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Arty is sort of weird in WAW because you get so little of it despite it being significant in the war and playing a massive role in both defense and offense. The meat grinder of the western front wouldn't be that "realistic" without the constant shower of shells against enemy artillery, against enemy offense and defence of your trench and of course the random harrass shelling.

Hi Searry,

Artillery is of course critical and just looking at our current stats for the latest build on my end, the default artillery will have a base de-entrenchment and demoralization value as well as a maximum of 10 shells per artillery unit with a default minimum of 1 shell.

Unused shells are carried over to the next turn, and shells are accumulated 1 per turn as well. This way you can build up your shells with several artillery units to prepare for a massive bombardment prior to a major offensive.

Researching Artillery Weapons will increase the de-entrenchment values per level, as well as the demoralization per level, and researching Shell Production typically increases your default minimum shells value so that if let's say you used up all your shells on a particular turn with a specific artillery unit, instead of starting over at 1 shell on your next turn, you could start at 3 shells if you have 2 Levels of Shell Production.

Investing in and using Recon Bombers will also help your Artillery units by increasing their effectiveness from any spotted unit via a Recon Bomber.

Since units can over time deeply entrench themselves, let's say along the Western Front, the right combination of spotting, artillery and infantry offensives can be critical to breaking fortified lines and advancing just as they were in real life.

Hope this helps,
Hubert

I think you have to keep in mind, that your korps and armies also include arty, even on divisional level. The few arty-units you get are heavy artillery or better said: huge concentration of such. it works pretty well in the original.you cannot have such overhelming firepower on every sector of every front.

Shell Production Research . . .

Of course this comes about 100+ years too late for the British who could have used it at the Somme where half the 1.7 million shells were duds, detonated early or were of the wrong type for their intended purpose (cutting the wire, etc.). Nice feature to be included the Strategic Command WWI, however.

Looking forward to the release . . . and best regards.

Arty and the science behind it aswell as combined arms etc advanced enormously during the War like many other things. Things like Arty and Inf co operation and say weather effecting Arty where unknown, everyone really was as ignorant as they where in Napoleonic wars. This obviously has to be modelled well and possible to keep up with speed of historical advancements. Also when say Arty advances and something like creeping barrage comes into play it shouldn't be instantly successful once advancements reached. Depending on how big a jump it was should then effect how long\often it has to be used and practised before a good level of competency is gained. Plus certain commanders should be better using new certain advances than others and become more competent faster. In fact some should be very resistant to change o you either have to wait until they learn error of their ways or sack them, this could be a dilemma though esp if they are great at something else. So do you keep them when currently they are messing up cos you know later he will come in very useful or bite bullet and sack him with the hope you have chosen the least bad outlook (maybe he believes in the bayonet and elan over fancy offensive arty techniques, however he comes into his own when on defence and back to the wall, trouble is currently he is commanding forces designated to attack but you know on the defence he could be the difference between success or defeat. What to do?).

I've said many times before that no matter the scale of a wargame leaders never have a big enough impact on the game. A poor commander can ruin a great unit, plus a great commander can elevate average troops. You rarely here of great units doing well under poor commanders. I can't think of one game where I feel leaders\commanders have a big enough impact. Games like Command Ops could be even better if those commander state really had a big impact. Actually the only game I can think of that is effected by personalities is Decisive Campaigns Barbarossa. Though again not sure on how much impact commander stats have on the outcome of combat results, it's more obvious in the role play aspects of that amazing game.