Bill101

Ah, glad you found it!

Thanks Bossy, it's great to see reviews like this!

Hi Colin Presuming that you're playing the default World at War campaign (i.e. with no modifications at all) then there is a 15% chance of a 1-2% rise in US readiness per turn from January 1941. Once the USSR has entered the war, the USA will have a one time increase in its readiness of 5-7%. Then there's the US oil embargo against Japan which starts in August 1941, increasing US readiness by 1-2% a turn, ramping up to 4-6% by December 1941. So, a canny (or lucky) Axis player can attempt to delay US intervention, but it should happen at some point. Hellraiser certainly seems to be showing what can be done here! Bill

Here's a short update on my current game with Dan now that we're up to July 1916. It's turning out rather differently than the last one, and the Kaiser is much happier with our progress this time! Serbia fell in 1915 and since then we have been facing stiff resistance by Albanian, French, Montenegrin, Greek and exiled Serbian forces. But with Serbia in our hands we certainly have the advantage here. The blue arrows show Central Powers attacks. An enemy Corps has just fled into the mountains in eastern Montenegro. Poland has been conquered in a lightning offensive that has sent the Russians reeling. It came as a real shock to the Tsar and only took a few turns to accomplish. The Russians have suffered tremendous casualties here, including two HQs, Samsonov and Evert, and will be hard pushed to recover from this catastrophe. Brest-Litovsk will fall next turn, and then we can either send reinforcements to the west, or follow up our success by driving deeper into Russia. The western front has seen a lot of action, and the Entente have pushed me a little bit away from Paris. Compiègne has been changing hands, and I've just destroyed a French Corps that had breached my line on the Chemin des Dames. The situation here is far from stable, with my forces frequently having to counter attack to prevent the enemy from driving us back further. But good news is that we now have even heavier German artillery, and I am transferring some of my airforce from the east now that the campaign in Poland is virtually over. If we can bomb and shell the Entente's artillery on the western front then he'll find it very hard to continue his attacks. The red arrows show the places where the British and French have been attacking. In the long term, I am considering an attack on Verdun once I've transferred all my artillery from Poland. One bad spot is the Ottoman Empire because it has been under serious pressure from the Russians in the Caucasus, and the British in both Palestine and Mesopotamia. Austria-Hungary bought peace with Italy at the expense of losing Trento-Trieste and this had a savage impact on our National Morale, but we are expending some of our income to boost civilian morale. This is slowing the decline in popular support for the war, and hopefully our successes in Poland will lead to further victories, especially as Romania is likely to enter the war very soon. Just as in real life, after the Russian army has been defeated! National Morale is also looking good for Germany as both France and Russia have suffered significantly more. The Austro-Hungarians and Ottomans are not doing so well, and the Ottomans may need support from some German forces to prevent a collapse. The diplomatic situation is very good as I invested early in the game to keep Holland, Norway and Sweden trading with Germany. This time, the Kaiser has a chance of victory!

I've found that only those on vital supply routes are essential to be garrisoned, and a major factor is where the battle is occurring. Minor partisan activity away from the center of operations isn't a problem, but if it happens on the supply line for a major offensive then it could be a big problem! :eek:

The loss to Germany caused by the blockade, if the blockade were fully imposed, would be just over 0.7% of Germany's starting National Morale per turn. But the NM loss caused by each blockade tile in the North Sea can be offset by Germany holding a French or Russian city, or by holding two French or Russian towns. Each blockade tile between Scotland and Iceland can be offset by holding one French or Russian town. So, if Germany is defeated then the blockade is unlikely to be more than just a factor in her defeat, and unit casualties (measured not in the number of units destroyed but in the MPP cost of each strength point lost) are normally the biggest factor. The best way to offset either casualties or the blockade is to capture as many French and Russian resources as possible, as early as possible, and hold them so as to drain your opponent's NM while also keeping yours up as much as possible. That said, we are currently testing out an adjustment to the blockade effectiveness, as well as introducing the ability for players to spend some MPPs to slow their decline in National Morale.

Hi The K Man Anti-tank upgrades are now incorporated into the upgrade for Infantry Weapons, so it no longer has its own unique slot. This has freed up a slot which is now used by Anti-Aircraft, so that many units, both land and naval, can now be upgraded with AA. This serves as a potential counter to the power of the Tac Bombers that you mentioned above. This campaign does have quite a few brand new Decisions that haven't been included in any of our previous WWII releases, a good number of which either came directly or were inspired by players' suggestions that have been posted in the Global forum's Decision Event thread. Bill

Hi I've checked and the HQ upgrades will be fixed in the next patch. Garrisons are hard wired to not be able to have any upgrades, though when we release the patch their movement may not be such an issue due to the new Forced March feature. In the meantime, you could always increase their APs by 1 to give them a bit more movement. Bill

I would be interested but it's a question of time as I'm heavily involved in working on the Storm over Europe campaign as well as testing the latest changes to the WWI campaigns. Hopefully someone else will step forward to take up your challenge?

Got it, thanks. I'll be taking a look and I'll get back to you on it either later or tomorrow. Bill

Hi I'm pretty sure it's still something worth trying out, as I have certainly done it, and also had it done to me. Give it a try!

Hi Peter Please can you send me a saved turn so that I can look at this in more depth? There are a few things you've mentioned that I'd like to check on. If you can send it to bill.runacre@furysoftware.com that would be great. Thanks!

Hi Peter Thanks for the feedback. Firstly, just to clarify, please could you let me know if you're playing using the initial release version or the first patch? There is a script in place which represents US annoyance at the blockade, but it has a low chance of occurring so as not to put players off enforcing the blockade. I've certainly seen it in my games but it is something that isn't guaranteed to happen all the time. The US will slowly move towards a belligerent position as the war progresses, but without any aggravating factors it will be very slow and even after having entered the war it will be some time before US ground forces can enter the war in any numbers, so in your game it looks likely to only be in the middle/end of 1918, if at all. I'm interested in the British morale, as the sinking of their ships should have lowered it. Though in return have they sunk a lot of German ships, and also have their ground forces suffered many casualties? With regards to Russia, how far into that country have you advanced and what is their National Morale level at the moment? It should be possible with an all out offensive against Russia to knock it out sooner so I'd be interested to hear more about what's happened here so that we can better assess Russia's strength. Looking at the stats on the blockade, the number of ships you've mentioned would have a small impact on German morale but it shouldn't be that much per turn, so there may be other factors too. Other factors could be German MPP casualties, the position of the front lines (i.e. have German units captured many Russian resources) and what is the diplomatic status of neutrals like Holland, Norway and Sweden? If you could let me know then hopefully we'll be able to come up with some solutions. Bill

It may be that the Battle Honor is connected to the unit itself, so that even when changing the general in command it still retains the honor. Otherwise the honor would have been taken away when the general changed.

The way I do it is to open an account at http://photobucket.com/ and upload the shots to there as jpg files. Once saved, copy the IMG link for the image, and paste it directly into your post here. I agree that it would be nice to see some pictures here, so give it a go and if you have any problems just ask. Bill

There are a lot of new features, with some still being tested at the moment. A full list of those so far included in SC WWI that are above and beyond what were included in Global Conflict can be found here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=95162 Quite a few of these improvements, e.g. the zoom, unit swapping, apply whether or not you're playing using the WWI or WWII engines included with the game, and I've just realized while playing out a turn in one of my own games of Storm over Europe that one thing we've probably not highlighted much is the new ability to use aircraft on reconnaissance missions. It can be really handy to avoid running into unforeseen enemy units, or when sub hunting! Bill

Hi Ilhughes 41 Firstly, welcome back! In my experience turns don't take much longer to play than older SC games, because we've kept the force pools as low as possible and we now have Garrison units which can at least delay an enemy attack or invasion, thus buying you time to prepare a counterattack. As to your question about airpower, one significant new improvement with SC WWI is that many units now have the ability to upgrade their Anti-Aircraft capability. Hence a player can reduce the impact of the enemy's ground attack aircraft in a way that wasn't possible before. I'm pleased to see that you like the AAR and I think you'll have a lot of fun playing it! Bill

Hi Our latest WWII campaign, 1939 Storm over Europe, is now nearing completion and as we move towards release two of our beta testers, Marc and Al, have volunteered to post an AAR here for us all. Just as with my recent WWI AAR against Dan, they have agreed not to read each other's posts so please respect that when asking questions or making comments. They are both rather competitive players with strong gaming reputations and many victories under their belts, so this should hopefully prove to be a hard fought contest as Al will attempt to conquer Europe while Marc who will command the Allies is going to do his best to stop him. This is still a beta version so amendments may still be made before release. Enjoy!

Yes, quite a few. My German losses so far have only been four Corps, two of which will soon be back in the line, so I haven't lacked troops. However, there is a rather nasty Russian offensive underway against Austria-Hungary, so all is not yet rosy in the Kaiser's camp.

I see that David Stevenson has a new book out, called With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918. As his general work on the war, 1914-1918: The History of the First World War, was really good and provided a lot of inspiration for much of this game, I would imagine that his new book on 1918 will be pretty hot too. I have only flicked through it in the bookshop so far, but hope to find the time later this summer to delve into it further. Meanwhile I've been re-reading Robin Neillands' The Death of Glory: The Western Front, 1915. I really like this book and it is one of the best on the problems facing the British army and their attempts to launch successful attacks that year. Neillands is also pretty damning about the French insistence that the B.E.F. attack at Loos in September 1915. Sir John French and Douglas Haig had rejected the French suggestions that they attack there, but they were told by Lord Kitchener that they had to do so. If Neillands is correct, Joffre and Foch weren't interested in the British attack being successful, having it tie up German forces was sufficient, and they were far more concerned with making sure they had their way, i.e. to show the British who was boss. I don't quite understand why the British (in this case Kitchener) felt that they had to kowtow to the French so much, because if the British had left the French to fend for themselves then they'd have been defeated before long. While Britain had an interest in ensuring that Germany didn't dominate Europe, the French surely had a much stronger interest in that their own country had been invaded and its entire future was at stake. Yet the French were able to call the shots and dictate strategy to the British.

I would think that actually capturing Paris is very hard to do in 1914. As to where the front lines settle, in my experience near Amiens is quite common, but sometimes its not even that far into France. Quite a few times it's been much further into France, even to the west of Paris, and in my latest game with Dan they have settled here: I could have gone a bit further west but would have lost heavily in the process. I was far too impetuous in our last game so have settled for less gains, and therefore lower casualties this time around. But we now hold a good chunk of France too! Since the front lines settled down in October 1914, we have taken Compiegne but our salient near Paris has been under heavy attack, losing two Corps there.

Also, if it's a default campaign then there is a Victory file showing in the Options section. The Options section is the one marked "123" on the right of the screen when you're playing, third from the bottom.

Ah, that makes more sense then because it sounded a little strange as although strikes will impact resource strength, this seemed like a little bit more. I would suggest asking whoever designed the mod to change the locations to perhaps Bradford and Manchester, as this would have less impact on rail movement. Or to the mine in 205,43 but that will impact the UK's income slightly more. Presuming of course that everything else is the same as in the default WWI campaigns, as it's a mod the designer may have changed other things too. Alternatively, they could use a Decision event to deduct income from the UK for a set number of turns, as this would avoid any interruption to the UK's rail services.

No, the strength doesn't make a difference, though it does make them more vulnerable to blockade runners.

Is this in a default campaign or a mod? Only what you're describing shouldn't happen in the default campaigns and there are no scripts to represent British cities ramping up for war. If it is in a default campaign, please can you let me know which cities and the date in your campaign? Thanks Bill