[Treeburst]

Have just completed the Afrika 40'41 grand campaign. Great mod, and very eye-opening.

It is obvious why the British got pushed out of France in a hurry in 1940. The so-called 'armor' that they had was almost useless against anything except (and maybe even including) small arms. In most battles in this mod I was forced to hide my armor behind hills and buildings to keep them alive until all of the enemy AT and even light AA guns had been knocked out. After this they were useful in handling purely infantry units. Against the vastly superior armor and infantry anti-tank capacity of the Germans they would have been nothing more than battlefield litter in seconds once contact was made with the enemy. (I believe that the French had better armor but their tactics were vastly inferior to the Blitzkrieg of the Germans.)

I am surprised that the British had such success against the Italians in North Africa. The only thing that they had in their favor was a significant superiority in artillery and parity or marginal superiority in air power. The Italians had some half decent anti-tank capability including (according to this mod) deadly mortar capability. My suspicion is that the Italians were defeated to some significant degree due to poor leadership and low morale, rather than vastly inferior arms.

This feeling was sustained when I swapped sides for a few battles and managed to seriously kick some British butt.

This is one benefit of playing this game. Not just the entertainment, but to get at least some appreciation of the real-life events that it is based on. Cheers.

[papa_whisky]

Whatever the British had done in Northern France the Germans would have had them kicked off the mainland given the poor performance of the vastly numerically superior French army that had the weapons but not the heart, strategy, or tactics to stop the Germans. Having said that the British forces would probably have been trumped too due to the superior tactics of the Germans. The British abandoned the collapsing French army that was certainly un-heroic but was needed for survival and only managed to get off the mainland as Hitler called a halt on the advance for a period just long enough for us to get out.

The British tanks in general couldn't keep up with improvements on German tanks and anti-tank design which really took off from 1940 onwards. It must have been pretty scary being a tankee knowing that you are out gunned  and under armoured.

[Tejszd]

British tanks in 1940 were not bad and outclassed many German tanks (PzI, PzII and even the PzIII since it only had a 3.7cm gun in 1940).

The problem they had was much like the French in that they used tanks to support infantry instead of making artillery and infantry faster to keep up with the tanks. In reality German artillery at this point in the war was very dependent on horses and trucks so the Stuka was used as mobile artillery....

[Antony_nz]

Yea, the allies didn't use there tanks decisively. They were spread out piece meal. During the battle of France.


Treeburst!  
Close Combat greatly influenced my knowledge of WW2.
I would download a mod. Then i would spend months reading about the battle before during and after gaming.

I didn't know about Finish-soviet winter war. Okinawa, Soviet–Japanese border conflicts untill i played the mods and did research.
It was a long time ago. But any mod refuels my interest.


Goes to show, how a modder should endeavor to be realistic and honor the memory.


I still remember asking my H2H mate "Why are there soviets on the German side" when playing a Stalingrad mod.