Version 1.2

[sol_invictus]

These changes/fixes sound fantastic Frank. Bravo! I would really encourage you to at least make the obvious HQ bonus changes, just to give some more flavor to the HQs. I think everyone would agree that Brusilov, Kemal, Hindenburg, Hutier, Mackensen, and Below should be a bit better than say, Nivelle. I am sure others could add to the list of better than average army commanders.

[Joel Rauber]

ORIGINAL: Arinvald

These changes/fixes sound fantastic Frank. Bravo! I would really encourage you to at least make the obvious HQ bonus changes, just to give some more flavor to the HQs. I think everyone would agree that Brusilov, Kemal, Hindenburg, Hutier, Mackensen, and Below should be a bit better than say, Nivelle. I am sure others could add to the list of better than average army commanders.

I'd be careful with this one, and for the reasons that Frank stated.

[hjaco]

ORIGINAL: Joel Rauber

ORIGINAL: Arinvald

These changes/fixes sound fantastic Frank. Bravo! I would really encourage you to at least make the obvious HQ bonus changes, just to give some more flavor to the HQs. I think everyone would agree that Brusilov, Kemal, Hindenburg, Hutier, Mackensen, and Below should be a bit better than say, Nivelle. I am sure others could add to the list of better than average army commanders.

I'd be careful with this one, and for the reasons that Frank stated.

I agree. The discussions would be endless "He was certainly better than that.....". So if it were going to be implemented it should be randomized each game until first combat and then revealed. And then again even bone heads like Haig learned something along the process and how should that be simulated ?

In the end we are the generals in the game.

[James Ward]

What sort of bonus would an HQ get?

[FrankHunter]

The way the rules used to work is any corps activated by a general with a combat bonus received the equivalent as a quality shift during battle. 

So let's say Brusilov had a bonus of 2 and his Russians were quality 6 and 7.  Well, they'd attack as quality 8 and 9 if activated by him.  Quality ranged from -2 to +2.

The generalship rules did add some colour but again, most of the generals were 0 simply because I couldn't find information on them.  Random generalship would work, perhaps as an option although if it existed as an option it would be hard not to have an historical default.

It seems you could do amphibious invasions without activation. Please also consider changing this, as this really is typically more effort than an offensive (especially corps size invasions)

That's a good point, an amphibious invasion is basically an even more involved form of an offensive.  I may change that.


And I'll look to blindly adding 1400x900 and 1600x1200 resolution and you guys can tell me how it turned out?

[James Ward]

How is that going to work for Britain shipping resources to an ally ?

Same as now but for each RM, Food or Ind Pt the country doing the shipping loses one Strategic Movement point.  However, let's say the Turks ship 5 RM to Germany, who should pay for that?  Germany or the Ottomans?  Right now its the Ottomans but I may actually change this so that the country receiving the point pays the SM point.
[/quote]

Could you just cap it at like 5 of an item per turn assuming there was a route to get it there?
What nation would ever send ALL of their excess food or resources to another nation while they were also at war? Seeing as how you control multile nations you can do it in the game so a cap would act as a brake while also allowing you to assit your ally to a degree.

[StkNRdr]

The changes look great Frank.  Looking forward to the release.
 
HQ's should be treated the same, I agree that we are the generals.
 
Don't want to drive you nuts about resolutions but a 1280 X 960 would be great also.  The current 1280 resolutions cut off the bottom text on 4:3 aspect monitors.

[jimwinsor]

Generals could do some tactical things better than others, such that we the players in charge of strategy would entrust the better ones with more important commands. Faster readiness recovery for troops in their hex, for example?

[pat.casey]

Another option which might be a bit less contentious would be to allow "assault" supply to a given HQ.

So for 2 activiation points (instead of one), I could be under "assault" supply and get, say, a 2 pt quality shift or some such.

[sol_invictus]

I feel that the player is the Head of State or Chief of the General Staff and not several Generals at the same time. Having to decide where we want our best Generals would add more strategic decisions to the game while also adding a tad more historical flavor.

[Lascar]

Good point. The scale of this game is equivalent to AGEOD's BoA and ACW where the qualities of individual generals is a very important consideration in strategic planning.

Frank said he had difficulty finding good info on the various generals to base a quality rating on. Perhaps we here in the GoA community can assist with that and do some research on the subject.

[EUBanana]

Well, heres a few to start the ball rolling, IMHO of course.  With a few notes where possible as to why.
 

The Good
British Empire, Plumer (Probably the best commander on the Entente side IMO!)
British Empire, Monash (Aussie, used a lot of deception tactics)
British Empire,  (Planned the attack at Cambrai, handled the retreat from Suvla Bay at Gallipoli)
AEF, Liggett (US version of Plumer, meticulous and thorough, didn't make mistakes)
France, Petain (You know /him/, right?  A defensive kinda guy...)
France, Fayolle (Older version of Petain, did very well, was horrified by the idea of attritional warfare)
Germany, Hutier (Father of the stormtroopers, as well as trashing the Russians big time)
Germany, von Below (Dished out a shoeing at Caporetto, before that was trashing the Russians at Masurian Lakes)
Serbia, Putnik (Old guy who was giving orders from his death bed in 1914, responsible for many humilations for Conrad)
Ottoman Empire, Kemal Ataturk (You know this guy too, right??)


The Bad
British Empire, Hunter-Weston (Responsible in large part for disaster at Gallipoli)
British Empire, Stopford (Responsible for the failure at Suvla Bay)
British Empire, French (Lost his nerve in 1914)
British Empire, Gough (Got his army chewed up at Arras, more than once, cavalry proponent)
British Empire, Murray (Commanded in Palestine for a while, of nervous disposition - fainted when told he was in charge)
France, Mangin (Nicknamed 'The Butcher' by his men, offensive minded)
France, Castelnau (One of the infamous 'offensive minded' generals, commanded many a slaughter)
France, Nivelle (He who caused the mutiny)
France, Duchene (Archetypal donkey general, made a complete hash at the Chemin-des-Dames ridge in 1918 despite orders from Petain as to how to counter infiltration tactics, which Degoutte ignored)
AEF, Pershing (Sorry, this guy was at least as bad as Haig.  I know the yanks love him.  On precious little evidence in the field, I would say!).
Austria, Conrad von Hotzendorf (Complete and total incompetent, got humiliated by the Serbs about three times)
Germany, von Moltke (Famously indecisive)
Russia, Samsonov (Was in charge at Tannenberg - enough said?)


The Indifferent
British Empire, Rawlinson (Commanded at the Somme, but redeemed himself later - planned the attack at Amiens in 1918)
British Empire, Birdwood (Commanded the Canadian Corps)
British Empire, Haig (Some good mixed with the bad)
British Empire, Allenby (Famous for the Ottoman shoeing, but only average when in the big league on the Western Front)
British Empire, Horne (Somewhat mixed record, first Brit to use a creeping barrage)
France, Lanrezac (Retreated rather than attack an army twice his size suicidally as ordered, got canned for it.)
France, Berthelot (Was commanding the Romanians for a while)
France, Gouraud (Lost an arm at Gallipoli, went on to lead US/French at the Second Marne)
France, Foch (This guy was almost comical at times, but he did have some solid organisational skills)
AEF, Harbord (Somewhat mixed record, but was up against it to be fair to him)
Germany, Crown Prince Rupprecht (Seemed to do OK but was nothing special)
Germany, Mackensen (Defeated Serbia when Conrad proved he couldn't do it on his own)



...if nothing else it'll provoke spirited argument I'm sure.  [:D]

[Sardonic]

Well I certainly disagree on alot of them.
But I dont have time right now.

[FrankHunter]

Birdwood commanded the Canadian Corps?  Wasn't that Byng and then Currie as of 1917?  Didn't Birdwood command Australians?

[hjaco]

"Birdy" was in charge of the Aussies yes.

[sol_invictus]

EUBanana, I pretty much agree with all of your opinions except that I would move Mackensen into the good category. He did a good job against the Russians.

[SMK-at-work]

ORIGINAL: Lascar

Good point. The scale of this game is equivalent to AGEOD's BoA and ACW where the qualities of individual generals is a very important consideration in strategic planning.

But it wasn't in real life - politics and seniority were imporant.

Games that rate generals are delving into candyfloss IMO - it's all very well to say so and so was good...but was he better than Blogs...and if so by 1 or 2 points?

It's all way to subjective and while I know some players like it (as witness this thread) it detracts from actually fighting the war.

[ulver]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work


But it wasn't in real life - politics and seniority were imporant.

Games that rate generals are delving into candyfloss IMO - it's all very well to say so and so was good...but was he better than Blogs...and if so by 1 or 2 points?

It's all way to subjective and while I know some players like it (as witness this thread) it detracts from actually fighting the war.

I’d have to agree. It doesn’t makes sense as a game mechanism. The brilliance of the design is precisely how it avoids any unneeded fluff.

- and it makes even less sense as a simulation. The Great War was not really a test of leadership. It was attrition battle of national societies won on the factory floor more then in Staff HQ. Tactical options for Generals in the field was actually quite limited and this is arguably one of the conflicts where generalship mattered least.

If, and I stress if, more chrome should be added it would make a lot more sense to do so in the field of politics and economics with options to attack Denmark to open the Baltic for Entente shipping, dynamic neutral reactions to military events, allowing everyone some shipping options for overseas resources, possible strategic bombing of production and morale as quite considerable efforts was made at the end of the war to engage in strategic bombardment and by 1919 quite massive air bombardments would likely have occurred.

What generals were assigned to what sector was never a big issue in cabinet level strategy – in any case as Prime Minister/Chancellor we probably wouldn’t know who was a military genius and who was a puffed up fool.

[Rhetor]

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

Austria, Conrad von Hotzendorf (Complete and total incompetent, got humiliated by the Serbs about three times)

Interesting notion since it was Conrad von Hötzendorff who planned the CP assault at Gorlice in 1915 and had overall command over the operation.

[ulver]

One big request: It would be really nice with a way to tell what hexes belong to what front for the purposes of air support. Is Vienna on the Eastern front? The Balkans? In my Balkan offensive I was quite surprised to discover that Constantinople is considered to be in that Caucasus when allocating air points. Is Southern Germany on the Western or Italian fronts? Some sort of overlay on the strategic map would be really great