lwarmonger
Posts: 152
Joined: 8/17/2008 Status: offline
|
So just a follow up. As the Entente, the last 5 turns I had occupied the entire map minus Holland, but still only won a Major victory when things timed out because to win a decisive victory German National Morale has to go to zero? That doesn't seem to make much sense. As the German player I am now experiencing some success through attrition warfare, but I doubt I will have enough time to get anything other then a minor victory. The issue is that a Schlieffen plan relied on two things. First, that the Entente would be out of position because of an offensive into Alsace Lorraine, and second, that the Germans would be able to hold the Entente in Alsace Lorraine. The issue is, any German offensive into Belgium can be hamstrung by the Entente player operating units into position along the French border, and the BEF into Antwerp. That creates a situation where the German player must spend more time fending off a double envelopment plus a possibly difficult to resist thrust into Alsace Lorraine then they do advancing. Additionally, when the Germans are fighting, they are typically at worse supply (because they are on offense). Finally, it is too easy to switch out the incompetent allied commanders that you start with for more competent ones, so even the leadership advantage the Germans have can be eroded fairly quickly. This is harder to do for the Germans, as they have to sacrifice a turn of advancing already slow headquarters to do so. The way I made this work as the Germans was to push forward as far into Belgium as possible, while using purchased units to first counterattack the French penetration into Alsace Lorraine that had some success, and then diverting units from my spearhead and my second round of purchased units to fend off a French counterattack into Luxembourg. By going onto the defense I managed to attritt the Entente down enough to return to the offense, but with only 5 turns left I think it will be too late to achieve my objectives (Verdun has been cleared, and I am nearly to the channel ports with not much left in front of me, but Dieppe is probably too far to reach, as is Paris... all they have to do is hold cities with detachments and that will slow me down enough to prevent a win by taking Paris). As for victory conditions, as things are the German player doesn't really have enough units to accept the losses necessary to push forward fast enough in their first bound to let them get to Paris on time. I don't think that adding more division is the answer here, but perhaps adding some detachments in Alsace Lorraine to create some unit density on the defense. Additionally, for the northern objectives, Dieppe is very easy for the Entente to hold. Why include that as a requirement if you are going for the channel ports, as it isn't in the same area as the rest? I really think 90% of the issues in this scenario would be solved by nixing all operational movement, and having French reinforcements arrive at the edges of the map. This would make Allied concentration much, much harder and create more of a "meeting engagement" feel for the scenario as a whole.
|