Ivanov

Definitely a cool idea that is worth further exploring. However I'm not sure if this option would be used too often. The TAC units are usually used by the side that is "on the move" and has overall superiority, so the players would rather use the air units to support the attack instead defence. But it would be surely an nice option to have. From the other hand, I would propose another mode for the attack aircraft units, that would be called interdiction. The TAC set to it, would affect the supply and readiness value of the enemy units in some radius from the selcted tile, without directly affecting the strength of the enemy troops. That would be a good representation of the attack air force, that was sent to some area for a free hunting in order disrupt the movement in the enemy's rear ( the best known case of such a successful use of the tactical air force was the fighting in Normandy ).

The tournament commenced on 1st of December so we should be playing until the end of January ( unless all the games won't be over earlier ).

Good stuff Bill, I hope you will be able to come up with something interesting regarding Bulgaria and Montenegro:) If it comes to the Italians being battered in "Fate Of Nations" due to the change of the mountain defensive value - we have to be careful so the Austrians don't get too much battered in "Call To Arms"... Maybe a better solution would be creating more passes in the mountains, add more hills in the Balkans, but the Alps should be a formidable obstacle, just like they were in the history, when the Austro-Italian front didn't move too much despite huge number of troops involved on both sides.

The overall balance of the Call To Arms campaign is quite correct, however there should be some adjustments made to the Balkan Front. There are basically two issues here: 1. Invincible Montenegro. 2. Late Bulgarian war entry. Firstly, as mentioned already before, it's practically impossible for the A-H to conquer Montenegro. If the A-H units will have a lower experience values in the new patch, then the task of defeating Serbia and Montenegro will be even harder. It seems to be a minor issue for the overall balance, but surely it's a frustrating one for the CP player. Also the Cetnije port in the hands of Entente is an open gate for a potential Italian intervention in the theatre. So the strategic importance of Montenegro is not so small at the end. The Montenegrin soldiers proved to be tought fighters ( just like the Serbs ), but the military capacity of the kingdom was very limited. I don't know what was the exact order of battle of the Montenegrin army but for example according to David Stevenson in his brilliant book "1914-1918 The History Of The First World War", Montenegro managed to moblize a militia force of 35-40000 men ( comparing to 350 000 men of the Serbian army. I think Montenegro should have either less units or make Serbia and Montenegro into one belligerent, that would surrender after the last Serbian capital is captured. Second issue is the too late Bulgarian entry - a problem rised many times on the forum. In most of my games Bulgaria joins CP later than in the history, even with the early capture of Belgrade and the diplomatic chints invested by Germany and A-H. Without Bulgarian support is not possible for the CP to defeat Serbia ( unless few German corps with HQ and arty support are moved into the theatre ). Historicaly what motivated Bulgarians to join CP was the capture of Belgrade ( reflected very well in the game ) and the success of the Gorlice-Tarnow operation in 1915. So my suggestion would be, that if Tarnow, Gorlice Jaroslav and Przemysl are in the hands of CP, then Bulgaria joins the war automatically on the historical date that is in October of 1915.

I'd like to see a scenario that would be called let's say "Schlieffen 05" or "West First", where the German units in the West would be deployed according to the original Schlieffen plan, with a very strong northern wing and vulnerable southern flank. I think it would be an interesing "what if" variant and could work out pretty well for the Germans in the game.

That's a definitely good news Bill.

Hmm, I'm not opting here to make the arty units completely immobile - I think in case of those units, the normal mobility without the forced march option, should be a good representation of their operational capabilities. The best thing to do, would be to establish the difference between the maximum speed with which the infantry and artillery could move and then adjust it accordingly in the game. Still, the main point was the arty operational movement in small scenarios, that seems to be quite unrealistic.

The fact that the artillery pieces have wheels, does not mean that they can be force marched just like the infantry. They rather serve to change the position of the battery but not to travel fast on the long distances. Let's go to another example. In "Call To Arms" campaign, Germans start with one heavy artillery unit. I assume that it is supposed to represent heavy Austrian 305mm Skoda siege mortars, that were used to to reduce the Belgian fortresses of Liège. Would you say that is was possible to force march this baby: In the same campaign the French receive one heavy arty unit in 1915. As we know, the French army was desperately lacking heavy artillery pieces and in order to try to match the German firepower, fortresses like Verdun were stripped of their heavy guns. I am not sure how exactly those guns were adopted to their new role, but definitely their mobility was very limited.

I have finished all my games except for the Gallipoli scenario against Shaun, where still have about 15 turns left. Given that we play less than one turn per day, I assume that the game will be over somewhere in mid January. I hope that in the second phase we won't have to play too many "Fate Of Nation" games at the same time, because the turns are extremely long due to the huge number of units involved. Do you remember about the medals for the winners of the league phase?

I still cannot imagine how would you force march heavy guns like those two:

This has occured to me after playing small scenarios during the tournament. I don't think that the ary units should be allowed to perfom a forced march. Artillery not being able to catch up with the advancing units, was a typical feature of every war during the early twentieth century. The arty units in big campaigns represent concentrations of heavy artillery on the army or army group level, so there is no way that kind of "units" of heavy, siege guns could be "force marched" just like the infantry. They should have a very low mobility and the only way to transport them on long distances should be rail. That would also help to represent in the game a static nature of the WWI warfare. In small scenarios the arty units represent probably corps level support, so they shouldn't be able to perform forced march either. The reasons why I managed to score a major victory in Keiserschlach as Germans was the fact, that two turns before the end of the game I force marched two arty units in the vivinity of Amiens and Montdidier and was able to soften the properly entrenched positions of the defenders. Obviously the German army was not able to preform this feat in the real life, in 1918.

Absolutely correct. The solution to that could be either increase of the US industrial base, or more free units.

Just out of curiosity I checked the MMP amounts earned by the belligerents and unit cost in the SC2 Blitzkrieg – the game that initiated my whole adventure with the SC2 system. Basically the proportions of MMP amounts earned by the Axis and Allies are similar to the SOE campaign ( I checked the initial amounts earned at the beginning of the Barbarossa campaign ). The main difference is in the proportion of the MMPs gathered, and the unit cost. For example Germany earns about 350MMPs at the beginning of the Barbarossa scenario. The cost of a tank group ( heavy tanks tech 2 and motorisation tech 1 ) is about 320. Based on that, Germany can potentially purchase one tank group per turn, as opposite to the two tank groups that can be purchased each turn before Barbarossa starts in the SOE campaign. It’s seems to me, that the model of the relation between MMPs’ earned and the unit cost, was more successful in the earlier SC2 Blitzkrieg campaigns. Replacing and building new units was harder and the whole game more realistic in this aspect. It also seems that in the SC2 Blitzkrieg campaigns the German industrial production does not increase so dramatically thanks to the conquest, so in general the game balance was better than in SOE ( despite too small US MMP output ).

I think we have Kommandant M.I.A. I haven't heard from him in a couple of days. Anyone knows what is going on with our referee??? :eek:

Correct. I meant that I'd prefer my arty to fire at the enemy unit, not at enemy arty but there is no option to make this choice.

This could be a difficult task to engage German navy directly in North Sea ports. In general it's very hard to destroy the ships in their bases. Such an attack would also give Germans an opportunity for a suprise counter attack. Royal Navy has globaly a significant numerical advantage but attacking Kaiserliche Marine on it's territorial waters it would lose this trumph. That's also exactly why Entente historicaly didn't go for the direct blockade - the risk was simply too big. In my game with Kommandant as CP, he tried to destroy my two battleships based in Emden and Wilhelmshaven. He very cleverly was blocking the Kiel Canal, so I couldn't make any serious rescue attempt, yet he didn't manage to destroy my battleships. The battle/blockade lasted for good few turns. I lost one sub but he lost one upgraded dreadnought and few ships badly damaged. I managed to upgrade and reinforce the blocked battleships, so there was no way he could do any damage to them. Attacking ports may be successful in case of Austro-Hungarian navy in the Adriatic, because the ships are usually not full strenght and A-H don't have sufficient MMP's to reinforce the damaged vesseles. But with against the Germans it's a completely different story.

Well, to loss of NM due to the ship sinking could potentially very damaging for the Germans. I also prefer not having to spend cash on costly repairs of the ships. As if to the Ottomans, they usually handle the Brits very well without any assistance nor help. I mean as I said, Britan cannot be ignored but I'd rather order my fleet to sit tight in the ports. I don't know if you are playing with the same Don, but when I played with him as the Entente, he was trying to harass me with his fleet, but he lost every single ship and Germany surrendered in 1916.

There are different strategies but I never move any surface ships of the German navy outside Baltic. I simply see the Kaiserliche Marine as a hostage of Entente. I also prefere to focus exclusively on Russia and France. It's impossible to ignore the Brits but in the naval clash the Germans are usually on the losing end. From at least my point of view, the naval confrontation with Royal Navy ends up in unnecessary diversion of the resurces. I prefere to concentrate on the ground warfare and eliminate the continental enemies. I mean the unrestricted warfare can serve as a distraction for the British and harass them but there is never a hope to make them surrender, just as a result of the naval operations.

Hi Bill, That's great. Maybe you could even conisder a higher NM boost for Germany ( 100 perhaps ), so it would be worth risking the destruction of subs.

Bill - what is exactly the NM benefit Germany gets each turn after launching unrestricted naval warfare? I'm asking because to put it in place, you have to position U-booats close to the British mainland, so there is a huge risk of the submarines being sunk. The loss of each one of them equals about -200NM points lost by Germany. So if the unrestricted naval warfare gives for example 50NM boost per turn, it's probably not worth the effort. Thanks

The best strategy to deal with the blockade is probably trying to sink as many as possible ships of the Russian Baltic Fleet and gaining some NM points in the process. Any attempts to engage Royal Navy are usually counterproductive. You could also launch U-boots against the Allied shipping, but remember that each sunken U-boot means about 200NM points lost by Germany.

I agree that it would be better to allow 2 players from each league to get through but Kommandant clearly said that only one passes to the next round, so we have another issue. Also, if you manage to get out from the league you will be playing small scenarios too. The big campaigns are reserved for the final and semifinal...

Peter - only one player qualifies to the second phase, so my system was based on the concept that would allow to establish a clear winner of each league, that is a player who wins more matches than the rest of the players. In Kommandans's/Glabro's system if you have players who are simmilarly skilled, then they would always get the same score playing any scenario against each other. My system allows picking a winner of each match immediatelly after it's finished.

Well, we could decide what criteria should be more important in case of a draw in a match. I sincerely would go for casualties but I though that would be too controversial and proposed speed of victory instead. Lt.Col. Stephen "Godfather" Ferrando from Generation Kill used to say, that there are only three things important in war: tempo, tempo and tempo.

Well, let's see what the majority will say. If the Kommandant's/Glabro's system get's through I have no problem with that. As for changing the rules after the start of the competition - we have started 3 days ago so I don't think that any match is over yet. The maximum I got is the 7th turn against Ludi and no change of rules would do any harm to the game. By the way - Amadeus - do you play mirrors in Panzerliga? How do they work? You are probably one of of the most senior and experienced players here so you could shed some light on us.