RE: Top Five of World War I (Full Version)

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Bossy573 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/1/2006 4:03:31 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: EUBanana
If he doesn't, I will. [:D]

I'm very curious as to what casualty figures will be like in the game with various strategies. There is so much maligning of Haig, be interesting to see if the game models Haig as being a dumbass or if seven figure casualties are the way it goes.

I hope the casualty figures are reasonable and not a bit of fluff tacked on for a laugh! I wanna see how I match up with Rawlinson and Haig when it comes to my deep and abiding respect for human life. [:D]


You're on! [:)]

Human life is one thing, electrical impulses on a hard drive another. My boys are going over the top whether the bleeding hearts like it or not. [:D]

There is so much about this game I am curious about. For example, will it deviate a bit and allow for the German player to go straight at the Russians? How will it transition from the mobility of the Schliffen plan to trench warfare? What role, if any, will commanders play? VERY intersted to start hearing some snippets from above.



Okinawa saw 8,000 US ground personnel dead against 107,000 Japanese.



TheBlackhorse -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/1/2006 4:11:23 AM)

Total American battle casualties were 49,151, of which 12,520 were killed or missing and 36,631 wounded. Approximately 110,000 Japanese lost their lives with 7,400 more being taken prisoner.



Bossy573 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/1/2006 4:24:02 AM)

Yes, 5,000 of the American dead were naval personel, 8,000 ground personel were killed. If you are into a numbers game, the kill ratio of dead was better then 10 to 1 the overall casualty ratio about 4 to 1 (excluding cililians, in which case it would have been close to 10 to 1 as well).

Of course, there is no comparison to be made between Okinawa and The Somme as the Japanse fought, almost without exception, to the death.

Please don't get me wrong on this. I am no flower child preaching the utter evil of any type of conflict. I just think The Great War is fascinating in the extreme and one of the big reasons why is the men who directed and commanded during it were overmatched by circumstances. This led to the most uneccessary and avoidable carnage in history. IMHO of course. [;)]



TheBlackhorse -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/1/2006 2:34:05 PM)

There are comparisons to be made between Okinawa (and other island hopping battles for that matter) and the conduct of operations on the western front in WWI (not just the Battle of the Somme).

1. To defeat/dislodge the enemy from his position, one must attack him.

2. In the absence of flanks, one must attack frontally in order to achieve #1 above.

3. The most advanced and best coordinated fire-support in the world does not guarantee anything, in particular when directed at an enemy who makes use of incredibly well prepared positions.

4. Counter-attacks by the defenders can be extremely costly in terms of casualties.



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/1/2006 6:52:30 PM)

I think that the Allied Campaign up the boot of Italy in WWII is a good comparison to some of the fighting in WWI. Sometimes there are simply no easy paths to victory. War is deadly.[X(] Justified or not, WWI was not the kind of war that almost every general had expected to fight. I think the mindset of the vast majority of military leaders expected something similar to the Franco-Prussian War, since this was the last major war between major powers in Europe. Military minds are usually backward thinking and look to past examples in order to extrapolate future events and outcomes. The problem of course is that in those years of peace, while military thinking has no updated examples or chooses to ignore what few examples there are, technology marches forward.

Given time and massive casualties, tactical solutions where arrived at, but this didn't solve the operational/strategic problem of turning tactical/operational success into decisive results. With no mobile combat force available to exploit any breach in the enemies line, it was relatively easy for a defender to plug up the hole before the attacker could exploit any success. Even the most devastating operational successes in WWI; such as Caporetto and Tannenburg; did not lead to strategic success. It was only after nations were exhausted through massive casualties, revolution, or blockade that decisive results were achieved. I just don't think there was a solution to the problem other than national exhaustion, hence the attritional slaughter which coalition wars almost always come down to.



Bossy573 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/1/2006 7:10:04 PM)

Germany's central position and excellent rail network only added to the problem you describe.

I'll counter my own argument by looking at the French stratigic and tactical doctrine of the Second World War. It was specifically designed to avoid excessive casualties at almost any cost. The result was missed opportunties, lethargy, plumetting moral and, ultimately, total defeat.
And there are those who will argue that Monty's strategy in North Africa was the only one which was guaranteed to succeed, i.e. attritional battles against a numerically inferior foe aimed at his gradual, and total, annhilation. Certainly not pretty, but the success is unquestioned.

Churchill was probably on the right track strategically with the Gallipoli venture. Turkey and Austria were far more vulnerable than Germany in the long run.



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/1/2006 8:22:41 PM)

I agree about Turkey and Austria, but they weren't as much of a soft underbelly as was supposed. The opinion was that Turkey simply needed one swift kick and the whole rotten structure would collapse. Events proved otherwise of course. Even suffering through such horrible catastrophies as the fight against Russia in the Caucasus's and the grind throughout the Middle east, Turkey was able to hold out to the end. Austria as well was able to sustain the war effort after repeated drubbings by Russia and even Serbia, as well as the drain in Italy. It is amazing that either of these two countries could remain in the war as long as they did.

I think the comparison between the American Civil War and WWI are informative and appropriate. Here you had a much stronger North in all catagories of national strength, opposed to an agrarian and much weaker South. Yet it still required four years and massive casualties for the North to subdue the South. I believe the reasons for this are much the same reasons that WWI developed as it did. Most leaders, both political and military, expected a short war. Military leaders who had little or no experience cammanding such large masses of men. Advances in technology that made the battlefield much more lethal than anyone had previously experienced, thus requiring the attempt to adapt tactics to the new reality through bloody trial and error; and never really being able to overcome the difficulties. Combat finally evolving into trench fighting that more resembled siege operations than the expected Napoleonic battlefieds, in the case of Civil War generals, and Franco-Prussian War battlefields in the case of WWI generals, had expected. Finally ending only after a long attritional grinding down of the enemy through bloody battles and naval blockade.

The only real complaint that I would feel comfortable making against some leaders of WWI, is that they ignored the hints of the future through a disdain to study the American Civil War, Russo-Japanese War, and the Boer War and to take heed of some of the lessons that could have been learned from those experiences. It is the sad fact that military experience is a very fleeting commodity that without constant practice, is quickly lost, with the need to be learned again through bloody trial and error.

It will indeed be very interesting to see if we, with all of the benefits of hindsight, can achieve decisive results within four years. It is my opinion that if the game engine is modelled in a historicly accurate way, that victory will only be possible by having the last man standing with the last cartridge in his breech.



EUBanana -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/2/2006 9:57:25 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Arinvald

It will indeed be very interesting to see if we, with all of the benefits of hindsight, can achieve decisive results within four years. It is my opinion that if the game engine is modelled in a historicly accurate way, that victory will only be possible by having the last man standing with the last cartridge in his breech.


I am very curious about the game engine myself. Presumably it should in some way generally force you towards what actually happened. I notice looking at the maps that there isn't much behind the front lines, what would happen if the British did amphibious assaults on Wilhemshafen or something? IRL mines and torpedo boats were a serious worry so that wasn't a serious possibility, but it seems to me that aggressive attempts to outflank navally may well work if the drain at the front line is so great you don't have any troops minding the back door. Also depends on how quickly you can move forces around I guess.

And then there is the question of whether you might get Somme-like situations where you have to attack with attrition as a goal, to relieve pressure elsewhere.

I'm sure the developer(s) have these questions all answered but I'm very curious to see how it will be. It will presumably be quite different from most other war games, as the nature of the conflict was so different from the typical war game scenario.



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/3/2006 2:15:58 AM)

I agree, it should be very different than what most of us have experienced in computer wargames. No forty kilometer armor thrusts here I'm betting.[;)]

Jackie Fisher proposed shipping a British Army to the Baltic to either threaten the Northern German coast or land them in Russia to add their weight there, but of course the Western Front generals didn't want to release any troops from their commands for such "silly" business. Some naval leaders also didn't like the prospect of sending the Grand Fleet into the High Sea Fleat's own back yard. Jutland would seem to prove their worries justified.

That would be one major risk of a German Eastern strategy. If Britain still ended up joining the war early, even without a German attack on Belgium or advance into France, the Germans would be faced with a strong and mobile force that could threaten their coast. That or the British could run riot in the Mediteranean and make Gallipoli look like a minor skirmish. I think Turkey would not last long with a completely free British army.

I would also imagine that France would be forced to attack in the West in order to help take some pressure off of Russia, in the case of a German Eastern strategy. It will be very interesting to see how people deal with these issues.



EUBanana -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/3/2006 4:20:52 AM)

Well, presumably attrition will be more of a factor in strategy than in the typical wargame.  I can't think of many games out there where attrition is an express strategy per se, they are usually very maneuver focused - after all, its usually moving counters around on a map.  If this models static warfare, then presumably the counters won't be moving around on the map in this game very much, and it'll be more of a numbers game - bleeding the opponent and guessing which units are reinforced and which are weak, I guess?  Though the war did go through attritional and non-attritional stages, so even harder to model I guess.

I think one of the reasons I'm so interested in this title is that it will truly be, I hope, a breath of fresh air with vastly different gameplay from other games.  I'm used to how napoleonic/ACW war works in wargames.  And WW2.  This hopefully will be something else again.  [:D]

I suppose Gallipoli was an attempt to "outflank navally", so that was historically attempted without much success.  The Bulgarian "outflanking" in 1918 wasn't exactly the finest hour either, though it did get results in the end, but possibly that was just a part of the general collapse of the Central Powers? 



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/3/2006 6:58:28 AM)

I think the Western Front will be similar to what it was historicly. There is just no room to maneuver and the force density will break the teeth of any offensive. The Germans will probably have a fleeting chance very early on to cripple France, but if that fails, the front will quickly become immobile. The Italian front will probably be the same, but without even a slim chance of a breakout as it is both very restricted and has absolutely horrible terrain. That will leave the East as the only front with much hope at all of any maneuver and decisive result. I am guessing that most TE players will eagerly look toward Turkey as a tempting target, as opposed to bogging down on the Western Front.

I guess the key will be how the National Morale system works because national exhaustion seems to be the only way to knock a country out of the war. I don't think there will be any stunning conquests of maneuver, even in the East. The Research system should also be interesting. Should a nation go heavy into Chemical Warfare or Tanks? Those kind of decisions could possibly have a large influence on how a nation fares.

Finally, the Diplomatic efforts should be interesting. I wonder if it will even be possible for Germany to not drag America into the war, and if so, what are the costs to achieve this. No Unrestricted Submarine strategy at the cost of greater British production? I can't wait to learn more about the game.



Bossy573 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/3/2006 6:31:48 PM)

Hopefully it wont totally preclude some "what ifs." For example, it is easy to see in hindsight that had the Allies been better prepared to exploit the initial successes at Cambrai, the Germans might have been in serious trouble. We all know the shock value of tanks, theeir "correct" use, etc. How will that present knowledge be balanced against "current" circumstances?
Depending on how the game sets up, my first move as the Germans will be to go for broke exactly as Schliffen mapped it out. Be interesting to see how that would play out.



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/3/2006 7:12:15 PM)

That's why I want to know whether Germany starts the game at war with Belgium and already fully deployed in the West. In that case, I think Germany has little other choice than to at least try to knock France out early. Failing that, Germany could then go on the defense in the West and transfer troops East. Hopefully, there will be some leeway as to the German deployment and Germany doesn't start the game at war with Belgium. That would present the German player with a major decision at the start and really set the stage for the entire game. A lot would also depend on the chances that Britain would remain neutral for many months, absent a German drive in the West. I also wonder if any German success would influence British intervention. I imagine that if Germany goes East and really roughs up the Russians early, Britain will feel compelled to intervene as well. The first turn should really be a tense one.



Bossy573 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/3/2006 10:12:13 PM)

There should be a pure Schleiffen option, an Eastern option, a free set-up option, etc. There should also be an option for Italy to honor its treaty commitments and come in on the Central powers side, perhaps a scenario with its starting point at one of the Moroccan crises, etc. Seems these variables could really open up the strategic possibilities and allow some serious probing into alternative paths.
Easy for me to say I guess...... [;)]



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/4/2006 5:45:35 AM)

As long as there is a limited free setup, I will be happy.



Bossy573 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/4/2006 5:12:52 PM)

Makes you wish this game had the kind of input and feedback going on with World in Flames. The way that is being handled is just incredible.



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/4/2006 7:38:40 PM)

Yeah, hopefully we will start to hear some beta feedback to whet our appetites. I figure the beta has been underway for a month now.



Przemcio231 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/4/2006 7:50:45 PM)

Well Okinawa Bloodbath is simply explained... rember it was a small island and even without large nr of troops you could make a defensive line witch could not be flanked by other way then the naval landing...

During the Great War there was no flanking manover option in 1916 no more... but what the Brits did at Somme was stupid... Shelling German position's for Day's letting them know where the attack will take place... leaving them enough time to bring up the reinforcment... the only succesfoul breakthrought tactics were designed by the Germans at the end of the War Short but intensive barrge mixed with Gas Attack to disrupt the defenders... The Brits wasted the Golden oportunity as most of the German Army was occupied at Verdun.




EUBanana -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/4/2006 10:05:44 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Przemcio231

reinforcment... the only succesfoul breakthrought tactics were designed by the Germans at the end of the War Short but intensive barrge mixed with Gas Attack to disrupt the defenders...



Not at all. There was the massed tank attack for starters, that sure worked. And the Australians had their own ways, at Mont St Quentin the Aussies drove off a superior German force with neither tanks nor lots of artillery.



Przemcio231 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/4/2006 10:43:09 PM)

sorry i didn't make myslelf clear as i ment the options advible in 1916



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/5/2006 3:36:48 AM)

I think all sides were shocked when maneuver became impossible on the Western Front. It simply took time for each Army to figure out new offensive methods. Of course, it was a very costly learning curve.



Jutland13 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/5/2006 11:06:39 PM)

some quality for your top 5 can be found in the book VIMY by Pierre Burton. The Canadian contingent of 3 large divisions was kept together under General Curry. This Corp became the elite shock troops on the Western Front. The Germans constantly kept watch on their placement as it was an a general indication for an offensive. The Cdn corps laid out detailed movement plans down to the individual, very coordinated fire plans and detailed maps to the small units. This created a sense of initiative and understanding that was not accomplished by any of the other combatants. The Cdns initiated aggressive raiding patterns and countless other innovations. Read the book, it is an amazing story of a small force very capably led without whose accomplishments could have siginificantly impacted the war on the Western Front.



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/6/2006 3:26:26 AM)

There is no doubt that the Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders served Britain exceptionall well in both World Wars.



7th Somersets -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/6/2006 11:50:42 AM)

quote:

the only succesfoul breakthrought tactics were designed by the Germans at the end of the War


The whole point of the March offensive's failure is that there was not a breakthrough. As wilth all previous offensives on the Western front reserves were brought up that were able to contain the offensive without a proper breakthrough being achieved.

The difficulty of tactics in WW1 was not always the achievement of the destruction of the defensive lines - (consider the attacks near Montauban on 1st July 1916) - but the ability to then exploit the break in to the enemy lines by breaking through them.

The success of the Entente was to utilise a series of hammer blows in the 100 days leading up to the end of the war, repeatedly smashing the prepared defences. Even then, so far as I am aware, there was never a complete breakthrough.





Bossy573 -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/11/2006 12:49:13 AM)

It would be nice to get a little news as to how the testing is going. Between this and Battlefront, methinks I'll be set for a while.......



SMK-at-work -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/11/2006 5:41:59 AM)

I can tell you that the testing is still happening, but I think if I said anything more than that they'd have to kill me!! [:(][:(][X(]



sol_invictus -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/11/2006 6:37:18 AM)

Come on, make the ultimate sacrifice for the community. We will remember you always.[:'(]



SMK-at-work -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/11/2006 7:47:55 AM)

Hmm......let's see, drop you guys a crumb, get lots of kudos and not be able to play the game any more...or be a good boy and keep playing..........[&:][&:]  Decisions decisions....I'll have to think about this one over a game or 2.........[8D]



EUBanana -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/11/2006 12:03:23 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: 7th Somersets

The success of the Entente was to utilise a series of hammer blows in the 100 days leading up to the end of the war, repeatedly smashing the prepared defences. Even then, so far as I am aware, there was never a complete breakthrough.



Depends on how you define a breakthrough, really. At Amiens cavalry and armoured cars penetrated to the German rear and prevented them from rallying, and the tanks ripped a hole in the front about 10 miles (I think?) long. The hole was plugged eventually by the Germans but at great cost.

The whole front didn't collapse if thats what you mean, but still, that sort of mass collapse didn't generally happen in WW2 either.



vonkohlmann -> RE: Top Five of World War I (7/11/2006 12:58:54 PM)

Boelke has to be included as one of the great front line commanders. He literally wrote the book on fighter tactics. After leaving the General Staff, Falkenhaym proved an able commander in the East, applying his "let the enemy break itself against us then attack" concept on a smaller level.

The problem was that many potentially great leaders were denied positions because of their prudent defensive beliefs and limited advance tactics while those who were promoted espoused elan, the grand offensive, and always pushing forward with predictably horrendous results.



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