Bill101

It strikes me that this could be a counterproductive use of the Ottoman navy, i.e. it blocks the strait, you declare war on the Ottomans, sink their ship, and hey presto, they've lost a ship, a couple of % points on their National Morale, and you will have gained the same from the sinking! But I can see that if this happens very early in the war before Ottoman mobilization is high then this would be more of a problem for the Entente to do this than later on when the Ottomans are about to join anyway.

There aren't any special rules as such but a landing in the Dardanelles could work. A successful Gallipoli landing does require a number of units to be involved, plus Battleships to pound the defences so that if you were to land at Sedd el Bahr then the garrison won't be able to reinforce much after the first turn. Other options are to land at either entrance to the Sea of Marmara, and send either amphibious units through into the Sea of Marmara to land, or naval units through. Or both! In many ways as a successful landing is a hard thing to achieve, it is the threat of such a venture that still gives this area its importance. Thus to prevent any invasions, the Ottomans need to maintain forces at Constantinople, Gallipoli and Sedd el Bahr. But the three Corps they start with here would be immensely useful elsewhere, so the temptation to move them can be very strong, and even if they are replaced with Detachments then that will cost the Ottomans in MPPs. Here are a few ideas on the locations where landings could be made: Obviously given the cost involved it is a hard decision to make, but certainly never make your opponent think that you won't consider doing it! An alternative approach would be to land some Russians at Zonguldak, and from there threaten the Ottoman capital. This may well draw some of the Ottoman forces away from the Gallipoli area, and there is your chance to pounce.

Hi Masayuki The colour of the graphic doesn't affect anything in the game.

I play with hard limits but I just realized from one of my games that my opponent must have selected soft limits because I could build a unit that I hadn't expected to be able to!

Hi Great to hear it, and as to your question about the Dardanelles, there is no convoy as such but as long as the Ottomans are in the war no trade will pass through. But once the Ottomans are out of the war Russia will once again benefit from this trade and her income will rise slightly. In the same vein, before the Ottomans enter the war Russia does receive some income from trade via the Dardanelles, which is why when the Ottomans join the Central Powers there is a message about Russian trade no longer being able to pass through the Dardanelles. Bill

Very useful if attempting an amphibious landing, or to threaten one, e.g. target Gallipoli with one and your Ottoman opponent will suspect that a landing is coming. If one isn't, then he's forced to keep a garrison there which otherwise might have been moved away. But their truth worth comes in in a naval battle where you cannot see the exact location of all the enemy's ships. If you suspect a trap, sending out a patrol or two of Seaplanes might prevent you from making a fatal mistake.

I just want to thank Airboy for his magnificent AAR!

Hi Colin I've been playing this one a lot. No great surprise there I guess considering that I designed it! The absolute NM starting figures are actually significantly lower than in the 1914 campaigns, with some of the event triggers modified accordingly. They have to start at 100%, but the actual values are a whole lot lower. Plus with them starting at 100% you can see during the course of this campaign just how well or badly everyone is doing. It won't actually make it harder to knock anyone out of the war. Bill

Some screenshots of the situation in August 1915 to go with the above:

The Lost Battalion is a great film about US troops in action in the Meuse-Argonne in 1918. I really liked this film as a lot of WWI films are really dire (e.g. The Trench). Also check out the ANZAC series from the '80s starring Paul Hogan. Both are currently available on youtube, and they should be enough to get you started! I also only found out recently as I never watched it when it was on TV, but the Young Indiana Jones series saw him take part in lots of WWI action, including in German East Africa. But I'll have to let others comment on whether or not this is worth watching.

Hi Karhu I've just played this one out again in Multiplayer and both myself and my opponent felt that it's a hard scenario for the Entente to win due to their low supply. Obviously it depends on both sides' actions, but if there's something I'm missing, e.g. a surefire strategy, then please let me know. Thanks Bill PS I have taken a look at Megiddo and am considering some changes.

Hi It doesn't, but it may be that Entente naval vessels in the Baltic are interdicting Germany's trade with Sweden. That is the only way of cutting off Germany's trade with Sweden, apart from using diplomacy to make the Swedish government swing towards the Entente.

Looks like it's today!

Two turns later, here's a shot of the action in East Prussia: There's more on the wargamer.com forum, but I thought I'd post these here as a taste of the action!

Here's one of the Central Powers advance into Poland: Meanwhile fighting continues in Galicia:

Agreed, it's great to see this and as Hubert said we have many improvements coming up. In the forthcoming patch everyone will find the tempo on the Eastern front somewhat hotter right from the start!

No, I've not seen that one, but the description from google books suggests that it has potential: "The core of the Atlas is a collection of double-page spreads, each concentrating on a specific campaign or battle. Each spread includes a specially commissioned four-color main map with annotated overlays." If you do come across it, or if anyone else is familiar with it, then I'd be interested to hear how good it is.

I agree with you on the weakness of many maps, not only in general but also when reading books on specific battles or campaigns. One exception is the British Official History, which does include many very good and useful maps, but as it only focuses on the British and Imperial forces, plus the actions of their allies only when appropriate, maybe there are other Official Histories that would also help fill that niche? An Atlas that is also a good read, due to the accompanying text, is Arthur Banks' A Military Atlas of the First World War. I found Routledge's WWI atlas a bit disappointing. Full of useful information so it wasn't all a waste, but the maps themselves were frequently lacking in detail.

Thanks Robert, and yes, they did think it works even better for WWI than for WWII!

It is a tough game for the CP player, indeed, as this was a Blitzkrieg style campaign in the desert, complete with the destruction of an Ottoman column by the RAF. It is certainly true that the Entente will smash the Ottoman forces facing them, but then what is left of the Ottoman and German units need to attempt to delay the enemy's attack so as to deny the Entente a worthwhile victory. Of course, this isn't a usual scenario in that the CP will lose a lot of units very quickly, so it will feel hard for them, a bit like a campaign set in Poland in 1939. But I don't think that it's impossible to buy time to slow the Entente.

I've been thinking about this and one problem here is that if we were to give the US a large army to start with, then this would severely penalize the Central Powers player who would now face a huge influx of US troops into Europe not only much quicker than was historically possible but also much quicker than they would be expecting. Could we be upsetting the Central Powers player to please the Entente player?

Hi Skarg The reason is that it all depends on which country occupied the Soviet capital when the USSR surrendered. If it was an Italian unit, as in this case, then Italy makes the conquest. It therefore pays to be careful which of your units occupy the enemy capital, as sometimes you might want it to be Italy, e.g. if attacking Greece or Vichy France, but at other times this is definitely not desirable.

Hi Karhu I've been giving this a lot of thought this week but a number of points keeping springing to mind: Firstly, if Austria-Hungary has been defeated and Italy is doing well then while we could penalize Italy for driving through the rump of the Empire to get at Germany, would it really impact the game in any real way? For instance, we could penalize Italy's NM when her troops advance into Austria proper, or even into Germany, but given the situation Italy's NM would still be very high and therefore unlikely to worry the player. This could possibly end up just being seen as an unnecessary irritant to the Entente player. Secondly, if Italy is penalized for such a move, could implementing this open up a can of worms as perhaps it could be argued that other countries should also face similar issues. For example, if Russia and Serbia are beaten, Austria-Hungary has achieved her own original war aims, yet a penalty to Austria-Hungary for using her forces elsewhere against a different foe might seem a bit tough. Historically Austria-Hungary did send troops to fight in both France and the Middle East, and I'm not aware of any negative repercussions specific to these deployments. In the same way, did Russia's deployment of a small force to the Western Front, or the Ottoman deployment of forces on the Eastern Front cause any great issues back at home? So essentially I have been wondering whether: a) is introducing anything here going to provide a positive impact on the game, and If we do introduce something, where do we draw the line? These are the issues I've been pondering over the last week and I thought I'd outline them here so that we can discuss them further. Bill

Great minds think alike Dave!

Good point, and there will be some changes here in the future to discourage and penalize the Central Powers for such actions.