6. Reduce Strategic Air to its historic effect. Near none. Germany's economy was growing right up to the end of the war. Germany's benzene production also grew, right up to the end of the war.
Try telling that to the good people of Dresden or Hamburg or better still Tokyo.
Germany's industrial capacity peaked in mid '44 I think, maybe late 44. Germany's industrial output for spring '45 was a dozen sausages, 2 tins of jam and a kubelwagon.
It took a long time for the protagonists to realise quite how much more they needed to be doing to make a difference, but once they had - they knew how to turn a city to ash.
None of which can be modeled in this game.
We also have absolutely no idea how much germany's production was hampered by the strategic bombing campaign. How much potential for growth was arrested? How much industrial capacity was expended in moving all those factories underground?
Check out the growth in military industrial capacity in the USA between 1940 and 1944, or the SU, or even the beleagured Islands of the Kingdom of Great Britiain. German industrial capacity grew yeah, but not nearly as much as her enemies.
Not enough effect to make any inroads against growth is all to often equated, quite unfairly, with = no effect. Whilst everyone else exapanded massively Germany expanded somewhat.
We know for a FACT that British strategic night bombing did nothing at all. With the avg bomb exploding 25 miles from its target.
American day bombing had better effect because at least they could see where they were going. However, the cost effectiveness was zilch. Your "terror bombing" mentioned above did little to deter the citizens or the military.
Liddell Hart, "During the war the bomber offensive went through three phases. The first, from 1939 to early 1940, was characterized by ineffective attacks against military targets. Daylight sorties were found to be almost suicidal when intercepted by German fighters, while Bomber Command was incapable of locating targets at night. Hastings cites the experience of the 10th Bomber Squadron, based in Yorkshire, which mistook the Thames estuary for the Rhine and bombed an RAF station at Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire, doing little damage. As the author explains, "again and again at this period, Germany would be genuinely unaware that Bomber Command had been attempting to attack a specific target or even a specific region. There was merely a litter of explosives on farms, homes, lakes, forests and -- occasionally -- on factories and installations from end to end of the Reich."
In June 1940, after the fall of France, the bomber offensive entered its second phase. Rejecting out of hand any suggestions for a negotiated peace settlement, Churchill felt there was little else to do besides bomb Germany. A year later, the Cabinet Secretary, D.M. Butt, presented a critique of the effectiveness of Bomber Command against targets in France and Germany. He reported that less than one-third of the attacks came within five miles of the aiming point and only ten per cent of the bombs fell within the target area. A.V. Hill, one of the founding fathers of British radar and a Member of Parliament, informed his colleagues that great resources were being squandered on Bomber Command and "the idea of bombing a well-defended enemy into submission or seriously affecting his morale -- of even doing substantial damage to him -- is an illusion. We know that most of the bombs we drop hit nothing of importance."
Aided by the new navigation device Gee, Bomber Command "browned" (the RAF euphemism for burning a town) Lfibeck on 28 March 1942 and a month later gave the same treatment to another medieval town, Rostock. The bombers tried out what became the standard pattern for attacking a city: flares were dropped to mark the target, then 4,000 pound high-explosive "cookies" were used to blast open doors and windows, accompanied by incendiaries to create huge fires. Characteristically, whatever industry was located in Lübeck and Rostock was back at near full production within days, since factories were located on the outskirts of cities, or in the suburbs, far from the town centers, which were the aiming points of Bomber Command raids.
BOMBER COMMAND: THE MYTHS AND REALITY OF THE STRATEGIC BOMBING OFFENSIVE 1939-45 by Max Hastings. New York, The Dial Press/James Wade, 1979. 469 pp with Notes, Appendices, Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 0-8037-0154-X.