Appeasement and Aggression

Description

Appeasement and Aggression

A scenario for Civ 2 FW and MGE by Nick Dowling (‘Case’)

(1936-1949)This scenario is an attempt to design a truly PBEM friendly WW2 scenario. It is not intended to be played as a single player scenario. As a result of this design philosophy, many of the elements which are standard in WW2 scenarios are missing from this one: war is notinevitable and the available units are balanced. As a result, the German player isn’t automatically fated for greatness and the French can avoid doom. (FW required, MGE recommended).

Scenario Background

This scenario is my attempt to design a truly PBEM friendly WW2 scenario. It is not intended to be played as a single player scenario. As a result of this design philosophy, many of the elements which are standard in WW2 scenarios are missing from this one. The most important missing element is that war is not inevitable. The second most important element is that I’ve tried to balance the units available to each side, by mainly using generic units, and not too many civ specific units. As a result, the German player isn’t automatically fated for greatness and the French can avoid doom. There are still quite a few Civ specific units, but their benefits are often transitory, and none of them are truly decisive by themselves (I hope!).

The scenario begins in late 1936 and I have tried to model the European situation at that time. The only alliance is between France and Britain. Italy is claiming to be Austria’s ‘protector’, and Germany and Italy will need to come to an agreement if the German player wants to expand into Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union is diplomatically isolated and under industrialised, but is no easy beat and has enormous potential.

An A-Z of Some VERY Important Game Play Notes

Fortifications: Most of the map squares in this scenario are fortified. This prevents stacks of units being destroyed in a single attack, something which is obviously historically invalid. As a result of this, units are often actually safer when placed outside cities then they are inside cities. As was the case in the war, the fate of cities will normally be decided outside the city limits. Major rivers and remote areas are not fortified. This is intended to represent the difficulty of carrying out large scale military operations across such terrain.

Governments: I’ve tried to get out of the tired civ routine where the Fascist states are represented by Fundamentalism, which is probably the most efficient form of government in Civ. As anyone who’s studied Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy can tell you, these states suffered from appalling levels of inefficiency and corruption. Similarly, I’ve tried to break the mould where the Democracies are represented by inefficient wartime governments such as Democracy. Civilians didn’t protest about bombers in WW2, and the productive capacity of the democracies was truly astounding. Fundamentalism much better represents the democracies of WW2 then it does the totalitarian states.

The following forms of government are used in this scenario:Communism: Soviet Communism (USSR only)Democracy: Liberal Democracy

Despotism: Neutrality (to stop the Neutral Civs from developing)Fundamentalism: War Democracy (Can be developed by France and Britain)

Monarchy: Dictatorship

Republic: Fascism (Italy and Germany)

France and Britain can develop War Democracy by researching the appropriate techs.

All the other countries in this scenario are assumed to remain as dictatorships.

German Budget Problems: As was the case historically, the Nazi’s budgetary policy is unsustainable in the long-run. For the Germans to survive financially, they must expand or menace their neighbours into paying tribute.

Railroads: In order to avoid single turn blitzkriegs of nations, railroads cannot be built until the very end of this scenario.

Sound: At present this scenario has no sounds. They will be added in a later version.Spain: Where’s Spain? The short answer is that Spain is in the midst of a civil war at the start of this scenario, and the resulting economic destruction is assumed to knock Spain out of European affairs throughout the 30s and 40s. The long answer is that I would have liked to include Spain but didn’t have enough Civs to do so, and I didn’t want it to provide lebensraum for the French player by using the neutral dictatorships to represent a full fledged Spain. As it is, I’ve included the main cities for trading purposes, and that’s it.

Switzerland: Trust me, you really don’t want to invade Switzerland!

United States of America: There are three ways which the Americans intervene: Somebody captures London from the British

Somebody captures Paris from the French

There’s a 1/90 chance each turn that the US will make a surprise decision to end it’s isolationist policies.

When the US intervenes a slow build up of US troops will begin in Britain and France. This build up can be expanded by Britain and France developing the techs US Build Up and American Armour.

Yugoslavia and Albania: These two countries are represented by the Barbarian Civ. As a result, they can be invaded without having to start a formal war. This is intended to represent the essentially friendless nature of these states.

Unit Descriptions

Firstly, just a note on scale: most ground units are intended to represent a division of that kind of unit. For example a ‘Regular’ unit represents an infantry division comprised regulars, and a ‘T-34’ represents an armoured division primarily equipped with that tank. The exceptions to this rule are Armoured Recon, Artillery, Guerrillas and heavy Armour. These units are intended to be roughly the size of a brigade/ regiment. Please see the order of battle links in the ‘Sources’ part of this document if you want to see the exact composition of divisions, brigades, etc.

Speaking generally, most divisions consisted of three brigades/regiments each composed of 3 battalions, as well as several artillery battalions and a recon battalion.

The main implication of this is that unit statistics reflect the capabilities of the entire military unit and not just the equipment this unit was primarily equipped with. For instance, the differential between an American Armoured Division equipped with M-4 Sherman tanks and a German Panzer Division equipped with Pz-VI Panther tanks is much less then the difference between these tanks individual performance. What the stats seek to measure is the difference in the overall effectiveness of these units. As was clearly demonstrated in 1944-45, US divisions equipped with Sherman tanks were not particularly inferior in combat to German divisions equipped with Panthers.Another key point is the way that unit stats between air, ground and sea units have been set up. In most instances, units of one service cannot inflict serious harm by attacking a unit of one of the other services. For instance, fighter aircraft can’t do much damage to ground units and most sea units can’t seriously harm ground units. The implication is that you should have a look at the stats before making any such attacks!

A key desire of mine was to ensure that infantry was ‘the master of the battlefield’. In most Civ scenarios, infantry is depicted as a cheap unit suitable only for defending the gains made by armoured units. However, anyone whose familiar with the composition and roles of all the Armies of World War Two will find that this contradicts the make up and deployment of armies of the period. Typically infantry formations hugely outnumbered armoured ones, and even in the highly mechanised Allied armies infantry was at the forefront of attacks as least as often as the armour was. Given the powerful and plentiful support weapons assigned to all infantry divisions, this shouldn’t be surprising. As such, I have given infantry units good attack and defence stats, while armoured units are useful only on the attack, and are extremely vulnerable if not protected by infantry units at the end of turns.

The following descriptions are intended to describe why I gave the units in this scenario the stats they’ve ended up with and how you should use the units in the scenario. Please note that I chose not to describe the various national specific units as these units are all so well known that describing them would be unnecessary. If you’re unfamiliar with any of the national specific units, a quick Google search should set you right.

INFANTRY

Despite all the attention paid to armour, infantry was the true king of the WW2 battlefield. While tanks were vital for creating and plugging breakthroughs and attacking other tanks, infantry was required to hold any gains the tanks made. Throughout the war infantry formations also possessed a powerful anti-tank ability, which increased dramatically upon the introduction of infantry AT weapons such as the Bazooka and advanced AT guns and tactics.

Regulars: Full time volunteers. Even after massive conscription was introduced, regular units generally remained the best in any given Army.

Reserves: Part time soldiers. At the time of World War Two, most reservists where old, but had plenty of combat experience under their belts. If given time to train these units were as good as regulars (you’ll have to disband the reserves to build regulars to get this effect).

Conscripts: While this may be slightly unfair, I’ve modelled conscripts as poor quality soldiers. These units are cheap, but the democracies would be much better off building volunteers.Volunteers: Upon the outbreak of war, massive numbers of volunteers joined the armed forces of the democracies. These volunteers typically enjoyed higher morale then conscripts, and this is reflected in their stats. War Democracies don’t pay any support for these units.

Cavalry: By 1939 Horse cavalry units were essentially infantry units which used horses as transport and always dismounted to fight. While too slow and lightly equipped to survive in open areas, these units remained useful in rugged terrain.

Motorised Infantry: One of the biggest, and most underrated, military revolutions which occurred in the inter-war years was the massive adoption of motorised transport by the worlds armed forces. Aside from being able to move more quickly then marching troops, motorised infantry units were also generally much better equipped and more able to stand up to armoured units.

Armoured Infantry: Motorised infantry mounted in lightly armoured halftracks. These units also included armoured self propelled artillery, tank destroyers and armoured scouts. The importance of armoured infantry seems to have been a real blind spot for all WW2 era armies, with it’s use being restricted to providing infantry units capable of keeping up with the tanks in armoured divisions. As a result, none of the armies ever really grasped the fact that armoured infantry units were powerful units in their own right. The only army that even came close to realising this was the Germans, yet their limited industrial base meant that tank production took much greater precedence over infantry carrying halftracks

Paratroopers: Elite infantry trained and equipped to land deep behind enemy lines with the goal of taking and holding strategic targets. WW2 era airborne formations are often greatly overrated. While the quality of the soldiers in these divisions was extremely high, the need to fit all combat equipment into aircraft meant that these divisions were significantly ‘lighter’ then standard infantry divisions. As a result, airborne divisions lacked the staying power of conventional infantry. As was the case in WW2, these expensive and fragile units should be used only in important attacks or truly desperate situations, and all efforts should be made to quickly reinforce them with more powerful conventional units.

Marines: Elite infantry trained and equipped for amphibious operations. A WW2 era marine division typically consisted of several battalions of elite infantry backed up by commandos and some armour. Like paratroopers, these units method of getting into battle imposed restrictions on how much support equipment they could carry, with the result that they were generally lighter then conventional infantry. (the exception being the US Marines in the Pacific, whose divisions were actually much larger and more powerful then US Army divisions).

Sappers: Combat engineers. These units were capable of carrying out assault operations as well as basic construction tasks. However, the difficulty of replacing highly trained personnel killed in combat meant that these units lacked staying power and had to be used extremely cautiously. Whenever possible, these units should be kept well away from the front lines.

Partisans: Most partisan bands were made up of survivors from defeated combat units. As such, they were generally made up of brave and skilled soldiers who lacked both heavy weapons and even remotely adequate supplies.

ARMOUR

WW2 Armoured Formations were powerful, but still rather vulnerable units. Their lack of integral infantry and complete dependency on properly functioning lines of supply meant that they were ill-suited to defensive tasks. Armoured units in this scenario are weak on defence and should always be accompanied by infantry units.

Light Armour: Until the late 30s, armoured formations were generally made up of small, lightly armoured and armed tanks with a mere sprinkling of support units. While mobile, these units were too unbalanced to stand up in a fight, something which the French and British found out the hard way in May 1940.

Medium Armour: ‘Blitzkrieg’ tactics called for well balanced armoured divisions consisting of well armoured and reliable tanks supported by motorised infantry and artillery.

Improved Medium Armour: As WW2 dragged on, the various armies tinkered with their tanks and armoured divisions to reflect the lessons of war. The result was upgraded versions of the old faithful tanks, and armoured divisions organised along slightly different lines (the US and Germany reduced the size of their armoured divisions, and the British increased the size of theirs).

Heavy Armour: As a reaction to the increasing power of anti-tank weapons, all the major combatants introduced extremely heavily armoured tanks into service. While these tanks are often depicted as ‘super tanks’, their role and abilities were actually rather limited. Due to their weight, these tanks were typically mechanically unreliable, and consumed vast quantities of fuel. As a result, they were generally used only to smash holes in the enemy front line and to defend set objectives, and never came close to replacing the faster and more versatile medium tanks. After WW2 most armies moved away from the heavy tank concept, and concentrated on improving the capabilities of their medium tanks, which resulted in the enduring (and successful) concept of the ‘Main Battle Tank’.

Armoured Recon: Armoured recon units played a vital, but limited, role. While primarily intended as the as the eyes and ears of the various armies, they also served as screening forces and mobile reserves. Note: The Armoured Recon unit is a diplomat type unit. As a result, it is destroyed after you use it to scout a city. Like everything else, information has it’s price.

ARTILLERY

Corps Artillery: Most army corps had a number of independent artillery battalions directly assigned to the Corps HQ. These battalions, which were usually equipped with guns of larger calibre then the divisional artillery, were either used to augment divisions tasked with difficult missions or in a relatively independent role such as providing long range counter-battery and indiction fire.

AIRCRAFT

Biplane Fighter: Biplanes were the standard equipment of most of the world’s air forces in the mid 1930s. However, they were rapidly phased out during the process of rearmament.

Monoplane Fighter: As a result of their far superior performance, monoplane fighters replaced biplanes with dazzling speed in most of the worlds air forces in the mid 1930s.

Heavy Fighter: Intended as both bomber escorts and killers, heavy fighters were typically large double engined aircraft. What this gained them in range and armament didn’t adequately make up for their resulting poor manoeuvrability and speed. After suffering terrible losses in the first year of the war at the hands of monoplane fighters most heavy fighters were relegated to ground attack and night fighter duties, in which they proved fairly successful.

Long Ranged (LR) Fighter: As the successor to heavy fighters, LR Fighters also performed bomber escort missions. However, as the performance of these aircraft matched or exceeded that of more short ranged aircraft LR fighters proved to be a massively successful innovation.

Jet Fighter: WW2 era Jet fighters were primitive machines and, on balance, were not dramatically superior to propeller driven aircraft. The performance of the jets which were introduced into service in the German, British and American air forces didn’t justify their cost.

Medium Bomber: Small and double engined bombers formed the backbone of most nations tactical bomber fleet in the 1930s and 40s. The types of aircraft used in this role were remarkable consistent, with many of the pre-war designs still being in full production at the end of the war!

Heavy Bomber: The inevitable result of the pre-war bomber doctrine. The record of heavy bombers is somewhat controversial, with many experts arguing that using the resources which were devoted to heavy bombers to have built more medium bombers would been a more effective strategy. Nonetheless, when escorted adequately and directed competently heavy bombers were able to inflict devastating damage on any target.

Dive Bomber: The tactic of dive bombing lead to much greater bombing accuracy. The trade off however was that the demands this tactic made on airframes meant that aircraft designed for dive bombing missions tended to be relatively slow and vulnerable to enemy fighters.

Ground Attack Aircraft: Dive bombing was gradually fazed out during the war, with rocket and cannon armed ground attack aircraft taking over the role of providing close air support and performing ‘tank busting’ missions.

Torpedo Bomber: Air-dropped torpedos posed a considerable threat to WW2 era warships. However, owing the weight and size of the torpedos, aircraft armed with these weapons tended to be extremely vulnerable if attacked by enemy fighters.

Nuclear Bomb: Despite allegations that the decision to use nuclear bombs on Japan was driven by racism, there should be no doubt that atomic bombs would have been dropped on Germany if she had still been in the war in August 1945. Owing to their massive cost, these weapons should only be used to attack major concentrations of enemy units.

SHIPS

Destroyer: These remarkably versatile ships served in every imaginable role. The trade off though was that destroyers were rarely the best ship for any particular mission.

Cruiser: Cruisers were optimised for naval combat. However, their ability to perform useful shore bombardment and anti-aircraft defence made them extremely versatile ships.

AA Cruiser: Anti-Aircraft cruisers were cruiser sized warships fitted with lots of anti-aircraft guns guided by advanced radar and fire control systems. These ships never lived up to their promise, and were phased out as soon as fighters able to provide naval forces with air cover in distant parts of the ocean became available.

Old Battleship: Large numbers of WW1 era battleships were still soldiering on in the 1930s. The demands of war combined with the high cost of replacing these ships kept many old battleships in service until the end of the war.

Battleship: With their huge batteries of heavy guns, battleships were capable of naval combat and shore bombardment. However, these ships cost and vulnerability to air attack meant that they were, for all intents and purposes, obsolete by the end of the war.

Carrier: Capable of carrying several squadrons of aircraft, these ships were extensively used in European waters to provide air cover for other naval units and to mount attacks against enemy ships and bases. However, the demands which the need to operate aircraft made on carrier design meant that these large ships were surprisingly vulnerable to enemy attack.Submarine: Most submarines of the 1930s and 40s were primitive affairs, generally capable of only limited underwater endurance at an extremely slow speeds. As these ships generally travelled on the surface of the sea, they were unable to operate in areas where the enemy enjoyed air superiority (as the Germans discovered in the Atlantic and the British discovered in the Mediterranean)

Diesel-Electric Submarine: Diesel Electric submarines represented a massive advance in Submarine technology. Through the use of more efficient batteries and engines, as well as devices such as the snorkel, these were the first genuine submarines. As these boats were able to both stay submerged for much longer then all earlier submarines and move faster underwater then on the surface, Diesel-Electric submarines were much more effective weapons then their predecessors.

Freighter: While slow, ugly and almost defenceless, these ships were absolutely vital to all military campaigns waged across a major body of water.

LST: Landing Ship Tank (or Large Slow Target to their crews). These ships were designed to carry vehicles and land them in contested beachheads. As such, they were essential for carrying out major amphibious operations in WW2, an era of motorised manoeuvre warfare.

Thank You

Everybody who tested this scenario for me, in particular Henrik, Boco (aka Dave Wylie) and Ravagon. All the comments I received resulted in this scenario being greatly improved. Any surviving flaws in this scenario are, of course, totally my fault.

Winterfritz, Chris62, and everybody else at the Apolyton Scenario League Forum for the interesting debates on various issues covering in this scenario, and particularly the debate on the best way to model WW2 era governments within the Civ engine.

Special thanks to Field Marshal Klesh for letting me look at his Lebensraum Scenario, and Winterfritz for inducting me into the art of multiple figure units.

Thanks also to everybody at "http://www.historic-battles.com" for the interesting discussions about various aspects of WW2.

And last, but not least, a big thanks to the staff of the Australian National University Library for consistently not asking why I wanted them to buy certain books. Without their cheerful willingness to spend taxpayers money on non-course related books, I could not have produced such historically correct civ scenarios over the last few years.

Version History

Work on this scenario commenced all the way back in March 2002

Beta Test Version: Sent to playtesters in June 2003. Version 1.0(FW): Released February 2004

Downloads

Case's Original Appeasement and Agression: Scenario Files

McMonkey's Mod with alternative graphics: Scenario Files