Flames and Steel (official thread)
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How strong did you make all the neutral forces on your setup?
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Neumark: I’d still keep it. The territory east of Berlin, bordering Pomerania, Silesia and Wartheland, is the old Neumark (Brandenburg east of the Oder). “Southern Pomerania” would name the wrong province. Cernel’s reply doesn’t actually argue this one, so I wouldn’t read it as a strong objection.
LOL This is actually the one I've the strongest objection against (though Ruhr is a close second). It is just that it would take quite a lot of time arguing over the various things, so I just didn't do it.
@kurtgodel7 But I'm enjoying the conversation with Claude (I would hate it if I did not know it was AI.), so I might make a full list of counter-arguments (LMAO) if you want to use your allowance to then see what Claude has to counter-counter-argue about it. You tell me.
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I wouldn’t split it into Bohemia and Moravia; that’s a gameplay change for a naming problem.
I totally agree not drawing territories to accommodate names, but both in case of Bohemia - Moravia (I would leave a space before and after the hyphen.) as well as in the case of Austria I would strongly consider splitting the territories in two east/west both on the account of the relative dimensions as well as on the account of their rough geography (mountains, forests...) which should not make them the easiest routes available and overall would favour front multiplication.
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@Cernel Why? Northern and Southern Pomerania have never been formal divisions of the province, it was divided east/west (Hither and Farther Pomerania). And Neumark's placement doesn't look wrong to me.
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Naval invasions being too easy to pull off is perhaps the most unrealistic thing in the standard rule sets.
What about coastal batteries that can destroy the ships
Okay. I agree that naval invasions are too easy to pull off. I've mulled this over, and have come up with a couple different solutions.
- The cool solution. There would be a new unit type: the coastal gun. A coastal gun would be a lot less expensive than a battleship. For a naval invasion the following would happen:
- Battleships and maybe cruisers would fire at the coastal guns. Coastal guns would fire back at the battleships and maybe cruisers. This would last two combat rounds. Destroyed units would be removed from play.
- Any coastal guns which survived the earlier phase would fire at transports. Casualties chosen at random, destroyed units removed from play.
- The simple solution (borrowed from Shogun/Samurai Swords). Units invading amphibiously don't get to fire for the first combat round. If units arrive by both land and sea, the ones coming in from land do get to fire for the first combat round. Those coming in from sea do not. When marines attack amphibiously, they are able to fire on the first combat round. Claude informs me that Japan also had infantry specialized for amphibious invasions: the SNLF. America Pacific already has Marines, and it looks like Japan will be getting a Marine-equivalent unit.
Solution 1) has way more of a coolness factor than solution 2). No denying that. Nonetheless, I'm going with solution 2) for now. I believe the game needs simplicity more than it needs coolness + an extra game mechanic.
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@KurtGodel7 In TRO I came up with a tech that would give the standard Artillery unit the ability to fire a bombardment shot at the enemy landing forces before the first turn of combat (it's filed under Japan's unique techs there).
The rule was that enemy warships would fire their bombardment first, then Artillery fires theirs after that's been resolved, and then normal combat begins. And I had it so that Artillery bombardment can only score hits on the landing units, not the ships.
Coastal Gun might be too niche of a unit if you want to avoid roster bloat, but if you did have a separate Heavy Artillery unit already, you could probably just dual-spec it to cover the coastal gun role too and give it the ability to return fire at warships.
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@KurtGodel7 They could probably use a bit of a buff to deter the AI from invading them right away. Germany could take Switzerland or Spain's border provinces on Round 1 with just the forces from the neighboring territories, Britain could probably do the same with Portugal, Leon, or Andalusia if it brings a transport and planes.
I think it would be good practice for invading the neutrals to require about one turn of setup by moving in enough forces from other territories, so that the enemy player might see it coming and prepare countermoves if they choose.
Also, Gibraltar having a border that extends all the way to Portugal is definitely an error - it should only touch Andalusia.
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@Cernel Why? Northern and Southern Pomerania have never been formal divisions of the province, it was divided east/west (Hither and Farther Pomerania). And Neumark's placement doesn't look wrong to me.
Let's compare the map
The latest iteration of the map.
with a 1941 map for the Great German Realm
I'll firstly say that, yes, if the Neumark would still exist, that would be by far the best name for this territory, especially connection wise. Indeed, the "Neumark" territory in the map closely resembles the eastern part of 1941 Brandenburg merged with the southern part of 1941 Pomerania: that would be more or less the old Neumark.
Unfortunately, not only by 1941 the Neumark is gone (as that can be said of Bavaria and Austria too and others), but it really means nothing as it is even dismembered into smaller subsets of two different territories (Pomerania and Brandenburg). The reason why I like Bavaria and Austria but not Neumark is that the former are obvious and unambiguous sets of existent territories, whereas the latter is just nothing any longer.
The territories of Pomerania and Neumark as drawn are together (meaning if they would be a single territory) Pomerania as the closest thing that they can be as of 1941 (even though there is the problem that Neumark borders Lower Silesia), meaning that that the closest thing that the territory drawn in the map and labelled as "Neumark" can be in 1941 is a part of Pomerania (next close would be a part of Brandenburg, but then Brandenburg would be adjacent to West Prussia). "southern Pomerania" is not a division of Pomerania: it is the division of Pomerania which the map makes, meaning the southern part of it as it happens to be split in the map. I said "northern Pomerania" and "southern Pomerania", and I assumed that the lower case would have hinted that those are not formal divisions. I could have said "seaside Pomerania" and "inland Pomerania" or "lower Pomerania" and "upper Pomerania". None of these are formal (as far as I know), so whatever works.
Now I can see that the argument here would be "Why are you splitting Pomerania as a name in two things which have no basis as names (and you just made them up) when you have an historical division with the name Neumark?". The point is that first of all it has to be a division of Pomerania: it cannot be just Neumark. In this case, the only name I would find acceptable is "Pomerania - Neumark" (next one being "Brandenburg - Neumark"). This would mean saying that this is the part of Pomerania corresponding mostly to the old Neumark, but I think that this would look very ambiguous unless maybe we call the other part "Pomerania - Stettin" or "Pomerania - Pomerania" (with the ambiguous meaning of what used to be Pomerania before the addition of the Neumark), neither of which I also like.
However, I can see that you may want to have the name "Neumark" with the meaning "this is the region corresponding to the eastern part of Brandenburg and the southern part of Pomerania which used to be Neumark". To me, that makes no sense, so I would rather call it as something meaning the southern portion of Pomerania or the eastern portion of Brandenburg, with a definite preference for the former. If not "northern Pomerania" and "souther Pomerania", then "Pomerania - Stettin" and "Pomerania - X", where X would be Neumark or the name of a city or something in there.
If splitting Pomerania in twain, I would actually much suggest splitting Pomerania (meaning the merging of the area which is currently split between Pomerania and Neumark) on the Oder river rather than how it is split now or any other way. The only problem with this is that the western portion would be rather small but not actually here considering that Pomerania is way over-reaching on the west (which is great in this case, so you can have enough space for units in the western part), so having the Oder river as the border between the two Pomeranians would be just fine (and way better than the current drawing also considering how history went down). Done that, you can call them a number of MUCH BETTER ways. I would suggest "Stettin" (also since this would comprise a lot of territory which is not Pomerania) and "Hinder Pomerania" respectively for left and right of the Oder, but of course they can also respectively be "Hither Pomerania" and "Hinder Pomerania".
So, if you can just merge the Pomerania and Neumark territories into a single one and then do the split on the Oder river instead, you will have both a better map (both for politic divisions and for topographical/military reasons) and better names there.
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In case of splitting Pomerania on the Oder river, it would be good to call the two just "cisriverine Pomerania" and "transriverine Pomerania" or "Cispomerania" and "Transpomerania" or "left Pomerania" and "right Pomerania" (meaning on the left and right side of the Oder). None of these (as far as I know) are historical divisions, but in 1941 there is only Pomerania, so I think that any made-up division is just as good as any historically based one.
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Also, upper and lower case could be used in case the division is respectively based on currently existing names or anachronistic/made up ones. For example, having the names "Lower Silesia" and "Upper Silesia" and "hither Pomerania" and "hinder Pomerania". That would hint that "Lower Silesia" is an actual province/whatever, whereas "hither Pomerania" is just a split of "Pomerania" (and something called "Hither Pomerania" do not actually exist).
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@KurtGodel7 In TRO I came up with a tech that would give the standard Artillery unit the ability to fire a bombardment shot at the enemy landing forces before the first turn of combat (it's filed under Japan's unique techs there).
The rule was that enemy warships would fire their bombardment first, then Artillery fires theirs after that's been resolved, and then normal combat begins. And I had it so that Artillery bombardment can only score hits on the landing units, not the ships.
Coastal Gun might be too niche of a unit if you want to avoid roster bloat, but if you did have a separate Heavy Artillery unit already, you could probably just dual-spec it to cover the coastal gun role too and give it the ability to return fire at warships.
When I think of a heavy gun, I imagine a normal artillery piece. Such as would be used in an army battle. It has mobility to it, as you'd expect from artillery. But when I think of coastal guns, I think of the land equivalent of a battleship's guns. Maybe even a little bigger than normal battleship guns. Much, much larger caliber of shells than a heavy gun. The coastal gun is completely stationary. It's basically putting battleship sized guns on a concrete pad, and using them to prevent enemy access to specific locations.
I don't necessarily mind having an additional unit for a coastal gun, but the extra game mechanic would be a bridge too far, I think.
The mechanic you are describing is not a coastal gun, at least not as I envision it. Rather, it's a pre-battle artillery bombardment by the defender. Nothing wrong with that, although that's also an additional game mechanic.
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On another matter, it is impossible for ships to enter the Baltic unless your side owns Denmark. Also, (new rule change) it is impossible to journey from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean unless your side owns Gibraltar.
The plan is for Italy to take Gibraltar on its first turn. Then the Axis can turn it into a hard point, to prevent a naval race between themselves and the Allies.
Leningrad is supposed to fall on G2. Ahistorical? Perhaps. But Germany's best general, Erich von Manstein, believed that Leningrad could easily have been taken as part of Barbarossa. He expressed frustration at what he believed was the wasted opportunity.
In my last play test the European theater was heavily unbalanced in favor of the Allies. I've made some balance changes, so we'll see how things go.
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@Cernel I see, it depends on whether you want to make use of the Nazi administrative divisions or the traditional provinces of Germany. I think either standard is acceptable - the Nazis never fully abolished the old provinces and states, they just transferred administrative authority to the Reichsgaue instead.
He'll just want to have consistency with whichever standard he chooses, and not be mixing and matching on different parts of the map.
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@KurtGodel7 Gibraltar working like Suez is very debatable. I would say hell no for Gibraltar and I would tend to still say no in case a single alliance owns every territory on that strait (meaning owning both Gibraltar and Morocco with your drawing to block enemy movement).
What I mean is, for example, that, if Germany would have had the Bismarck fully repaired in Brest and then moving through the strait into the Mediterranean, Gibraltar itself would not have impeded that happening (of course, the ships in Gibraltar could have).
If the question would be whether you can fully close the strait with mines once you have Gibraltar, I'm not feeling qualified enough as a miner to answer that...
(but surely no in case the strait is contended, for example the Axis controlling Gibraltar and the Allies controlling Morocco)The matter could be made some clearer with a more correct depiction of the situation, like having Spanish Morocco (maybe Tangier too, but I would consider it being part of Spanish Morocco thus avoiding having it on the map) and Gibraltar being limited to what it was rather than covering the entire European part of the strait.
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