Lots of interesting opinions floated around here, so here's mine on a various number of things discussed..
On the German "military superiority" discussion.
In my opinion, the one recurring theme that I almost always find in repetition when studying battles, operations and campaigns is that of all levels of the German military machine's ability to improvise. You can talk about equipment, tactics, strategy, leadership, morale, whatever all you want - the fact is after the fall of France (in some cases sooner) every country in the world copied German tactics and organization to some degree. Improvisation by all levels of the military and home front are what set Germany most notably apart. Most other "reasons" one could come up with can be parried (as well as we can in hindsight).
Primarily this is concerned with those in leadership roles of course, from NCOs to Field Marshals... but you see evidence in all aspects of the German War Machine... from the homefront economy to the battlefields.
If you take a look at the smaller picture (not looking at operations and campaigns on the operational/strategic level) and take a more tactical approach to battles and confrontations, you find a recurring theme - pretty much anytime the Germans met someone on remotely equal terms they won. I know there's going to be a flood of disagreement there and I'll welcome any disagreement to discuss - but consider that there very few battles and encounters where one can consider the sides remotely "equal". Some notable exceptions would be certain smaller and often unheard of battles in the Battle of the Bulge, but by that time looking at quantity alone is meaningless. Aside from a core of experienced and adequately trained troops (who incidentally were mostly concentrated into the armored and mechanized formations anyways) the bulk were Volksgrenadier divisions thrown into battle with wholly inadequate training and equipment.
If you look specifically at it from a tactical point of view - especially in the East, Germany prevented a plethora of situations that would have been catastrophic to most any other army. Indeed most other armies, situations reversed where the Germans had tactical or strategic superiority consistently lost to the Germans... usally in far more dramatic ways.
On the idea of the "pathetic" French Army
The French air arm never really recovered (or from another perspective didn't move forward fast enough) from the nationalization of that industry in the 30s. It turned back the clock on everything from pilot training to forming coherent squads. Anybody who thinks the latter might be meaningless only needs to take a peek at the IAF, considered by many to be pound for pound superior to the USAF.
The army... well it's true they definately did not have the apparent nationalism that was advent in pretty much every nation/kingdom at the outbreak of the first world war, using that as a primary reason for the French defeat ignores quite a lot of logic to the contrary.
For starters, I think it's safe to say it's a rarity to find men who truly do fight for idealistic reasons. How many Americans for example who went overseas truly believed and desired to fight for "democracy" against tyranny? The one constant that almost every soldier who has written memoirs as a combatant in a war talks about is the comradeship and bonds that develop between men in war. I don't think nationalism or morale (or lack there of) even significantly played a role in the battle for France. Many historians have talked about it... about the lack of the French will to fight... but almost every single book or memoir I've seen attribute this significantly to the downfall of France has been from an aloof perspective - books that covered the strategic side of the battles... or memoirs of a General who ran the war from a room behind closed doors. I truly don't believe your average man has the conviction to die for his "country" no matter how much nationalistic sentiment he might have. What inspires men in war more than anything else has always been their comrades.
Most armies to this day (and for a long time previous) took advantage of this by recruiting entire units from the same area/city. This way they all had something in common and it would be easier for them to bond - the sooner they would bond the more loyal to each other they would become... and the less likely they would act like a complete and utter coward in the face of adversity.
I think most people recognize the single most significant reason France lost was dislocation and preemption. Concepts practiced by every mobile army today and by every Allied nation after seeing the effects in France. What we saw in France was the equivelant of what we saw in North Africa, only on a far, far, far greater scale - yet nobody gives the Brits flak for "fighting poorly". It's easy for anybody who isn't French to talk about how the French caved in so quickly... the Brits? Sure, it's easy for them to hold out and fight on the beaches, fight in the countryside, fight in the cities -- because even getting a single German soldier across the Channel given the circumstances would have been extremely difficult. The french situation when they surrendered was hopeless as far as France proper was concerned. Without their industrial base and geographic position the only thing the French had to offer was manpower (which incidentally they did in the form of the Free french). The razing of a historic city like Paris would have done little. Even if the French wanted to continue to fight when the armistice was signed, there wasn't much left around to fight with. What coherent and possibly effective formations the French had left were holed up in the maginot line - abandoning which would have meant slaughter as all their heavy weaponry was static. Air support? Non existent. Armored support? Well they had a measure of "armored support" inside the bunkers but had they abandoned them to fight it would have just been a repeat of "Plan 17" in the opening days of WW1. As it turns out the last French troops on the mainland to surrender were troops in the Maginot line. The germans attacked it from the rear (and they were basicaly defenseless from that direction).
So the reality is - talk about how great German/French tanks were, talk about how bad you think French morale was, talk about how superior you think tactics and leadership on either side was... really in the end as far as the battle of France was concerned there would have to have been utter dominance by one side in all those areas to have prevented a bunch of German infantry men in lorries from performing their dislocation maneuver with nearly the same success. The only real chance the French had (barring a deployment that had the benefit of hindsight) was to stop the Germans at Sedan where they would have a river to defend. But that wasn't going to happen with the sheer weight of numbers the Germans pushed through to Sedan - that they were largely the best and most mobile elements of the German armed forces only exasperated an already hopeless French situation.
There are only two things that any soldier, no matter how hardened or how fanatical always runs away from:
1) Flamethrower.
2) No supplies.
No soldiers, not even the most hardened Japanese troops of the time, stood up to either. There are many cases of Japanese troops living off the land and or living with extremely limited supplies. But there are many documented cases of Japanese blockaded in their caves who only surrendered (or blew themselves up... which was the usual of the two) when they could no longer bear the hunger.
On the issue of France in the context of HOI:
I think France being able to survive is fine. I think it's pretty straightfoward:
On one hand you have single player issues - some say if France is not scripted to fall (in some way or another) the game is unplayable for the Axis. I disagree.
First we'll deal with single player.
If the player chooses Germany I see no real problem. France can be scripted to deploy ignorantly (or a scenario created for 1940) if historical accuracy is to be maintained. Because in all honestly, if the deployment stays the same, unless the HOI engine does a really poor job of the war on an operational combat level, the French will lose every time (assuming the player executes the campaign as the germans actually did).
If the Germans take an alternate route, for example the original German plan which was more or less a straight thrust through Belgium along the coast, they will be very hard pressed to win - which is historically accurate. That does not doom Germany outright either. As a human player playing Germany.. are you really going to DoW on the USA like Hitler did? Are you really going to invade the USSR and make them an enemy (which was really in question... Stalin was nobodies friend and I have my doubts he would have done anything but sit and watch if Germany fought France/England for many years).
Germany vs France in broad terms is probably a pretty good/fair fight. Germany was industrially stronger... had a larger population and at a definite advantage when war broke out. England does not have a continental sized army... they never did at any given time throughout the war (with good reason).... assuming that is accurately portrayed Britain will never be able to (alone) force the Germans into doing anything. So given that Germany is probably the stronger of the two countries (Germany and France) throwing England on the side of the French doesn't necessarily doom the Germans. Germany fought Britain (who had a continental-sized army), France and Russia at once and managed fine in the first Great War - hell they almost won until the USA joined in (not to say the USA saved the Entente - their timing may have though - it's fair to say if Ethiopia had a few divisions training in France during the German Peace offensives in 1918 one could say Ethiopia saved the Entente).
If you want a more open ended scenario (which is actually how I think things should be considering even one jar early on would totally ruin the entire sequence of events in WW2 - this works for EU because EU's scope is so much grander than one war with typically no more than one event for any famous war) then there is no issue of survivability for the Germans. The USSR is not firmly in the Allied camp at the outbreak of war and only a moronic German player (or AI for that matter) would invade the USSR in 41 while still engaged in the West.
Who says the USSR would not even join with the Axis? I think if that happened we would have a war end in stalemate. I don't care how many ships, planes, guns and men a US entry into the war could contribute, it doesn't mean anything if they are invading an Atlantic wall manned by a couple million troops rather than a piddly panzer reserve and 500,000 troops of mostly questionale quality without any air support at all as happened in the war. Now we start opening up possibliites like early US entry into the war.. early USSR entry into the war on the side of Axis. Japan preparing and entering the war earlier. Hell one of the first things I want to try in a scenario like this is joining with Japan and crushing the Soviet Union right after the great purges (assuming the AI takes the event if its one) - which IMO Hitler should have done in 1939 (crushing the USSR that is).
This is what makes a game like EU fun. The fact that you can start at a historically accurate point and rewrite history. Or try your hand at history in the same conditions (scenario editor).
And the great thing about a scenario editor is that we can make scenarios for every single year of the war.. so you can start at any time.. make many many "what if" scenarios... this is what made games like TOAW great.. a robust scenario editor meant those of us who followed major battles could recreate the "what-ifs" and simulate them.
If the player chooses France then they probably want some (even if slim) chance to survive. Not a problem. Players have hindsight. That pretty much makes France survivable.. of course I hold the opinion that even with German superiority in organization, equipment, whatever you can think of, the French armed forces weren't so piss poor that if the bulk of their mobile troops weren't cut off immediately France would have lasted much more than 6 weeks. In fact I doubt Germany would have had any sort of decisive victory in the West before the year ended.
Now to multiplayer:
The one thing I think has to be considered is that the USSR, even in the specific history as we read it today, could not necessarily be considered firmly in the Allied camp until the USSR was invaded by Germany. I'm assuming a human German player isn't going to be so stupid to declare on the USSR if they're embroiled in a slugging match in the West.
And finally, this all goes on the assumption that the combat system in HOI is much more robust than in EU. I only just started reading about it today so I can't really say... all this theorizing on game balance could be thrown completely out the window depending on how they simulate battles and such
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