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I have been looking closely at the settings for the 1917 Fate of Nations campaign. I was surprised to see that the two outbound convoys from France in the 1914 campaign - to Serbia and to Italy - are not operative in the 1917 campaign.

In the case of Serbia, by 1917 they have lost their original territory but they are still a Major with a capital and a port on Corfu. Is there a historical or game-play reason why the Entente player can't reinforce the Serbs via convoy from France to Corfu?

In the case of Italy, this is more puzzling, as the Italians are fully engaged in the 1917 campaign. But given their small industry base, it would be very helpful if the Entente player could send additional MPPs to Italy via the convoy that opens up in the earlier campaign once Italy enters the war.

Michael

Hi Michael

I've checked and there is an issue with the dummy Decision controlling the convoys in this campaign, as it requires some places to be in Entente hands in error. I'll make a note to change them to Corfu.

Bill

Hi Bill - glad to hear that. Will correcting the dummy decision enable the convoy to Italy too? From a strategic point of view, that is probably more important to the Entente player than the convoy to Serbia.

Each country can only have one active convoy, so either I can set it to flow to Italy, or to Serbia.

Maybe the former would be better then?

Hi Bill - for the Entente player in the 1917 campaign, Italy is clearly the more valuable ally - it can build many more units and has a significant front with Austria-Hungary, while the Serbian government is in exile and camping out far away from the action on Corfu. So if you have to pick just one destination for the convoy, make it Italy.

Cheers

Michael

I agree, Serbia dying is a loss, but Italy falling is a catastrophe.

In 1917 after Caporetto, the British empire pulled troops out of East Africa, Mesopotamia and even Sinai to bulk up the Italians, so scared were they of a second Caporetto forcing Italian surrender, even the French supplied some troops despite all their mutinies and overall precarious situation.

Gameplay wise I would vote for Serbia. In this scenario Italy has a small economy but Serbia has practically none, which makes its unit slots virtually useless. Also Italy can be easily supported by simply walking a few guys over, should the need arise.

Evidently there is a range of player views on this question! I have two suggestions for the devs to consider:

1) give France a new DE at the beginning of the campaign which gives them the choice to route the convoy to Italy or to Serbia

2) have the French convoy routed to Italy but give the UK a new DE at the beginning of the campaign to redirect their Eastern Mediterranean convoy from Athens to Corfu, in order to fund Serbia.

Thanks, I'll have a think about this.

While we are at the 1917 campaign: another thing that might warrant a look are the victory conditions.
They seem to be the same as in Call to Arms. Here however Russia starts on the brink of death and will spend its time fighting for naked survival. So taking Warsaw for the Entente minor victory is absolutely impossible. This leads to the somewhat weird situation that the Entente's major victory is way easier to achive than the minor one.

Since I have been playing Bavre in two back-to-back games of the 1917 campaign (or more precisely a mod I am developing based on that campaign), I can fully support his observation. In our first game, he was playing the Entente. We ended the game by mutual agreement in early August 1918. At that point, the Entente forces had captured the Ruhr and were heading directly to Berlin. The German Army was down to about 8 corps to defend a very wide front. He was clearly going to take Berlin before November and thus almost certain to drive Germany into a surrender - which would count as Major Entente Victor. However, it was highly unlikely that the Russians would revive sufficiently to retake Warsaw - which is a minimum condition for an Entente Minor Victory. As he observes, this seems perverse.

Perhaps some revised Victory Conditions could be developed based on the starting points of both sides in January 1917. Thoughts?

Stick to the formula where a historical win is a minor victory and a major victory goes substantially beyond that?

Historically 11 November 1918 was Poland's independence day as the day of the armistice was also the day the Poles rose up and overthrew the Germans, so perhaps the issue of who holds Warsaw at game's end is solved by having a Polish uprising at a sufficiently low German morale? At least if this is the case then this needs to be communicated to the players so that they know that's what will happen.