World War I with more territories?

[Schulz]

@iratoric

Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania are purposefully undervalued so they don't make Austria too powerful once Austria captures them. However, I will make sure it is very difficult to conquer Serbia and hold Galicia at the same time until Bulgaria joins Austria.

The game will use a one battle per combat per round system, with defenders being heavily favored. Here's roughly how I think the units should look:

Bedouin — 2/2/2, 3 IPC (Hejaz only)

Light Infantry — 1/3/1, 4 IPC (Russia and Ottoman Empire only)

Infantry — 2/4/1, 6 IPC

Light Artillery — 2/3/1, 6 IPC, +1 attack to Infantry and Cavalry (Russia and Ottoman Empire only)

Artillery — 3/4/1, 8 IPC, +1 attack to Infantry and Cavalry

Cavalry — 2/3/2, 8 IPC

Gas — 4/0/2, 6 IPC (suicidal), can attack on its own

Fighter — 2/3/2, 12 IPC, +1 attack/defense to unlimited Artillery, can attack ships, 2 air attack/defense

Zeppelin — 3/3/4, 28 IPC, +1 attack/defense to unlimited Artillery, can bomb cities (2–12 damage), can attack ships, 1 air attack/defense

Transport — no attack/defense, is not taken as a casualty, carries 2 units, 12 IPC

Submarine — 2/2/2, no stealth, 12 IPC, cannot be attacked by air

Cruiser — 3/3/3, 18 IPC, has AA

Battleship — 4/4/2, repairs in docks, shore bombardment, 24 IPC, has AA

[iratoric]

@Schulz I assume that this is attack/defense/movement? It definitely looks like attacking on land will be hard, which gives a good impression of WWI. A few points:

• Why does artillery have 2 movement points while light artillery has only 1? I would expect the opposite.
• I feel like this could do with one more sea unit besides cruiser/battleship. Maybe a torpedo boat or a minelayer sub?

[Schulz]

@iratoric Oops, I did miswrite that. Artillery has 1 movement as well.

There will already be 8 historical and permanent sea mine zones. I'm mostly concerned about how to represent the Battle of the Atlantic. One idea is that 6 sea zones could each have a 1/6 chance to spawn a German submarine every round. But playing that kind of whack-a-mole game as the Entente sounds frustrating.

The laziest solution is simply giving the Germans an unhistorically large number of submarines in the Atlantic from the beginning.

[Schulz]

I think the Trento-Milan route should be impassable. The Tunis-Ghadames route doesn't make much sense, but it is necessary to give the Ottoman-controlled Senussis another target besides Italian Libya.

[iratoric]

@Schulz I think it would be neat to use the mountain territory effect in Trento/Milan instead of making it totally impassable. You could restrict units like tanks from entering, give defenders a bonus, even have a mountaineer unit which performs better on those tiles.

There’s also movement cost for territory effects which could slow down cavalry.

[Schulz]

I think it's necessary to block the Milan–Trento route to make it both more historical and to make the front lines even narrower than the Western Front.

The mountains favored the Austrian defenders, but Italy was able to threaten both the Trieste and Trento routes simultaneously from one central position, which was their advantage. Austria won't have a factory in Trieste (but the Germans will have one in Munich). The front line will still encourage the Austrians to take Udine for a better defensive position, which was historical.

Should the Turin–Lyon route be impassable as well? Maybe @cernel could help us with this?

[Schulz]

Here's the new impassable mountains.

[iratoric]

@Schulz The Carpathians should not pass to the north of Galats, they don’t do that in any map I’ve seen

[Schulz]

Done.

[iratoric]

@Schulz Looks good. I had an interesting idea. I remember how you wanted to have Russia get more of a debuff every round (like -10 pts, -20 pts). What if you tied that into whether or not the Allies control Gallipoli/Constantinople? Because a large part of the reason for that attack was getting relief to Russia. So every round that the Ottomans control the Turkish straits, the worse the blockade gets for Russia.

[Schulz]

@iratoric I was thinking the same.

Russia's nominal income is huge at 165 IPC (excluding Serbia). It is the penalty that makes them weaker than Germany and even weaker than France later. If the Allies capture the Dardanelles and Constantinople, the income debuffs Russia receives should periodically decrease and eventually be removed realistically. But at that point, the game would already be over.

Round 1 (20 Aug14): -60
Round 2 (10 Dec 14): -62
Round 3 (30 Mar 15):-65
Round 4 (20 July 15): -70
Round 5 (10 Nov 15): -75
Round 6 (28 Feb 16):-80
Round 7 (20 Jun 16):-85
Round 8 (10 Oct 16): -90
Round 9 (30 Jan 17): -95
Round 10 (20 May 17): -105
Round 11: (10 Sep 17)-120
Round 12 (30 Dec 1917): -150

That debuff continuing even if the Allies succeed does not make sense either. So the game should end with an Allied victory even if they control only one capital.

The US will join in round 9 with a similar debuff to represent their mobilization process. Instead, their debuff will decrease gradually and be removed totally.

Round 9: -90
Round 10:-80
Round 11: -65
Round 12: -50
Round 13: -35
Round 14: -25
Round 15: -15
Round 16: -10
Round 17: -5
Round 18: 0

The game is supposed to last 15 to 18 rounds.

[iratoric]

@Schulz Most of the things you are saying make sense, but are you saying the Allies should instantly win if they take Constantinople? Because I don’t agree with that one. For example, Germany could be about to take Paris or Petrograd on the next turn which would be a similarly (if not more) devastating blow to the Allies.

[Schulz]

@iratoric The war should continue, but the issue is that I do not know how to code it.

It is doable if I know someone will show me how to code it.