After AH has surrendered...

[boogada]

I knocked out AH pretty early in my latest game. Blitzkrieg into Vienna, Galicia and Budapest sealed the fate of the Dual-State. So this territory should at least become neutral right? Or something like that. But there are German forces all over it?! They haven't attacked me out of it, but it confuses me..

[boogada]

Also after Bulgaria declared war on the TE, all of a sudden German troops line up in the area? How have those gotten in there? AH is conquered, there is no way they could have used naval transport and I am very confused.

[FrankHunter]

Austria was an exception to the rule about their territory no longer being "in the game".  So rail links etc would still extend across it.  However, I've changed this now to make Austrian surrender the same as the others.

[Szilard]

Frank - I still (v1.1) get the situation with units stranded in surrendered enemy territory from time to time. Sorry, no save game, but it's happened a couple of times with German units in France.

Also, on a funkier note, I invaded the UK via Scapa Flow and forced a UK surrender, at which point every German & AH unit in the UK apart from HQs disappeared. Not a priority prob by itself but I guess maybe a little bit of diagnostic data for tracking down these post-surrender glitches.

[SMK-at-work]

IMO the surrender of AH would either mean the end of the war, or the splitting of the country into CP and TE occupied zones with any territorial govt's being largely irrelevant.  Both sides would have seized the rail lines, and I think that leaving its territory open is a reasonable thing to do......although just how to determine which side gets to occupy how much of it is a bit trickier....
 
as for invading the UK via anywhere....well that's just cute!! [:D]  sort of like the Serbs invading Trieste...[8|]
 
Of course the system allows it, but it probably shouldn't

[Szilard]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

IMO the surrender of AH would either mean the end of the war, or the splitting of the country into CP and TE occupied zones with any territorial govt's being largely irrelevant.  Both sides would have seized the rail lines, and I think that leaving its territory open is a reasonable thing to do......although just how to determine which side gets to occupy how much of it is a bit trickier....

as for invading the UK via anywhere....well that's just cute!! [:D]  sort of like the Serbs invading Trieste...[8|]

Of course the system allows it, but it probably shouldn't

Yep, I think most ports should be blocked to invasions.

[Szilard]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

IMO the surrender of AH would either mean the end of the war, or the splitting of the country into CP and TE occupied zones with any territorial govt's being largely irrelevant.  Both sides would have seized the rail lines, and I think that leaving its territory open is a reasonable thing to do......although just how to determine which side gets to occupy how much of it is a bit trickier....

as for invading the UK via anywhere....well that's just cute!! [:D]  sort of like the Serbs invading Trieste...[8|]

Of course the system allows it, but it probably shouldn't

I think it'd be worth redoing the surrender mechanics for a future release. It obviously doesn't make a whole lot of sense for former allies and enemies to be ejected en masse from a surrendered country, and it also doesn't make much sense to have national borders re-set while the war is going on, in most cases - generally I think you'd have an armistice in expectation of a settlement at the end of the war.

Think it'd be cool to have surrender/armistice modelled in a more detailed way. Eg, during the diplomacy phase, the ability to put demands to an enemy ranging over alternatives like:

1. Full surrender of all territory
2. Demobilization of bulk of army & cessation of hositilites, with occupation of captured & maybe additional terrirtory continuing until the end of the war
3. Access to raw materials & food, even if not captured in addition to (2).
4. Transit rights, in addition to (2)

Etc etc etc.

[boogada]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

IMO the surrender of AH would either mean the end of the war, or the splitting of the country into CP and TE occupied zones with any territorial govt's being largely irrelevant. Both sides would have seized the rail lines, and I think that leaving its territory open is a reasonable thing to do......although just how to determine which side gets to occupy how much of it is a bit trickier....

Right, AH would have fallen apart into different countries (like it did in/after 1918), and some might have joined the Entente, some might have allied with Germany.
The problem I was facing was that the AI seems to have larger numbers of troops scattered around territories. And those troops were probably not there when AH surrendered. So did the AI move them to these locations in the first place? It seems to have problems recognizing the overall strategic situation after the AH conquest. The Russians were advancing but instead of defending Germany these troops lined up at the Serbian boarder, but they didn't even attack, they just were on vacation. The Russian troops that beat AH were moved out of the country after the surrender like the game mechanics use to do this.

[SteveD64]

Yep, I think most ports should be blocked to invasions

 
Completely agree.  An amphib invasion of Trieste or Sacapa Flow would, in reality, be suicide.

[Joel Rauber]

ORIGINAL: CLEVELAND

Yep, I think most ports should be blocked to invasions

Completely agree. An amphib invasion of Trieste or Sacapa Flow would, in reality, be suicide.

While perhaps a little unrealistic if you think of it in direct simulation terms; as a game mechanic I think its worthwhile and works. It keeps the opponent "honest" regarding the use of their naval assets. Admitting that I don't fully understand all the naval mechanics, if you want to protect the port, control the sea-zone.

Its simple, otherwise we will start needing beach hexes and a more complicated naval invasion routine. Which I think would be beyond the design intent of the game. (my speculation)

[SteveD64]

At the very least make ports where fleets dock off limits.

It does force the player to keep garrisons but at this scale a full corps garrison sitting in a port seems a little much.

Also your point about forcing the player to pay attention to the naval game is a good one.

[James Ward]

I would like to see amphibious operations limited to the UK, Germany and perhaps France. Only they would have the Amphibious option in the naval screen and transports could only carry their own nations troops. The idea of Serbs or Bulgarians launching amphibious operations at that time seems pretty odd.

[esteban]

I agree on keeping the use of amphibious invasions to a few countries. 
 
I would make invasions of Wilhelmshaven, Toulon, Trieste, Taranto, New York and Scapa Flow impossible though.  The idea that you would invade a hex occupied by a major enemy fleet would be pretty much impossible in real life.  Also, the idea that Germany could send units across the Atlantic to invade the U.S. would be beyond a pipe dream  
 
 
 

[FrankHunter]

I agree and will make the necessary changes.

[SMK-at-work]

Also Sevastopol and St Petersburg and Riga....  possibly Tallinn too....the large islands covering the gulf of Riga channeled any approach and the passages between them were easily mined - the Germans eventually took them by amphibious assault in 1917 after taking Riga - see http://www.military.com/Resources/Resou ... erview.htm

One thing I've done a few times is build an Ottoman transport and capture Sevastopol, Rostov and Novosibirsk!!

there's a good WW1 naval page at http://www.worldwar1atsea.net/index.htm

[SMK-at-work]

Additinoally perhaps it would be timely to consider what other amphibious ops weer considered for WW1 - Jackie Fischer was planning landings on
germany's Baltic Coast in 1919 - I don't know exactly where, but it was a ot further to go than the Nth Sea Coast so presumably he didn't think the Nth Sea was a viable option.
 
the allies looked at landing at Smyrna and bombarded it at least once.  they never did put troops ashore but the Greeks did in May 1919 - 20,000 troops took over the city - there were Turkish troops there but they did not initially oppose the landings.
 
The Russian civil war saw the French occupy Odessa by sea, but again not against any hostile force

[pat.casey]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

Additinoally perhaps it would be timely to consider what other amphibious ops weer considered for WW1 - Jackie Fischer was planning landings on
germany's Baltic Coast in 1919 - I don't know exactly where, but it was a ot further to go than the Nth Sea Coast so presumably he didn't think the Nth Sea was a viable option.

the allies looked at landing at Smyrna and bombarded it at least once. they never did put troops ashore but the Greeks did in May 1919 - 20,000 troops took over the city - there were Turkish troops there but they did not initially oppose the landings.

The Russian civil war saw the French occupy Odessa by sea, but again not against any hostile force

There were historically massive mine barrages around major ports weren't there? The Entente laid close to 100k in the north sea and the Germans had about half that number along their own coast protecting major ports. I'd think even with complete naval superiority (as in the other guy's fleet was totally sunk), it still wouldn't be practical to launch a direct invasion through that kind of mine field with WW I technology.

[SteveLohr]

I just invaded the Ottoman Empire via Gallipoli with 6 UK Corps. I then marched to Constantinople, took the city, and forced the Ottomans to surrender. The next turn, all of my UK corps that were in the Ottoman Empire disappeared, except for the HQ unit. They missing corps appeared on the Reinforcement list, but with a time to re-enter the game 19 turns later, ie, sometime in 1920. I can't help but think of this as a bug. Can it be fixed in the upcoming patch? Otherwise, it really doesn't make sense to force a nation to surrender.

[SMK-at-work]

Every time a nation surrenders you lose some forces to garrison it IIRC - might have been what happened here

[Joel Rauber]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work


as for invading the UK via anywhere....well that's just cute!! [:D] sort of like the Serbs invading Trieste...[8|]

Of course the system allows it, but it probably shouldn't

IMHO, I don't think the game system should prevent this. The British player should prevent this. Perhaps having a sufficient navy in certain ports should be how the British player prevents it. As has been argued above for Scapa Flow and some other ports.

However, I wouldn't want this for all or even most ports.

Remember, invading a port in this game is the games way of representing invasion along any point of the coast adjacent to the sea area that the port is adjacent to.

This is an important point and is a result of the fact that the naval war is more abstracted than the land war in this game. Otherwise Frank must create a beach hex class and redo the amphibious mechanics, in what I assume would be complicated fashion.

Only if sufficient navy resources would prevent the enemy from invading along that coast anywhere would I make it disallowable (this could be argued for Scapa Flow I think and some other ports.)

Or if nowhere is it possible, to invade that coast. For example, as SMK has argued persuasively for the German North Sea coast (I'm not sure I believe him, but SMK has almost convinced me.) I.e. Wilhelmshaven as an example.