New Map: World War 1 End of Empires

Schulz

GDP is insufficient when “war” is taken into account. Because they can be easily skewed or manipulated.

Germany is shown as 4.rd strongest country with 1914 borders in here which should have been the strongest. Germany had the the best land and second best naval forces even in 1917.
British economy was mostly focused on services(insurance, shipping, foreign investments) while Germany concentrated more on raw industrial production. Another disadvantages of Britain are they had to deal with insurgencies on its colonies and expenese of protecting shipping routes. (They had to invest way more to protect their shipping routes than Germany had to invest to interdict). So the British Empire was definitely weaker than Germany militarily.
France and Russia were equal but I think France might be slighly stronger.
Turkey should worth at least 2.
Italy should be 6 or 7 and Libya should be 0.
Russia is way too strong. Its income should be similar to France realistically.
USA had almost no army in 1917 even in 1918 it has very small army compared to other major combatants and they had rely on mostly British and French equipments in 1918. Considering war torn European nations it is still questionable for me to make USA even stronger than the British Empire militarily considering the time frame.

My other suggestions;

Shrink the smallMap as much as possible to get slimmest right bar.
Change the color of USA.
Make combat phase before purchase.
Change the order of unit purchase list: (Like making infantry, artillery and cavalry first rather aaGun, armour, artillery)
Use v3 rule transports.
Get rid off the A&A capital rules. (Not losing remaning incomes and mobilizatin abilities if Capitals are lost)
Turn Russian units to the left side.
Use these better flags:

Bonus if there will be Communists:

iratoric

@cernel Thank you for your comments! I wanted to create a balanced game where the Central Powers can knock Russia out of the war without entirely conquering her, then focus on France and capture Paris. It is impractical for the Central Powers to conquer the whole map in this game, but they do not have to in order to win, they only have to get Paris.

For approximating the GDP, I used the 1914 borders (plus some convoy zones to make naval warfare interesting). Germany with her 1914 borders + the 2 convoy zones = 24 PUs, while Russia with her 1914 borders = 25 PUs. Britain does not have her colonies' GDP factored in as they are too far away and are not on the map, and I do not want Britain to be too strong as this would unbalance the game.

You make some good points about the lack of a Belgium/Alsace connection, I can redraw that part of the map so those two territories are connected. I recently redrew a lot of Russia to make it feel like the large country that it is. Portugal can be made English if you like, after all, Britain did request that they confiscate German ships, bringing her into the war.

I am not so sure what to do about Veneto, because I do not want to make it so small that you can not fit units in there. I was considering adding "stalemate" to this game where only one round of combat occurs and the units stay in the territory.

I think the Armour is useful on the attack (not so much on the defense). Maybe pairing it with artillery should boost its attack by one? For fighters I was considering having them give a bonus to artillery, since they can act as spotters for artillery.

For battleships, I agree that they should take longer to place. I will look to see how I can do this in the XML. I know that the United States AI will buy a battleship but Germany AI will usually buy a lot of land units (makes sense).

Germany will typically have to keep a few land units in the conquered Russian lands anyways because Britain will try to naval invade them there if they don't. A resistance to occupation mechanic could be cool but it could also be really annoying. Tell me what you think.

Dalmatia was definitely one of the Italian war aims to capture but calling it Croatia might be more accurate. I will rename the Serbia territory North Macedonia.

iratoric

@Schulz

If you look at the setup you will see that Germany does have the most land forces and their naval forces are on par with Britain. If you are trying to say that Germany should have a higher production than everyone else, I don't think that they should because then they will demolish France very quickly.
In this game, Britain's colonies are not included on the map so their industrial production is not added. This could simulate insurgencies in their colonies. Also, a lot of Britain's production is in convoy zones which German submarines can capture. This could simulate the expense of protecting shipping routes.
Maybe in terms of military skill France was stronger, but Russia had a larger army.
I may do this, I was considering making the Ottomans a little stronger.
If Italy is 6 or 7 PUs then they will get trounced by Austria-Hungary. I might move Libya's production into Italy proper, but it does provide some incentive to defend North Africa.
Russia is not as strong as you think, they will get quickly pushed back by Germany and Austria-Hungary. Plus the Russian Revolution means that the Central Powers can knock them out of the war entirely. Russia's army was larger than France's historically.
The U.S. Army is tiny at the start if you look at the setup, but after a lot of turns it will become a formidable force. German submarines can slow them down by capturing their convoy centers.
Thank you for those flags!

I might turn the Russian land units to the left side, but the Russian navy units should face the same direction as the rest of the Entente or you will see a weird effect where the ships are perpendicular to each other. What color do you want USA to be?

Schulz

@iratoric

Still making Germany even weaker than Russia (considering 1914 borders) is incredibly unrealistic. Not sure if France would be doomed to fall in this case maybe you could prevent it making the game more defense oriented or giving France some defense specialist units.
I'am fairly certain Russia was not stronger than France. Russia was heavily dependent on foreign investments (especially French one) and grain exports (which deprived when the Ottomans joined the war). France was more industrialized, more stable, had better leadership, communication, navy, and innovative capabilities.
I mean its fine if you wold prefer to keep Ottomans at 3. But its not realistic giving Anatolia 1.
I have no strong preference. Maybe Purple.

iratoric

@Schulz

Germany with 1914 borders has 20 PUs on land and 4 PUs in convoy centers, for a total of 24 PUs. Russia with 1914 borders has 25 PUs. So it is a difference of just 1 PU. However, you do make a good point; a lot of Russia's economy was focused on subsistence farming which could not be converted to military power. Meanwhile, Germany's economy was focused a lot more on the military. As such, I might increase Germany's production by a few PUs.
It depends on what you mean by "stronger". If you mean industrialization, stability, leadership, etc. then France was definitely stronger. This is reflected in the fact that Russia has a lot of low value territories and it is pretty easy to send Russia into Revolution. However, if we are just talking about raw resources then Russia definitely had more. Technically Russia's army was even larger than Germany's! However, this was mostly an illusion as Russia could not effectively supply all those troops. I was considering making Russia's units have lower attack values but figured it would be offensive, essentially saying that their soldiers are somehow "lesser". So I just gave them fewer units. A better solution might be to add a movement cost to units; I believe the Civil War map did this. That way you would have to supply units to be able to use them.

Cernel

@iratoric About the "players" colours and the colourization of their units, I suggest you take a look at the "Over The Top" map. I wonder why the Austria-Hungary territories and units are yellow? Makes me think it's the Holy Roman Empire. The colours used by the "Over the Top" map are more in line with the colours of the uniforms of the common soldiers at the time, and, pretty much, @GenerationKILL has set some skin standards, with that map, which can hardly be improved by any other World War 1 game, so I'm not saying everyone should just use exactly the same colours, but it is a good point of reference, preferably referring to the displayed territory colours as modified by the map details (not as defined in the "map" properties).

Schulz

@iratoric

Once I had tried realistically rating major WW1 combatants considering, GDP, war making capabilities, steel productions, electric comsuptions, vulnerabilities, stability, leadership etc... I had came up with these numbers;

Germany: 11
Austria: 4
Ottoman: 1

British Empire: 9
France: 6
Russia: 6
Italy: 2

If we could take into account the fact that the Central Powers were able to fight against basically the rest of world for 4 years while taking 4 enemy capitals and knocking out of one of major entente member. These ratings seems realistic to me. If Germany was weaker than both the British Empire and Russia in 1914, there is absolutely no way the war could last 4 years, the Central Powers would be decisively defeated within 1 year.

Also some realistic aspects are harder to take into account like Austria's terrain advantage over Italy that's one of the reason why Italy couldn't even advance Austria significantly despite outnumbering Austria 2-2.5 to 1.

RogerCooper

I have done a fair amount of research on the economics of the world wars, especially with regards to databases, the most useful being the Maddison Database and the Correlates of War. It is surprisingly difficult to relate GDP figures to actual military capacity and production. (There are also quality problems with both databases, such as abrupt, inexplicable changes between adjacent years, and not agreeing with each other).

In both world wars, Germany & Russia had roughly similar GDP's, but in WW1 the Germans beat the Russians in every battle with basically a quarter of their resources, while in WW2 the Russians stopped the Germans when the Germans used most of their resources to fight the Russians. The Russian mobilization was very inefficient in WW1, while German mobilization was somewhat inefficient in WW2.

An interesting example is the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945. The GDP's were similar and the Chinese armies were larger (but less well equipped). But a combination of Japanese Air/Naval superiority and Chinese inefficiency meant that Chinese could only fight a defensive war and were unable to hold their major coastal cities.

To really replicate 1917 situation, Russia needs to have minimal offensive power. Russia had basically lost its offensive capability after the ultimate failure of the 1916 Brusilov offensive. (My grandfather, fighting for Austria was captured then). They can have lots of units, but little attack capability. This puts the Germans in their historical dilemma, of committing large forces to conquer Russia or focusing on the West.

Historically, the German leadership, tantalized by the goal of Paris, chose wrong. Had they stood on the defense in 1918 and focused attention on turning Russia into a series of pro-German client states, they probably would have achieved stalemate in the West and a negotiated peace leaving the Germans dominant in Eastern Europe. The limited efforts made to create client states were fairly effective (these countries are still around). An orderly purchase of agricultural products from the Ukraine would have averted the food shortages that sapped German home front morale in 1918.

By the way, Schulz's production values are fairly similar to the ones used by Kirk Uhlmann his excellent game The Lamps are Going Out.

Germany: 12
Austria: 3
Turkey: 1

Great Britain: 7
France: 4
Italy: 1
Russia: 4

iratoric

@cernel I do like the color scheme "Over the Top" uses, so I will change the colors and use those instead. The main thing I don't like about that map is that Austria-Hungary looks kind of weird. By map details, are you referring to the map relief? I think the map relief uses a semi-transparent layer which would look better than the opaque colors I am currently using.

I changed the border between Alsace and Belgium so that they are connected now:

This definitely solidifies Germany's hold on Belgium because they can attack into Belgium from two territories now.

@Schulz I let the Hard AI play against itself with the new Belgium-Alsace connection and got this result:
Centrals Win.png
As you can see, the Central Powers took Paris by round 12, winning the game. So it is definitely possible for the Central Powers to win.

Here are some tips on how to win as the Central Powers:

Use your submarines to capture convoy centers
When warships try to attack your submarines, either submerge or retreat, you will do more damage by attacking convoys
The Entente as a whole is stronger than the Central Powers so you will have to practice defeat in detail
Focus on knocking Russia out of the war first, defend against France and Italy
When Russia makes peace, you will get a boost to your income from the conquered lands
Use your navy to prevent Britain from naval invading you, plus a few troops along the coastline
Move your units to the west and defeat Italy and France
If you can hold Paris to the end of the round you will win

Schulz

@iratoric I didn't mean to discuss the game balance since I haven't played the map yet. I had just intented to share my realistic ratings of nations but all off them are negligible of course.

I have different approach for colors of nations. I think it is wiser to prioritizing distinctive colour rather than using their uniform colours (it is problematic because there will be 3 brown, 2 green and 2 blue nations). For example Russian uniforms obviously weren't red in WWII (neither German ones were pure grey) but red matchs just perfectly for Russia and creates more contrast.

There is of course no historical reason to use yellow for Austria I guess it is used because yellow is one of the primary colour and has to be used somewhere. But I can say I don't like the this shade of yellow. Too bright for me I would suggest to make it slighly more orange-ish if you want to keep it yellow.

You could maybe like my Japan's colour.

iratoric

@schulz
The only problem with using your Japan color is it looks close to the Impassable color used for Switzerland, Denmark, etc. I do like your suggestion that Austria-Hungary be orange-yellow, so I decided to test it out:
Austria-Hungary Color Change.png
I think this looks much better! Tell me what you think.

Schulz

Yes it is better now. (though I would still suggest to making it orange-ish, you could check NAP FFA 8 players and see the Swedish color. It is really distinguishable colour.)

Also I would advice adding a bit grey-ish tone to Russian pure white when they left the war. I've used this color for impassables.

adsız2.png

iratoric

@schulz
I changed neutral Russia's color to light grey, now they look like this:
Russia Neutral Color.png
With the current mechanic Russia becomes neutral but not impassable, so German units do not get "stuck" in neutral territory and are able to exit Russia.

iratoric

@Schulz
By the way, I was considering giving Belarus to Germany, however it seems that this territory may have remained Russian under the treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Cernel

@iratoric I think the most questionable ownership on the map is Greece being Italian. Of course, a game has to make approximations, and it may also be good to do so, yet, also on the account that the game aims at realism to some extent, I mostly wonder if Italy is the best choice amongst all existent players (instead of, say, France).

About this, Bulgaria is certainly a player one may consider worth (or not worth) being a player, maybe more so than Greece.

Anyways, I also support your general approach to keep the complexity of the game fairly low. You are quite exceptional here (as most map-makers make big and complex games).

Schulz

@iratoric

Congress Poland and Baltics were the only areas which the Germans were able to establish client states hence turning them Grey is correct when Russia left the war.

Ukraine became independent state but had grain agreement with Germany and Austria in exchange of military protection from the Bolsheviks. Belarus was in similar situation. If Ukraine becomes German, then Beularus could be too.

Finland became independent not a client state.

Southern Caucasus was very complicated.

RogerCooper

@schulz German troops took Helsinki in March 1918. I think we can count Finland as another German client state.

Schulz

@rogercooper I've though because the Germans considered the actions of red Finns backed by the Bolsheviks is a violation of Brest-Litovsk.

I'am not sure if it would be correct to turn Finland grey just because German troops stationed there. As far as I know Finland wasn't a client state (please correct me if there are evidences against this.)

iratoric

@schulz I think I will follow your suggestion to make Belarus German as well because it appears that there was a serious attempt to form an independent Belarusian state on the territory controlled by the German Imperial Army: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_People's_Republic

Here is a 1918 New York Times article discussing the newly independent Ukraine:
Dismembered_Russia_—Some_Fragments(NYT_article,_Feb._17,_1918).png

I think Germany should get income from these newly independent states because the German Army occupied them and exploited their resources. In terms of gameplay, it will give the Germans incentive to knock Russia out of the war because they will increase their income without having to deal with the Russian army anymore.

iratoric

@Cernel
The only reason I chose Italy is because their proximity to Greece makes it easier for them to move more troops there. However, I will change Greece to French ownership as the Allied Army of the Orient which operated in Greece and Macedonia was headed by France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Army_of_the_Orient
I will change the units in Greece to be a multinational force as Britain and France were fighting in Greece alongside Italy.