What is needed?

[SMK-at-work]

I've had a couple of emails from Frank Hunter - FWIW he no longer has the GoA development environment available, so chances of any updates are even slimmer

However I thought, for the record, I'd like to get down what NEEDS to be done to fix the remaining faults in GoA 1.x, and perhaps some things that could be improved.

So the first list I want are things that are just wrong - either historically or the game system not working.

1/ Danzig and Konigsberg need to be ports. ATM the Russians can bypass Konigsberg and it just dies - the Germans cannot evacuate it, nor supply it.

2/ Belgian, Serb & Bulgarian surrender - none of these states actually surrendered historically - even when completely over-run as Serbia was. Only retained a miniscule corner of Belgium wasn't occupied, but they still managed to keep 6 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions in the field - that's 3 infantry and a cavalry corps! Many men of Belgian ancestry volunteered from around the world.

Similarly Serbia reconstituted it's army after evacuating from the Adriatic coast - it took a year, but they had 6 divisions in the field by 1917 too, and at http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/ar ... 11128.html a Serb chap reckons they got 40,000 volunteers into the army from various sources after "conquest".

So these nations should not surrender at all, and should get some basic level of manpower reinforcements - 2-3 per season - and be upgraded to the equivalent of French Corps. Equipment would be supplied from the French or English

Romania didn't surrender until the treaty of Brest-Litovsk took out the Russians - the Treaty of Bucharest was signed in May 1918.
Romanian units remained fighting alongside Russian ones in the corner of Romania that was not occupied, and amounted to perhaps 400,000 troops (wiki) - the French sent weapons and a training cadre.

So it should fight on until after Russia surrenders, and should get quite a bit of manpower to be supplied with allied equipment - apparently 150,000 rifles, 2,000 machine guns, 1,300,000 grenades and 355 artillery pieces arrived from the West - which is probably best represented by using Russian equipment points gifted to Romania, since those weapons must have been shipped at the expense of stuff shipped to Russia.

3/ Turkish resources - Turkey should be a drag on the CP, not a source of resources!

BUT...in the game, German use of Turkish resources seems to give Germany about the right amount...so removing Turkish resources should probably be balanced by giving Germany another 2-3 resource hexes, and lowering their staring % efficiency so the extra only "kicks in" about 1915-16.

Also the encourage a little naval are in the Black Sea, Turkey should get 1 resource from shipping in it - most Turkish coal came from mines around Zongledsk - 4 hexes east of Istanbul (now Zonguldak) - but it was shipped, and the Russians navy cut it right back to the point where Germany had to supply 12,000 tons of coal/month.

I'm not sure how much of the oil in modern Kuwait & Iraq was actually being exploited then, nor what the resource hexes in the Caucasus represent, but I think they could be cut right back to only 2 or maybe only 1 - does Turkey ever get to 3 production?

[SMK-at-work]

4/ Oh and how could I forget - improve the naval interface!!

IMO it needs to be able to display what you have deployed in each sea zone separately, showing the unit, its mission, and how many strat moves it has left.

[SMK-at-work]

And a real life PBEM bug - if you have not moved all activated hexes, and you press "no", the game proceeds anyway - it runs through your turns, presents the results, and proceeds straight to your next turn, skipping your opponents next turn!

I'm not sure about this - I need to do more checks, but it may also "invent" some moves that your opponent didn't actually make...or maybe it's just that I didn't "see" them in the ral game? 

It's a bit time consuming to run through a turn and check it against my opponents turns in some old PBEMs...but you can probably do it once or twice just to check my results.

I haven't tried it in other games - it happened in some of my current & recent PBEM games

[SMK-at-work]

And form some other experiences with games recently, I think the double penalty for Italy losing cities is not needed - they are already sufficiently penalised by having poor troops IMO.

[ham17]

I think that it is necessary to enhance the effect of U-boat.
Commerce raiding is one of focus in the great war, isn't it?
but it's just sideshow　in this game.

[SMK-at-work]

I've never really seen a German player go all out with U-boats- I did a bit of damage to Boogada as related in the AAR.....maybe if some effort was put into it it could be quite important, but I guess no-one really wants to be he first to try it!