. The game finished with France, Russia and Italy surredering. CP was also in control of suez canal, and Serbia-romania also had surrendered.Overall, i had a lot of fun to play it.
Didnt try the entente yet, but CP is very tough and you have to be very alert to beat the AI that will take every chance you give it to hit you.
However, i am really dissapointed by a number of things.
First of all, strategically there is no real ground to build ships as CP. I even went further and disbanded all my ships in the first few turns. Didnt affect my morale, and helped my revenue with erasing the upkeep for these large and not-really-useful things. No naval fights meant no americans at all in my game, which was very nice.
I put these dollars in research and increase of ammunition production. You can also basically overlook the plane aspect. I removed all my reserach points there and disbanded all air units. Again, didnt hurt me at all. So i had like 5-6 research points in INF and 3-4 in ART, plus a large ammo production, and like 4 ART (2 in 1915)with Austria-Hungary and same with germans. This enabled me to crush the serbians early , counter-offensive the russians, pre-emptivly attack the Romanians to crush them in 3 turns, and then turn the CP might to the west front, Italy and FRance to crush them in 1917, since the entente was simply banging on my front in the west and was getting nowhere.
So a ideal template for winning this game, at least as the AI is to build a defensive line in the west and let the allies try to beark your line, while you get busy clearing up the rabble in the east. When they are either gone or tamed, you then return to the west and crush them with CP might. All of this without ships or planes, you dont really need them.
Second, no real diplomacy or randomisation of events.
Third, country that fight to the death. I had to take all cities in France except for Marseille(that was encircled) for them to propoce a surrender. I had to fight my way down to Naple and still the italians were stubborn, but finally decided it was time to let go in 1918.
Russians... Well, that was the most dissapointing. I went as far as taking Kiev, Riga and most of the Baltic states, All the center cities like Brest, Varsaw, etc, and the Russian revolution only took place by the end pf the game. The ruskies even survived the french!!! Imagine, the turkish army even landed in Sebastopol and took Kerch andthat didnt even merit a little stress from the Russians
Fourth, no way to see how your ennemie's morale is doing... I mean you take paris and most major cities and the french seems to go unabated like nothing is happening. I think that historically the french would have collapsed with simply the fall of Paris. The Italians, ah well they would have crumbled with simply the fall of Venice and too many military casualities.
Anyway, good game, but it needs some help to be beefed up, and its got to be more than the 1.20 update talked about in the forums.
