POLAND between GERMANY & USSR by Joni Nuutinen
LINKS:
⊕ Play Store
⊕ Amazon
⊕ free turn-limited at Amazon
⊕ local turn-limited APK to to sideload
Rarely in military history has a country been attacked from all four cardinal directions. In September 1939, the Polish armed forces, still in the middle of the process of mobilizing, faced that grave reality. The official defense scheme, called Plan West, relies on defending all land areas, but it might be smarter to use the defensive fortifications and rivers to your advantage to slow down the German advance enough to mobilize all the regular divisions.
⊕ Taking place from: 1940-09
⊕ Map size: 2500 = 50 x 50 hexagons
⊕ Specials: Grim, hopeless defense against attacks from all four cardinal directions (Soviet Red Army joins Germans). Game mechanics: Hold on as long as possible.
⊕ Released: 2023-03
WELCOME:
You command the Polish WWII armed forces, which are hopelessly defending Poland from attacks from three separate directions... or from four directions if the USSR decides to attack as well. The official plan, called Plan West (September campaign), relies on defending all land areas, but it might be smarter to use the defensive fortifications, rivers, and local militia to your advantage to slow down the German advance enough to mobilize all the regular divisions and brigades into a concentrated defense. Every day of fighting increases the likelihood of receiving Western assistance, or at the least strengthens the case for the rebirth of the Polish nation after the war!
VICTORY CONDITIONS: The object of the game is to hold the city of Warsaw as long as possible. So, effectively the game ends when you lose Warsaw, or control zero VPs, or unbelievably control the whole map.
QUICK TIPS: Unit markings: Lower left corner shows HPs (Hit Points), upper left corner shows the number of MPs (move points), right side has several type of markings: warnings on red, attached resources on white, ground information (what's under unit icon) is marked on green. Zooms buttons (Z) are located on upper-left corner.
Combat core concepts: adjacent units critically support each other in battle: encircling is often more efficient than using brute-force direct attacks.
TMP-system: By controlling Key Tactical Locations (green diamonds) you will gain TMPs (Tactical Move Points), which can be used to move between two hexagons sharing Tactical Route (yellow-green arrow between the hexagons) without losing regular MPs.
CAMPAIGN NOTES:
Victory Conditions: The purpose is to hold the city of Warsaw as long as possible. To win, and break the game, you need to control ALL Victory Points (VPs), which are gained from the cities. A total of 160 Victory Points available in this particular campaign.
Poland has a fairly large number of various types of units, and as a result, there are plenty of units to move after a dozen turns. If you want the turns to progress at a faster pace, turn off unit types like tankettes, local militia, etc. to speed up play.
Please note that the province map will exceptionally change shape mid-game in the East once the Soviet attack begins and some Soviet supply cities are added to the map. These cities will also round up Victory Points (VPs) to the total of 160 VPs.
Some of the later Polish divisions get assigned to the army that happens to be the closest one at the (chaotic) time.
Any unit can be disbanded by selecting it and pressing the REL-button (relieve) for more than 5 seconds. Any possible HPs will become available in those or similar HP replacements.
The location of later Soviet attacks varies a lot to prevent the player from preemptively stockpiling a massive defensive wall at the precisely right spot to instantly stop and even wipe out the Red Army before it even gets going at all.
Polish Local Militia Units will appear in cities one by one, roughly one per turn, favoring the bigger cities. The emergence is partly dependant on how much area you are still holding: The more area you hold, the more inspired the locals are to actively take part in the struggle. This entire unit type can be turned ON/OFF from Settings.
The Polish armored force is split into two different unit types: There are a couple of decent but light tank units (model 7TP) plus a handful of very weak tankette units (model TKS). There is a setting to turn the tankette units off (removed from play), in case you want to speed up the turns.
Regular Polish infantry division will appear as half strength to represent the ongoing mobilization that was still in progress when Germany attacked. However, Difficulty level might affect the initial HP.
Railway Move Points (RMPs) can be gained both automatically each turn and by using an action by a general. Moving armored units will consume more RMPs than infantry. The number of new RMPs partly depends on the amount of controlled area: the more area you control, the more RMPs you are likely to receive each turn. To prevent players from gathering an insane amount of RMPs, there is a small decay to represent the fact that you cannot stockpile an unlimited number of locomotives in real life.
The help from the West (France and the UK) will never arrive in this particular scenario. In reality lack of time, lack of proper shipping routes, etc. made it nearly impossible to actually directly help the Polish ground combat.
The usual flag of the hostile country is this particular time replaced with a generic crossed-sword motif flag as there are several countries attacking from multiple directions at different times. It is also possible that at some moments and points in time the Soviet and German adjectives, which are automated on the fly, might get mixed up and show 'Soviet' instead of 'German'.
There are three types of German Panzer Divisions, the one with the Panzer Is (lighter NATO icon) is a little bit weaker compared to the Panzer II divisions. There is one Panzer IV division: The 1st Panzer Division, which is the strongest as it is the only one with noteworthy amount of the latest tanks. WSS units are represented as regiments. Each Frontier Guard Corps is represented as a regular German Infantry Division.
The chosen time-scale is, after a lot of testing, a compromise between historical accuracy and including the Soviet attack in the game play in timely manner (no much sense if the entire campaign can be finished before the Red Army even gets active).
Scenario Specific documentation and unit types that includes links to more generic documentation on how the game series and the underlying game engine works.
To get a feel play the free turn-limited demo version (sideload or Amazon App Store), while screenshots are available on the app stores. No ads or tracking in these either.
There is also available a much ealier game about the German invasion of Poland.
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⊕ Developer Log: tidbits about military history and scenario updates
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