Potzblitz V26.01 OCT 26th 2025

[Robotron]

That's too unspecific, please give me examples for when that happens or even better some screenshots.

[Kossatx]

I mean, for example, when Belgium or Serbia surrenders and some random, unconnexed and non conquered hexes remain belgium/serbian. I think this has no sense, so I think it would be a good idea to determine via script which hexes are traspassed from one country to others when surrenders (I have a problem with screenshots).

[Robotron]

Why are some random unconnected hexes so important?
I've made sure that any Belgian hexes without troops and the most of Serbia, including the railway connection through Nis are passed over to CP in case of surrender.
Personally I've never encountered any problems with that procedure. In case of Serbia you can refuse surrender offers until you are satisfied with the hexes you captured anyway.

[GiveWarAchance]

I just bought the game and installed this mod.
I tried Entente with historical Shleefin 4 times and got overrun by Germany right at the start 4 times. They evaporate the weak French reserve units, surround Paris and take it over in a few turns.

Only Verdun area held out but that is useless when the rest of France is overrun. Are we supposed to evacuate the Verdun area and rush everything to Paris to slow down defeat?
Building reserve units doesn't work cause they die instantly and trenches don't do anything, and the infantry corp take 4 turns so Paris will fall before I can put out the corp and it can't stop several dozen German units. I got the BEF event corp but it got pinned by the huge German horde and pecked to death on the coast. So I don't think a 5th try will give me a different result. Does Paris always fall in this modded version and the player struggles along without France?

[Kossatx]

Why are some random unconnected hexes so important?
I've made sure that any Belgian hexes without troops and the most of Serbia, including the railway connection through Nis are passed over to CP in case of surrender.
Personally I've never encountered any problems with that procedure. In case of Serbia you can refuse surrender offers until you are satisfied with the hexes you captured anyway.

I agree with you what I say is not important, is only an "esthetic" observation and isn't necessary for an enjoying gameplay with your mod.

[Robotron]

I just bought the game and installed this mod.

This mod is about 10 times more difficult than the basic game, so you'll end up running into a brick wall if you've not won at least a few campaigns of the basic game.
Playing the mod as Entente vs. Schlieffen CP AI is about the highest difficulty level you could have chosen.
I'll upload a turn by turn summary in the AAR subforum to give you an idea about how to deal with the first few turns

Why not at least try playing CP for starters? Here's a good summary by another forum user:

1. you are not the only one that finds potzblitz hard. in fact, i think playing it with the CPs in single player is one of the hardest games i have ever played.
one could say this is realistic - it must be hard to change history - and in addition the challenges the CP are facing seem to be pretty realistic.
I keep trying and trying and most of my attempts fail as well, but its still fun to see how long you can survive tha chaos.

2. Aufmarsch Ost is the easiest plan. a few weeks ago i explained in detail how it can be executed, its somewhere in this forum. germany strikes east allows you to focus on one front for a very long time as defending against france in only 4 hexes is very easy. at the same time gbr joins very late due to no belgium neutrality violation. if you strike east, ensure that you capture warsaw, riga and vilna before winter starts. its possible! dont go for the kiev option, austrian troops are poor they should not attack, that never worked for me. never waste time to ´fully kill´ russian units in the fortresses! keep the high pace and keep marching east, the hotspots will be surrounded and run out uof supply anyway. the computer does not leave the fortress. so just surround them and keep going. cavalry helps a lot in the east, build min 4 units that form the peak of the attack. russia can be done in 1915/16, which leaves you enough time to attack france as well. The good thing about this is, that italy likes a successfull germany and ist mostly attracted to join CP after campaign in the east. chance that they join entente is reduced significantly.

3. schliefenplan is already much harder. yes, you can and should take paris in 1914. sounds impossible but its achievable by very carefully using the way you approach with infantry. basic rule is: always move as many hexes as possible into french territory. the further and deeper you can move into france, the better. never miss a hex, even if this leads to strange looking frontline. if you dont capture the hex, the french will, and it is much more difficult to get them out of the hex instead of defending it when you are in it. a successfull schliefenplan should include at least two channel ports (antwerp, rouen or calais) plus paris. if you dont get that in 1914, its over. Problem is, that the AI seems to have endless transporters that keep arriving in france and bring new troops. you must stop that from happening asap. thats only possible with german naval units in the channel. thats why you need ports to resupply asap. your abovewater fleet is too vunlerable against british dreadnought dominance, which is why you should basically build one german sub per turn in avarage starting in turn 1! this will pay off. use them to block gbr transports to arrive in france. if this is done, france can be defeated. dont worry too much about verdun and the other fortresses, they can be captured later. (too time consuming!).

4. Serbia: an early victory is vital if germany focusses on the west. with schlieffen and rupprecht, german units should only deploy against france until a decisive victory is achieved. (see 3!). this will lead to a catastrophic eastern front which must be defended by austrian troops. to have them available, serbia should surrender in the first 10 turns. my record is turn 8 serbia surrender. try to beat it this allows you to deploy all forces to stabalize the east. if you can get bulgaria into war with events, do it! use them to block russians as well. if you cant do this, the game is likely lost.
thats what makes the game so hard - you need a good execution on all 4 frontlines (france, serbia, russia and at sea) at the same time. if one fails, you likely loose as CP.
your aim for war with serbia must be the two production cities tirana and buckarest. again, the rest is less important. you have to sneak into serbian territory and approach tirana direct where you find that single hex gap at game start above that serbian fortress. go for it! first attack on it must work! if not, serbia puts an army inside which is...not good for you. artillery must fire on buckarest supported by 3 army corps attack it as early as possible. if this works, serbia is done.

5. Rupprecht: I still could not win a game with this plan. yes, my initial attacks looks okay now. but i never made it longer than 30 turns. key problems are:
- fighting the french in the mountains is slow and does not block any channel ports. you might break the defenses in france like i did (see screenshot this forum page 80), but when you arrive in paris, the british expeditionary corps has already arrived and totally crushes the rest of your army (which will be exhausted/red).
- i always had the impression that i had to fight two armies (fra, gbr) in france instead of just one if this plan is choosen. altogether this plan is too slow, reenforcements arrive too late at the frontline as the french block the railroads with forts.
- the penalty of declaring war on swirzerland leads to an italy that joins entente. that always happend in my attempts, and they just march into germany while i am crippled by british exp. force in france. at the moment, i have no idea what to do about it.
- want a challenge? try it, i would love to see a player winning with CP using the rupprecht plan. i keep trying.

6. Basically: Every surrender of any country should be accepted immediately. i know, its always nice to "finish a country off" and capture all cities and also get some experienced troops plus capture the ports. but in this game speed is more important. someone surrender? accept! and redeploy the troops to the next frontline.

7. do everything you can to keep italy out of the war or make them join you. I never won a potzblitzgame in which italy joined the entente yet. watch the manual how you can achieve that.

[GiveWarAchance]

Robotron, thanks for replies. Wow 10x harder!
The advice text you pasted says the CP player must take Paris in 1914 and will probably lose anyways. Egad! I was hoping for a WW1 style grinding battle with Somme and Ypres and all that mired in France with mud and trenches abound and new technology bringing out fun new toys for the generals to experiment with. I guess no to all that. This mod sounds like a severe ironman grueling struggle where you win or lose in a few turns.
The reason I had some hope of playing this mod is cause I was doing okay on the Russian and Serbia fronts, only France getting overrun but I guess after Paris falls all the Germans can steamroll the east. I also found the naval aspect hard to understand and nearly impossible to do any damage to enemy ships without a full dogpile on one enemy ship to eliminate it.
I guess I will sadly have to uninstall and do a vanilla installation. I got interested in this mod cause a veteran player review of the vanilla game said this mod made the game exciting and new for him. But I want to eventually have the clunky tanks, bombers and big balloons so only vanilla for that stuff I guess.

[Robotron]

You misunderstood the advice: he said you need at least 2 additional channel ports, most likely Antwerp and Calis, in order to effectively wage submarine war later to a agree that you can starve Britain.
You do not need to take Paris in 1914 and even I rarely achieve that.
But if you hold out to 1916-17 you have a good chance and to do so you will have to grind like you will never have grinded before.

The game features all the things you mentioned: there is a Verdun offensive, a Somme offensive, muddy weather, espionage and all kinds of other stuff.
There are more than 500 random events and 100 choice events for each side.

However it must be said due to the (un)ability of the AI opponent, playing CP or Entente is quite a different experience and not all stuff will happen in both scenarios.
You really need to play and win the vanilla Grand Campaign as Central Powers (as Entente it is laughable easy) and you are good to go.

I've also uploaded some screenshots for the first few turns in the AAR subforum here, maybe it's helpful to you.
viewtopic.php?f=131&t=100614

[GiveWarAchance]

That AAR helps. It is amazing you didn't refill the Paris corp cause no Germans approached it. So I think you borrow units from Verdun area to fill in the left end while the ships pop away at the German units from the water.
With the fortify Verdun event I guess you can hold there along with Nancy and move the other units.
I will try again after seeing this. Unfortunately when I lose in a computer game I have a tendency to retry again and again to try and win by incrementally improving each time despite losing.

[Robotron]

By the way: you can have two separate installations of the game: one vanilla and one modded.
You only need to reinstall the game to a different folder, like for example "CTGWBasic", to have the vanilla version back just in case you want to practice.

[GiveWarAchance]

Okay cool.
If I can get that line made in France it should be okay from there. That ugly gap where the BEF is supposed to be is the problem I need to deal with. I would rather have two BEF corp in that area for French's (who wasn't even French... go figure) famous battle of Mons and fighting retreat. And the legendary Haig too.

I like WW1. I have hardly ever played it in a game though. The only other WW1 game I played was Making History The Great War. I also bought Strategic Commander World War 1 along with this game the other day which is beautiful with the big mod, but got suckered into this game first.

[Robotron]

Strategic Command WW1 is a quite recent game and probably the better choice for you if you want a slick looking game developed by a team of professionals with a more active community to boot. There are also many features which CTGW sorely misses like hotseat-matches or easy integrated modding support. The full manual is a thing of beauty to read, for sure.
The way decision events are handled seems to be more linear though from what I've read from the forums. Starting war plans for Germany seem absent and must be conducted by the players since the game starts with all major nations being in a state of war, unlike CTGW.

My mod is a hobby thing for a game that is 5 years old but has it's own merits. One being that I can usually react to new feature requests or bugfixes within a few days or even hours.
Also CTGW is way more simplified than SCWW1, it's a kind of "beer & pretzels" game like for example the old Panzer General, yet it can be devious to beat. Grognards may scoff at this.
You can also easily play a whole 1914 Grand Campaign within a day, which in my opinion is a good thing as I always get bored by drawn out matches.
Bugs are an issue though, and will always remain, as long as new stuff is added. The ever declining group of CTGW players posting on the forum also makes it difficult to root out bugs and find opponents for multiplayer.

Whatever your choice, you can't go wrong with either one, so have fun. ^^

[Robotron]

Sometimes I wonder how it can be that this thread is getting several hundred views in a few days with such few feedback.
Must be a lot of lurkers out there...right?

[Unwichtig]

Good afternoon,

Yes I thought the same. The pictures we posted have been watched several hundreds of times but no one says anything or comments or adds own ideas.

I am on holiday so don't have much time to comment but I am still following the discussions sometimes.
It's good to welcome new players all the time, I am realy waiting for some MP opponents as well.

I ll be back September for detailed feed back and reports and ready for a challenge if someone wants a match.

I hope my very general guidance and advice in some of my previous posts help a few new players to make the game more accessible. It's realy worth the investment.

The vanilla version is also great and has different advantages. It's definately also worth playing a full campaign here to practice. Sadly the ai is a little stupid, so once you get it, the game becomes less interesting. Anyway it offers many more game turns which some players probably find attractive , a, from my perspective, higher importance of tanks, zeppelins and bombers, strategic bombardment and an overall more 'static trench warfare like' game flow. Research is also completely different, the whole PP management I. E. Ammo production etc. More time to conquer more territories. You don't need to rush all the time from One front to the other. Is totally different. Both worth a try. But once you finish a CP match on vanilla with total victory, surely Potzblitz must be the next step.
I don't see a point playing multiple campaigns over and over again on vanilla as they are all pretty much the same.

Anyway it's good to welcome a new player.
Let me know if u need advice.

[GiveWarAchance]

I tried Entente against the Shleefin historical in the mod again. I did better and Paris survived but Russia was losing gradually and France's front line fell apart. I need another 4 or 5 attempts to survive it I think. For me, the English handicap of no infantry corp is quite a heavy burden. Also the Turks declared war on me which put strain on russia cause the mountains east of Anatolia needed infantry corps to block off the mountain roads and the British had to put down cavalry in Egypt to defend which was odd but my only choice cause reserve infantry are too weak. At some point I should switch over to vanilla.

There is another WW1 game called 'To End all Wars' by Ageod I think. Have you tried it? It is the most detailed and deep WW1 game I think.
Have you played the sister game to this one I think Commander WW2 or something. It is this game but WW2 in Europe. It looks nice but I don't have it yet.

[Robotron]

the English handicap of no infantry corp is quite a heavy burden

The "Canadian Corps" event unlocks industrial warfare tech for Britain which allows building Army Corps.
It will be available right after the BEF has landed if you've played "British Royal Navy Review" before.
Usually this will happen before Britain has researched industrial warfare tech.

[Unwichtig]

I tried Entente against the Shleefin historical in the mod again. I did better and Paris survived but Russia was losing gradually and France's front line fell apart. I need another 4 or 5 attempts to survive it I think. For me, the English handicap of no infantry corp is quite a heavy burden. Also the Turks declared war on me which put strain on russia cause the mountains east of Anatolia needed infantry corps to block off the mountain roads and the British had to put down cavalry in Egypt to defend which was odd but my only choice cause reserve infantry are too weak. At some point I should switch over to vanilla.

There is another WW1 game called 'To End all Wars' by Ageod I think. Have you tried it? It is the most detailed and deep WW1 game I think.
Have you played the sister game to this one I think Commander WW2 or something. It is this game but WW2 in Europe. It looks nice but I don't have it yet.

Yes, I played commander Europe at war as well. That's also a hex based low level strategy game that can be compared to commander the great war just with the world war 2 setting. I spent many many hours playing it and I think it's actually also very good. It's a bit older and does not include as many features as Ctgw, actually it's the first game of the commander series. There's also a napoleon one but I never played that one. The ww 2 covers the same map as the ww1 game does, it feels a bit the same playing it. I can definately recommend it if you like low level strategy games that don't bombard you with millions of details. I loved it. If you buy it, ensure that you buy the gold version as the original is approx 10 or 12 years old and is a little outdated with few unfair aspects that were covered in the gold mod upgrade. The game is the same, just a little bit better balanced with the gold version.

I often thought about a Potzblitz style commander Europa at war game. That would be a smash hit from my perspective but I am afraid the gaming community is too small to create that and it would not be worth the time investing. Additionally there are also so many ww2 games on the marked to it would have to compete with many great other games I. E. Heart of iron.
Anyway I would love it... Event based ww2, the Werner von Braun event to unlock the V2, the enigma code event, Russian winter, a choice to invade Malta or Crete with paratroops, the Graf Spee on the loose instead of the east Asian squadron, air raids on cities with significant diplomatic penalties etc. I don't know, millions of ideas but as I said, there are too many ww2 competitors on the marked I guess.

Back to Potzblitz, Entente vs schliefen:
Try the following, I did it twice and almost made it, it's a weird plan but looks promissing to me:
1. Obviously defend France as long as possle. But that is just to allow you an offensive stance against Austria in the east.
2. The longer the stronger german troops are busy in France, they can't support poor Austrian troops on the balkans. Which is why I started an Russian Serbian offensive to conquer Austria Hungary and knock them out before Germany gets France. I think if you achieve that, you can win.
3. To ensure max Serbian power I always play every pro Serbian event, I. E. Serbia shall not bow, Russian aid to Serbia and medical aid to Serbia. With a little bit of luck the typhoid crises is not as bad as expected
4. Use 80% if the large Russian army to fully strike in the Austrian front. You will overrun it and should be able to take Budapest at least. This will force Austria to redeploy troops from Serbia to Russia which opens up a gate for at least 4 serbian army corps.
5. The Serbian corps should take split, buckarest, Trieste. The combined Russian Serbian army (at least 8 army corps) must take Vienna as well. I made it, it's possible. The offensive stopped in Munich, but 70% Austria was conquered.
6. Trains and Cavalry are useful in this plan to encircle Austrian troops in klausenburg and temscheburg. Just cut them if supply. Main objective is to have a land bridge between Russia and Serbia and isolate the south east of Austria. They should die of low supplies.
7. Austria had zero production capacity, lost the capital, lost all Adriatic ports which kills their fleet, Serbia was twice as big, I had riots and revolts in Austria, their minorities I. E. Bosnia and Czechs,
which give additional collapse points to Austria. I honestly think Austria must have been shortly before surrender. If that had happened, I think I'd win the game.
8. Sadly... My French Frontline collapsed and unlocked dozens of german army corps to redeploy in Munich. They stopped my invasion and liberated everything again, I assume just in time to save their ally. I could not stop the power of 20 german army corps as my army was exhausted.
9. My main idea remains: to win with Entente, Austria must be knocked out asap. I will try again.
10. Try it it's fun. Let me know if you habe other ideas.

[GiveWarAchance]

Unwichtig, that sounds like the best strategy. I was trying to invade Austria Hungary but they sent a counterattack more north that was grinding through the Russians there. My biggest problem was Turkey starting war so I had to waste 2 fresh new infantry corp to block off the mountains next to Anatolia and any infantry corp for the allies is worth its weight in gold cause they take 4 turns to make and France can only make 1 or 2 and Russia 2 or 3 of them and england none during the dreadful German grind through France. Maybe Russia should just make some rubbish reserve infantry and drop them down in the mountains down by Turkey to slow down the Turkish invasion without any counterattack ability.

[Unwichtig]

That was indeed a problem I did not have as the Ottomans did not declare war on me at the same time. That must be even more difficult for you then.

Few things about ottoman:
1. Once they join, the Austrian fleet can escape destruction by evading to Ottoman ports. It becomes impossible to trap them inside the Adriatic sea from then on,they can resupply in Ottoman ports. That's why I always recommend to block the single hex choke point with one French dreadnought to prevent their escape.
2. To strengthen your footprint in uk territory next to Ottoman you should play the Anzac arrive in Africa event and also make Japan join the Entente. This gives you additional pp and spawns a uk army corps in Africa which should be used to keep the Suez British.
3. The Suez must stay British all the time, once lost, the supply route from Asia is interrupted which will cause supply problems.
4. Deploy 3 light garrisons to Suez as early as possible. Position them in port Suez and the fortress. The earlier the better as they dig themselves in and get a higher def. Then put a qualified defense general in the fortress to get extra Def for all units in vicinity. Look at the stats of your Generals, don't just add them randomly. One spare small garrison should just stand in 2nd defence line for replacement to swap. This should be enough to block the ottomans. I could always defend Suez against them, especially once the new zealand army corps arrives.
5. I don't think you need Cavalry to defend, they become very weak the longer the game continues Cavalry is actually only good 1914 and maybe 1915 to outflank Russians or French and encircle them quickly. But once the horse massacre event happens, they get slaughtered. Don't defend Suez with them.
6. The Caucasus was never one of my priorities. Yes the ottomans en
ver pasha will approach and take one or two cities. But that happens very very slowly as they move in slow motion due to mountains. They can be stopped later from my perspective. Let them March into your territory and cut them off supply later. They only move a hex per turn, to you habe easily 10 turns until they hurt you. Their attack strength is also eak in mountains and cities can be defended with small garrisons as well if they are digged in. I would not waste 2 army corps for that, I d rather deploy them against Austria.
7. However... I might be wrong. I have also not achieved a victory yet. Still trying. Just want to share a few thoughts.

[GiveWarAchance]

Unwig, I wonder if the Ottomans declared war on us cause I took the Italy event to stop them (or slow down anyways) from joining the centrals. I think Italy and Ottomans are not fond of each other cause they were at war with each in other WW1 game.
I will try that Anzac event to help.
As for putting horses in the Suez and inf corp in Anatolia, both were not my wanting. When Turkey backstabbed us, those were all I had ready to deploy to slow down the Turks cause I was rotating the weak garrisons in Suez as they were damaged and the Turks went around my horses and one garrison got wiped out and another was stuck or something and the badguys snook into Suez uninvited just like when Mehmed II's horde snook into Constantinople in 1453 through an open gate causing a monolithic loss to humanity which was particularly tragic considering the city had a chance to hold out until the Turks gave up. Sorry went off on a different topic there. I think you meant to deploy a few rubbish reserve units at Suez to hold it instead of the spindly garrison units. I will do that next time.
I think for the Caucasus I will prepare two rubbish reserve units and drop them onto the mountain roads to block them off before the Turkish sneak attack occurs so I don't have to panic and drop down units when I most need them during the Hungarian counterattack.
Like you said about blocking the Hungarian fleet's chokepoint with a French dreadnaught, I actually did that every attempt I made at this game even the first time. There is a lot of space in the Med for the Turks to operate though so they have free reign of they want to be pesky and make some landings in unexpected places.
When you say you haven't had a victory yet, how far into the campaign are you getting? Like what date? I gave up my last game in November 1914 which I guess is still pretty early. Losing Suez and a few inf corp in France were what made me throw in the towel.