Some questions about France '40

[JDR Dragoon]

I am not personally badgering for any changes. I am merely trying to elucidate why a historical scenario has to be designed in order that a certain effect (the historical result, in this case an undeniable "German Major Victory") might be among the likely possible outcomes. You are in essence designing more for effect instead of designing for cause. Nothing wrong with this approach, but we should appreciate why this is so and what steps are necessary to reach this outcome.

any thoughts on (what if) wargames.i know there are what if scenarios.

The MC series (w. MC1 ME67 as the only exception). Doesn´t get much more "What If".

[Volcano Man]

Look at it this way, what do you think the answer would be if you were to ask a militairy historian to rate the chances of the germans decisivisely defeating the allies as they did under the following conditions:
a) french 7th army is kept as strategic reserve as originally planned instead of sending them north to link up with the dutch.
b) no strategic surprise; ie the allies either suspect/know of an attack through the ardennes or at the very least recognize the potential and deploy accordingly.

I agree with most of what you are saying, but it is the chicken and the egg argument. For allies do have the gift of hindsight so that has to be taken into account when determining much of these things. But for the most part, that hindsight can be negated with the "Allies cast the die" scenario, but not entirely.

Other than that, the official approach in the design process was (I believe) something similar to what I did in Compass '40 add-on, and probably what would have to be done if there were ever a Poland '39: basically time itself is the enemy; spectacular expectations are placed upon the Germans to achieve a victory in that they have to destroy lots of enemy units and capture nearly all the important high value objectives, and time is short. With that in mind, it is just as much a balance as going the other way: that is, making the French tough as nails and expecting the Germans to pull off some kind of miracle. I guess it all comes down to what people expect to experience. If it was too tough on the Germans in the sense that they have to have a miracle to gain substantial ground, then no doubt those on the other side of the coin will complain - and for a valid reason too. In the end however, it is all irrelevant if the VP levels are (or are not) balanced, the other stuff is just a means to how it plays out to the end conclusion. If the VP levels are balanced to where it is tough for the Germans to win, even if they are destroying the allies wholesale, then the campaign "works" well enough.

This is really a very difficult campaign to pull off in a wargame. We have to give the original designers the benefit of the doubt in that they did take a campaign that can/is considered by some as "unwargamable" and made it into a wargame. I am also not totally convinced that the current approach (where time is the enemy) is the wrong approach, BUT perhaps it should not be stressed so much so as to meet in the middle ground between both design philosophies. More about that later.

The current france '40 campaign games have had to incorporate a number of unrealistic elements just so to make the historical outcome a likely one:
- german morale ratings are too high for some units (IMO no german units except the three platoons at Eben Emael should be rated A)

Actually, no, the quality of the panzer battalions are NOT literal. Leaving out the apparently controversial GD, just about the only other units that have A ratings are the panzer battalions. The A rated panzer battalions represent intangible advantages that *cannot* be represented any other way. It is well known that the allied armor (most notably French armor) totally outclassed the German panzers, and they certainly do outclass them in F40 unit rating wise. However where the panzer excelled was in their tactical doctrine, radios (French were still using flags and hand signals), crew training, and so on. Where it any other way then the German panzer formations would have been totally useless, but these intangibles have to be represented, and the only way to do that within the scope of F40 was to give them A quality. If they were relegated to B quality, then the French armor would have to be rated even lower in quality to represent the gap here, which was no desirable. This is all covered in the notes AFAICR. However, I suppose it is all debatable whether a quality of B instead of A gets the intangible differences across sufficiently enough.

- allied morale too low for some units; the french should have a number of B morale formations, especially among some of the North African formations (these were essentially professionals with combat experience who did well in 1940)
- german artillery twice as effective as allied artillery
- french (and later belgian) units starting to disappear randomly from the 13th on

All of these are good/valid points. However, keep in mind that the randomly disappearing (surrendering) French/Belgian units relies on luck (a 1% to 2% chance per unit, per turn), which is something you say the Germans should need to rely on.

- and IMO german soft attack values are in many case too high compared to those of comparable allied units (or the other way around).

Well, the _Alt and stock ratings may be similar in this regard, but it is for a good reason: German infantry were simply better equipped than the French at the squad/platoon level. AFAICR, the French had nothing like the MG34 (the LMG employed at the squad level), one of these in every squad/platoon alone is worth 3 soft attack points, although that is not the only difference that this increase represents. ;)

Anyway, I think a good approach (if I were to make any future adjustments to the _Alt at least) would be to take something in the middle ground. IMO, you cannot make all of the above suggested changes and expect it to be a "fair" representation of the campaign (it would tilt it too far the other direction I think, especially with hindsight). Some of the changes could be made to make it a more of a tougher fight for the Germans, which sounds like would be the ideal approach: a tougher fight but not a miracle fight.

BTW, I started a discussion about this as vmods.com forum for F40_Alt feedback, since apparently no one else intends on doing so...

[smurf309]

great discussion.really enjoying the input.
i was brought up on avalon hill games.battle of midway was my first.that game was so different than any other game i had play at the time.i found out about it at history class when our teacher was showing us the battle.a classmate mentioned he had sunk some ijn carriers in a game.
i found out where he bought and ran down to get it.wow was that game hard to figure out. later i found out it was a basic game and there were much harder ones.
now we have computers to do all of the hard parts.
thank you to all of the game designers for making this happen.

[Archijerej]

@jonnymacbrown
Well, since I've played only small scenarios so far I generally avoid firing at Germans on my turn, because the loss of time that I can cause on him is far more valuable than the insignificant attrition. Besides, I'm a sensitive man, and I hate seeing my soldiers cut to ribbons ;)

As for other issues discussed, I think that a close to historical result in France '40 could be achieved using different methods. For example: decreasing of HQ units quality to represent problems in command and control system. If a player wants to be an Allied commander in a desperate situation of may 1940 he could just choose to play a campaign with fixed units and reinforcements arriving on historical moment. There is no reason that the desire for "historical effect" should affect smaller scenarios, when the French (or any other army) had put up a good fight. This in fact is my main issue with Panzer Campaigns series. It doesn't take the full advantage of its potential to be a great operational, as well as TACTICAL game. A player, having mastered a couple of "tricks", can otherwise behave completely recless, because he knows that on tactical level his battalion can rout a brigade. This is one of the reasons I've quit playing Campaign Series, where a German platoon in the open could destroy by fire a Soviet one, entrenched in the woods, without even being affected. Don't get me wrong, the Germans SHOULD have high values, the quality and quantity of their automatic weapons, mortars, infantry guns were excellent. Also the tactics at platoon and squad level, that can only be represented in abstract numerical manner in PzC, were great. But there is a wide sphere of tactics that should be left to the players and their abilities and knowlege. A designer should most carefully think of the actual combat situations and TERRAIN. Would a German battalion in the open, without artillery support, really engage a Russian battalion, equipped with large quantity of lmgs, hmgs and mortars, on a wooded hill without expecting to suffer heavy losses? Or would it rather wait for support or try to find a flank? Would tanks assault it, because a player had spread out his infantry to thinly and now he's thinking "aaaah, doesn't matter. they're ditrupted so I'll just force them out of position with a panzer charge into the trees". Should you really be able to locate entire enemy line, with infantry hiding in the woods and AT guns among the buildings, without drawing their fire or sending patrols first? These are the issues that, according to my uneducated intuition at least, should be easily fixed and would raise this game to a new level getting rid of the annoyances that can be really frustrating.

[jonnymacbrown]

"@jonnymacbrown
Well, since I've played only small scenarios so far I generally avoid firing at Germans on my turn, because the loss of time that I can cause on him is far more valuable than the insignificant attrition. Besides, I'm a sensitive man, and I hate seeing my soldiers cut to ribbons"

You are probably right in the short scenarios. In the larger ones I think you need to shoot back especially at the German panzers that are very thin skinned; even the Pz IIIs. My problems with this game come from wanting to play the variable strategic option scenario which is really interesting but however comes with the drawback of having many French units with the defense of 12 and even the best ones at 14; and they just get chewed up. I'd have to say that if I ever play F 40 in the future I'd play a vmod because all the Allied units have a defense of 16 and so you have a better chance. jonny ;)

[Narwan]

I agree with most of what you are saying, but it is the chicken and the egg argument. For the most part the allies have the gift of hindsight so that has to be taken into account when determining much of these things. But for the most part, that hindsight can be negated with the "Allies cast the die" scenario, but not entirely.

The hindsight works both ways. The german player also knows a lot more than his historical counterpart. For the 'Allies cast the die' scenario I can see your point, but not for a 'free form' campaign. Then it becomes punishing one side in an ahistorical manner for something a player can't help (historical knowledge). In my opinion there is a much easier way to deal with this, remove the Fix orders for Axis forces and give the germans different strategic starting options; just enough so they can vary their Schwerpunkt. The fix orders don't make any sense in a free-form scenario as the conditions which led to those 'halt' orders being given are more likely not to occur this time around.

basically time is the enemy; spectacular expectations are placed upon the Germans to achieve a victory in that they have to destroy lots of enemy units and capture nearly all the important high value objectives, and time is short.

Here I disagree. The may '40 campaign for the germans was all about destroying lots of enemy units, not about capturing certain objectives. The southern breakthrough and race to the channel ports was a means to an end, not the goal. In fact, the speed and success surprised even the german themselves. There were other ways they could have gone about it, what mattered though was to deal a crippling blow to 1st allied army group and knock out the belgians and dutch.
The way that they did choose was the one with highest risk (of complete failure) but also with the biggest payoff (complete success). The germans were, imo, very lucky to get the payoff they did. It could easily have gone very wrong for them.

If the VP levels are balanced to where it is tough for the Germans to win, even if they are destroying the allies wholesale, then the campaign "works" well enough.

Which is my whole point, then it works as a game, but not as a historical simulation (or at least as close as this game engine can get to one).
I believe that the opposing forces were actually much more evenly matched than is often assumed. My brother (history major, used to do a bit of tabletop wargaming himself years ago) probably said it better then I could when I told him what game I was playing (a regular 01 campaign): "What's the point of playing? How on earth can the germans have any chance of winning?".
That's exactly it, with hindsight for the allies the actual battle (as opposed to winning the game on victory conditions) in this timeframe should very difficult, perhaps even nearly impossible, to win outright for the germans given forces with accurate historical values on both sides. Such a battle would be decided on points; who would manage to do enough damage to the other to claim victory. Ie a victory based on balancing the game on an expected stalemate. Whoever gets enough 'edge' in the stalemate wins.

This is really a very difficult campaign to pull off in a wargame.

I absolutley agree. You can't turn this into a wargame without first answering the question whether you want to stay true to the historical outcome or true to historical forces. This campaign was historically decided by stupidity and luck. How could you model that without tweaking the historical forces?
My desire is simple, I want a game based on forces that are historically as accurateas can be, without any compromise to a desired 'historical outcome'. In my opinion that's what a wargame is about, give both sides forces that are as accurate as you can get them and then let them duke it out. Use victory conditions to balance out certain advantages one side may have over the other but otherwise keep it as it is.
There's no reason btw why there can't be both approaches.

The current france '40 campaign games have had to incorporate a number of unrealistic elements just so to make the historical outcome a likely one:
- german morale ratings are too high for some units (IMO no german units except the three platoons at Eben Emael should be rated A)

The A rated panzer battalions represent intangible advantages that *cannot* be represented any other way. It is well known that the allied armor (most notably French armor) totally outclassed the German panzers, and they certainly do outclass them in F40 unit rating wise. However where the panzer excelled was in their tactical doctrine, radios (French were still using flags and hand signals), crew training, and so on. Where it any other way then the German panzer formations would have been totally useless, but these intangibles have to be represented, and the only way to do that within the scope of F40 was to give them A quality. If they were relegated to B quality, then the French armor would have to be rated even lower in quality to represent the gap here, which was no desirable. This is all covered in the notes AFAICR.

Here too we have a difference of opinion, I don't think it is the best way to show those intangibles and I don't agree that french armor outclasses german armor in this game either. There are five factors that matter most: hard attack, soft attack, defense, speed and morale. French armor is marginally better in hard attack and a lot better in defense. These pale however when you look at the advantages the germans have when it comes to soft attack, speed and morale. And not only that, soft attack, speed and morale are far more important in this title than hard attack and defense are.
The only way I could come up with an explanation for the values as they are is that they already incorporate those intangibles. How else can you explain french AMR units and british VI-B units having soft attack values of 1/1 while similarly armed german Pnz I&II units have a whopping 6/1?
That's just an example btw, on the whole I can't figure out the rationale for giving the germans such high values in soft attack and a boost in morale at the same time. Looks to me like they get rewarded twice for the same thing, or (which was my assumption up till now) the allied values are deliberately tweaked down to facilitate a historical outcome.

All of these are good/valid points. However, keep in mind that the randomly disappearing (surrendering) French/Belgian units relies on luck, which is something you say the Germans should have to rely on.

True, but in the game it's purely randomly and completely separated from what actually happens on the battlefield. The historical dissolution of certain formations was a direct result of what happened in the 'grand battle'. If there's a mechanism for this effect in the game it should at least have some link with what happens on the battlefield and not reward the allies for throwing his worst formations at the enemy first (you might as well use them while they're still around and whatever you put in front of the germans first is gonna suffer badly so why not these guys?).
Then there's the issue of whther this mechanism is necessary at all. I'm not convinced that the situation with the french formations falling apart is in any way unique. The same happened just about everywhere in ww2 to just about everyone (meaning you can find examples of this amongst just about every nations forces) when slower forces were outmanouvred strategically and bypassed. Some stayed their ground and fought, some formation just diseappered. Morale played a big part in which way a formation went but it wasn't unique to the french in '40. The common way to deal with this is to make it very easy to deal with cut-off and isolated enemy formations. Their morale drops rapidly and after a few assaults just about all of them show the white flag. I think this mechanism covers this effect well enough on average without the need of separate mechanism for france 40.

- and IMO german soft attack values are in many case too high compared to those of comparable allied units (or the other way around).

Well, the _Alt and stock ratings may be similar in this regard, but it is for a good reason: German infantry were simply better equipped than the French at the squad/platoon level. AFAICR, the French had nothing like the MG34 (the LMG employed at the squad level), one of these in every squad/platoon alone is worth 3 soft attack points, although that is not the only difference that this increase represents. ;)

Have you never heard the phrase that the germans had the best LMG for defense and the british had the best LMG for offense? :-)

For sure the mg34 was an important weapon which had a lot of advantages. And german units should get a boost for it but it wasn't a miracle weapon. In the end it still was an mmg that could also perform the lmg role (although not as well as the mmg role). The Bren and it's french counterpart the FM29 were dedicated lmg's which had their own advantages. There's a reason both of these stayed in service for a considerable period of time after ww2. They were quite good for their job, and for some parts of the job at least considerably better than the mg34.
Personally I'd sooner raise the german defense value because of the mg34 than the attack value, maybe one point in each? :-D

Here are some values:
French motorised infantry; 6/1
British motorised infantry 7/1
Belgian motorised infantry 5/1
German motorised infantry 11/1

That's a big difference which isn't just explained by weapons at squad, platoon and company level (including support units).

IMO, you cannot make all of the above suggested changes and expect it to be a "fair" representation of the campaign (it would tilt it too far the other direction I think, especially with hindsight). Some of the changes could be made to make it a more of a tougher fight for the Germans, which sounds like would be the ideal approach: a tougher fight but not a miracle fight.

Indeed, it's the combination of all of these factors that makes the current version of the game much less historically accurate than it should be.
But much depends on what you mean by 'the fight'. Scenario 1 where the germans attack through the ardennes and the allies are free to deploy as they wish to deal with it should be extremely difficult to win as a battle for the germans and conditions should be balanced accordingly.
Scenario 2 where the allies are fixed up north for much of the first week should de difficult for the germans to pull off but not impossible.
Best would be one where the allies are free to deploy but where the germans have several strategic options so the allies can't be sure they made the right choices. This scenario should be able to go anywhere, including an actual defeat on the battelfield of the germans by the allies.

On the whole I think that the germans did have the egde over the allies but not by enough to make a victory assured and that condition set for the game need to determine whether the german player did well enough to claim the game as 'won'. As the attacker you need a considerably bigger edge than they had which IMO is why they gambled. And won.


PS I'm still grateful for the time you have spent on these titles and are continuing to spend on them.

[Archijerej]

Another simple fix that comes to mind: tanks in the woods (and similar type of terrain) should deploy, go back to travel mod and assault (with severe penalty) at the cost of full movement cost. This way they can only provide fire support in column and along the road, otherwise valuable time is lost. A meticulously planned and built forest roadblock have fulfilled its task.

[jonnymacbrown]

"Scenario 2 where the allies are fixed up north for much of the first week should de difficult for the germans to pull off but not impossible.
Best would be one where the allies are free to deploy but where the germans have several strategic options so the allies can't be sure they made the right choices. This scenario should be able to go anywhere, including an actual defeat on the battelfield of the germans by the allies."

There is one like this and it is really neat:
0510_01: Fall Gelb/Strategical Options/no fix

I don't think this one was ever turned into a vmod and I've talked a bit about some of the inherent problems: low morale and especially 12 & 14 defense for all the French units. jonny :smoke:

[jonnymacbrown]

"The only way I could come up with an explanation for the values as they are is that they already incorporate those intangibles. How else can you explain french AMR units and british VI-B units having soft attack values of 1/1 while similarly armed german Pnz I&II units have a whopping 6/1?"

This is a good question. Could the same be said for the French AMD Panhard with a 2/1 soft attack?
jonny :conf:

[Archijerej]

Off topic: Volcano Man, you mentioned a possibility of a PzC Poland '39. Despite what some may think, this could be an excellent title. There are several people out there with extensive knowlege about the campaign from both Polish and German sources. The historical campaign would of course be unwinnable for the Poles but an alternative campaign with different Polish deployement/complete mobilisation should give him a hope of "winning", i.e. preventing the German player from taking all required victory points and destroying the Polish army. There is also loads of material for interesting scenarios, for example Mokra (Wolynska Cavalry Brigade vs. 4th Panzer Division), Polish counteroffensive at Bzura (Battle of Kutno in German sources), the delaying action of colonels Maczek 10 cavalry (mot) brigade against the German XXII (Pz) Corps, etc. I will gladly contact the designers with guys in Poland and, if time permits, help myself. Feel welcomed to approach me in case the game is considered.