How to simulate a WW1 battle?

[Zarquon]

(I know it's been discussed here before, but my search-fu is getting rusty...)

This is not meant to be ultra-realistic, I'm just playing around with my favourite game again. If the result comes within a lightyear of a WW1 battle, it's fine.

First, selecting all-rifle platoons should be obvious. There the trouble begins - I can find early Romanians for the Axis, but no rifle-only units in the Russian OOB.

Wire is simple, but I'd need trenches and I guess that CM trenches don't really represent WW1 fortifications. Especially infantry behaviour in trenches is a problem - they rout out of them. Still, it's better than nothing and there's nothing one can do to improve that.

Mines were around, but were AP minefields a common fixture on WW1 battlefields?

Arty should be 75mm+, liberal quantities, preplanned only. Or shouldn't it? Any tips on that?

[JasonC]

You can definitely improve on CM trenches. Simply alter the actual ground, the map. Make depressions. You can make a line of "rocky" for a shallow trench, at 1 level below the surrounding terrain. Use actual trenches only to simulate fortified firing posts, MG nests, and the like. With one end resting in the lower ground and one end higher for wider LOS. You can also use "nodes" of "rocky" as strongpoints - it is close enough to simulate a heavily sandbagged position. You can also use log bunkers with MGs, then keep direct fire weapons to a minimum (cannons, ATRs etc). They are radically tougher in an environment without tanks and with mostly just squad infantry.

Use a medium or high "damage" setting to pockmark the terrain with shellholes. Add numerous larger depressions in the map editor, and make some of them "marsh" at bottom, others wet ground, and the best ones "rocky". Do not use any forest or tall pines - at most scattered trees and those thinner than you might otherwise use. Forests tended to be stripped to shattered toothpicks by persistent artillery fire.

Using rifle squads is actually quite unnecessary, it is enough to avoid the 2 LMG varieties.

For artillery, it should not be reactive at all. Map fire plotted on turn 1 should be the rule. Do not use TRPs. The calibers do not need to be restricted to 75mm - that was true of the allies early war only. (The Germans went to war with 105s in every infantry division; it was in fact their main edge in the fighting before everyone entrenched).

HMG teams with max ammo should be another feature, singles or in pairs, and off on sides well behind the front line. They will be hard to spot and will simulate the ever present flanking fire from positions on either side of the contested area.

Disallow smoke. If a fight is meant to take place with gas present, make the environmental condition fog, instead. This will accurately simulate the reduced visibility that masks caused.

Dugouts can be simulated by the reinforcement mechanism. Meaning, give a defender fresh platoons popping up in the middle of the map at points inside his trench network.

There were trench mortars, so do allow some of those. They should generally be stationary on each side's own trench network though.

[Der Alte Fritz]

To save yourself some hard work there is an experimental CMAK WW1 scenario at the SCenario Depot here:

http://www.the-scenario-depot.com/scenario_details.html?command=search&db=scenarios.db&eqskudatarq=449

[Zarquon]

Thanks! I'd have to install CMAK again to try out the scenario, but I might do that.

Don't you think the LMG increases firepower at range to an unrealistic level?

What force ratio would a "typical" battle involve? 2:1 in infantry seems too low, but massed arty for the attacker should balance that to some degree.

Wouldn't the defender have at least some reactive artillery, registered at no-man's-land?

[JasonC]

No, the LMG doesn't increase firepower to an unrealistic level.

Firepower rises sharply as range falls and that is all you need to be accurate. Yes you want to avoid the full automatic weapon squads - they make momentary cover state more important and numbers less. But if all the squads on both sides are single LMG, single SMG, mostly rifle, you will get entirely balanced results.

And no, the defender gets no reactive artillery. They couldn't call it where they saw enemy. They can have a conscript FO or two without TRPs, that they can choose to use for map fire wherever they want and whenever they want. Not knowing where the attackers will be, they will likely want to use those as "target wide" map-fire sometime in the early - middle part of the fight, but it is entirely up to them. They just didn't remotely have the communications to time the shot to just when the enemy was exposed and just where.

As for a typical fight, give the attackers way too much infantry for the amount of space and the defenders an "ordinary" amount plus HMGs, dug in. Then give the defender reinforcements - from the back of his trench system or from "dugouts" inside it - after 15 or 20 minutes. The initial infantry odds can be 3 to 1 (battalion vs. company e.g.), but should fall to 2 to 1 or even 3 to 2 after all defending reserves have arrived.

Attacks very often succeeded in reaching the enemy trench system, but then they had to brawl with arriving enemy reserves there, using only the forward (ragged out) elements that made it, and typically finding it quite hard to support them further due to remaining flanking HMGs, barrage fire, first wave units routed and otherwise disorganized, etc.

In addition, the defenders being thinner in the targeted area initially, will reduce the effectiveness of barely aimed attacking artillery in quite realistic fashion. While they won't be able to use it later because they won't be able to plan ahead where they will and won't have succeeded, before the whole attack begins.