Suggestions for improving this game.

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: Lava

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

As far as I have seen 2-3 point barrages cause 0-3 point damage unsighted, and up to 7 or 8 sighted. A single example of doing 21 is exceptinoal!!

Also depends heavily on the research level of artillery.

Artillery is fine. Folks don't like it, they should buy trenches or aircraft to counter its effectiveness.

Ray (alias Lava)

Trenches are fine but you can barrage far more often than you can build trenches. I've gone from trench level 3 to 0 trenches in a single turn.
Perhaps trench building could be done during HQ activation like air recon? While you could rebuild all of your lost trenches each turn you'd need to spend a lot of points to do it.

[SMK-at-work]

France has far too many HQ point. Right now, they aren't forced to buy some until very late in the war. Even Germany has far too many in my opinion. Really, I think there should be far less HQ point at the beginning and make them lest costly (2 BP).

Well historically Germany had enough to sweep through Belgium almsot all teh way to Paris, takign a few delays on the way, AND to destroy a russian army in East Prussia.

France had enough to attack on hte borders for a couple of turns, then to attack at the Marne and advance after the German retreat.

the russians require enough to attack in East Prussia and Galicia, the Asutrians to attack Serbia and counter in Galicia.

I haven't done the math, but I'd be interested to see how many points this does actually require.

[Raynald]

Well historically Germany had enough to sweep through Belgium almsot all teh way to Paris, takign a few delays on the way, AND to destroy a russian army in East Prussia.

Tannenberg would be 1 or 2 HQ point.

The whole action in the west rarely ask for more than 1 HQ point per activation phase : say 10 for the whole August/september-October (for 7 impulses). The Germany will still have plenty of HQ point when the leaves fall.

France had enough to attack on hte borders for a couple of turns, then to attack at the Marne and advance after the German retreat.

1 point for the attack of the 1st and 2nd army, 2 at most, another one for the attack of the 3rd army, and to be generous 1 more for the adventure in Alsace. The Marne would take 1 or 2 including the "pursuit". In any case, less than 10 point if the French were to duplicate history. A player will spent a lot less (possibly even zero), except if Germany tries a Russia first.

Great Britain might be the worst : they begin with 6 HQ point and no (historical) offensive in sight for month to come. Actually, no one ever anticipated the British Empire would have to build the huge army it started to deploy in late 14.

I agree Russia and Austria feel about right. You don’t want to waste a HQ point with them and will be forced to buy some very early (especially the Russians).

[James Ward]

Regarding the number of HQ points maybe the staring number per HQ should be reduced and more added as reinforcments after the first turn. On the West Front having all your HQ's at max let's you launch a huge number of attacks on the first turn. Perhaps if 2 or 3 HQ's were maxed and the rest had 1 or 2 points you couldn't attack all along the lines from the git-go.

[StkNRdr]

I suggest new presentation of naval info.  One thought is that during any phase of a turn you would be able to click on the naval tiles and have it bring up a small window with a matrix of info of non-enemy ships in that sea.  The names of the ships could be on the left with the columns showing the type of mission, endurance, damage, turns left on station, control of sea, number of corp available for amphibious movement, etc., etc.  This info is generally only available during the strategic move and is still not very clear, at least to me.

[Radagy]

Two small interface suggestions that does not alter balance:

1) Make the game remember the latest screen resolution choosen by the player- I have always to set it to 1280X1024 - quite a waste of time.

2) Create a "Load last game" button in the opening screen.

[SMK-at-work]

On reflection I've decided that it probably wouldnt' do the game any harm at all removing all the initial artillery except for the Siege guns....the ability of hte Germans to simply smash away the French border forts and almost completely destroy the French army in  the first move by concentrating all its artillery is probably a bit strong!!

[Raynald]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

On reflection I've decided that it probably wouldnt' do the game any harm at all removing all the initial artillery except for the Siege guns....the ability of hte Germans to simply smash away the French border forts and almost completely destroy the French army in  the first move by concentrating all its artillery is probably a bit strong!!

Not a bad idea.

Something less drastic would be to have all the artillery in the game worth 2 (siege is still 3). After all, one could see the influence of better artillery in the combat power and quality of the corps (i.e 24 for the Germans partly because of their good corps artillery, 22 for the French because of the 75 in the divisions, etc.). The French doesn't deserve to have such a good heavy artillery in 14.

[SMK-at-work]

I argued long and hard that if a strength point = ~2000 men then corps of hte same size should have the same strenght points, and differences in equipment etc can be dealt with through quality.....I still reckon it's a better way to go.....but never mind....

[FrankHunter]

Yes, you did argue that and I did understand your reasoning.  However, I didn't want to put equipment in with quality because the effects of quality generally have nothing to do with firepower.  So equipment got rolled into combat strength along with numbers of troops.  I think it would have been better to add a third variable and separate troops, quality and equipment but I was too far along.

Equipment however wouldn't just represent artillery.