Slitherine

Myrddraal wrote:You only get green dot zones around cities that were originally yours. Captured ports still provide a port bonus for ships actually in the port itself, but no green dot zone.

OK. Is the other thing I raised about sinking battleships and not losing NM a bug?

Sounds likely. I don't suppose you have a savegame?

No, I am sorry, the game has moved on now. I will see if I can re-create something similar with the Entente sinking the German and Austrian fleets on the same turn in 1914. Leave it with me for a few days.

Finally coming to the end of my one remaining game and the Central Powers are collapsing in 1918 due to the superiority in artillery and aircraft that the Entente has. I do think that the artillery superiority is a bit of a problem - the Entente has a 50% advantage with GB, France and Italy having artillery against only Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Entente has a 100% advantage while Russia is still in the war). The air superiority is more accurate, I think. Maybe one way to address this is to say that Italy cannot deploy artillery outside its own territory. Or, at the moment artillery can go up mountains - tanks cannot, but they probably would have more chance of doing so than artillery. So maybe that is another way of dealing with the artillery imbalance - artillery should not be able to go up mountains, or if they did then their efficiency would drop to zero. This would affect Italy as the Alps really hem them in thereby making the game more balanced.

Another issue that I would like to flag up is the Portuguese participation in WW1. I am not quite sure how many troops each infantry unit and garrison unit is meant to represent but I am wondering if the Portuguese are over-represented in Europe in the game. I am trusting Wikipedia here (not always a wise thing to do!) . . .

August 7, 1916 The Portuguese Parliament accepted the participation of Portugal in the war, following the invitation of the British Government. The Portuguese war effort reached 55,000 infantry soldiers, plus 1,000 artillerymen, to be sent to France—4,000 soldiers per month—to man 12 km of battlefront. In fact, only the first two divisions reached France, as the shipping of American troops drastically reduced the Allies' transportation capacity.

At the same time, Portugal fielded forces in its African colonies, in Mozambique, to defend the colony from German colonial forces, and in the south of Angola, against native unrest instigated by the Germans.

Portugal had 8,145 dead, 13,751 wounded and 12,318 prisoners or missing. (at the end of the war, both in Erope and in Africa, I presume)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal_d ... orld_War_I

So, if only two divisions reached France, then I think there is an issue with Portugal sending 3 or 4 infantry units to Europe in the game. Maybe they should only be able to send 1 or 2?

stockwellpete wrote:Finally coming to the end of my one remaining game and the Central Powers are collapsing in 1918 due to the superiority in artillery and aircraft that the Entente has. I do think that the artillery superiority is a bit of a problem - the Entente has a 50% advantage with GB, France and Italy having artillery against only Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Entente has a 100% advantage while Russia is still in the war). The air superiority is more accurate, I think. Maybe one way to address this is to say that Italy cannot deploy artillery outside its own territory. Or, at the moment artillery can go up mountains - tanks cannot, but they probably would have more chance of doing so than artillery. So maybe that is another way of dealing with the artillery imbalance - artillery should not be able to go up mountains, or if they did then their efficiency would drop to zero. This would affect Italy as the Alps really hem them in thereby making the game more balanced.

Just to develop this point. Our game is upto turn 110 and the Central Powers are being blasted into oblivion now. The Austro-Hungarians must be on the verge of surrender but my opponent may not have time to capture Berlin as well. I found this about artillery bombardments yesterday . . .

"Preparatory bombardment was when at the beginning of a battle an artillery barrage would take place for hours and sometimes days. The aim of this was to wipe out soldiers in enemy front line trenches as well as destroy those trenches. This would then be followed by waves of infantry attacking these trenches in case there were any enemy soldiers left. Infantry soldiers would then occupy the enemy trench and in this way, gain more land.

However, this tactic was flawed as enemy soldiers, like German soldiers did in the Somme and at Passchendaele, could go in to bunkers or take cover for the duration of the artillery barrage and once this barrage stopped, they could prepare themselves for the suspected oncoming infantry waves so any hope of a surprise attack was lost and essentially all this preparatory bombardment was destroy the terrain both armies were fighting on. At Passchendaele, over 4 million shells were fired in the preparatory bombardment but caused very little casualties and only added the excessive muddy conditions.

Artillery barrages in short bursts were quite effective as enemy soldiers would be caught unprepared for these attacks and caused high casualty rates. Barrages in conjunction with other tactics such as the creeping barrage were also quite successful."

https://sites.google.com/site/wwiverdun ... gy-tactics

If the middle passage is correct then artillery in the game is way too powerful against well-entrenched troops by 1917/18 when it has been researched right to the end of the tech tree. Maybe there should be a maximum limit for the amount of losses a unit can take from bombardment each turn (say 5 strength points) - so that infantry would be needed to go in and clear the hex.

I have read some stuff now on WW1 and in our game the USA have not entered, yet Central Europe is being overrun by mainly Portuguese and Italian troops. I don't think this is very realistic, to be honest. I think Portugal has too many troops in the game and I think they are probably of a higher quality than they were in real life. Maybe they should all be efficiency 8. And the Italians find it too easy to get up and over the mountains - these terrain features need to be much tougher (prohibitive really) and artillery should not be able to cross over them.

I don't know if any of this is any use now for the next patch but I thought it might be helpful given that this is only the second game of mine that has gone so far (out of about 10 games in multi-player).

Artillery is undoubtedly overpowered but I tried modding the daylights out of the game and the only thing I can't find a happy medium for is artillery; either it's too weak causing the AI to just build fighters instead) or too powerful (killing 3 steps, 75,000 (?) infantrymen in a space of time so short that it's ridiculous).

Samhain wrote:Artillery is undoubtedly overpowered but I tried modding the daylights out of the game and the only thing I can't find a happy medium for is artillery; either it's too weak causing the AI to just build fighters instead) or too powerful (killing 3 steps, 75,000 (?) infantrymen in a space of time so short that it's ridiculous).

There are three other possibilities that I can think of to try then, Samhain . . .

i) make the mountain hexes impassable to artillery. This will mainly affect Italy if they try to advance into central Europe forcing them to take the coastal strip near Trieste. The only other mountainous area where fighting takes place is the Caucasus but that hardly ever involves artillery (the mountain hexes should be made more difficult for other troop types as well, in my opinion).

ii) either do not allow Italy to deploy artillery outside of Italy or do not allow Italy any artillery at all.

iii) allow Turkey to have artillery to at least offset the imbalance between the Entente and Central Powers (even if points ii) and iii) do not address the main point about ludicrous infantry casualties). If you compare the military strengths of Italy and Turkey, is it right that one should have artillery and the other not? I have not researched this thoroughly but my inclination is to say that these two powers were of similar military strength (they were at war with each other before 1914).

Regarding the 75,000 figure in your post - is that your estimate then, that one strength point equals 25,000 men? That seems very high to me but it is something that I wonder about.

Another possibility is to increase the defence values of entrenchments at levels 3 and 4, especially at level 4.

My game has finished now after the full 118 turns. I played as the Central Powers and won a "marginal victory" despite the fact that the Entente was absolutely massacring my troops and had been doing so since the beginning of Spring 1918. Austria-Hungary had lost both Venice and Budapest and was down to 5% NM - Germany was at 42% NM, Turkey 69% and Bulgaria 91%. The Entente powers' morale was much higher around 75% or higher (Russia, Serbia and Romania had been knocked out earlier in the war).

Although it was an exciting game to play the last few months of the campaign were fairly ludicrous in historical terms. Upto the end of 1917 the Central Powers were holding their positions quite well on the Western front but that all started to change once the Entente powers had all researched artillery to the highest level. The Entente was then able to blast my troops out of their trenches even when entrenchment was at maximum level. Then, once my air forces and artillery had been substantially destroyed the Entente was able to advance at will. As the number of turns remaining gradually diminished I hit upon the idea of mass producing garrison units and putting them in the way of the enemy just to slow him down. It worked reasonably well and Vienna did not fall until around turn 112/113 - A-H morale fell to 12% and I expected them to surrender when Budapest also fell a few turns later. But they did not. I think they might have last until "turn 120" had the game been able to continue. Germany may have lasted another couple of months but the Central Powers were completely beaten by this stage. Yet the game says that I won a "marginal Victory". Ridiculous really. If A-H had fallen, as it should have done when Vienna and Budapest were captured, then the Entente would have won (probably by more than "marginal" too, although I am not sure about that).

Some suggestions . . .

i) artillery is way too powerful against entrenchments - so increase the defence values of entrenchment levels 3 and 4 (especially level 4)
ii) make mountain hexes much more difficult for infantry to cross and do not allow artillery units to enter mountain hexes at all (except by train)
iii) abandon the fixed ending date for the game to allow a more natural ending to the campaign

stockwellpete wrote:

Samhain wrote:Artillery is undoubtedly overpowered but I tried modding the daylights out of the game and the only thing I can't find a happy medium for is artillery; either it's too weak causing the AI to just build fighters instead) or too powerful (killing 3 steps, 75,000 (?) infantrymen in a space of time so short that it's ridiculous).

There are three other possibilities that I can think of to try then, Samhain . . .

i) make the mountain hexes impassable to artillery. This will mainly affect Italy if they try to advance into central Europe forcing them to take the coastal strip near Trieste. The only other mountainous area where fighting takes place is the Caucasus but that hardly ever involves artillery (the mountain hexes should be made more difficult for other troop types as well, in my opinion).

ii) either do not allow Italy to deploy artillery outside of Italy or do not allow Italy any artillery at all.

iii) allow Turkey to have artillery to at least offset the imbalance between the Entente and Central Powers (even if points ii) and iii) do not address the main point about ludicrous infantry casualties). If you compare the military strengths of Italy and Turkey, is it right that one should have artillery and the other not? I have not researched this thoroughly but my inclination is to say that these two powers were of similar military strength (they were at war with each other before 1914).

Regarding the 75,000 figure in your post - is that your estimate then, that one strength point equals 25,000 men? That seems very high to me but it is something that I wonder about.

I'm assuming (perhaps enormously wrongly) that 1 step is 25,000 infantrymen based on nothing other than that's what 1 step is in CEAW, not a flawless method of deduction but even if it's not 25,000 I still maintain that artillery alone couldn't kill 1/3 of a corps or army or perhaps even division in such a short space of time even if 1 artillery unit is 10,000 pieces which is what Germany had a the beginning according to the documentary The Great War (I can't remember the exact episode but it dealt with the homefront I think).
I think Italy should be unable to deploy artillery in the mountains as I would imagine getting an entire corps enough space in the mountains would be hard enough without pushing artillery pieces up but I don't know. I think all major powers should get artillery as I played a game where I concentrated heavily on artillery as the Entente and was able to cut the Ottomans to pieces (kill 50 steps in under 10 turns with almost no casualties in return) around the Suez Canal and I didn't bother to advance so the carnage could continue without pause.

Samhain wrote: I think Italy should be unable to deploy artillery in the mountains as I would imagine getting an entire corps enough space in the mountains would be hard enough without pushing artillery pieces up but I don't know. I think all major powers should get artillery as I played a game where I concentrated heavily on artillery as the Entente and was able to cut the Ottomans to pieces (kill 50 steps in under 10 turns with almost no casualties in return) around the Suez Canal and I didn't bother to advance so the carnage could continue without pause.

I think not allowing artillery to go in the mountains would be the simplest way to deal with this for the developers. This would help to off-set the 3 shots to 2 artillery advantage that the Entente currently has on the western front because the Italians would have to take the coastal strip by Trieste before they could deploy their artillery outside of Italy.

Then, by also increasing the defence values of entrenchment levels 3 and 4 the power of artillery against well-prepared defensive positions will be reduced somewhat. Against troops in the open artillery would still be devastating.

That's what I said. You said it first but I mean I agree.

Yes, I realise that we are agreeing, Samhain. I was just thinking about it from the point of the view of the developers producing a new patch. Of course, they might take a quite different view.