Is there anything to be said for adding a new city for the UK in Europe 1939?
One of the main problems when playing as the UK is that it starts off with a unit limit of 7, and most of that is quickly taken up by convoys. Also in the early game there isn't much room for British expansion, unlike the axis countries, while fairly soon Britain itself is under attack when (or if) France falls. And since Britain starts off with one of the lowest production bases its very difficult to build up a decent army and air force to defend itself, while at the same time finding itself stretched across Europe. Also, as new operation and units are added in the future, this will become worse.
I can identify two practical ways to boost this limit and avoid the slowdown in production. First by killing of its navy units. I think some people do this, but I tend to let France die and reinforce Norway and Africa. And this means that, at the beginning at least, I have to keep a strong navy around the mainland to fend off operation Seelowe. And by the time naval units become useless its already the second half of the game and the allies are on the offensive.
The second way is to take cities in Libya. In the current game this is reasonably easy, but if an operation Sonnenblume is going to be introduced and the African campaign extended then this wont really be an option.
Anyway I decided to make a list of unit limits for each available country for comparison to prove a point.
France: 54 - 28 starting units = Starting Unit supply of 28
Greece: 20 - 10 staring units = Starting Unit supply of 10
UK: 41 - 34 staring units = Starting Unit supply of 7
Germany: 51 - 28 staring units = Starting Unit supply of 23
Italy: 45 - 29 staring units = Starting Unit supply of 16
USSR: 113 - 15 staring units = Starting Unit supply of 98
As you can see Britain starts of with the largest number of units (though mostly naval and spread across the map) but still has the second lowest overall limit. Obviously comparing the UK's situation to that of Germany (who's supply is quickly boosted by conquests in Poland) or the USSR (who start off with a massive supply but lose a large amount of cities quickly after fighting begins) is stupid, but similar countries like france or italy have higher limits.
I'd say Greece has a good limit. High enough for some build up during its year and a half peace, with room for expansion to the north east.
France has a large starting supply, but a large amount of that will be lost to the Germans at first. But enough to absorb that and produce more units alongside the convoys it receives.
I'd say Italy is the country best comparable to the UK. Naval based, and with room for expansion in east africa. However Italy still starts off a higher unit limit, as well as the cities gained during the fall of france.
Anyway to cut this short my suggestion is to give the UK a new city. My suggestion would be Glasgow, since there's a good bit of room in the north west of Scotland. Also Glasgow was one of the big industrial cities of the time. Another possibility would be to make Palestine or something part of Britain, though this could be a bad precedent for the removing other nation states in Africa.
If a city was added with a population of 8, then the stating unit limit would only be boosted to 15, still less than Italy. This would still put pressure on Britain, but at the same time give a little extra breathing space. It would allow britain to build a reasonable army and air force, along with researching units and any future operation, without removing the challenge that the unit limit presents.
Anyway that's my rather long winded suggestion.
