict neutrals in Africa or the middle east would join UK; Rio De Oro would be considered part of Spain, for these purposes. If Turkey is neutral…? I’d probably consider them part of the middle east.

Europe: Eire, Spain / Rio De Oro, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland Africa: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ethiopia Middle East: Northwest Persia, Persia, Eastern Persia, Afghanistan

What this all means:

Starting Income:
USSR: 45
NATO: 92

Maximum potential income, including neutrals:
USSR (plus Arab League, OAS*, and all strict neutrals) : 71
WE (plus France, and all strict neutrals in Europe) : 46
UK (plus Arab League, and all strict neutrals in Africa + Middle East) : 42
US (plus OAS*) : 46

*Assumes OAS income is capped at 8 rather than 9

it’s one of those things where you have “12 IPC’s left” and someone is wanting to build ships but dont just want 2 subs

@tincanofthesea

I don’t have time to test your house rule, but it sure looks interesting. I might use it sometime.

@dilton You’re right about the Axis needing to take Morocco before you can take it back, sorry about that. I still think the overall point (there are other options besides Gibraltar for your bases) stands, though.

-Midnight_Reaper

@CWO:

@taamvan:

I am not sure what the British government’s back up plan was anyways if Sea Lion was successful.

The British government may not have had an actual “backup plan”, in terms of something serious and concrete and specific.  My impression is that Britain’s civilian and military leaders were focussed on preventing an invasion in the first place, and on defeating it if it did actually occur, and that they were sufficiently confident that they could accomplish one or the other of those goals that they didn’t need to give any detailed consideration to what to do if Britain ended up facing defeat.  Hitler, similarly, didn’t give serious consideration to invading Britain until he was forced to admit that Britain wasn’t going to come to terms with him after the defeat of France.

It’s quite possible that British government considered the possibility of setting up a government-in-exile in Canada (or elsewhere), but “considering the possibility” isn’t the same thing as preparing a functional contingency plan.  And in fact, there would have been two good reasons NOT to work on such a functional plan.  First, it would have taken up time and resources that could have been better used elsewhere, even if it only amounted to a small number of staff.  More importantly, preparing such a plan – even in secret – would have been politically very dangerous.  Churchill had famously been proclaiming in the House of Commons that “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”  If word had somewhow reached the public that the same Churchill was secretly preparing plans to decamp to Canada, it would have had two very serious negative effects: it would have told the public that Churchill believed that Britain genuinely risked being conquered by Nazi Germany (which would have been very bad for morale) and it would have convinced people that Churchill was hypocritical on a monumental scale (which would have ended his political career).  It would also have destabilized the British government, which was the last thing Britain needed at that time.

No, I completely understand why Churchhill did that, he was a very ballsy man and someone who was needed for UK but you’d still think you want some kind of back up just in case. I am sure his staff and the Royal Family would AT LEAST retreat to Ireland if need be.

Well I’m still not sure how simple it is to implement a group phase like the warchest concept I mentioned.

Might be advisable to keep regular war bonds in the back pocket. And the +5 for capturing an enemy VC as outlined in the master thread would be good to have as a toggle. Since at least we know both of those mechanics work in tripleA.

But yeah I think the warchest VC concept has promise, if it can work in 1942.2, I’m pretty sure it will work even better in Global.

Ok we played this today and it turned out to be pretty balanced.

Allies won

I’m still a little iffy about the 2 German subs that start SZ 2 (Germany subs were in total control of the Atlantic for the entire game)

The other rule changes I made was to make Borneo and East Indies (DEI) basically neutral until attacked by Axis or US enters the war, then they join FEC/UK seemed to work out nicely.

You just know that everyone’s Sealion plans will go up in smoke if Larry gives us a workable SBR rule in Alfa+3.