Some questions about France '40

[Narwan]

The problem I have with France '40 is that it suffers more than most other wargames I know from the problem that the designers feel that the historical outcome should also be the 'average' outcome of battle in the game (and balance their victory conditions accordingly). For them the game becomes a question of whether you'll do better or worse than historical. It isn't a problem at all that you can lose the battle in game and still win the game so long as you didn't lose that badly.

But all of that becomes irrelevent if the historical outcome was actually a freak outcome instead of being the most likely one. The historical result of may '40 was more like the germans rolling lot's of fives and sixes while the allies kept on rolling ones and two's.
The battle for France in may '40 should actually be a game where the german victory on the battlefield (as opposed to winning because of victory conditions) should be in doubt. The most likely outcome, assuming equal skill an luck on both sides, should be a stalemate somewhere across belgium and northern france. Actually winning the battle should be result of skill (and maybe some luck). Winning as big as was done historically should be a freak occurence. Only in a campaign setup where the allies are forced to deploy their forces in belgium and keep them there until the 14th-15th of may should reaching the Channel by german armored spearheads be a serious possibility (but even then not the most likely one!). In a campaign with little or no limitations on allied deployments it should only be possible with fairly incompetent allied play plus very good german play plus a lot of luck.

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'm pretty sure they would rate the german chances of achieving anywhere near the historical outcome within the same timeframe as close to nil.
I suspect that a fair amount of them would even speculate that the entire german attack might likely fail to produce a decisive result either in 1940 or in 1941 and that germany would then lose the war when either the russians or the americans decide to join in.

In my opinion a proper simulation of the France 40 campaign should have to see the germans fight hard to get any sort of battle ground victory. It should also have a serious possibility of the allies achieving a battleground victory as opposed to only 'stopping the germans' as it is now.
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)
- 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
- and IMO german soft attack values are in many case too high compared to those of comparable allied units (or the other way around).

I view the current France '40 game as a just that, a game. It's based on historical events but not a historical recreation of those events.
Doesn't mean I can't enjoy playing it, I just can't take it seriously as a historical simulation.