Slitherine

I find it very hard to get all the pps you need (with both sides). Always hard pressed to buy just another garrison or inf unit and once you succeed in taking over a city it takes forever to get some extra revenue from it.

Looking at the more or less neutral states their cities produce large quantities of these rare pps. Pps that could be used for labs, ammunition, planes or simply even more infantry.

Whenever possible I try to set up lightning strikes against the Netherlands and Rumania (playing the central powers), its quite possible to take all the cities in these two countries in two turns and usually the cities produce one or two pps at once since they start with so many. I do believe in the long run I benefit from this no matter the cost and time the operations require. No matter what it is fun to execute these attacks. (once the dutch cities are repaired they give you a lot more then Belgium for instance, somewhere between 10-15pps/turn.)

When I do take Rumania, afterwards I keep these forces going, not so importantly east but rather north, usually they are enough to roll up the entire Russian line.

Now looking at Stockholm I think it brings in 35 pps/turn and Oslo a bit less. I have not tried yet but taking over Stockholm should be quite possible and I was wondering if someone has tried?? Probably the best way would be to expand the transport points to 4 so that you can bring 3 inf and one art. 2 inf to land next to Stockholm (attack at once to soften the defenders for next turn), one art behind one of the infs and the final inf behind the art to protect it (dont know if that is necessery). Next turn bombard Stockholm with battleship and art and attack with both inf, should be enough.

Expanding the transport and bringing over 4 units makes it a large and expensive operation though, dunno if worth it. Could be only two infs with battleship bombardment is enough to crack Stockholm??

Also for all these operations including Netherlands and Rumania, its best to have some upgrades on your forces first to be sure to get good combat results. But by the time you can do these operations probably you do have som upgrades.

Of course doing the above also requires that you can hold the line on the other fronts and also that for the time being the forces are not better used on those other fronts.

I took your advice and hit Romania early. Took Bucharest on turn 45, 2 May 1916, with a German unit so that Germany gets the PPs. After rolling up the southern flank, as you suggested, my Bulgarians fanned out into southern Russia. They have overrun the Crimean Peninsula and are at the gates of Rostov. The Austrians are outside Kharkov and hold Gomel.

Is there a way to tell how many PPs a city produces? Does Stockholm really produce 35 PPs? That would be huge! At the beginning of the war all of Germany produces just 93 PPs.

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Thanks! And indeed Stockhold produces 35 PPs--double London or Paris. Surprising!

Presumably this is done to give small powers the ability to maintain a half-decent army. They have to do it independently, after all, not as satellite states like in CEAW.

However, if

1) it is possible to easily capture these places - and let's wait until someone actually tries Sweden before saying it is!

2) the captured PP's come into play reasonably quickly (it's not clear to me how fast they recover)

then this is a bit of a gamebreaker. Not realistic at all. But I'm not sure either or both of those conditions are true. CTGW isn't CEAW, and for good reason. No blitzkriegs and quick capitulations here, unless a country is very badly positioned (poor Romania, what can I say? Almost as lucky as Poland... speaking of which... but I'll put that somewhere else.)

If there IS a problem one fix would be to give every country (say) 20 free PP's every turn regardless of how many cities it controls, then damp down capital city PP's everywhere across the board. Though there might be issues with that too.

Well Stockholm does fall pretty easily, tried it now. 2 inf and naval support will do it. First turn land them and naval bombard. Second naval bomb and attack if it didnt fall then do it again one more turn should suffice. Stockholm will by then be reduced to about 8pp and need a guard unit or continued offensive on Sweden because surrender didnt happen. Doesnt matter though because if you took Stockholm you prolly want to go for Norway from there. Convoy also keeps coming in Baltic. Still you need to have those spare infs to send. England could also try Norway. Harder though.

I think we may tweak the incomes and starting armies of neutral nations. It's a little unrealistic that invading Sweden provides you with such a bonus.

Maybe including some diplomatic events could do the thing, too. I mean that declaring war on minor countries should make the other minor countries to "dislike" you and eventually after 2 or 3 conquered states everybody else should declare war to us. Also such war-spreading should make the Italy, Romania and USA to declare war faster or (if Entente is the power that conquers weak countries) not joining the Entente.

The only way to raise enough PPs is to sell research labs - I don't see any other way. Keep a minimum of labs, only aiming at areas essential to winning the war. As the Central Powers I ignored naval and air research as it's too expensive - it helped me to perform much better as I was able to buy more forces.

something needs to be done about that imo, whatyou say is true, but it shouldnt be so. You should be able to have all areas of research atleast as germans. Perhaps no upkeep for labs, they already cost alot to buy.