F 40 Gold question

[Pvt_Larry]

Regarding your former points, I consider this a fundamental question of wargame design: do you the designer attempt to force a player to make historical mistakes, or should the player as C-in-C be left free to make his own?  If I am in the role of Gamelin, must I be constrained to act as Gamelin did, or can I revise history?  Personally, it seems to me that the point of a wargame is to allow the player to revise history and make his own mistakes.  And in this particular case, being handcuffed to Gamelin, when added to all the vast advantages the German enjoys, and assuming competent play, effectively guarantees German victory

If you don't mind my jumping in I think it's perfectly fair to have different variants of the campaign which impose differnt degrees of constraint, in terms of obliging the allied player to send forces to defend the Netherlands for instance. I think there is a fair argument to be made that there would be political pressure to keep the Low Countries in the war. However, there should of course be a variant which allows a more prudent French commander to salvage victory on less ambitious terms.

But for me I think the bigger problem is the attempt to ensure a historical outcome by manipulation of unit statistics rather than just the constraints imposed by victory conditions. Obviously the poor performance of the French "B" divisions is now infamous, but pound-for-pound there's no reason a French line unit shouldn't be able to stand and fight against an equivalent German formation, and that's difficult in the game due to the morale values chosen by the developers. I'd go so far as to argue that frankly the German success was so complete and depended on so many contingencies that two competent players arriving at a historical outcome really shouldn't be treated as any measure of realism at all! The fact that the allied units need to be handicapped to permit this outcome is evidence of the fact in my opinion.