A couple of oddities that may be as intended

[Joel Rauber]

a) Late in the game, I was able to advance into Russian hexes in Courland with infantry without expending HQ activation points. I wasn't paying close attention so the revolution may have occurred. If the revolution occurred are that some Russian hexes that the Germans may occupy??

b) I was advancing down Greece on my way to take Athens, with two AH infantry corps, there readiness dwindled down to 0 one hex away from Athens, and then they could not by any means, so I got to simply watch a corp starve to death while there was no enemy opposition and it could retreat to avoid the starving with either regular or strategic movement (of which there was plenty. Its not a big deal, but this doesn't seem right to me. Yes I know they were in the mountains; and maybe some of the attrition is realistic, but not to be able to decide to turn around and go home seems a little odd.

c) The British naval AI needs work to keep the Germans from being so successful in the North Atlantic. I generally can get the Brits to be the first major power to surrender. Once I start playing PBEM I suspect I'll find some wrong lessons learned from solitaire play[:)]

[SMK-at-work]

1/ You can advance into any hexes tha are completely cut off from any supply source with infantry without needing to activate - that may be what happened there

2/ Greece has always been a pain - the only way to get Athens is to strat move a corps into that last hex, then activate it before it runs out of readiness and capture the city - after you do that supply in hte mountains will increase and you'll be able to get your other one out of there.  For an example of what can happen when you're out of supply even in your own country read the wiki article on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sarikamis

3/ I've never managed to get he brits to surrender in previous betas - no matter how many U-boats I build the allies get ASW and they all get wiped out in 2-3 turns!!

[Joel Rauber]

Thanks, I think you answered most of the questions

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

1/ You can advance into any hexes tha are completely cut off from any supply source with infantry without needing to activate - that may be what happened there

Yup, that's it I had the Courland peninsula cut off [:)]

2/ Greece has always been a pain - the only way to get Athens is to strat move a corps into that last hex, then activate it before it runs out of readiness and capture the city - after you do that supply in hte mountains will increase and you'll be able to get your other one out of there. For an example of what can happen when you're out of supply even in your own country read the wiki article on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sarikamis

That's exactly what happened as well. The only odd thing is that in a sense one wasn't cut off from supply in the sense of a line of communication existing. But that line was through the mountains.

I wonder if it would be too much to have mountain terrain effects vary by time of year?

3/ I've never managed to get he brits to surrender in previous betas - no matter how many U-boats I build the allies get ASW and they all get wiped out in 2-3 turns!!

I'm able to fairly consistantly get the Brits to surrender, mind you this is against the AI; I suspect against a human it would be a whole different ball game. I basically do it by sending the subs and much of the High Seas Fleet on raiding missions.

[SteveD64]

In my my current PBEM game my opponent "packed" the North Atlantic with every destroyer in the British and French fleets and sunk every uboat I put out there. I decided to go on patrol missions in the North Sea since he had no destroyer protection there. Apparently uboats only do 2 hits worth of damage to surface vessels (although this may be a random result) which makes them worthless in that usage.

[Shawkhan]

...Forget U-boats. I use the High Seas Fleet to obliterate the British transports in the North Atlantic on Raider missions. Then the British starve and eventually surrender. Since they get resources as well from the Eastern Med, I use the Austrian and Turkish Fleets to destroy Transports there. The British always seem to surrender sometime in 1916 when I do this properly. Part of the problem is that the British AI spends entirely too much time concentrating on the North Sea in the game rather than defending 'vital' interests.
...U-boats were much more effective historically than they are in the game. A 'simple' fix, if there is such a thing, is to double the damage U-boats do to ships, or at least transports. WWI was in the days of imperfectly compartmented ships. One substantial hole in the hull, and virtually any ship, from dreadnought to destroyer, was doomed.

[SMK-at-work]

It wasn't quite that bad, but generally yes I agree they do too little damage - especially to large ships.  But then ship units represent several ships......
 
Perhaps their damage scheme should be something like they have a half chance of sinking a transport or a destroyer, otherwise they do maximum non-sinking damage.  1/2 chance of sinking a cruiser otherwise do 1/2 damage, 1/3rd chance of sinking a BB, otherwise do 1/2 damage.
 
but they should have a very low chance of actually encountering warships other than DD's on ASW or else you'd have to make them a LOT more expensive 'cos a couple of U-boats could sink a fleet in short order!!

[SteveD64]

Well a little more damage (or the potential) done to surface vessels by uboats might make the TE player think twice about packing every single destroyer in the North Atlantic.   All of my uboats (6 in total) were sunk in 1914-15 with no loss to the transports.   I thought abandoning the uboat war might delay US entry but they actually entered in 1916!  My opponent did a big diplomatic push on the US while I concentrated on keeping Italy out of the war.

[Shawkhan]

...Well, the U-boats are multiple ship units as well of course. In one day, September 22, 1914, the Royal Navy lost three armored cruisers to U-boat attack(one U-boat?). The Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue all took one torpedo and went down. During WWI, six Royal Navy battleships were torpedoed and sunk. The Majestic,Goliath,Formidable,Cornwallis,Britannia and Triumph all argue that protection from the torpedo wasn't that great.
...The problem is that U-boats in the game are seriously underpowered. Perhaps doubling the number of U-boat counters in the game would be an even easier fix. Cutting their purchase price by about half might also help. As it is, no German player who wants to win the war has much incentive to build U-boats as the game now stands.

[SMK-at-work]

I don't think they're underpowered vs commerce........I think that ASW is overpowered vs them. They are fine at KO'ing transports, but once the TE gets ASW they are simply swept from the seas in a couple of moves.

Houge, Aboukir and Cressy were obsolete even before WW1.

all the battleships listed were pre-dreadnoughts, which might arguably be treated as cruisers in my schema above.

The Turkish pre-dreadnought battleship Barbaros Hayreddin was also sunk by a submarine torpedo - from the British E-11

According to http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/sunk.html 12 pre-dreadnought battleships were sunk by ship- or submarine launched torpedoes in WW1, as were 23 cruisers

Dreadnoughts that were torpedoed and did NOT sink in WW1 include:
SMS Westfalen, Moltke (two seperate occasions), Seydlitz, Grosser Kurfurst, Kronprinz
HMS Marlborough

2 dreadnoughts were sunk during or soon after WW1 by torpedoes fired from surface craft -
Ptropavlovsk (Soviet) was sunk in shallow water by 3 torpedoes in 1919
Szent Istvan (Austrian) sunk in 1918

[TexHorns]

I ignore the N. Sea as the German and put out Subs, transports, raiders and patrols in the N Atlantic. The Subs and Raiders attack TE transports, Patrols attack TE surface vessels (protecting German Transports). In solo game just completed playing CP, Germany lost only one sub and 2 transports sunk during the entire war. On the flip side, I hammered TE shipping, sinking tons of transports and several surface vessels, especially DD.

[TexHorns]

Also, agree that Greece is a problem. AI did not defend Solanika sp?, choosing instead to place Corps on border with Turkey allowing Austrians to take city unopposed from Serbia. Cannot get Corps next to Athens overland. Looks like amphibous attack is only way. Supply penalty to severe in greek mountains. Didn't understand the strategic movement suggestion, since you cant strategic move into an uncontrolled hex. And you cant gain control overland due to supply penalty.

[SMK-at-work]

You can take the 2 mountain hexes with 1 corps and 2 HQ points... if it is too exhausted in the 2nd one then you can strat move another corps into that hex, activate it and take Athens next turn.

[SteveD64]

yeah, Athens is a tempting target but 2HQ's are expensive (+ the one used to take Salonika).  Also by the time you actually get there a rude awakening may result in the form of British units.  Control of the Eastern Med is very rarely certain for the CP.

[Joel Rauber]

ORIGINAL: CLEVELAND

yeah, Athens is a tempting target but 2HQ's are expensive (+ the one used to take Salonika). Also by the time you actually get there a rude awakening may result in the form of British units. Control of the Eastern Med is very rarely certain for the CP.

Well, yes enemy action may cause some problems.

[Joel Rauber]

ORIGINAL: TexHorns

I ignore the N. Sea as the German and put out Subs, transports, raiders and patrols in the N Atlantic. The Subs and Raiders attack TE transports, Patrols attack TE surface vessels (protecting German Transports). In solo game just completed playing CP, Germany lost only one sub and 2 transports sunk during the entire war. On the flip side, I hammered TE shipping, sinking tons of transports and several surface vessels, especially DD.

The problem is with solo games and British naval AI.

Does anyone have any comments regarding whether the above strategy is viable at all against a human British player?

[SteveD64]

Two games PBEM against the same person: in the first game the uboat war worked enough to effect the British economy to a severe degree. In the second game he wised up and uboats were no factor.  My opponent had very little experience with the TE before playing me.

In both games Raiders never found a transport and were sunk quickly.

In the second game, "Jutland" happened in the North Atlantic which bascially ended the High Seas Fleet.  I put some hurt on the British fleet but nothing decisive.

I don't see how that strategy could work if the Brits put most of their eggs in the North Atlantic but I've only played twice and am still learning.

[Shawkhan]

...In the game, Great Britain starts with some 18 transports, representing 12,000,000 tons plus of shipping. About 6,000,000 tons of shipping were required by GB to prevent starvation.
...Germany begins with two U-boat counters. Technically, Germany had 21 U-boats at the start of the war, but only 9 of them were actually diesels, capable of operating outside the North/Baltic Seas.
...This means that each transport represents roughly 700,000 tons of shipping, while each U-boat counter represents either 5 or 10 U-boats. The average effectiveness of U-boats during the war is known. They each destroyed about 70,000 tons of shipping before being lost. By August 1916, only 18 U-boats were lost to enemy action(out of 33 lost total)while the U-boat fleet had risen to 111 operational U-boats.
...The British didn't have working hydrophones(for submarine detection) installed on many of their craft until after June, 1917.
...To recreate this in game terms means that the Germans need to be able to possess a U-boat fleet of between 11-22 units by August 1916. At 18 points a unit, this is an astronomical amount of production Germany has to forgo. U-boats were not that expensive to build.
...I would suggest that the cost of U-boats be drastically reduced to make this option possible in the game. To have 700,000 of shipping cost only 12 points while a few thousand tons of U-boats costs 18 points seems inequitable.
...I haven't played the Entente(I prefer the historical underdog) but I fear that ASW is seriously overpowered in the game. Since there simply wasn't any way to detect submerged U-boats before 1917, I would suggest that ASW at the first two levels of tech should do NOTHING. This would represent the first attempts at fighting U-boats. Would you believe that in 1914, men were sent out in small craft with sledgehammers to attack U-boat periscopes? Later on, fishing boats attempted to snare U-boats in nets. These methods and others, which we might characterize as Level one and Level two technologies, were, as we might expect,  ludicrously ineffective. Depth charges and hydrophones we might describe as level three technology, while level four would represent convoys. If there were some way to add DD units to shipping missions in game at level four this would make historical sense.

[wurger54]

As a 3E player, armed with my 20-20 hindsight scope, I plan on spending 1 on ASW research until its maxed. Worry about winning the war after that. How historical is that?

I want to develop that sledge hammer idea though. [8|] Maybe a steam operated mechanical hammer on the bow and a bank of them on each beam. [:D] Even if it didn't get a hit, it would churn the water up so much as to be a negative modifier to any attack. Hmmm, I like it! [8D]

[SMK-at-work]

ASW in 1914 consisted of shooting at periscopes - torpedoes were short ranged and subs close to the surface cuold be hit by shells if you were lucky.
 
Advanced ASW techniques by the end of the war included hundreds of airships operating from the UK and French coasts - most u-boat attacks happened surprisingly close to allied coastlines.  Even hte US ended the war with about 170 blimps on submarine patrol duties - the UK operated over 200 - the first ones were the SS class....standing for "Submarine Scout" and operating as early as 1915.
 
I've gotten the Germans up to 10 U-boats operating withotu much bother vs the AI - the influx of Turkish raw materials in 1915 gives plenty of scope for it (although I'm nto sure exactly how accurate that influx is....)
 
Why do you equate the UK's ships to 12 million tons?

[Shawkhan]

...Because that is how much shipping Britain possessed at the start of the war of course. 12,000,000 tons. German U-boats actually hit their peak in August of 1917, sinking some 860,000 tons of allied shipping. Germany by then possessed 156 U-boats. I think in the end, the only thing that saved the allies was belatedly starting to group merchant shipping in convoys. Twenty percent of shipping capacity was lost by using convoys(an often overlooked point) but at least ships started to arrive.