France's role in Global 1940 SE

@SuperbattleshipYamato

I played a game as the Allies against the Hard AI with out of box rules and removed everything from France before the first turn, including all facilities in their territories (losing the facilities probably hurt the Axis more than the Allies). The British troops in Paris stayed, however.

I won as the Allies.

Granted, the AI’s play as Japan was a disaster (it’s generally a tough country to play and other AIs have performed even worse), but I made my fair share of mistakes out of carelessness and rushing, and their play as Germany and Italy was mostly solid.

The lack of French troops allowed Germany to declare war on the Soviets G1 and advance quite quickly. The Soviets were definitely in danger of collapsing the first 10 turns were it not for massive amounts of support from the British. Still, the Allies barely weathered the storm and were able to slowly push the European Axis back, with the US making frequent-large scale landings on the Western Front, eventually capturing Rome (the Axis navies and air forces in Europe were negligible). The UK did not participate in many landings, focusing their efforts on a successful strategic bombing campaign and continuing to funnel troops onto the Eastern Front from industrial complexes in Egypt and the Union of South Africa, where they ended up doing 30-40% of the fighting there.

Thanks to the aforementioned poor Japanese play, UK Pacific and China steadily dismantled the Japanese presence in Asia, while the Allies achieved dominance in the Pacific within the first 10 turns.

Overall, while the Allies were able to win without France, the loss of all those units hurt the Allies more than expected. In a competent player’s hands I think the Germans had a better than even shot of capturing Moscow early on.

Full game:

Global 1940 no France Game 1.tsvg

Stupid question of the day:

In the TripleA version, after France loses their capitol, any French territories liberated from the Axis by the other allies become controlled by that ally (i,e. not liberated to French ownership.) FWIW, I’ve seen this happen with the USSR territories if Moscow falls, too.

Is this intended, in the out-of-box rules? or is this just a TripleA-ism?

I mention it here because my strategy as France involves trying to balance out, “How can I maintain as many of my infantry as possible/inflict the most casualties/take the fewest losses?” with “Actually, just let the Italians have the territory, so the Americans can get the IPCs for it later.”

Like, if I know the Italian transports are in a position to just dogpile me if I push all my infantry east, I’ll pull them west instead, for sure. If the transports are too far away, I’ll try and move up – but I don’t actually want to move too far east…?

And this mechanic actually dovetails into the fact that it seems better for the US to try and hold the factories in coastal France (to place units immediately on the front line) than it is to give all that land back to France – or possibly just bypass France altogether and try to land in Greece (a favourite of mine, for example). You could argue that this simulates the “Battle of the Bulge” (or something… I guess…) but it does just seem to reinforce the fact that having France as an active ally isn’t really a value add, and is actually a detriment in the later game.

@The-Janus

yea triplea does it correctly

A reason why a lot of people don’t liberate France in the OOB version :)

@FranceNeedsMorePower said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

@SuperbattleshipYamato Very interesting. I will have to test it out to.

Did you give France goes first a try?

@crockett36

Yes, a while ago. I can’t find the TripleA file now (my files are like a maze), but I think the Axis won, though the change did make the Allies more competitive compared to out of box rules.

So I did a test run where I actually focused on liberating France, and even tried to feed them some extra territories once I did so (rather than have US or UK take everything.)

Oof, even when France is back on their feet, they don’t have enough income to really do much. Would it help to give them some national objectives, to pad their economy (not unlike what Italy gets)?

@The-Janus In my experience, if the Allies have consistent control of Paris (long enough for France to consider purchases), the game is essentially over. If Germany is weak enough that Paris is taken and held, then France’s economy really doesn’t need a boost, IMHO. I get that it is more fun to buy expensive units, but it simply would be kicking Germany while it is down.

That said, if you have a good European game as the Allies but a crappy situation in the Pacific, maybe something can be considered, but the French really cannot do much about the Pacific.