Slitherine

I just recently purchased and have been playing Battlefront's Strategic Command The Great War 1914 - 1918. The game plays well and they have included many improvements to the Strategic Command game engine, such as the ability to have units swap hexes with one click. The event scripts, however are atrocious and have little to do with how the player conducts the war. Two of the scripts involve unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram. In order to delay American entry, I have declined to use Unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram just to see the US enter in 1917 anyway. The isolationism of America at the time would not have allowed its entry without such provocation in spite of Wilson's love of the British. In fact the US entered the turn after Russia's defeat in 1917. Even worse, I played another campaign as mentioned above but with a Russia first strategy and defeated the Russians in 1916, and you know what happened?, the friggin' US entered, without provocation the turn after Russia was defeated. I even had the South Atlantic surface raiders working with the High Seas Fleet in the North Sea, and somehow Von Spee was still defeated in the falklands battle even though he was sitting in port at Keil at the time. I hope to see more accuracy and common sense with CTGW's event scripts.

Ideally NOT provoking the US should make the Allies equally stronger elsewhere. For example if you choose not to attack convoys the UK will have much more resources early on. You won't have to worry about the Americans, but the other Allies will be able to hurt you a lot more, and a lot sooner.

Nonetheless, Not provoking the US did not keep them from entering for no good reason. I planned my strategy accordingly and had the British fleet pretty much defeated -I used my U-boats, at highest development,in conjunction with the High Seas Fleet- just in time for the American fleet to tip the balance back in Britain's favor. I was appalled to say the least.