Good game but some detractors

[gdpsnake]

I have some comments:
1. Differentiate between sm and lg corps perhaps XX for Div xxx for sm and xxxx for lg with xxxxx for the armies. Hovering over identical units to see if it has 20 or 30 sp is time wasting.
2. Takes way too long to build efficiency up especially paras which have to be 100? why? In real life you could drop a unit with little to no efficiency or experience. The cost would be in their effectiveness to fight but not whether they can drop. This is a really bad mechanic because just one bad WX turn in a para hex if they do nothing drops their efficiency which you then have to wait to build.
3. Speaking of weather, it's out of control. I only experienced a few clear turns in two years of play. You literally can't invade Norway in '39 or '40 unless you are very lucky because the weather is always bad and invasions can't happen. I had to invade the Low Countries and France with almost no clear WX until July. Absurd. You'd think Europe was the hell pit of wx. It's not, I was stationed there for many years. Since turns are of such long duration you get rain for weeks when maybe it's really a few days in the time frame of a turn. D-Day is a perfect example of going in when the WX was good even though overall it did and was bad. In this game you would never D-Day because the WX is ALWAYS bad. It was bad during my entire Balkan campaign as well (rain or snow EVERY TURN) and bad in Russia except a few turns in July. Only North Africa was good WX. This is a bad mechanic because turns are many days long but the WX choice will be bad for the entirety when in reality it might be 50-50 good or so.
4. When U-boat attacks (and others I believe) are mentioned in the pop up logs, it never shows the losses. For instance, it will say U-boat attack #merchants lost and # escorts lost but not if any damage or U-boats are lost. So every turn I have to look at all my naval units and sometimes there are significant damage to my units that I would never know without constantly checking all my units. This needs to change somehow.
5. There seems to be two different WX zones that are near Oslo. It looked like one turn it was clear in a few hexes near Oslo but I still couldn't invade as the pop up said bad WX.
6. Air attacks are too nerfed. The biggest assest in Blitzkrieg was the Luftwaffe but in this game I almost never see any results against ground units during air attacks except maybe air losses. The pop-up never even mentions any efficiency lost. Also, according to the manual, more than one attack has diminished returns. Wow, they are so diminished that it's not even worth attacking a hex more than once. I'm not saying that much strength should be lost but efficiency should be way more effected. Just the squeal of a stuka coming down on troops was enough to send them into panic or flight.
7. If you have unmoved ships like u-boats in a port hex and move other ships into the hex like a u-boat return from sea at mostly full range, they automatically merge and you can't subsequently move the 'fresh' u-boats out even if you select the unit and remove the check marks on the 'un-fresh' boats. All get frozen and lose their ability to move.
8. You can't relocate flak units without other fresh ground units in the hex? Absurd. Flak guns had inherent crews and should be movable regardless. Using up rail points to do so and losing some efficiency is fine but they should be relocatable as independent units.
9. The feel of Blitzkrieg is lost in this game. It's a slugfest. You need to try and change the effects of being "broken through and surrounded" perhaps by removing the supply benefit of a city which itself can't trace supply to a major supply source. Also, surrounded units need to deplete faster. These turns are many days or weeks long and combat readiness and efficiency would drop rapidly without LOC's and supply. Morale gets very bad very fast when you are trapped.
10. Advancements, IMHO, needs to be changed. Picking a unit to forever be an anti-tank or assault is dumb. In real life infantry units get updated equipment of all types as it becomes available, both AT upgrades as well as arms, art, etc. As for heavy, medium or light tank choices go, eliminate that. You should choose to build light, medium or heavy in the build menu and the units should be differentiated by different counters on the map. So you can still invest in advancements to CREATE the Medium (breakthrough) or Heavy tanks to make their purchase available in the force pool to represent the eventual deployment of different types. In the same way, you build fighters or Fighter bombers, tactical, medium or strategic capable planes not choose a plane unit to be one. I know it seems like you already do but on the map I can't tell who is a fighter or a fighter bomber because they look the same and I'm back to hovering or reviewing every unit every turn to see who is what. Countries built specific airframes for specific jobs, we should do the same and should see the differences on the map. Different icons for different planes (ftrs, fb's, naval air, SAC, TAC, medium bmbs etc.
11. Okay, I'll say it. The partisan situation is all wrong. First the history:
Netherlands: Totally non-violent. They used passive resistence, helped downed flyers out, relayed intel, messed with RR schedules but they never actively engaged Germans to prevent reprisals.
Denmark: Mostly limited assassinations of collaborators. Almost no sabotage.
Belgium: Totally ineffectual until after D-Day and focused around the Capitol.
France: Almost no effective or organized resistance until '43 when the Allies began to heavily invest in their organization and recruitment in advance of D-Day. In fact, the Allies made it contingent on their aid that the French NOT engage in armed resistance so as to keep hidden until D-Day. '41 to '43 was mostly directed against Vichy policy and collaborators.
Norway: Very slow build up. Almost all directed at the Heavy water disruption.
Yugoslavia: One of the biggest but a lot of infighting between groups with several groups siding with the puppet governments and turning on each other. Severe setbacks till much later making them largely ineffectual until British aid and Yugo leadership appeared. Then they were a real force to be reckoned with.
Poland: Very aggressive but mostly in direct confrontation with German units in pitched small battles and ambushes which lead the Germans to investing heavily (8000 men) to counter the threat which they did very well capturing and killing many of the groups. Later in the war, a lot of sabotage but those were carried out a lot by Russian partisans working in Poland. So not really effective until mid '43.
Greece: Probably one of the most effective and competent resistance movements in Europe. Very effective at sabotage. Limited though due to some infighting over who would be in charge after the war.
Russia: The beast even fielding division size infantry units late in the war. Lots of units that operated as far as France, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Trouble is, STAVKA did not take them seriously and did not provide any funding, supplies or organization until the Spring of '42. Then it took some time to coordinate the units. Large portions of behind the lines units but kind of like each of them was creating their own 'empire' because they hated Stalin too.
SO the game misrepresents the real 'feel' of the "Set Europe Ablaze" effects of partisans. They fire up all over the place, even in '39 and '40 at ridiculous rates. Also the Axis can't deal with them at any level - it's like a hopeless battle to even try.
I suggest that the Axis player can create Police and Security units and deploy them on the map representing the real drain on manpower and resources to combat the threat. They would have large ZOC's against partisan activity. Or better yet, maybe a strategic pool (one for Russia and one for everything else) of anti-partisan 'points' purchased in the support pool (like air transports, trucks or craft) that costs resources and manpower that are applied against partisan activity with some being lost as partisan activity ramps up and IT SHOULD ramp up as the war progresses. Just my opinion.
12. Speaking of the build process, oil is wrong. I should not 'spend' oil to build units. I spend oil to move and use oil dependent units. And motorized should cost half of armor. Air should cost half as much as naval. You build units with steel (resources) and manpower to field it. And the availability of oil is too low to even approximate the true oil-dependent builds of actual units fielded in WW2. You don't even send out the German or Italian fleets because there won't be any oil left and god help you when minors join you because you have to ship oil to all of them except Romania to even build the units they operated. Hungary had a armor/motor corps in real life you can never build or use in this game. Same for Turkey and Spain that had some navy and armor units. Romania had several, some provided by Germany that you can never duplicate. Finland has a sizable AF you can't recreate.
13. Convoys and minor production are wrong. I can't convoy/trade except from Germany and Italy. I should be able to convoy/trade from minors as well. It's a fact that the Romanian oil fields continued to supply the German and Italian war economies throughout the war but in this system I can't 'send' any oil from Romania to Germany or Italy after they join the alliance. This system also prevents resources to/from other minors as well. I played with diplomacy and got Spain but then it stops providing any resources. Why is the system like this? It's almost more of a detriment to get minors to ally with the major powers as you lose access to the resources. Better if they didn't join. Plus the complete lack of any production ability by minors makes them liabilities. Hungary 6 production for example, really? All the minors can't buy anything, ever. And Spain starts with everything at half strength. It takes all their production 18 months just to replenish and I still haven't built up the airpower.

Don't get me wrong. This game has a lot of great stuff in it. I highly commend the developer and programming. It's great work and a herculean effort that is worth buying and supporting. I don't think the mechanics I've outlined are outside the scope of this game. I hope my comments can make it better. It's good but it could be great.

[Kraken Studios]

I always look at opinions like this and see what I can improve or create for the next game or update. So thanks for the input.

[Daddy]

I was searching for info on paratroopers when I found this post. All great points. For me, probably the single biggest issue is weather. My invasion of the UK was brought to a crawl by several months of rain book-ending 5 1/2 months of continuous snow, mid-Nov through the end of April.

As for my paratrooper issue, I've concluded that the regular bad weather together with the 100% efficiency requirement makes them not worth the investment. Bad weather drops their efficiency. It takes several turns of good weather for them to recover to 100%.

[Kraken Studios]

Use supply trucks to bring them up
Always have them on a 9 supply line.
Before this rule people were dumping paras all over the place.

In truth it took a lot of planning for paradrops.

[Daddy]

Originally posted by Alvaro Sousa:

Use supply trucks to bring them up
Always have them on a 9 supply line.
Before this rule people were dumping paras all over the place.

In truth it took a lot of planning for paradrops.

Ah, forgot about trucks...that would definitely fix that part of the issue. On the weather problem, would it be possible to increase the chance of a good weather turn for each consecutive bad weather?

[Kraken Studios]

In May Norway is 100% always clear at Oslo and Narvik which are the two key ports
In France June, July, and August are 100% clear
May has a 75% chance of being clear.

In one game I have had October to April with no clear weather turns. With May being 50% clear. I still took out France by August. This is extremely rare.

November-February are never clear in Western Europe. It has to be this way to make a balanced game for France in 1940 and Germany in 1944-1945.

March, April, and October the chance of NOT getting at least 1 clear turn is 25%
The chance of getting all clear weather turns is 0.03%

The original poster is mistaken in his weather comment. It is impossible to have bad weather in June in Western Europe. It is impossible to have bad weather in Norway in May and June.

Perhaps he played a modified Europe 1939 game over PBEM. Early on some players did cheat like that. They would modify the weather chart and play the Axis.

I will not be altering the weather system. Currently the game is very well balanced. Allowing an extra clear turn in the middle of winter is pretty devastating.

[IamLags]

sorry but there must be a bug as i'm playing un-modded and I'm in May 10 40 and its still bad weather in Western Europe. Most of Norway is indeed clear , except the ports (Oslo etc.) which are all light rain. The rest of Europe is all light rain i.e. Norway & a bunch of Russia is the only place that has any clear weather. In fact i haven't seen any clear weather in 40 at all. The best has been light rain. Can send save file if it helps. Could be RNG but is serious bad luck and what you are describing above , 100% chance of clear in May - has not happened in my game.

[Kraken Studios]

Did you look at the weather document?
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4884245

5% heavy rain, 15% rain, 75% clear in May in North Moderate zone

[IamLags]

Thanks for replying and including the link. Its awesome that you have created the charts to show how weather is determined.

A few questions:

Why would every port in Norway be raining, but every other hex in Norway be clear? They both are in 'Arctic'

Its also kind of strange that places that would have worse weather are clear i.e. Arctic / Arctic Circle at the same time as the North Moderate is raining. Given the zones are already pretty abstract concepts you would think they would be linked in some way (weather wise) and that wouldn't be possible. Get some really weird (game-wise) scenarios.

Is there any rules around weather determination or are they completely random every turn?

P.s. maybe i don't know European weather very well (i don't) but why does Arctic have a higher chance of clear in May than North Moderate?

[Kraken Studios]

All the weather was taken from 10+ sources including different games, climate charts, weather charts, while taking in ocean temperature for invasions, and game balance. The weather is different in the sea than the lad because there are different weather systems that impact both.

The weather is randomly rolled each turn based on the chart.