East First breaks the game

[lwarmonger]

Those are not solid cordons... and both of those units are dead on the allied player turn. While 2000 NM points is a bit of a blow, I dont see anything a good allied player cant recover from.

That being said, I think some garrisons in poland might be a good idea. But dealing with cavalry and detachment raids is part of playing in the east, both as Entente and central powers.

[PK1914]

Those are not solid cordons... and both of those units are dead on the allied player turn. While 2000 NM points is a bit of a blow, I dont see anything a good allied player cant recover from.

That being said, I think some garrisons in poland might be a good idea. But dealing with cavalry and detachment raids is part of playing in the east, both as Entente and central powers.

Sorry, but it does not work at all. I just play a game with the Central Powers. The Russian player has inserted three cavalry corps into the German hinterland. They are rampaging, I have to send all unnecessary units to screen some cities, yet the cavalry can still sneak through holes and drop the German morale. The Germans are now at 89% even with taking Nancy and other places and the Russians at 98%. Ridiculous.

If this is not changed, the game should have a caveat: looks like a WW1 game, but plays like WW2 and produces nothing like the real result.

[PK1914]

That being said, I think some garrisons in poland might be a good idea. But dealing with cavalry and detachment raids is part of playing in the east, both as Entente and central powers.

Maybe in the first 2 weeks of the war in East Prussia. But not after that. Read a book about World War One in the East (Norman Stone´s book comes to mind).

[PK1914]

Ok, I tried again as the CP player against an excellent player. He was able to smash the CP in the first turns with Russian cavalry overrunning most Silesian, Galician and East Prussian towns, I played hide and seek with them and had to pull all cavalry and all reinforcements to chase them. This is the oppsosite of fun and reminds me of Pacman.

German morale is at 86% now. Game over, man, game over. In the West, even taking Nancy will not save you then.

I will monitor this thread to see whether the game has been fixed. Until then, it is still a great game, but horrible history. See you later, thanks for listening.

[FOARP]

ORIGINAL: budd

When have Mr. Cater and Mr. Runacre ever not addressed issues like this or taken input from the community. I have no problem recommending this game, a long history of dedicated support of their games should count for something, shouldn't it.

+1

If it's possible to beat the AI with a particular strategy, this is not a game-breaker. What might be a game-breaker is if in MP it results in victory every time, but an aggressive offensive in the West does seem to address it.

[lwarmonger]

ORIGINAL: PK1914

Those are not solid cordons... and both of those units are dead on the allied player turn. While 2000 NM points is a bit of a blow, I dont see anything a good allied player cant recover from.

That being said, I think some garrisons in poland might be a good idea. But dealing with cavalry and detachment raids is part of playing in the east, both as Entente and central powers.

Sorry, but it does not work at all. I just play a game with the Central Powers. The Russian player has inserted three cavalry corps into the German hinterland. They are rampaging, I have to send all unnecessary units to screen some cities, yet the cavalry can still sneak through holes and drop the German morale. The Germans are now at 89% even with taking Nancy and other places and the Russians at 98%. Ridiculous.

If this is not changed, the game should have a caveat: looks like a WW1 game, but plays like WW2 and produces nothing like the real result.

I've encountered raiding strategies like this... you can counter them, and I have. And after 4 turns you should have a fairly solid front anyways, stopping this unless the enemy achieves a breakthrough (in which case cavalry is working as designed).

That being said, from a game design perspective,a fairly easy and realistic way to deal with this is to simply have garrisons start in the national morale forts behind the lines in Germany and Russia. It isnt like these fortresses were empty in real life, and the garrisons have negligible combat power, so they shouldnt change the balance.

[Xsillione]

Yep, probably that would be the simplest and most realistic solution, have a garrison in each fort that currently empty at start, and some more garrisons in the closest NM cities, that can be reached on turn one by cavalry.

[FOARP]

ORIGINAL: Xsillione

Yep, probably that would be the simplest and most realistic solution, have a garrison in each fort that currently empty at start, and some more garrisons in the closest NM cities, that can be reached on turn one by cavalry.

Especially if the garrisons were locked so that they couldn't be moved, or at least locked until fired on, the game balance wouldn't suffer much at all.

[Christolos]

ORIGINAL: Xsillione

Yep, probably that would be the simplest and most realistic solution, have a garrison in each fort that currently empty at start, and some more garrisons in the closest NM cities, that can be reached on turn one by cavalry.

+1

C

[eightroomofelixir]

ORIGINAL: lwarmonger
That being said, from a game design perspective,a fairly easy and realistic way to deal with this is to simply have garrisons start in the national morale forts behind the lines in Germany and Russia. It isnt like these fortresses were empty in real life, and the garrisons have negligible combat power, so they shouldnt change the balance.

+1. The East Front in WWI wasn't that empty, and the Russian superiority in numbers isn't really represented in the game (their weakness is fully represented though).

[Christolos]

I think, and ultimately, we need to consider how the game should and foremost, be presented regarding historical accuracy in terms of opening move choices in the context of balance. Should the game try to balance the opening game, essentially like a chess game, which still has an advantage to the first moving player, aka, the White side, or present both sides with essentially balanced gambits (which chess has), depending on the relative abilities of both players (and this is what needs to be determined), or allow opponents to react and adapt with the best response they can mount to counter these risky gambits.

More play testing and opinions will help.

Full disclosure:

I became interested in this strategy when it first came to my attention watching (a while ago) a few YouTube videos exploring an East First strategy. I'm sorry and apologize to the YouTuber(s) who fist posted this, but I just can't remember who it was to post a link here.

After reading this thread, I thought I would help by trying it out on a good friend of mine (who has given me much enjoyment as a PBEM opponent in SC-WaW), with the idea that he is a very capable opponent and would therefore be quite capable in countering this gambit. I thought this might be helpful, while still and maybe, giving me an opportunity to get revenge for being soundly defeated by said opponent in our past games. [8|]


C

[Chernobyl]

To me the main factor seems to be that because the central powers move first, they can position troops and garrisons to prevent the russian cavalry from taking any towns, while the central powers can take brest-litovsk and cut rail lines before the russians can move at all. Yes the russians can threaten to take towns on turn #2 but in my opinion it doesn't work very well. Depending on what exactly they do, the germans can surround their units before they take a town, and worst case scenario you just rail in a couple defensive units. Just don't let them ever take a supply city/fort. Turn #1 the central powers MUST prevent the russian cavalry near Lodz from charging in to take Bromberg Thorn or Posen and this requires a few units. You can't just leave that area totally wide open and expect to win.

[lwarmonger]

ORIGINAL: eightroomofelixir

+1. The East Front in WWI wasn't that empty, and the Russian superiority in numbers isn't really represented in the game (their weakness is fully represented though).

It is worth keeping in mind that World War I was not World War II. The Russians were always constrained by what their industry could support, and the fact that they didnt have mass conscript armies providing at least partly trained units on mobilization. The Russian Army was actually about the same size as the German, and never really got much bigger then the German Army did (the Germans were split between two fronts... however the Austrians provided substantial forces as well).

I think the unit sizes are about right... but garrisons on both sides would mitigate some of these raiding strategies which can seem very gamey if an opponent doesnt do a good job countering.

[Christolos]

Maybe a Russian detachment in Bialystok and one in Brest-Litvosk would be enough for the Russians.

Not sure what could be done for the Germans, but giving them also at least two more detachments, would seem reasonable.

C

[Mercutio]

It was quite the shock to loose an important NM objective before I could even start my turn! However this is my first PBEM for WWI. So we will see, but interested in others opinions.

[eightroomofelixir]

Thank you for the clarification. I was thinking about the AI scripts that gives Germany a huge number of land units (they can reach 100 or 101 in 1915 when playing as Entente, nearly twice the size of the Russian Army). This problem doe not exist when facing a human player, as this thread is about NM grabbing problem in the PBEM.

[Benedict151]

ORIGINAL: eightroomofelixir

ORIGINAL: lwarmonger
That being said, from a game design perspective,a fairly easy and realistic way to deal with this is to simply have garrisons start in the national morale forts behind the lines in Germany and Russia. It isnt like these fortresses were empty in real life, and the garrisons have negligible combat power, so they shouldnt change the balance.

+1. The East Front in WWI wasn't that empty, and the Russian superiority in numbers isn't really represented in the game (their weakness is fully represented though).

Another +1 for trying this (before more drastic surgery is contemplated)

regards
Ben

[ThunderLizard11]

Did East First in SP and it was quite simple to hold French/Brits in West until Soviets were out. Curious how this would work for MP - what is the best Entende strategy to counter this?

[Christolos]

I'm currently playing this out in MP as the CP, and from the way it is going so far, I would not call it an automatic slam dunk. The Russians have a lot of forces to contend with...but if I had to play this out as the Entente, I would say that France and Britain, if they choose to not DOW against Belgium and possibly even the Netherlands to open up the front, would probably need to be more aggressive in other theatres, like helping the Italians and even the Serbians. They could also be more aggressive against the Ottomans in the Middle East...

C

[CommandoDude]

Russia absolutely needs detachments on the cities near its borders. In fact I think a lot of places should have low strength detachments, for instance a huge amount of italian and turkish seaports have no units on them and could be taken easy peasy through naval landings.