9) Send French cavalry into the middle east in order to gobble up empty hexes. Serbia is another great place for that.
10) Cavalry are great to block free enemy cavalry advancement. This forces your opponent to pay for each hex with activation points.
I am still very new at this game; I have only started 6 pbem games of which I won 1 quickly, lost 2 even quicker and the other 3 are still in progress. I say this only because I am unsure if the following suggestion is good advice and standard practice or not. If it is not I trust one of the more experienced players will correct me.
In any event in my recent game as the CP I went with a France 1st Strategy. However what my opponent did to blunt my attack was use his HQs to activate some of his cavalry units and move them into some of the hexes from which my units were attacking. As cavalry tend to move 1st if activated this had the effect of freezing my units in place and preventing them from moving at all. Of course in the subsequent combat phase his cavalry then retreated without loss. Although it meant using up a French Offensive I think this was a very effective (if perhaps ahistorical) use of his cavalry. Makes me wish I had thought of it. Perhaps I am the only one who never did think of it which is why it is not mentioned in any of the above posts as it belongs in the "Well Duh, of course" category.
It does make sense Hjaco; but I assume this is only for the first turn you move the fleets to the sea area. Since fleets can stay at sea for a few turns I assume that during the subsequent strategic phases your fleets will get 3 full searches. Is my assumption correct?
I am still very new at this game; I have only started 6 pbem games of which I won 1 quickly, lost 2 even quicker and the other 3 are still in progress. I say this only because I am unsure if the following suggestion is good advice and standard practice or not. If it is not I trust one of the more experienced players will correct me.
In any event in my recent game as the CP I went with a France 1st Strategy. However what my opponent did to blunt my attack was use his HQs to activate some of his cavalry units and move them into some of the hexes from which my units were attacking. As cavalry tend to move 1st if activated this had the effect of freezing my units in place and preventing them from moving at all. Of course in the subsequent combat phase his cavalry then retreated without loss. Although it meant using up a French Offensive I think this was a very effective (if perhaps ahistorical) use of his cavalry. Makes me wish I had thought of it. Perhaps I am the only one who never did think of it which is why it is not mentioned in any of the above posts as it belongs in the "Well Duh, of course" category.
It used to be so that if one side only had cavalry involved in a combat that would not pin movement and subsequent combat by involved infantry units.
But I have made some testing and that is certainly allowed with the current beta patch which is not intentioned IMO (i.e. a bug) because apart fromt the fact that it is not stated as a rule change if a cavalry unit attacks an infantry/cavalry stack the attacked cavalry units move and subsequent attacks are being carried out.
In any case I would recommend players not to use this loophole as it is heavy Entente biased. I still have to meet a GOA player finding playing CP to easy [8D]
The biggest single strategy tip I have learnt isn't that subtle, but involves the feature of the game that is most alien to most games and gamer behaviour: activation point management.
This game does not reward massively aggressive play, like most do; rather, it punishes it. (Very good Frank, kudos.)
HQ activation points are insanely expensive. You start out with a lot of them, which makes you inclined to burn through them like crazy. Don't. Because they won't come back.
Things like replacements, artillery shots, naval assets, etc are given to you in multiples of your economic spending. Freaking activation points are exactly the reverse. Each single activation point is like worth 24 naval assets, for example.
Placing your HQs carefully is so critical it is hard to over-stress. An activated HQ will activate all the troops around it, except for the ones stacked with another HQ that has points left. So the starting setup on the Western front, both French and German, is very bad: all those HQs nestled up against each other virtually guarantee wastage of your single most expensive (by far) resource. The first thing you have to do is get a good chunk of your HQs into reserve, stacked with nothing, but right behind your attack point. If the advance doesn't work out, the worst outcome is stacked HQs, which is totally fine, as it doesn't screw with the activation point burn ratio.
A minor point: on the othe hand, the instinct is to try and use every single activated unit because they are so damn expensive-- you shouldn't. You want to activate as many units as possible, by clever HQ placement, to be sure. But then you have to be a little bit careful, because if a stack is successful and advances somewhere, what happens next? Will it have any points to advance further? Will it be knackered down to a shadow of itself? Is there any follow-up possible? On the other-other hand, a bad advance is probably better than no advance at all, because they cost so damn much.
The game revolves around activation points and nothing else, but most newbies (myself especially included) don't realize this, and have a very hard time learning it, because it is so contrary to every other game. And you get so very many at the start, you think they are cheap.
Basically, a single activation point in 1916 is worth like 20 activation points in 1914; hold onto those suckers!
Aside from clever HQ placement, given the ridiculous expense of activation points, it is very much worth giving up extraordinary amounts of territory, numbers of troops, and even resource sources, to avoid spending them. It is very hard to wrap your head around this idea.
I speak from very rueful experience, I was doing pretty damn good as the CP against what I thought was an extraordinarily passive TE until 1917, pursuing what seemed to be a pretty successful Eastern strategy, and all of a sudden I got my ass kicked something awful, the damn Ruskis had all their HQs fully loaded and HQ points in reserve to boot, and that was bad enough, but then the Western Front (where I stupidly thought I had put France on the ropes) opened up too, gah, it was terrible how badly I got beat down, with nothing left in the tank to fight back with. (Yeah, the body count and losses did indeed lead to Lenin, but by that point it was far too late.)
One correction OrvalB, when you activate, the adjacent combat units are activated even if they are stacked with a non-activated HQs. The thing is, the HQs themselves aren't activated so if you click on that HQ and want to use a Move Stack order you can't do anything offensive. But if you instead select a combat unit in that hex, you will be able to.
One correction OrvalB, when you activate, the adjacent combat units are activated even if they are stacked with a non-activated HQs. The thing is, the HQs themselves aren't activated so if you click on that HQ and want to use a Move Stack order you can't do anything offensive. But if you instead select a combat unit in that hex, you will be able to.
Well darn, you are absolutely right. I was blowing points where I didn't need, to, inexcusable in this game, explains why I got my butt kicked. Let this be a warning to the eternally offensively minded amongst us.
With regards to the use of offensive points: The french shouldn't hesitate to burn them on the defensive against the germans in a France-first strategy. I've used this tactic with considerable success on several occasions. This will have the germans attack empty hexes and run into full stacks of frenchmen where they only expected slight resistance. Also use offensive points to retreat, that will almost guarantee that you will get away to fight another day without losing effectiveness. The germans on the other hand will lose effectiveness when they advance too quickly into enemy land, mayking them vulnerable too a Marne-style counterattack.
The most useful research is probably gas and trenches.
For the TE gas is necessary to try to catch the CP's initial advantage and hopefully negate some of it. For the CP it is necessary to maintain an advantage to have a good chance of capturing Paris or quickly over-running Italy.
Trenches are self explanatory I hope
The next most useful IMO are artillery and aircraft. High level artillery can inflict a constant drain of casualties - quite heavy ones if the enemy is not well entrenched. And aircraf improve the effectiveness of artillery by spotting, and also decrease the effectiveness of enemy spotting if you have a tech advantage by shooting him down!
Assault or tanks are useful at the end of the game if you have a surplus of equipment over manpower - which you prefer will be a matter of taste - tanks use a lot of equipment so are probably easier for the TE than the CP.
Anti-submarine is long term research, but apparently does make a significant difference.
The only thing the CP can do to improve the effectiveness of u-boats is engage in unlimited submarine warfare - but that will usually only be useful in 1915 and 1916 when the Brits have limid numbers of transports and are trying to get the army to France - after that it becomes less and less useful & just bring the USA into the war faster - so there's not much point building u-boats in 1916 IMO.
At the start always at least 1 for gas for both sides, 2 if you can afford it & the 2nd on trenches. As production ramps up you can increase that to 3 - if things are going well I'll be buying 4 per turn by mid-2nd 1916..
If things aren't going well you'll find your 2 per turn will leave you well behind & you'll notice the differences - his artillery will be 4 or 5...you'll be losing some aircraft per turn, he's at 3 or 4 trench you're still at 2, etc.
