Zombo wrote:About Serbia, I would say that two wrongs doesn't make one right: that is, artillery making unrealistic damage on Belgrade may somewhat compensate, in effect, for Serbian unrealistic offensive power, but it's still unrealistic. I had the impression that the realism was the kind of argument you were receptive to, since it seems to be the whole point of the mod.
+ that strat bombing-like arty damage may apply to situations elsewhere in the game where nothing compensates for it.
1. This mod's first goal is to introduce a certain degree of variability to the game, realism is a secondary goal. There are many events that are quite unrealistic to say the least (sending Goeben to Pacific, German right of passage through Belgium etc.) but were added to allow for some alternate history.
2. About arty dealing too much PP damage:
arty has always caused that much PP damage since vanilla V1.66 and I'm a little bit surprised that this suddenly becomes an issue but I will reduce stratattack to 10, so only one PP damage will be caused. Hydrp-pneumatic howitzer tech will then add +8 so the original value of 18 will be met.
3. About Serbia's unrealistic offensive power:
in vanilla V1.66 Serbia had THREE army corps instead of one, 420 manpower and 28 PP to start with while Belgrade had 14PP.
Now Serbia has 1 army corps, 250 manpower and 21 - 38 PP at start while Belgrade has 7PP plus Entente AI starts with a rather strong Putnik with a defense value of 4.
The way the combat routines work in CTGW means that raising a unit's defense value will also increase its ability to deal damage on the offense. That may seem strange but that's the way it was implemented and rewriting the whole combat script and AI pre-combat kill/loss ratio analysis that relies on that principle is out of the question.
If i were to further reduce Serbia's strength then Belgrade won't be defendable at all after a few rounds of getting hammered by arty. The "strong" Serbia will also force Austria to divert units from Galicia, allowing for a historical Russian invasion scenario there instead of Russia meeting a wall of AH units.
Zombo wrote:Regarding Alsace-lorraine, the problem is that as the Germans you start with a Reserve Corps in there and the French can breach very quickly. Diverting an Army corps certainly does the trick, but that means that right at the start of the war you have to redeploy an army corps from the right-wing, which would have SERIOUS consequences ( or from the East, with equally serious consequences and a possibility of arriving too late). This feels very awkward, especially that historically the French were unable to achieve even marginal gains against the Germans there (adequate represented by reserve corps) and the Germans even managed to counterattack successfully! - this is very far from the current in-game balance of forces. Whazt I think makes the difference, is that the Germans had been fortifying the area for quite a while (in addition to poor French tactics), this is why I thought of increasing the entrench level
You were referring to a Reserve Corps getting attacked by three French Army Corps, so I take it you mean the one selected in the picture?
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Well, that's an easy one: retreat that unit from the salient back to Strasbourg after having made space there. You could use the other one to strengthen the Eastern front or keep it in reserve to switch places with damaged Reserve Corps in that region. Eventually you will need another Reserve Corps there as one won't be enough to cycle in and out of the front after some turns as the French will deal a lot of damage.
Zombo wrote:I'll dare another "humble opinion" about the ammo stockpile generic event (something tells me I should keep that for some other day...)
Honestly, I fell it's a little anti-WW1. Scarcity of ammo, managing the stock and eventual running out - and as a consequence the offensive operations petering out - was characteristic of (early, at least) WW1 offensives. So popping ammo out of a hat like that seems to allow players to bypass a fundamental aspect of offensive planning.
The "Stockpile Ammunition" event is a one-time-only event, generating 4D6 ammo once per game. It will be replaced by the "Supplementary ammo" event generating a measly 2D3 ammo from then on. If players deem it helpful to squander their diplo points on generating ammo, I won't stop them, but building ammo factories is surely a better investment.
Zombo wrote:As a mere and innocent "suggestion", I was thinking of something like "Pressuring the Workforce", which could either add a +1 per turn ammo (no PP investment: more working hours, not more industries) or add a % to the economic mobilization, or both, or the choice between both. The drawback would be a morale loss and a increased chance of internal turmoil once these events are applicable. It should have diminishing returns, of course, with possible inflating drawbacks, if selected multiple times
That's exactly what the "Women in the workforce" events do for every major nation.
Zombo wrote:Similarly, the generic event adding manpower to the pool has no effect until the very end of the game, so it's kinda unappealing ( or maybe when reaching those coloured thresholds - but adding manpower should accelerate degradation of infantry quality, not delay it). I was thinking of something that would provide immediate, emergency, manpower, at the cost of morale and a corresponding worsening of the quality threshold. of course, it should have a different effect for major powers and minor countries, so maybe two extra reserve corps/ one extra reserve corps OR one reserve corps straight away / one reserve corps in the production queue). (The mobilization of the Landwehr is a good example of this). this would make it an appealing option, a trade off between urgency and efficient long-term manpower management, a classic military dilemma
I'm surprised you are having qualms about producing ammo "out of the hat" but suggest doing the same with units. Anyway, to make the "Volunteer recruits" event more desirable I'll raise the MP output and have it double the per-turn growthrate AND have it discarded if not played before end of 1914 to be replaced with the less powerful "New Recruits" event.
Zombo wrote:patriotism is just fine
While I'm at it, I'll have that discarded too (if not played before) if the first annual morale check favors the enemy. For the "Patriotic movement" event I'll add a chance to suffer a collapse point then (out of sheer spite) if the 2D6 roll is lower than 4 or higher then 10.
