Three questions, two comments and a minor correction

[Karhu]

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!

[JoMac]

Three questions, two comments and a minor correction...and a partridge in a pear tree :-)

[Bill101]

Hi Karhu

Great to hear that you're enjoying the game!

1. With the naval blockade, it's a case of the more naval units used, the more effective the blockade. A lone ship will have minimal effect, but if all the trigger points are occupied then it will start hurt Germany's National Morale quite a bit more.

2. It will just serve as a good trap for the Royal Navy, as they will have to attack it to drive it away so that they can enforce the blockade there. So in a way it is a way of breaking the blockade.

3. For raiding the feedback can be seen in the Graphs in the Reports section (7th button down on the right). The actual pop up happens at the end of your opponent's turn.

Thanks for the comments and info on the flag.

Bill

[Karhu]

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.

[xwormwood]

I won't damage the Entente National Morale, but i would prevent that the Entente can use it to damage yours.

So your NM won't benefit from it, and it wouldn't damage the Entente NM.

Its just like Bill101 already said with his answers 1 & 2.

[Bill101]

Because the blockade is simply a way of hurting Germany, the most the Kriegsmarine can do is either to contest the trigger points (i.e. by what you're suggesting) or to keep the Royal Navy so busy elsewhere with unrestricted attacks or even sending out the main fleet that they can't spare ships to enforce the blockade.

A third way is of course to ride out the blockade and attempt to defeat both France and Russia before the blockade and your own casualties weaken your own side's will to fight too much.

[Karhu]

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?

[Hubert Cater]

Thanks for the feedback Karhu and all I can say for now is that it would be a tough call on any changes (just yet) as some have felt that it is already too expensive and too limiting relative to previous games.

At the current costs I would imagine that if there were that many landings in your game some other aspect of your opponent's war machine was likely to be lacking... but either way we'll keep an eye on this and make any adjustments as needed.

[Karhu]

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.

[Sergei]

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.

I should mention the German Ost-See Division that landed in Hanko in 1918 and marched on to Helsinki as a successful example. Another Detachment Brandenstein landed to east of Helsinki to cut the Helsinki-Viipuri railroad a few days later.

I think the main issue is that there aren't coastal artillery batteries to hinder invasions in the strategically important areas that usually were very well defended. Which was also why Gallipoli was so important in the first place!

[Karhu]

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.

[lettowvorbeck]

There were probably more real amphibious ops than we give credit for b/c WW1 in general is covered poorly in the military history literature. I had no idea of the impressive Operation Albion until recently when a new book about it came out. there were also smaller russian amphibious landings along the Black Sea coast in support of their Caucasus campaigns. That said the lack of coastal batteries in the game as well as minefields do hamper defenses against landings. However, even against the AI, I felt deterred from frivolous landings due to their cost, and players will be far more pressed for MMPs in pbem games.

[Blackcat]

Thanks for the reply, Hubert.

In WW1 Gallipoli was almost the only one attempted, and it was a disaster.

On a historical note, Gallipoli certainly wasn't a sucessful campaign, but the amphibious bit went quite well - the problems happened after the troops got on shore.