8) First playthrough (almost)

[gronk]

Just "finished" my first game against balanced AI as the central powers.
Originally i had intended to only play a few rounds to learn the game and then start over, but i had so much fun that i could simply not stop.
I considered the game won at turn 42 when Russia surrendered. France was completely occupied and the German army had taken Bern and were marching steadily towards Rome. With 10 turns to go before Romania would enter the war, i would actually declare war on them first. Bulgaria had just saved Turkey by providing the trench around Jerusalem with extra infantry and pp. And Austria had just ordered the third battleship (no idea what else to do with all those pp )
A few random observations:

I lost only a single unit (except turkey) in the entire game, which surely proves what excellent general i am. Though i did scuttle my fighter unit and the German battleship (funny popup ftw! )

France was easy. I pushed hard through Belgium and left only a token army at the french border. When the french retreated (due to the threat of being cut of from supplies in the rear) the entire front collapsed as they moved out of their deep trenches into open territory while my troops were still protected.
At around turn 25 France tried to surrender, but i refused. France never asked again.
Would have been nice to get the two stars for beating France. I guess in my next play through i will accept the surrender and in the same turn declare war again.

Serbia was fun but slow for some reason. I think France surrendered before Serbia.

Turkey was extremely annoying. I lost Gaza before i realized that the English had massive army in Egypt. Given that the English troops are superior in all aspects and Turkey has no pp whatsoever, there is literally nothing to do but leave the trenches between Jerusalem and Aqaba and never attack.
I did use 3 garrison units up north to take over Russia: With one unit "dig" supply tunnels into enemy territory, preferably between cities. Station one unit next to a city with a guard. The third unit then walks all around the city to cut off supply. Then wait a few rounds, take out the weakened guard and move on.

Russia was fun, but way too easy. After establishing a token defense i used mainly cavalry and garrison units to cut up Russia, disrupt train lines and supply. There are a lot of cities with no guards. The AI almost never moves out of the cities if an enemy unit is near (kind of makes sense as they would take over the city). Until the end of the war i had never more than 9 garrison units, 9 infantry, 1 artillery and an armored train in all of Russia. To compare this i have 10 infantry, 5 garrisons, 2 cavalry, 2 artillery and 2 battleships on the Italian/Swiss front.
Cutting off supply is extremely deadly against the AI as it can't properly defend against it. Though since the best defense against this tactic this itself, it shouldn't be too hard to add some AI scripts.

The AI also cannot play England properly, though it did manage to sneak a garrison unit past my front line to take Cadiz.

Research is odd. Historically the first armor units appeared relatively early (and on french side i believe). By now i could have beaten France twice and i still have not finished the tank research. It would be nice to have this research available earlier.

Anyways, very fun game. I will be playing this for years to come every once in a while alongside advanced civilization and history line 1914-18

[Samhain]

The British had the first tanks in fact.

[Myrddraal]

Glad you like it

Try Privileged AI, then wait till you get on to multiplayer (a must I think)

[gronk]

For some reason i always thought the Mark I tanks were French

Anyways, after a brief look at the Entente grand campaign i gave up in round 14 or 15. I cannot seem to get a handle on successful blocks. Also Russia and Belgium have a few less units than in my Centre game
I learned a very important thing though from that though: even infantry without trenches will be overrun by a few advancing units.
So back to Center but this time against privileged AI.
(i probably wont play multiplayer because of my spiky work)

Serbia is going a lot better: At the end of round 5 Belgrade has fallen and i am standing outside of Skopje, Tirana and Nis. Almost the entire Serbian army is still sitting in their trenches around Sarajevo. Good thing for me as they will be cut off from supplies next round. No artillery used, but i moved the German plane to help.

Occupation of France is also faster. Brussels has fallen and i am 3 hexes away from an undefended Paris. Firstly i copied the relentless attacks shown me by the Centre AI. Secondly i have turned the French North/South front into an East/West front with 4 french infantry units tied up by 3 German garrison units east of the Meuse! Half the French army is not doing anything and wont be near Paris for another 3 turns!

And i keep forgetting to produce new units. At the beginning of round 6 both countries have a pp pool of over 100.

In this game i have tried a few things that may or may not ruin my game
1. move the entire German navy to London before Britain joins the war. The idea was to intercept the infantry units shipped from Britain. Although i managed to destroy the cruiser in London, i lost mine as well due to misplacement of my submarine unit. Furthermore i discovered that attacking the transport with my submarines does not have the expected 0:-x casualty rating but a whopping -8:-2. This essentially means that the cheapest and easiest way to destroy fleets is to put a bunch of garrison/armored cars out on the sea. (in my last game a battleship attacked my cavalry and lost 2 steps, while my cavalry survived)
For the cost of a battleship (80pp) i get 3 armored cars (low manpower) or 8 garrison units. And while a battleship cannot defeat another in 1v1, 3 transports can.
So this initiative didn't gain me anything but a badly damaged battleship.

2. move the Austrian fleet to the channel. It seems the AI always knows where my fleet is, though they gave up the chase at Cadiz. I am still not sure if this does anything, but eliminating the British fleet has always been the key to taking the Islands. In my last game neither the French nor the Austrian fleet did anything in the Mediterranean so even if i lose the fleet it hopefully wont make any difference. (though given the whole transports are better destroyers thing the move may have been silly)

3. invite Russia into Germany and then cutting off the entire army. There is a huge space around brest-litovsk that the AI probably is going to entrench. It will be an extreme of my previous game to exploit the weakness in the AI. So far its going alright, but a few attacks gone wrong lost me Lemberg and the neighboring city, creating a much bigger drain on the Austrian army because instead of having one choke point i now have to defend three cities.
This will probably be my downfall, because instead of speeding up the occupation of Russia i struggle more.

4. build almost exclusively low manpower units (mostly cavalry). Although i won the first game with 90%, repairs especially to infantry require a lot of manpower and i expect this game to be harder. Also cavalry units are much better shock troops while artillery and air units can deal with trenches. Besides they are faster!

5. spend more pp's on research early on. Research and unit upgrades make a huge difference, especially defending a position (my Turkey problems last game taught me that). It will also in the end save manpower and pp's.
Most likely it will cost me the game though since i will be missing vital units to hold the eastern front.

[Myrddraal]

4. build almost exclusively low manpower units (mostly cavalry). Although i won the first game with 90%, repairs especially to infantry require a lot of manpower and i expect this game to be harder. Also cavalry units are much better shock troops while artillery and air units can deal with trenches. Besides they are faster!

This is true at the start of the game, but there are basically no tech upgrades for cavalry... this means that whilst they are a viable (even attractive) option in the opening turns, their advantages are quickly outpaced by infantry & entrenchment upgrades.