Karhu

I tried this. It all fell to peices when my Entente opponent invaded Germany through Holland.

Very similar - but then Poland didn't surrender either.

52 and it's great. Cut my teeth on making up wargaming rules for battles between my airfix soldiers and models and my brother's.

This is an excellent idea. It would add a lot of unpredictability and variety to the game, and allow people to try out different strategies.

Ok, fair enough of course. I just remember reading that the German numerical supriority was not as great as is often assumed, but naturally there are always game play considerations. According to the WW2 database (see http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=28), the Poles fielded 600,000 men during the campaign, the Germans about 1.8 million, so a ratio of 3:1 would be about right. Of course this doesn't take account of tanks or planes, where the Poles faced even greater odds.

It does look good, but surely the Polish army had more units than that relative to the Germans?

Great stuff, thanks very much.

I was wondering as well about the Gallipoli scenario. As it stands the Turks receive so little by way of supplies that they're on a hiding to nothing. For the Entente it's pretty much a stroll in the park as a result. It's all a bit strange, considering how it worked out historically...

Ditto that!

Hi Bill, To take your second point first, I think there's a big difference between Italy attacking Germany through a now-neutral Austria and the Ottomans or the Russians sending troops to fight in other theatres. The issue is not one of sending troops abroad - I don't have a problem with that at all, if you can spare the troops - but rather one of declaring war on a country you have just signed a peace treaty with. Peace treaties were taken seriously in those days, and breaking one just as soon as it was signed would have serious consequences, so much so that it almost never happened. I say almost, because Bulgaria did fight the Second Balkan War with Serbia and Greece after the peace treaty to end the First Balkan War. But even then the original peace treaty was with Turkey, and Bulgaria went to war against Serbia because Serbia refused to abide by an earlier agreement on dividing Macedonia with Bulgaria. Despite the extenuating circumstances, Bulgaria became a virtual outcast in international circles, even being disavowed by its old ally Russia. Germany was only too happy to take advantage of that soon afterwards. My solution would be to say that you can only declare war on a country once in any given game. The time span of the game is too short to allow a peace treaty to be signed and then broken again. If it ran over 30 years (like the time between Germany guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality and then violating it) then fair enough, but from one month to the next is not on. That would answer your first point, about it not really having an effect on the game. I appreciate the situation would be different with newly-independent countries (the Ukraine, the Baltic states etc), but here I like the 'Dutch' solution suggested earlier by Omegaman1. Giving Germany even a few MPPs from these countries would make invasion pointless.

It's early 1917 in my current PBEM game and Austria-Hungary has collapsed and been replaced by the various successor states, while Germany fights gamely on. So far so good. However, my Entente opponent (yes, the same one who launched a thousand amphibious landings) has now had Italy declare war on Austria - again! I think his plan is to get at southern Germany through Innsbruck. Italian NM is at 130%. The Austrians, who thought they were done with the war and were busy ski-ing and drinking mulled wine, are not able to offer much resistence with a few shattered units and NM at under 50%. The thing is, shouldn't Italy face some negative consequences from breaking a peace treaty before the ink is even dry? The US is already in the war, but I would think Italian NM should take a massive hit - the people thought they were done fighting the Austrians, and now their government wants them to do it again straight away.

Well spotted Wushuki - this is very good to know!

Fair enough, of course - makes good sense. As we were discussing the Mostar to coast railway, I had a quick look (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plo%C4%8De). According to the English page, the railway was built in the 1960s. The Croatian page is more specific, not to say contradictory (http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plo%C4%8De, for those of you who can read Croatian). It says the Austro-Hungarians planned to build it before WW1, but it was only started in 1937, and finished in 1942. Given that it's more detailed, and is in their country after all, I'm inclined to believe the Croatian version. What does seem to be clear is that it was built in the 1930s at the earliest. As you say, it's amazing how innacurate maps can be. Not to mention how contradictory Wikipedia is sometimes, though I suppose that's less of a surprise.

Railways are a bit odd on the map. For instance there's one from Mostar to Dubrovnik, which sadly has not yet been built to this day!

It's true about the German landings in Finland after the collapse of the Russian Empire, but they were virtually unopposed, and indeed were welcomed by much of the local population. That's a bit different to an opposed landing in an enemy country. Good point about the coastal batteries - they were important in many places, but are absent from the game.

Thanks for the reply, Hubert. The thing is, previous games related to WW2 when amphibious landings were much more common: North Africa, Sicily, Anzio, Normandy, the Pacific islands, etc etc - the list goes on. In WW1 Gallipoli was almost the only one attempted, and it was a disaster. The logistics of the time - to say nothing of the lack of specialist landing craft and other vessels, or effective air support - were such that such operations were extremely difficult, to the point of being impossible. Otherwise, we could have expected Italian landings against the Austrian coast or British landings from Egypt to Palestine. They didn't happen; such landings were simply not a feature of WW1 as the issues of supply were overwhelming at the time. Also, from a purely game point of view, in previous games there were a relatively large number of units and fewer towns. With the detail on this map there are a lot more towns, and yet far fewer units to cover them with. It is physically impossible, for example, for Turkey to garrison all its coastal cities.

Ok, that's all much clearer now, thanks again. Any chance of making amphibious landings a bit less of a gamey tactic for the Entente, either by making them VERY expensive or restricting them to certain units?

Hi Bill, Thanks for the quick response and your answers. As regards question 2, what about the NM points in the sea near Iceland? If I plonk a sub there, does that do my NM any good, or damage that of the Entente? Cheers.

Questions: 1. I'm still a bit confused about the naval blockade of Germany. Is it necessary for the Entente to have a ship on each of the blockade tiles in the North Sea for it to be effective, or does the severity of the blockade depend on the number of tiles covered? 2. Does putting a German sub on the NM tiles achieve anything? If so, what exactly? 3. Playing as the Central powers in a multiplayer game, I'm not getting any feedback about the effectiveness or otherwise of convoy raiding or sub attacks on convoys. I remember in previous games there would be detailed feedback on the damage caused, but now nix. Is this deliberate, or do I need to change a setting? Comments: 1. Having a great time with the game, but I have to say that as the Central powers amphibious landings are a nightmare. You don't have nearly enough troops to cover all the possible landing sites, and Entente units are popping up all over the coast of Turkey, Austria-Hungary and everywhere else thay can find, causing havoc. This is happening far more than historically, and is impossible to prevent given near-total Entente naval superiority. Can it be turned down a bit? 2. Contrary to what some people have written elsewhere, I like the solution in the game to the collapse of Russia. It has historical reality and feels right. If Germany insists on holding on to lage swathes of Russia, then all hell should break loose in terms of local revolts in the occupied territories and rebellions in the German army through imported revolutionary ideas. Minor correction: After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, quite rightly the state of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs is formed on part of its territories. But the flag is wrong - it should be a red-white-blue tricolour, not the Serbian flag as it is in the game at present (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Slovenes,_Croats_and_Serbs). This later joined with Serbia and Montenegro to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia) with a blue-white-red tricolour. Otherwise, great game, brilliant stuff!

"The First World War began as a consequence of the assassination by Bosnian nationalists of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne." Oops. Leaving aside the whole issue of whether the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in 1914 was the cause of the war, or rather the spark that ignited the powder keg, to describe them as Bosnian nationalists is deeply misleading. The assassin, Gavrilo Princip, and his co-conspirators were Serb nationalists from Bosnia who were trained and armed by Serbian state security, which smuggled them back over the border to carry out the assassination. They objected to Austro-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia, and wanted to see Bosnia annexed to Serbia instead.

The grey ones turn green when they're upgraded to infantry weapons 1. Not sure what happens when you get to level 2, I've not got that far yet ;-)

Team, Too busy crashing through France while holding off the Russians to say much, but I just wanted to say a quick, but heartfelt and huge, thank you to you all for this great game. I may be away for some time...

That works. Thanks Moon.

It's seems we're all in the same boat - lots of people with the same problem. Has anyone got the game to start yet? BTW, I got virus alerts from Norton Antivirus when I tried to install the game, no doubt a false positive but still a nuisance.

Ok, cheers - thanks for clearing that up.