Matrix Games Forums

My colleague has just bought this game and says is very good. I'm thinking about starting a game in it whilst we seem to have plenty of time on our hands. An unpopular request would be to ask you if you model the pandemic of 1917 1921 in the game. It obviously had a very severe effect on the fighting quality of the troops. Though not much is known about it. There was a very interesting programme on TV about three weeks ago just prior to this all getting very bad where it went through how it moved between the American British French and then German armies very quickly.

Hi Cavalry,

Currently it is not modeled in the game.

Hope this helps,
Hubert

Yeah, not sure how this should be modelled.

Presently various epidemics are modelled in-game (so please let’s have no-one saying the Spanish Flu shouldn’t be modelled for moral reasons) including outbreaks in Serbia and the Ottoman Empire. However, these are modelled as regional out breaks that cause random unit-damage (and MPP loss but I’d have to check this to be sure) within a small area. Having something like this happen across the entire map seem pretty sub-optimal.

My suggestion is a random 1-5% national morale/MPP hit to all major powers in the order that they got the Spanish Flu historically. This will also have the effect of helping accelerate the end of the game around the historical end of the war (I.e., mid-late 1918) if the game is still stalemated at that point.

Fair enough - I just was quite shocked on watching the program on the BBC about the impact to allied units in France and at the same time the German units - they tried to keep it as secret as possible.It made a lot of units ineffective. It also had a big effect on arriving US units as it took hold on several large troop ships. Something for the future perhaps.
And like the lessons of WW1 unlearnt only a few years down the line ,so too is the current issue. And people moved about a lot less then but that virus got it freedom because of the war - otherwise it may never had been as bad as it was. The lesson of this historic event was not heeded today until it was too late. Lets hope it gets under control soon.

Some have argued that the Spanish Flu may be what pushed the Germans to an armistice in November 1918.

Both sides were affected by the flu, but the impact was probably greater on the Germans because the war of attrition and the naval blockade had already pushed them to the edge.

This hypothesis is very attractive and I'm tempted to take it seriously, but it needs a lot of research to back it up. I doubt that it's responsible for ending the war, but the extra strain on their economy, medical system, and war machine was something the Germans could ill afford.

To model it in the game you should probably deduct production points from each side in varying amounts while the epidemic is in force. How many and in which months would need to be worked out with a little research, but as we're learning (and are about to learn) viruses are less active in the summer months when there's more ultra-violet radiation, so the production hit should be less in June, July, and August, and then greater in September, October and November.

Probably the best option would be a creeping effect:
First the troops in US would be affected with some loss, and the US would suffer some morale hit, than the troops in the UK, and UK morale would take a hit. Than it arrives the western Fronts, and moves southward every turn, hitting the units in the current band with loss and some morale hit depending how many units affected. After it went through the entire western front, it hits the eastern one too.

Also allowing the currently affected to act against the pandemic, but that also makes it open, causing a bit more morale loss for the first to come clean, but allowing everyone after to fight it without extra morale loss, so it is a balancing act, who takes the hit, or just everyone shuts their mouth as happened IRL. But this would need quite a lot of events and such, for something that is mostly just a balanced stuff for everyone, but yes, it could tip over some almost fallen empires, that currently trying to prevent any more morale loss to avoid a cascading defeat for their side.

If anyone has seen the BBC film about it that gives tons of info in relation to the war, it was on a few weeks ago. It appears just like the current one, it appeared in winter, that winter was 1917 . Vanished in the summer and then came back in the autumn ( and more dangerous apparently), and continued like this until 1921. Sobering thought.