airboy Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 October 21, 1916 France: Bordeaux and La Rochelle are under attack. The German Army is close to isolating the entire Entente army attacking Belgium. Austria: Austria has started a major shipbuilding effort. Austrian Army is marching towards Albania and Greece. Only winter can stop them! Turkey: Turkish forces have taken the offensive around Baghdad. British continue to retreat in the Sinai. National Morale: France = 19%; UK = 78% US now at 63% towards the Entente. If they reach 90% they will eventually enter the war. Nothing seems to slow this down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airboy Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 November 18, 1916 French Collapse The German Army captured the French cities of Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Angers, Rouen, Arras and Lille. More than 75% of France is now occupied by the German Army French National Morale = 11% French Losses = 50 corps (3 cav), 4 HQ, 3 Heavy Artillery, 3 detachments, 1 Airship, 1 Battleship & 1 Sub UK Losses = 26 corps (2 cav), 16 detachments, 1 Heavy Artillery; 1 Airship, 2 Fighters, 1 Bomber & 3 Arab Partisans. Albania surrendered to Austrian Forces. The Austrian Army has penetrated deep into Greece and is attacking Larissa. Turkey is on the offensive and recovering their territory. US is now 71% towards entering the war on the side of the Entente. It probably does not make any difference now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airboy Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 December 16, 1916 German Army is taking the Channel Ports. French morale = 8. German Morale = 101. Austrian Army is moving towards Athens, but Austrian national morale dropped to 66? (must be a design bug). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airboy Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 January 27, 1917. French Surrender!! Central Powers Win the Great War! It is easier to describe the cities still controlled by France and the UK than to describe what is held by the German Army. Northern most French city is Cherbourg. St. Malo, Quimper and Brest in Brittany are all cut off from the rest of France. Bayonne on the Spanish border is still in French hands. Narbonne is isolated. Grenoble in the French Alps is still under French control. The three ports of Marseilles (the current capital), Toulon and Nice French national morale = 3. They surrender at the end of the turn. UK morale = 77. German morale = 102. Austrian morale fell again to 65 in what must be a design bug. The Austrian Army is attacking Athens. Turkey has almost expelled the UK from their empire. The Austrian Navy won a major battle in the Med. They may be able to take amphibious action against Malta and Egypt. French major losses were 53 corps (3 cavalry), 5 HQ, 3 detachments, 3 Heavy Artillery, 2 Battleships (med), 1 Heavy Cruiser (med) and 1 sub. UK ground losses were 31 corps (2 cav), 1 HQ, 18 detachments and 1 Heavy Artillery. The entire Royal Air Force was destroyed. ********************************************** General Airboy is given a triumphal march through Berlin! ********************************************** Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airboy Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 The US came close to entering the war. If the war had lasted much longer, they would have entered. The Central Powers tried everything possible to prevent a US entry. This strategy worked until Russia fell. Then everything started to unravel diplomatically for the Central Powers. Why did this happen? Scripts! The US is given large scripted events to start siding with the Entente and to enter the war after Russia falls and if the Entente is still active in the latter half of 1916. There was no reason for a US war entry given Central Power actions. I should have turned the scripted events for the US in 1916 & 1917 off before starting the game if I had decided to avoid declaring war on Belgium and chose not to ever use unrestricted submarine warfare against the UK. Once you start the game you cannot turn off scripted events. This was something that I never thought of when I started the game. By the time this started happening in 1916 I could not do anything about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airboy Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 This is the first strategic level game I have ever played that captured WWI era combat. The game mechanics and the AI worked pretty well. Many of the strategic and supply issues that dogged commanders during WW1 I also had to struggle with. I would highly recommend this game if you are interested in WW1 strategic combat. The game is pretty modable with the scripts. It seems to have a robust play by email support system. Don't try all of my tactics against a human opponent! The decision to cede Trieste to Italy will really hammer Austrian Morale. You really can never overcome this. Even if you defeat Russia and Serbia, the Austrians are still unhappy. I misplayed the Turks from start to finish. The only thing the Turks did was to tie up some Russian troops. If I played the game again I think I could have done a much better job with Turkey. I was impressed how well the AI crushed my submarine forces in the Atlantic. I tried 4 major strategies. Nothing worked. The game engine really works well here. I never devoted research towards improving my subs. I thought that the land battles were critical and purchased research to support my strategy. A human player would have never set back and let me slowly chew up France with inferior forces. I probably could have knocked Russia out of the war in 1917 and crushed Serbia, Albania and Greece against a better AI. I probably could not have really done serious damage to France before 1917 against a human opponent. My AAR was played with the unpatched version (1.0) of the game. It has since been patched to take care of some design problems and to improve the AI. I have not played the patched version (saves are not compatible). I have only 3 design suggestions (which may have been taken care of in the first patch). Minor Problem: Something went wrong with Austrian and Turkish morale at the very end of the game. It did not impact the outcomes, but it was annoying. Major Problems: The AI never committed sufficient troops to defend the Franco-German border after taking losses. The AI did not reinforce heavily damaged units consistently. Sometimes it did, sometimes it did not. Bill Runacre supplied the photos. I greatly appreciate his help. Bill told me that the minor morale problem with Turkey and Austria at the end of the war has been fixed in the patch. You can see the AAR with more photos at www.wargamer.com on thread: http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.aspx?&m=526737&mpage=1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airboy Posted April 25, 2011 Author Share Posted April 25, 2011 This AAR runs about 30 pages in Microsoft word. I really got involved in the game and made a systematic effort to save my games in order to review my strategy. After completing the game I realized that an AAR was possible. I doubt that I will devote the time to an AAR of this length very often. Quite a few people have told me that they purchased the game after reading the AAR. Battlefront may wish to "sticky" this AAR. Some people are more likely to play against the AI than against a human opponent via email like Wormwood and HappyCat. One final observation. I could have tried a couple of other strategies as the Central Powers. My strategy playing the Entente would be quite different. This is one of the few strategic level wargames that I have played where there are multiple strategies with a plausible chance of success. The excellent 1914 Call to Arms Strategy Guide (which I encourage everyone to read) suggests a very different strategy for the Central Powers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bossy57322 Posted April 25, 2011 Share Posted April 25, 2011 They should cut you in for a piece of the action because this was brilliant. Your methodology puts my "fire that baby up and wing it" approach to serious shame. Question on scripted events. If you turn off the USA scripted events in 1916 and 1917, can the Central Powers then engage in unrestricted submarine warfare without any fear of a US entry at any point? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
airboy Posted April 27, 2011 Author Share Posted April 27, 2011 They should cut you in for a piece of the action because this was brilliant. Your methodology puts my "fire that baby up and wing it" approach to serious shame. Question on scripted events. If you turn off the USA scripted events in 1916 and 1917, can the Central Powers then engage in unrestricted submarine warfare without any fear of a US entry at any point? I'm glad that you enjoyed my AAR. I think that turning off the US scripted events before starting a game which employed my strategic plan (no declaration of wars, no unrestricted submarine warfare, etc....) would be a valid "what if" historical scenario. What irritated the US was the invasion of a neutral (Belgium) and the submarine warfare. WW1 was about as "clean" of a major war as you ever see. Very little intentional civilian casulties, very little shooting captured enemies out of hand (excluding flame thrower and machine gun crews), etc...... Prior to the German ultimatum on Belgium, only Serbia was threatened with war. The Serbs shot the Austrian heir to the throne. Russia started mobilization and then declared war on Austria-Hungary and on Germany. France declared war on Germany. Germany pretty much to that point was reacting to events. Consider also that the USA did not actively intervene in the Franco-Prussian War, the Crimean War, or the War in the Balkins involving Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania in 1912-1913(??). I doubt that the USA would have intervened otherwise. Thus, taking the USA scripts off would be a reasonable thing to me. Others might disagree. We can all choose before we start a game the scripts that we wish to have active and those we choose to leave in place. Personally, I would not engage in unrestricted submarine warfare if I had changed the USA war entry scripts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts