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06 Maestro -> RE: Schlieffen Plan (1/11/2009 5:12:55 AM)
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I began this campaign in full knowledge that there would still be some bugs to work out in this game. I had hoped that fixes could all be applied as I proceeded, but that was not to be. The current state of the game is much better than in this current campaign so I’m ending this one in May ’16.
The AI was, as expected, not quite up to human skill levels, but still gave a good fight. It did throw away units in several battles and operations. In particular, the French in Belgium early in the game, and the Russians in a large scale attempted invasion of West Prussia (that cost the Russians 2 Armies). It did counter attack enough to make me somewhat leery of overextending CP forces. It did in fact make several moves and attacks on all fronts which forced me to withdraw. The current front in Poland is less favorable to the CP than the October screen shot due to a major attack by the Russians to retake Warsaw. I very nearly lost the German 10th Army and was forced into some attacks which I did not want to make.
In my next game I will make the AI more aggressive and will try the “give full time” to the AI. This should make it more challenging.
Overall, the game models several aspects of the Great War to my liking. The R&D, unit builds, supply and economy seem to be reasonable for such a game. I barely had begun to explore the various attributes to the commanding generals. The skill differences are of great importance. Few, if any, are good at all types of assignments. The diplomacy features are interesting, but I found that after the first 4 turns of the game, I could not affect anything with diplomats. The next time around, I will have a complete manual. The naval aspects of the game were not really tested in my game. This was by choice-I used events to make contact less likely so I could get away with a few bombardment missions against Great Britain.
I did learn a few lessons about long term planning for this war. The next time around I would build more artillery early in the game-both siege and field artillery. In this game I ended up with huge surpluses of ammo that could not possible be used with the units I had in the field. Another error on my part was focusing on building high quality infantry for the first year. I could easily have had many more infantry corps on the West Front in the summer of ’15 if I had chosen to build low quality units. This would have made RR repair much easier to effect and would have released elite units for the front. There were several turns in which I could not advance due to supply issues and even had to withdraw to avoid the possibility of a unit being withdrawn. With another 6 corps, I could have exploited some additional opportunities. A good balance of quality and quantity comes with practice.
Regarding CTD; I had one in Feb 1915, several in June/July 1915 after installing a patch-I thought I was going to have to quit, but then it all came together. There was one more during the next 6 turns someplace-but I had long since learned to save every turn. With the exception of the occasional CTD the game ran smooth. It would use 1 to 1.5 gig of RAM (in addition to my ˝ gig of normal system use). One problem which did not entirely go away was the cursor occasionally getting stuck on a province for a second-rather irritating, but rare.
Bottom line is that I like this game and will certainly play it many more times in the future. Mutiplayer games should really be challenging.
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