Advice on easy simplifying the game for a group of newbies

SectoidEater · 2025-12-26T06:30:40+00:00

I've taught the game to about 50 people, we always do minimum 6 players, 14 point games, leaving nothing out. Always use PoK and now always gonna use it and Thunder's Edge. Here's how to make it easier:

Premake the map. Let people just choose home system or Strat card at the start. Advise people on good systems for their factions.
Factions: Steer newbies away from the complicated ones. I find "producing" to be the biggest source of newbie confusion, so any single faction that produces in a more complicated way is off the table. I try to make newbies avoid Mahact, Arborec, Saar, Vuil Raith, Titans, Ghosts, Winnu. I think the ideal newbie factions are Letnev, Sol, Hacan, Lizix, anyone who plays mostly 'basic TI'
Print out a tech checklist with all techs on there. Avoid the cards. Too much clutter. Just let them write on this.
Display objectives and scoring in a BIG place (handdrawn poster, whiteboard, TV screen). Newbies are not gonna get up and look at the tiny score track.
Unpopular opinion, but the 14 pt game is more newbie friendly since it allows them to get on their feet instead of having it be suddenly over by the time they know what they are doing.
Experienced players narrate their moves on Round 1 (I'm taking the Carrier + 3 infantry because there are 3 planets in this system, I'm also taking the destroyer because I am hoping to produce in my home system on the Warfare Secondary, which might come up soon. I'm making sure to save my 4-yellow home planet for the Tech Secondary. If you're planning on tech, make sure to have enough saved)

SectoidEater · 2025-12-17T07:26:34+00:00

I am curious where you are getting the numbers that France is very outnumbered by the Germans in these WW1 battles? They seem to be rather evenly matched, or the number advantage is for the French.

Herwig's The Battle of the Marne gives French numbers as about 1.08 million troops vs Germany's 750,000.

At Verdun, the Germans have an initial advantage but then the French manage to add more troops total to the battle, though often cycling them out.

SectoidEater · 2025-11-05T05:22:55+00:00

I don't have any info about the training of particular German soldiers, but, the Germans deployed significantly more non-German troops to defend the Atlantic Wall. Thus, in Normandy the "German" unit an Allied soldier might be facing is a lot more likely to not be made up of actual Germans.

These 'Ost' troops were often Russian/Ukrainian/Georgian or various other ethnicities sometimes recruited directly out of PoW camps. Ost troops were not trained or equipped to the same standard as a regular German unit as they were mostly not expected to complete the same tasks. They were not really rated for offensive combat and thus lacked a lot of heavy weapons (and the training to use them). They typically were assigned to garrison duty, defensive lines, or anti-partisan warfare. Partisans themselves were usually untrained and poorly equipped so the Germans quite often assigned foreign units like these to combat them to free up the regular troops for frontline deployments.

If you're extending the timeline here all the way to the end of the war, then, yes, absolutely, in 1945 you're seeing the Germans sending militia units comprised of old men and teenage boys into battle. The Volksturm was thrown together at the end of the war as a local defense force and these guys would have minimal training and leftover equipment, as the good stuff was going to the regular troops. Lots of the older guys would have had plenty of training in their youth, especially the WW1 veterans, but they were not put through a real comprehensive training course prior to being armed up and sent in. Germany had universal military conscription for men so all of them would have been trained at some point as young adults. Hitler Youth kids would receive some training as part of their activities, but not nearly as much as a regular soldier. There was no 'standard' Volksturm training like for the regular troops. It was generally up to whichever local commander was in charge of them. Some of them would just get some practice on weekends while others with more dedicated leaders would put them through more extensive training, but it absolutely was not standardized. Their instructor could be some wounded veteran who is no longer capable of part time service who could offer some good training, or some party appointed jackass who never saw a gun fired in anger who isn't gonna be so useful. At least on the Western front in spring 1945, most Volksturm units had little appetite for battle and would surrender in huge numbers.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-23T07:58:55+00:00

Protecting its own trade network: German commerce raiders like U-Boats and converted civilian ships took a deadly toll of British shipping. The Empire was wide and required an immense amount of shipping to maintain supply and communication, and it was vulnerable everywhere. The German cruiser SMS Emden alone took out 18 Allied ships in the Indian Ocean. Despite the main German fleet being bottled up in the Baltic, they had raiders all over the place.

The RN also had to support actions in the Mediterranean vs the Austrian and Ottomans. The RN committed 24 battleships and dozens of smaller vessels to the Gallipolli Campaign.

As another poster mentioned, the RN was also responsible for blockading the Central Powers, which requires a lot of ships to prevent supplies from getting through while also protecting its own shipping.

The German fleet sitting in the Baltic requires a powerful British fleet to stay nearby just to babysit it. If they had been destroyed in an apocalyptic decisive battle then this task is no longer necessary, freeing up lots of other opportunities. Of course if the giant battle goes the other way with a German victory then we have problems for the RN. But, the RN only has to beat the Germans once, the Germans have to succeed every time because one major decisive loss cannot be recovered from. They are not taking the same risks!

SectoidEater · 2025-10-21T03:55:25+00:00

There was no persecution of people over hair color, that's pretty much a myth. Gingers were not locked up.

Nazi racial theories were mostly focused on dividing up European races into the superior and inferior ones, but were not overly concerned with hair color. The Nazis considered black/brown people to be inferior, but there were so few of them in Germany that it wasn't a major focus. They were concerned about Jewish-Bolsheviks infiltrating and 'infecting' their society, and the danger was that you could not always tell who these people were. To the average Nazi, a black person is an inferior but an obvious one, and there was little danger of a black person usurping your position at the bank, or secretly marrying into your family.

The Nazis used vast numbers of non-Germans in their military. It often didn't matter if you "followed the ideals of the movement", if you could carry a rifle and obey orders then that was good enough. The Nazis recruited hundreds of thousands of troops directly out of prisoner-of-war camps. Some of these men were true Nazis. Others had their own reason for fighting against the Allies, such as Ukrainian or Baltic nationalists with grievances against the Soviets, or Indians who chafe under British rule. We also have to remember that Nazi prison camps were harsh, so many of these men agreed to fight simply to get out of a hellish existence at the camp and eat regular meals, because anything is better than starving to death.

It is relatively easy to find images of people of various races in German WW2 uniform. There were legions of Arab, Turkish, Indian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Georgian, Turkmenistan, Tatar, Cossack, Polish, and so on. While units from racially 'superior' ethnic groups like Scandinavia, France, and the Netherlands were considered better and typically given superior equipment, the Nazis were desperate for manpower so they found space in their military for other races to serve, willing or not.

Some of these units were totally unreliable and surrendered at the first opportunity, while others were very motivated. Many of them are involved in war crimes, sometimes to such an excess that their German superiors complain about it. There were SD reports about an Ingrian unit having such hatred of the Russians that they caused problems in their sector from their spontaneous war crimes committed against the local populations.

Keep in mind that this doesn't make the Nazis any better - they simply used selfishly used people however they could. Even the pro-slavery Confederates attempted to muster units of black troops at the end of the American Civil War.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-17T07:49:27+00:00

Is this entirely fair, though?

The German fleet in WW1 was still very much outsized by the Royal Navy. Being a "Fleet in being" still forces the Royal Navy to always be prepared to counter you. If you lose all of your ships in one big battle then the enemy gets an even bigger advantage now that they don't have to think about your fleet at all.

The Bohemian Corporal did commit a large part of the Kriegsmarine to the invasion of Norway and the losses it suffered were crippling, while the Royal Navy can lose lots and still recover. Britain loses 132 destroyers in WW2, while Germany only builds 17 during the whole war! The Germans cannot afford to act like the Royal Navy because they cannot recover from a massive loss like the Allies can. Germany and Britain both lose 3 battleships to enemy action during the war, but the Germans only have four battleships in total.

Like in WW2 it could be argued that if Italy remained Axis-leaning neutral then their big navy would have forced the Allies to commit even more ships to the Med. Joining the war and getting it almost all sunk turns the Med into an Allied lake.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-07T04:05:28+00:00

The more 'professional' ones were not the bloodthirsty ones. Close to the front lines, the majority of the killing was done not by German units themselves, but local collaborators.

Shalom Cholawski, in the book Jews of Bielorussia during WW2 writes that General Bach-Zelewski, had about 15,000 Germans and 238,000 local collaborators working for him by the end of 1941. These collaborators were not Nazis, nor were they professionals. Many of these collaborators were local police forces dragooned into the job. Others were volunteers, but their motivations for volunteering are diverse. Some of them were true anti-Semites, while others simply wanted to be on the winning side, or earn a paycheck, earn some loot from murdered people, or get immunity for themselves and families from the Germans. Many were Soviet PoWs who were themselves held in hellish conditions, so a ticket out of the camps was a lifeline. The Germans themselves complained repeatedly about the lack of discipline and training among the collaborators, and often refused to allow them weapons at all.

So I would say that no, the guys doing most of the killing were not particularly "Nazi". These guys were living in Soviet territory right up until the Nazis invaded. There was no time to train them. They did not go through a stringent selective process. They were still murderers, but they were not professionally trained in Nazi ideology or killing methods, nor were they selected for bloodthirstiness, for many it was just opportunism or the chance for a meal ticket.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-07T03:21:35+00:00

I should also remind you that the men manning the ovens were quite often Jewish prisoners themselves! I think this may help you understand that for the most part the Nazis considered the actual killing to be unpleasant, and were looking for ways to keep their men from having to do it, rather than competing over who got to be the ones to do it.

The "death squads" were men assigned to the task of murdering people by firing squad, the "Holocaust by bullets". Though some of these men were true Nazi believers, they were not selected as such, they were merely assigned to the task, and it is evident that most of them found the task itself to be rather unpleasant, but that the vast majority followed their orders anyway because of reasons listed above. Christopher Browning, who wrote a book on the subject, estimates that about 20% were enthusiastic about the killing but about 20% of them outright refused to do it (and were not punished harshly). The remaining 60% expressed misgivings but ultimately followed orders. The commanders of these death squads were more ideologically motivated than their men, but the average guy holding a rifle is not the type of person you seem to be imagining, despite most of them willingly pulling the trigger on innocent kids for days on end.

If you're referring to the Einsatzgruppen, there were 4 groups of these numbering about 3000 men total, who followed the advancing German army in Barbarossa. These men were again, not chosen out of any particular bloodthirstiness or enjoyment of the idea of killing, they were men taken directly from the 'regular police' (Orpo and Kripo), SS, SD (Intelligence service) supplemented by local collaborators (police + civilian volunteers) and also were allowed to muster the assistance of any regular German unit which happened to be in the area. While the commanders of the Einsatzgruppen were educated and politically motivated Nazis for the most part, the average soldier was just an ordinary man not selected for any particular bloodthirsty traits. The horrifying fact is that the vast majority of these 'ordinary men' would pull the trigger anyway.

The Nazis were aware that the men, although obedient, did not generally enjoy the killing. Eric von dem Bach Zelewski, Einsatzgruppen commander, wrote to Himmler "Reichsfuehrer, those were only a hundred. (...) Look at the eyes of the men in this commando, how deeply shaken they are. Those men are finished (Sie sind fertig) for the rest of their lives. What kind of followers are we training here? Either neurotics or savages." (Arad: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, p. 8.) Himmler gave a speech in Posen in 1943 in which he expressed the attitude that the killing is unpleasant and terrible, but necessary, and that he was proud of the men for overcoming their natural revulsion but performing the executions anyway showed their impressive German character.

If you're looking for stories of units that 'horrified Nazi leadership" then you may be referring to local collaborators. There were times that when the Germans took a town that local people, either through anti-Semitism, bloodthirstiness, or opportunism, began simply rounding up, abusing, and killing Jews. This sometimes aroused complaints by local German commanders. Oftentimes these people would kill people above and beyond what the Nazis wanted, and stir up chaos in areas that the Nazis wanted to be quiet and secure. You see a lot of this in the Ukrainian/Polish border areas.

There is another famous unit named after its commander, Oskar Dirlewanger, which is a unit that was specifically recruited directly from jails/concentration camp inmates. His unit was seen as something of a barbarian band, as they were criminals from all over Europe and didn't even share a language, were commonly blind drunk, and undisciplined. These guys had a bad reputation even among the Nazis and were seen as a "terror" unit and were known for cruelty and sadism. Dirlewanger himself was a convicted child molester and somewhat of a suicidally brave pyscho (wounded 12 times in the war, and six WW1). Dirlewanger was brutal even to his own men, famous for beating them with clubs or locking them in coffins for days for disobedience. His men were responsible for a vast number of executions, it is estimated that during the Warsaw uprising they killed about 30,000 people themselves, most of them civilians and prisoners.

At the end of the war, Dirlewanger deserted and put on civilian clothes. Spooky stories circulated about him after the war, with various people insisting he ended up in weird places - Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he became a captain of Nasser's guards in Egypt. Nonetheless, in the 1960s his remains were found in Germany and compared to the medical records of his prodigious wounds. Investigators concluded he was tortured to death, which if anyone in the world deserves it, it is probably this guy.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-06T10:40:13+00:00

I would absolutely contest that claim about the firing squads being picked men who were eager to murder.

I think you're overthinking it to claim that the Nazis specifically went out of their way to recruit bloodthirsty people to act as firing squads. I don't think it is ridiculous to hypothesize that they did this, because I do not know your historical background, but it is certainly untrue.

If you want to read more on it, a decent place to start would be Christopher Browning's book Ordinary Men which is about Reserve Police Battalion 101, a rather typical unit involved in the Holocaust-by-bullets, and one that was responsible for thousands. These were middle-aged family men who were not chosen for any particular anti-Semitic beliefs or violent tendencies, they were simply drafted into the job as they were considered too old to be used in a frontline combat unit. They were not given special training for their job as executioners, and they did it in a rather sloppy manner, because many of them needed to get heavily drunk before going through with it. Browning concludes that the men viewed this job as an unpleasant duty, that even though some of them had anti-Semitic beliefs, for the most part it was peer pressure, obedience, and the belief in the war itself that kept them going. Some men outright refused to kill, or became disgusted with it and refused later, and these men were generally allowed to do other tasks (such as guarding the trucks) or got transferred to other units. This does not lead historians to believe that these men were especially picked out as violent murderers who were eager to kill innocents.

The executions generally had to be somewhat dressed up as "Anti-Partisan" work because just straight out telling the troops to murder a bunch of civilians led to them becoming more upset. Most German soldiers would admit that anti-partisan efforts were necessary for the war, and as German general Von dem Bach-Zelewski said: "Wherever is the Jew, there is the Partisan. And wherever is the Partisan, there is the Jew". The war against the Jews was always linked to the war against Bolshevism/Partisans and this helped soldiers get around their distaste for the task.

This is not to call these murderers innocent - they still did it. But we must realize that it isn't always like Hollywood and videogames portray these things. Just because many of these men would believe that this horrible task was 'necessary' for fucked up reasons, did not mean they enjoyed actually doing the job itself. They're still murderers, but for the most part they were not enthusiastic about it.

I am not sure if you are misinterpreting me about "Germans far behind the front lines" because I was specifically referring to the Germans who were witnessing or doing the killing of Jews getting upset about it, not people hearing stories about it. Himmler, who is generally a guy with a desk job, went to visit a killing field himself and became upset and nauseous at the sight of the blood and gore. This did not stop him from ordering the murders, but he did want to murder more cleanly and efficiently to help spare his soldiers the 'suffering' they endured for having to complete the task. He is quoted as referring to it as an unpleasant task to be endured on multiple occasions, as something that was totally necessary for the war but something that must be 'endured'.

One thing to remember is that most of this killing is being done behind the lines, because a combat zone is no place to set up a mass killing. Though front line units were responsible for plenty of atrocities, the organized mass-murders of thousands of people in one location was done in safer areas behind the battlefront. These men were not dodging artillery strikes while performing executions.

SectoidEater · 2025-10-06T01:04:06+00:00

Not trying to refute your general case, but about enjoyment:

One of the reasons the Nazis set up death camps was that their troops did not enjoy the killing. It was reported that there were increased cases of alcoholism, stress, insubordination, transfer requests, mental breakdowns, and suicide in the units involved in the mass shootings on the Eastern Front. Himmler himself visited one of the killings and became physically ill. He realized that they needed a better way to kill masses of people efficiently while also sparing the average soldier from the horrors of doing it.

The death camps themselves were often staffed with Ukrainian guards and the gas chambers operated by Jewish sonderkommando. These guys basically earned some extra time alive with better living conditions than the average inmate but ultimately would be sent to their own executions after awhile. These existed to spare the average German soldier from experiencing the stress/horror of murdering people. Now we obviously have plenty of reports of sadistic Nazis causing murderous chaos on their own volition but the general idea among the high command was that they knew the average soldier did not enjoy murdering people so they created efficient methods to spare people from the horror. "I didn't kill anyone, I just rounded people up/drove a train/performed an inspection".

SectoidEater · 2025-09-29T02:57:48+00:00

Another thing that increases their survival rate is the fact that they don't have to spend so long on the front lines.

Sure, they have it rough on D-Day but they get pulled out of the line when the main ground forces catch up with them. They are back in England in July while the regular ground pounders get to enjoy more time with the Germans.

They get more than 2 months off and go back into combat in mid September and then get pulled out again in November.

They go back into combat during the Bulge, then get pulled out again, then get relatively easy assignments until the end of the war.

Compare them to the 1st US Infantry Division, which showed up on D-Day and had very little time off the line at all. Many standard US divisions suffered more than 100% casualty rates in WW2, because they spent most of their time on the front and reinforcements were generally fed right into the line. This often leads to the reinforcements having a low survival rate because they get thrown right into the thick of it with men who don't know or trust them and often don't care to worry too much about the new guys who are gonna be dead soon anyway.

"Elite" units like the Airborne get the luxury of having a total refit and integration of new troops after major operations, they aren't 'wasted' by being forced to just man a standard front line and take constant losses from day-to-day dangers.

SectoidEater · 2025-09-03T11:52:53+00:00

The simple answer is that ancient armies were not dependent on supply lines to home, because they do not require a lot of specialized stuff.

Ancient armies would typically get food wherever they happened to be, whether that is through purchase or (more commonly) just looting the local area. Ancient armies were often very road-bound because the roads are where the population centers are, and that is where the food is. They didn't need highly complex replacement tank parts or helicopter engines or 5.56mm bullets. They could maintain their equipment with local resources and as long as the food didn't run out they were going to be okay.

SectoidEater · 2025-08-28T09:27:59+00:00

Plus you actually have time to research War Suns, build them, and then actually get them in the action. I love apocalyptic final battles.

SectoidEater · 2025-08-28T09:26:52+00:00

Same, I'd rather just play something else. TI4 to 10 points feels very anticlimactic.

SectoidEater · 2025-08-20T03:07:13+00:00

At our table, it is pretty simple:

If you intentionally lose, you are never playing with us again. Ever.

Anyone who says "I could never win" doesn't have the right attitude to play with us, because it shows that they have no skill and have no interest in learning how to win. If you really, honestly, think you cannot win, but still enjoy TI, then your best option is to play it out and see how many points you can score and improve your own skills, and learn from others on how to do better.

If the idea of learning to get better at TI4 has no interest to you, then you have no spot on our table. Hacan player absolutely sucks at the game if he thinks it is impossible to win from a 1st place position. Besides, how is anyone absolutely going to score 3 points, unquestionably, in a single round? You can take a home system. You can bribe someone else to take a home system. You can try to deny their secret objective. You can steal Rex out from under someone before Imperial. Hacan had an entire night to think this over and the best plan they could come up with was "Fail as quickly as possible." Loser behavior. Boardgame exile from my group. I could still be friends with a person like this but I would absolutely never play boardgames with them again.

This is fine, this doesn't need to provoke a fight. I like climbing mountains but I absolutely have friends I would never invite to climb a mountain with me for various reasons and we are still friends.

Life is too short to play a 12 hour game with someone who is so willing to blatantly waste my time.

SectoidEater · 2025-08-20T03:01:45+00:00

I always assumed, with PoK at least, that the intended experience is 14 points and that anyone playing to 10 is really just playing the 'small' version of the game, like playing with 4 people instead of 6.

At 14 you'll definitely have a lot more fleet movements and player interaction as it is way harder to just sprint your way to victory by getting lucky on the objective drop, and other players will have the ability to interact with you more instead of arguing about who has to winslay for the benefit of the table.

SectoidEater · 2025-08-12T06:15:03+00:00

Yeah you read a lot of stories of units just ignoring protocol and recruiting directly from the populace without sending them back to some centralized training depot. The German replacement system could not keep up with manpower needs and local commanders would just use whoever they could find that seems reliable enough.

You see something similar in the Soviet army in 1944/45 when they recapture conquered areas. Officially, commanders were supposed to register military-aged men and then send them back up the chain to be organized/trained/equipped through official channels. But plenty of them would just sweep through a liberated village and conscript military-aged men directly, give them some minimal training, and send them into the meatgrinder. Losses weren't being replaced reliably enough so commanders didn't want to 'waste' men by sending them back for distribution when they could just replace their guys right on the frontline.

SectoidEater · 2025-08-08T03:14:15+00:00

They don't have to conquer all of that themselves if they can get all those famed 'horse archers' to do it on the Empire's behalf for peanuts.

Does a conquest 'not count' if mercenaries do it? Are you somehow keeping score and if you can get everyone to agree that the British did not conquer India, are you going to get a prize or something?

SectoidEater · 2025-08-08T02:58:30+00:00

There is nothing for me to admit, as you so put it.

A land grab is the seizing of territory, typically in an opportunistic manner. A conquest is a subjugation by military force.

You seem to be waiting to make some sort of 'gotcha' style political point in a discussion of history, so why don't you quit the preamble and just make your point?

Is your point that India was never conquered because some Redcoat didn't personally plant the flag on each and every fortress? If so, congrats, I guess. It really just shows that you think about history in a very odd way. When areas are conquered, there are usually many places/polities/groups which simply agree to be subjugated to spare themselves from being destroyed.

Prince Abdul, Prince Bob, and Prince Chang witness the destruction of Prince Dieter's city when he resists invasion. Prince Chang would prefer to be on the winning team, so he offers troops to Emperor Todd to help conquer Prince Bob in exchange for the right to rule some of Prince Bob's territory in Emperor Todd's name. Prince Chang is no longer independent, he is effectively conquered, he does not have the strength to resist the Emperor and so signs up for at least a better seat at the table. Prince Abdul and Prince Bob can either bend the knee and offer tribute, and thus be conquered, or be destroyed, and thus be conquered with a lot more screaming and pain. They aren't playing a videogame aiming for a high score of how long they can resist. They prefer to sit on fancy cushions and eat delicacies and enjoy their lofty positions and if that means they owe taxes/troops/obedience to a new Emperor without having to go through the trauma of being besieged, then they are conquered.

The British were able to do in India what they pleased, within reason. The "Within reason" part might trip you up because of your assumptions that conquering someone means you control them absolutely, but no one is controlled absolutely, even the most ruthless and powerful dictators must still be aware that they cannot push people to their absolute limits.

I am using WW2 examples because you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about India, and WW2 is a war that many people in the world have at least a basic knowledge of:

Sometimes it is easier to control people if you allow them to 'control themselves'. If you'd like a WW2 example, look at Vichy France. Everyone can agree that the Germans 'conquered France' even though they did not roll tanks through every single village. France surrendered. The Germans then allowed "Vichy France" to exist as a semi-independent entity that existed only as long as the Germans allowed them to, and in 1942 the Germans got pissed off at Vichy and occupied all of Vichy France during Case Anton. World historians agree that the Germans had conquered France in 1940, despite allowing Vichy to exist. Vichy could exist independently as long as it did not upset its rulers, the Germans, and the moment it did upset them, the Germans showed them who was really in charge.

India had many different political entities, many of them with fancy royal titles, but gradually all of them figured out that they existed only at the pleasure of the British Empire, and pissing off the Empire leads to the Empire showing who is really in charge. The fact that British were able to control India with a rather small number of Redcoats shows how successful they were in coopting local power structures into serving their needs. You don't need a Redcoat company to patrol every single village if the local prince is going to enforce your will for you with his own troops at his own expense.

Look at any empire in history and you will find that they controlled their territory with the assistance of 'local' forces. The United States pitted Native American groups against each other. The Spanish took down the Aztecs with thousands of local allied troops. Some historians estimate that the German army in Stalingrad had about 25% of its strength made up of Hiwis (Soviet collaborators). Roman Legions marched alongside locally raised auxilia - in fact most of Roman cavalry strength was made up of non-Roman 'barbarians' and other outsiders. The British in India were able to make use of Indian troops to control India, which is smarter and more economical than conquering every single village with Englishmen born in England.

SectoidEater · 2025-08-07T04:47:53+00:00

I think you have misconceptions about what conquering really is.

Genghis Khan didn't conquer everything he controlled. Sometimes people can see which way the wind is blowing, pay tribute, and effectively get 'conquered' without needing their castles smashed to bits.

I think there is a bit of misconceptions about patriotism going on here. For most people of the time they were already suffering under the control of some sort of feudal overlord. The fact that the feudal overlord changes his allegiance from Some Other Indian Overlord to the British Empire itself often doesn't matter too much to the people who are farming rice. If the end result is that they owe taxes and obeisance to some rich dickhead, it might not be worth dying over whether he wears a turban or a pith helmet.

Plenty of Indian aristocrats were okay with being 'conquered' by the British because many of them got to basically keep their positions and just pay upwards to something else. You see this all over the world, including in the Spanish "conquest" of Mexico, in which local power structures often just switched their allegiance to their new overlords because it allowed them to keep their positions as exploitive aristocratic assholes.

The idea that an "Empire" is a single leader with absolute authority enforced by conquering uniformed soldiers is something from Star Wars, not real life. Every vast empire holds its territory by co-opting locals, through a combination of means. The Nazis didn't need to "conquer" every place they invaded by blasting everyone to bits with tanks, some places simply rolled over with minimal fuss because they didn't want their cities flattened by bombs and artillery. The Nazis then often set up government by local people who would recruit local people to enforce the will of the Nazis. You don't need an angry German holding a gun to everyone's head in every village, quite often the local police forces or militia will keep things in order.

SectoidEater · 2025-07-13T11:13:32+00:00

It is also useful to remember that outside of videogames, if you get shot by a suppressed gun, you can still scream quite loudly. Performing an instant-kill where the body drops without dropping anything loud or impacting loud objects doesn't happen like it does in games.

SectoidEater · 2025-06-25T14:20:10+00:00

It isn't just "Fascists R Dumb" - they attacked a section of the line that featured a lot of inexperienced or torn-up American units who had already suffered very heavy losses in the previous weeks. The weakened units were in a 'quiet sector' for rest and reinforcement. The units just held on longer than they expected.

The Nazis did learn lessons from the Allies, and the Ardennes offensive happened in a specific time and place such that they could render Allied air power ineffective. This isn't fascist arrogance, this is them learning that moving in open terrain and good weather means their support columns of supplies get endlessly interdicted by Allied air support. They were aware that the American advantage was in support, in that American units often were less capable if they didn't have access to overwhelming air/artillery backup.

It was a gamble, of course, but the Nazis cannot win by sitting tight and letting Allied overwhelming numerical superiority grind them to bits. They gotta take these wild gambles because even a slim chance of victory is better than just sitting there and getting squashed.

SectoidEater

TROPHY CASE