Using a Strategic Reserve or "Ou est la Masse de Manouevre?"

So, this is one more thing that I wanted to share here, because there have been incessant complaints about units taking too long to heal and calls for a building of some sort to be added that can be used to heal damaged units. Whatever your stance on this issue (and I want to state for the record that I oppose any such change because I think that the game as it is provides an excellent simulation of the limitations faced during the war), the fact is that damaged units do take an annoyingly long time to heal up to full strength in this game. The point of this post is just to share my own method for dealing with this so-called ‘problem’ with other players, and I hope that those who advocate a magic healing building for the game will take this in the right spirit.

It is said that when the Germans had broken through in the Ardennes in 1940, Churchill attended a meeting of the French High Command at which he asked the French commander-in-chief, General Gamelin, where his strategic reserve (la masse de manoeuvre) was stationed, to which Gamelin said “Aucune” (There is none), and the story goes that Churchill knew at this point that France was lost. The point of course is that if Gamelin had had a handful of infantry divisions available, they could conceivably have stopped the German armoured columns that were driving to the Channel coast.

So, my method for dealing with the ‘problem’ of damaged units taking too long to heal is to always play with a strategic reserve. In practice, this is a very simple method, of keeping a few units of the same type as those you have in the frontline in a rear area. I typically use armoured ‘divisions’ made up of two tanks, one motorised infantry and an armoured car, so if I am conducting an offensive with a few of these, I will almost always try to hold one such ‘division’ further back (unless I know for sure that I am beating up on a noob player, in which case I figure I can afford to be cocky). The benefits of doing this are

• If an enemy force counter-attacks and threatens my rear (and in the early game, my core), I will (unlike Gamelin) have something available to throw in against them.
• If my units in the frontline take heavy damage and start turning an unhealthy colour, then I can rotate these back to the reserve area, and move the fresh troops that are in reserve to the front.

So, if I am launching an invasion of the Belgian Congo to finish off an active opponent, I make it a point to send my reserves off shortly after sending my invasion forces and hold them in a staging area so that, if I need replacements, I will not have to march them all the way from my core area in Europe, but can move them to the frontline within a few hours.

The limitation imposed by this playing style, of course, is that your resources in this game are never going to be enough to allow you to do this simultaneously on multiple fronts, but this is just par for the course. In practice, you will be forced to make a choice. For example, you can either launch your African invasion and finish off your opponent, or you can grab more land in Europe, but you cannot do both at the same time, if you want to have sufficient reserves for either campaign.

What you will not be able to do, of course, is recruit the largest possible army and go on a blitz, in the hope that you will be able to conquer the world in one massive thrust. As always, the system in this game favours caution, planning and deliberation, and using a strategic reserve is a helpful way to maintain your offensive over a sustained period, instead of running out of steam before achieving your objectives and being forced to abort your mission and fall back if you face heavy resistance.