Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Strategic Command Series >> Strategic Command: World War I >> Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations

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Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations - 1/8/2020 2:21:13 PM

Benedict151

Posts: 596
Joined: 3/4/2016
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Many thanks to Hubert and Bill for such an enjoyable 'time sink', don't think I've enjoyed a SC game so much since the very first one! I also think its the easiest to play (notwithstanding the fact that I'm familiar with the system).

Have managed two games now, one as Central Powers and one as the Entente. Playing as the Entente seemed a little trickier to me (even allowing for a couple of mistakes I made). Won as Central Powers by end of 1916 whilst the Entente game lasted until mid 1918. By the end both sides resembled "punch drunk fighters", Russia had collapsed, French and German morale was below 25%, Austria and Turkey were below 50% (although prior to 1918 Austrian morale had remained very high � an Italian breakthrough seemed to reduce it significantly). Britain was around 75% and the Italians were above 100%. America only entered the war the turn before the end.
Rapidly declining French morale meant the British had to take on the bulk of the offensive actions on the Western front from mid 1917 - which pretty much mirrored history of course so well done for that.

A few observations and questions from this game (in no particular order I'm afraid)

German morale went below 50% before the end of 1916. I suspect the blockade had a fair amount to do with that (I had the 'near' blockade line pretty much permanently manned from start to finish) - its effect was compounded by the German fleet making a sortie in mid 1916 and suffering a very heavy defeat indeed.
As a side question does manning both the blockade lines effect German morale more than just manning one? Is there any point in having ships one the far line if the near line is fully manned?

The German submarine campaign never really got going. With the advantage of historical hindsight I focussed on anti submarine warfare from the start (is the research cost a little too low I wonder?) and completely crushed the U-boat threat in 1916. A few tried again later in the war but again were dealt with in fairly short order.
I wonder if the lack of any credible submarine threat/attacks was the main factor in America's reluctance to join in the war? (so playing devils advocate would it be better to allow the U-boats to sink a few more merchant ships??)
Austrian and German submarines did little in the Med either and seemed largely to prefer lurking in the Adriatic.

Rather like the British in admirals in 1916 I am sure having Seaplane carriers is a 'good thing', I'm just not sure what it is yet!

The Austrian army was remarkably well travelled. In addition to appearing on the Eastern, Balkan and Italian fronts a large contingent turned up on the Egyptian front (including cavalry and artillery) and the Western front.

Central Powers artillery was terrifying. By the end of the game its attritional effects were significant, with at least 1 (and generally more) Entente corps being blown away every turn (and yes, in the main they were all entrenched).

In terms of new tech only the Austrians developed tanks in time to do anything with them - this appeared towards the end of 1917, went on a scary rampage for a couple of turns and then did very little. French tanks arrived on the last turn of the game. The Central Powers had a fair number of aircraft by the end but they seemed to achieve very little. A couple of Allied ground attack aircraft were useful in 1918, but it seemed way better to invest in artillery and artillery ammunition development. Given the Entente did very little with aircraft the 'money' invested by the Central Powers in fighter development (and fighter units) seemed somewhat wasted.

With the British I invested quite lot in the Mesopotamian campaign - 5 corps, artillery unit and 2 HQ. Whilst they almost made it to Damascus before being beaten back by the Turks (supported by yet more Austrians) with hindsight I think it might have been better to deploy them on the Western front couple with a declaration of war against Holland to lengthen the German defensive line.

As has been noted elsewhere the 1914 Russian offensive in Galicia was rapidly stopped by a mass transfer of German troops from the Western front. In some ways this makes sense of course, but it does mean that Paris never really felt threatened which is perhaps a pity.

Whilst the Arab result was a local success any attempt to use them in support of a British offensive out of Egypt was immediately stymied by enemy forces - I think their combat power is fine as it is, but I do wonder if their mobility should be increased - allowing them to move an extra hex (maybe at an upgrade cost) would make sense? The same could apply of course to the Libyan and North African rebels.

As per a stand alone thread, Storms at sea were a lot more dangerous to Entente shipping (esp. troop transports) than submarines.

I now need to read Bill's strategy guide (deliberately held off from doing this as I wanted to try the game first) before going for a 3rd game.

regards
Ben

Post #: 1

RE: Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations - 1/8/2020 3:32:43 PM

BillRunacre

Posts: 4945
Joined: 7/22/2013
Status: offline

Hi Ben

Great to hear how much you've enjoyed the game!

Interestingly, a different beta tester has told me they think the game is harder for the Central Powers to win. Perhaps knowing why you've come to the opposite conclusion means we need to compare the strategies being used?

quote:

German morale went below 50% before the end of 1916. I suspect the blockade had a fair amount to do with that (I had the 'near' blockade line pretty much permanently manned from start to finish) - its effect was compounded by the German fleet making a sortie in mid 1916 and suffering a very heavy defeat indeed.
As a side question does manning both the blockade lines effect German morale more than just manning one? Is there any point in having ships one the far line if the near line is fully manned?

Yes, the more ships blockading, the more effect it has.

Seaplanes are great for scouting ahead to spot enemy ships or Subs. They can also be put into Recon & Bomb mode to attack targets.

Please let me know how you get on in your next games once you've read the Strategy Guide!

Bill

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RE: Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations - 1/9/2020 12:04:00 AM

Chernobyl

Posts: 444
Joined: 8/27/2012
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I'll just throw out my experience here. I played a standard campaign as Central Powers on "Expert" mode with +1 spotting and +20% MP for the enemy, but no experience bonus.

I won in July 1916 after Lenin -> Brest Litovsk -> Lowered French NM even further so they surrendered (Paris was taken in 1915).

My German NM hovered over 100% and then increased steadily, finally ending over 120%. I feel like the British were not prioitizing the blockade. Austria had insanely strong NM, especially boosted after Italy attacked, reaching 172% NM at the end! Turkey made slow progress but was getting the better of the Russians in the Caucasus, however Turkey's NM just kept creeping down for some reason, and finished around 75%. This may be because I couldn't retake Basra and I temporarily lost Medina to partisans.

I Destroyed 287 Entente units and only lost 6 (not counting mines). These kills caused my HQs to have lots of experience; most of them had 3 stars by the end. The combination of high HQ experience and high NM (plus low enemy NM) meant that my units were extremely tough and godlike by the end. I could attack a weapons-upgraded entrenched French or British corps with a non-upgraded German corps and do something like 4 damage while taking only 2. And the AI had difficulty counterattacking me even when I left units unentrenched.

ARMY AI: The AI is a little dumb with unit placement. Too often it leaves units in suboptimal locations where they can be easily destroyed. I mentioned it before in my other post but the French REALLY need to stop sending a corps to the 160, 86 hex; I must have destroyed 20 corps in that hex alone. The AI also has a problem with leaving HQ exposed when they should really be in a safer hex. Ditto artillery to a lesser extent. Finally it needs to simply perform far fewer costly attacks - it seems to love wasting strength in attacks that it knows are disadvantageous and I have no idea why. I guess it's historical.
It performed a few amphibious landings which seemed random and with no goal. For example landing a detachment in Beruit which I killed pretty quickly. Also landing in northern France with a HQ and one corps - if a whole army had landed and entrenched this could have been a major problem but instead I immediately picked off the exposed HQ unit.

NAVY AI: It fails to recognize when it really needs to send in a large fleet or retreat to port; instead it sends 1/3 of its fleet against my entire navy and loses (even with a spotting bonus). It also keeps ships near my ports (Italians ships at sea in the Adriatic) when I can easily pick them off and risk nothing because my ships safely return to port the same turn. It does an OK job hunting my subs. It actually sunk one of them and I had to really spread out and move randomly in order to keep them guessing.

RESEARCH: The AI does an fair job at prioritizing the best techs, however they really need to research Industrial Tech (none of them did) if they intend to keep up in the late war. The British actually had infantry weapons 1 before I did which was nice. However just like in my Triple Alliance game, France researched practically nothing. This would have lost them the war in the long term even if their morale had been solid. France spent only 450 on research the whole game and none of that was after 1914 (British spent 1885, Russia 1435, Germany 2925, Ottomans spent 2285 on research, etc). Even just 100 MPP spent on Command and Control would have made a huge difference for France.

Overall it was fun but I will need increasingly unrealistic difficulty settings in order for the game to be a challenge. Hopefully some of these issues get patched.

< Message edited by Chernobyl -- 1/9/2020 12:09:05 AM >

(in reply to BillRunacre)

Post #: 3

RE: Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations - 1/9/2020 10:34:30 AM

Benedict151

Posts: 596
Joined: 3/4/2016
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[EDIT � keyboard died half way through writing this. Now replaced and resuming typing]

I was playing for fun so simply used the default settings. As the Central Powers my experience was not dissimilar to Chernobyl.
As the Entente I guess I played kind of 'historically' (its something I tend to do with games, at least initially, be they digital or board). I felt it as trickier to win firstly as it took 2 years longer to win and was much more touch and go at the end ... it did become a race to reduce German morale to 0 before the French collapsed completely. Luckily there were just enough British and Belgian units to hammer the Germans in north Germany.
Disregarding the naval war (the naval side seems to be a bit of a weakness for the AI, when playing as the CP I don't think it really maximised the blockade) I thought the AI played a better game, maybe due its interior lines - it was adept at co-ordinating German and Austrian units (and used them almost interchangeably at times it seemed). Other than on the Western Front it was trickier to do this with the Entente.

In terms of strategy I was probably too aggressive with Russia and suffered a heavy defeat in Galicia in late 1914 when the Germans from the western front turned up. That front didn't really stabalise until mid 1915. From my experience in my first game as CP I moved a number of Russian units from the Turkish front as in the previous game neither side made any real progress here despite committing sizeable forces and the same thing happened in the 2nd game. In 1916 there seemed to be opportunities to launch Russian attacks (Brusliov anyone?) but they turned out to be blind alleys and led to defeats ( said I played historically!

).

With Russia on the ropes by 1915 adopted an offensive strategy in the west which led to some gains with the front line pushed pack pretty much to the German border (which gave Russia some breathing space). The downside was with the British army still relatively small France had to take on the bulk of the attacks and the losses would eventually take their toll on national morale. In addition resources tended to be spent on replacing losses rather than researching things like entrenchments and artillery (unlike the Brits who could afford to do that).

With hindsight I think I should have declared war on Holland in 1917 to lengthen the front and used some of the British units sent to the Egyptian and Persian fronts here. With regard to the war on Turkey going for a major effort in both Egypt and Persia was probably over ambitious and was certainly logistically challenging (having said that it did pull multiple Austrian units including the fearsome artillery onto these fronts so maybe it was worthwhile). Playing again, I would try the 'micro' (or semi micro) amphibious invasion tactic here (in conjunction with an attack out of Egypt). I'd like to do more with the Arab forces but not sure how they can be best used in conjunction with the British).
Pushing French forces into Greece achieved little.... it was mainly done to stop an Austrian/Bulgarian invasion after the fall of Serbia although the AI turned out to be not at all interested in doing that.
The war winner I think was the blockade (which is not unhistorical I feel) and the British emphasis on this, anti submarine warfare and naval weapons paid off.

In terms of research I got to infantry weapons 2 before the CP but it was ahead with artillery, both in terms of tech and numbers. Interestingly by the end of the war pretty much all the Entente infantry units were at Weapons 2 (inc. Russia before the collapse) whilst there were still some CP units at level 0 and 1. The CP got tanks first although not to any great affect (other than a moment of horror when they first appeared) whilst the Entente comfortably won the undersea war. The CPs aircraft development didn't seem to achieve a great deal and I didn't feel any great need to match this (spent the points on things like production research).
I focussed on Infantry Weapon development on the basis infantry were the most common unit in the game so it made sense for them to be as effective as possible.

Diplomacy wise despite investing 4 chits in Rumania it never got close to joining the Entente. Buying a chit to encourage the US seemed a bit of a waste of 150 points. Scandinavia, Holland and Switzerland were all heavily pro CP by the end but none of them entered the war. USA only entered the war on the penultimate turn so was not really a factor (although its morale effect on France was helpful).

Sorry for the stream of consciousness, hope it helps a little and thanks again for a fun game.

Ben

< Message edited by Benedict151 -- 1/9/2020 11:02:11 AM >

(in reply to Chernobyl)

Post #: 4

RE: Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations - 1/9/2020 1:07:46 PM

Hubert Cater

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Thanks for the feedback Ben and very glad to hear you have enjoyed the game

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RE: Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations - 1/10/2020 1:16:46 AM

offenseman

Posts: 768
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From: Sheridan Wyoming, USA
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Probably a dumb question but where can I find the strategy guide? Please forgive me, it was a long day.... found it and had looked at it before even!

< Message edited by offenseman -- 1/10/2020 1:22:34 AM >

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Strategic Command Series >> Strategic Command: World War I >> Just finished 2nd game, a couple of observations

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