The guns are surveyed in, the Fire Direction Center computers are up and running, and the FOs are calling in fire missions, so it's time to start servicing my targets.

My first target is Mark Pitcavage's column about the prospects for Grand Europa from issue #19. I disagree with him on many points ahout the prospects for it happening, but I do agree that the "Greater Europa" games are indeed the easiest to do and these are what we are likely to see first as John Astell is already planning on linking Scorched Earth and Second Front from 1943 on. Without minimizing the effort to create Grand Europa, it really only requires an overall Axis order of battle to get started, and John is preparing one for SF.

Grand Europa will require all existing orders of battle to be recast in a common form. It cannot tolerate a multitude of replacement systems individual to each game or set of games like War in the Desert, Balkan Front and Scorched Earth. I believe that the replacement system should be structured like the Soviet example in that each unit costs either armor, infantry or artillery RPs or a mix of them with the possible addition of truck RPs to control motorization assets. Each unit appears in the replacement pool and must be bought. Only units arriving from off-map theaters would be actual reinforcements as is currently the norm. It becomes critical to assign the RPs to specific locations and to allow for them to be captured or destroyed. This could be by city, factory or MD/Wehrkreis as appropriate. It is important here not to be bogged down in the little details of each individual factory. These RPs could then possibly be bombed through the strategic air campaign.

I might as well address here the issues of hypothetical 0Bs. Some allowances are going to have to be made for unexpected successes that allow for the creation of extra units. This is not a real problem as every unit should be purchased from the replacement pool anyway with the exception of offmap theaters like the US or the Eastern MDs. Players must merely be denied the ability to build ahistorical units or historical units early. I'm sorry, you just can't convert every Wehrmacht infantry division to 9-8 or have 20-10 SS panzer divisions attacking France. All this is easily controlled by specifying when certain units can be converted or upgraded and by not providing many of these extra counters. Armies could upgrade certain units after specified conditions are met.

For example, most German infantry would gain a point after the conquest of either Poland or France and a second point after the conquest of the other. The biggest problem for those like Lynn Ray Stolpa who wish to make major changes to the OBs is that the countermix cannot allow you to do so. If players are willing to make their own counters I suppose they can, but I'd not want to play in such a game. Some provision for extra units is going to have to be made if a surplus of RPs exist, such as giving the Germans a 28th and 29th panzer division.

And why not? I've never seen a Stalingrad in a game, but have seen games of SE where 27th Panzer Division had been raised and a surplus of armor RPs still existed. Thus good play is rewarded. It's silly to think that countries would not have raised extra forces if the resources were at hand.

On the other hand, certain armies must be shackled with the crummy troops raised through political wheeling and dealing at the highest levels. I'm talking about the Luftwaffe Field Divisions in particular. No rational player wants the things, so they must be inflicted upon him. This reflects Goring's maneuvering to satisfy OKW's demands that surplus ground crews be formed into combat units while not losing control of them to the Wehrmacht and, as such, shouldn't be subject to the player's control.

I have my reservations about a production system similar to that proposed by Frank Watson in issue #29. In principle it looks quite rational and even (relatively) simple to do, but an economic system is very hard to evaluate unless some hard numbers are presented. Frankly, I don't have any idea of the amount of resources required to produce an RP of any type and I don't believe that anyone else does either. It seems very difficult to assign a value or formula for the cost of an RP and to declare it more real or accurate than any other value or formula.

Now what may be possible is to "reverse-engineer" the production systern from what was historically built, i.e. translate the historical OBs into replacement points and work out a system that will produce said totals. Care must be taken to ensure that changes in the inputs yield reasonable outputs to prevent players from abusing the system.

Despite my overall doubts, I nevertheless have some comments on Frank's proposals and on John Astell's comments about them in issue #31.

Agriculture

Judging from the stats I've seen, the Germans only had a potential (or actual) food shortage problem at the very beginning of the war and at the end of the war. The acquisition of Poland and western Europe, with their large agricultural bases, provided Germany with more than enough food to keep its people fed.

Consequently, it is the loss of these areas that should precipitate the German food shortage in late 1944, in conjunction with the Allied strategic air campaign against the German transportation network that prevented the distribution of food to the cities. This does impact the amount of labor available for the production effort and must be accounted for. It could also be important for the Brits if an abstracted German U-boat campaign is more successful than was historically the case.

Armaments

Actually, I prefer Frank's term myself. I believe that artillery should be factored out of armaments in general, as I wish to see artillery RPs used to build artillery units. This way we can dispense with grossly artificial limits on the number of artillery REs that may be replaced. It would also prevent RPs yielded from disbanded artillery units being used to replace infantry divisions. It should be noted that rockets and mortars are very cheap to produce and should be available at some discount in comparison to ordinary tube artillery.

The categories, as I see them, are automotive, artillery, aircraft and shipping. Automotive would include armor, trucks and rail capacity. I'm inclined to limit the ability to change from one category to the other. Dockyard workers could switch pretty easily between battleships and submarines, but require much more training to build tanks.

Aircraft

I am extremely dubious about the possibilities of allowing players the freedom to build their own air forces, even just by changing arrival dates, much less altering the models built. Even more than elsewhere in Europa, the air OB's level of detail limits its flexibility. It's moderately easy to figure out what changes are involved in dealing with one aircraft model, but it becomes exponentially harder to do so for multiple changes.

If better data existed for the amount of time to convert a production line from one model to another and the resources involved to do so, I'd be less pessimistic, but I've never seen such data. It's just too damn difficult to figure out the effects on the Luftwaffe of, say, terminating Me109s in favor of Fw190s (which any player would do in a heartbeat), or the reaction of the Allies.

Until the Fw190D arrives, the Fw190 just can't compete with the Allied fighters above 20,000 feet. This is exactly where the daylight bombing campaign is being fought. How would that impact the strategic air campaign? I don't know, but I doubt it would be a positive thing for Germany. This is another case where the details of all the different aircraft models vitiates against allowing players much freedom to build their own (the Europa principle, if you will). Things would be different if we had generic fighter and bomber counters, but we don't. And I, for one, am grateful that this is so.

Now maybe it would be possible to allow players a limited ability to switch between aircraft models, particularly those aircraft that have multiple models with different functions, such as the Ju88.

The only reason why a player shouldn't be allowed to switch production from Ju88A bombers to Ju88C night fighters or from Ju88Ss to Ju88Gs is a possible shortage of airborne radar sets. Keep in mind that at least several things must be considered in evaluating this sort of thing: airframes, engines and any special equipment like radar sets to name a few. If these are similar, as they are for the Ju88 models just listed, then it's not a big deal to convert aircraft on the production line; in fact, that's exactly the way some models were produced.

It is more problematic when converting from say, a Ju88A to a Ju88G, where each model uses a different engine. A much bigger step would be to convert from one type to another, though this could be minimized if they shared the same engine and weighed roughly the same. The Me410 (7HF6 2-1/17) and the He219 (9NHF7 1/20) share the same engine and are virtually the same weight. Which would you rather have? But all this would require a lengthy list of conversions specifying which models could be converted to some other model and the price for doing so. Frankly, I'm not enamored enough with the concept just outlined to do the work required to whip it into shape.

One very real problem with allowing even this sort of free choice for players is that it ignores the fact that Willy Messerschmitt was far more influential at the Reichsluftfahrt, the agency that decided on all Luftwaffe aircraft purchases, than was Ernst Heinkel. This is one major reason for the high number of Me410s built versus the low number of He219s.

Kindly do not mention the possibility of massed Me262s decimating B-17 formations in early 1944. It couldn't have happened. Hitler's order to convert them to the fighter- bomber role had almost no effect on the availability of the Me262, despite the myth to the contrary (see my article in Combined Arms #1). The real problem was that the engines were not combatready and weren't fully mature even by war's end. Now, if they had pursued the HeS 11 engine rather than the Jumo and BMW engines... But I digress.

Bauxite may be so scarce that it needs to be tracked explicitly, since it is the ore from which aluminum is refined. Without it, aircraft must be made of wood. Wood is heavier than aluminum for the same amount of strength. This has an adverse impact on aircraft performance. The Mosquito was a superb aircraft built of wood and would have been even better had its airframe had been built of aluminum. The short time Germany held the primary source of Soviet bauxite, Tikhvin, was long enough to force the Soviets to use wood for their aircraft. The consequent performance penalties lasted virtually until the end of the war.

Cement

I'd not thought about tracking cement explicitly, but doing so would allow us to dispense with the all-purpose, handy-dandy, jack-of-all-trades resource point. I have always had a bit of a trouble with the idea of refining oil at Ploesti and then firing it at Soviet cities through the barrel of Dora. What did Dora fire, 55-gallon drums of oil? The resource point works well at limiting construction in individual games, but has no place in Grand Europa.

Maintenance

Just say no! I don't really think we'll need to address this explicitly aside from the refitting of ships.

Fuel

I agree with Mark that the fuel situation is difficult to deal with, particularly in relation to the mobility of ground units, although cutting exploitation movement as fuel reserves are exhausted might be one way to go. Air units are easier to handle, as you can cut their patrol and interception ranges, drop their GA, and possibly even award fighter superiority to simulate the lack of training for the German pilots late in the war.

Those who anticipate that Grand Europa will impart virtual total freedom to do as they wish haven't thought it through. Because of its level of detail and operational scale it is not suited for a free-flowing recreation of WW II. Play strategic games such as World in Flames or Third Reich if you want the ability to conduct your own version of World War II, not Grand Europa.

A corps is much easier to deal with in non-historical situations than is a battalion since so much is subsumed into the corps to begin with. Grand Europa with its many battalions and historically-driven OBs cannot allow players the ability to do as they wish. Even in existing games, the OBs become somewhat questionable if things like the destruction of the Stalingrad pocket do not occur as they did in reality. Why should the Germans withdraw so many units from the replacement pool if they weren't destroyed to begin with? Sure, some of them return later so it sort of balances out, but I'm still uncomfortable with the whole idea.

Now imagine how screwy a game could get if Stalin attacks Hitler in 1942 while Rommel is in the Sinai. While GE cannot allow players the total freedom they might desire, fewer shackles are necessary than you might think.

Four Givens

The political aspect of Grand Europa only requires four givens (thanks to Tom Johnson and Joe Hayes for the initial work on these concepts):

First, the Germans start the game at war with the British, French and Poles and allied to the Soviets. This is World War Two we're dealing with here, not some alternate history free-for-all.

Second, the Americans enter the war. The exact date is irrelevant, as the Americans take quite a while to transfer forces to the ETO.

Third, the Soviets may attack Germany on or after Jul I 41.

And lastly, the Italians must declare war on France and then go adventuring after the collapse of France. They must attack Greece, as Yugoslavia is far more problematic from a political and economic viewpoint-the Germans did not want their imports interrupted. Any Italian attack would result in a lengthy campaign and would probably devastate the country, unless the Germans participated as well. If you have played the Plan Y scenario in Balkan Front, you have an idea of what I'm talking about. Marita was over so quickly that little economic disruption occurred.

Undoubtedly some eyebrows have been raised by the idea of the Soviets attacking the Nazis first in 1941. but consider-what else could induce the Nazis to attack first more than the specter of a triple line of Soviets from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Alternatively, the Nazis could simply be required to attack in 1941, but I'm reluctant to simply compel such an attack. I'd rather figure out some mechanic to encourage the players to act in a near-historical manner; this is a much more elegant solution in my opinion.

Some have proposed that a large German garrison in Poland would deter the Soviets from attacking in 1941, while still allowing the Germans to execute a Mediterranean strategy in 1941, but I don't believe that such was a viable possibility considering Hitler's fixation on dealing with the Soviets.

Furthermore, the structure of the 1942 Soviet Army without Barbarossa would differ vastly from the historical one shown in SE. It would require many assumptions unsupported by much more than a gut feeling. In addition, many new counters would be required for the tank and mech divisions equipped with T-34s and KV-1s and the infantry divisions with another year of training under their belts and reinforced by older tanks passed down by the tank divisions. These sorts of hypothetical campaigns are best handled by a scenario with its own OBs (and most probably counters) and special rules-not within the context of GE.

The behavior of the neutrals like Norway, Romania and Hungary is more problematic, but I think that they could be handled through something like the system in GDW's Third World War system of games. A nation's political stance is measured on a spectrum from membership in the Axis to membership in the Allies with various degrees of neutrality in between that would govern how much that nation would cooperate. The prime example is Sweden's permission to move the 163rd Infantry Division from Norway to Finland after Barbarossa. The realities of the situation were that Sweden did not feel safe in refusing a Germany that had her surrounded. Later in the war Sweden balanced the Allied demands to cease shipping ball bearings to Germany with the German demands to continue to do so by shipping the machine tools and the high-quality ore necessary for Germany to make them herself. Many of the internal coups like the one in Yugoslavia can be linked to the conquest of neighboring territory, as the likelihood of external aid often prompted them, or at least governed their timing.

I'm considerably more optimistic than Mark is about the prospects of Grand Europa, as I trust you have gathered, but GE is going to require major amounts of work and a lot of time to play. Frankly, the proposals outlined above are complex, but I don't believe that you can do it in a simpler way and retain the historicity that Europa is famous for. I think anyone who wants to play Grand Europa had better realize that it isn't a commitment made lightly and had better prepare accordingly. I also think that few will actually play this monster, but that there will be a much greater demand for the Greater Europa campaigns that Mark refers to, simply because you can play them with a more reasonable expenditure of time.

The FOs are reporting effects on target, and radar reports incoming, so it's time to hit the foxholes until things have quieted down.