AGEOD Forums

Just curious to know, the basis of units in game-

For eg: i counted German Corps to be 100+; 102.. including cavalry.
counting 2*Corps you get 204 divisions. (Added colonials too). . did not add artillery or planes.
artillery- 20+= 42-44 divisions.

In War Germans raised 251 combat divisions and these were chronicled by allied intelligence esp. Americans in post war even published a large book about it. (Combat Performance- a very good summary book- PDF's available)

The Germans did this by-
Raising their pre war 50 Infantry and 1 Cavalry (Guard Cavalry)
Equal amount of 'shadow' or 1st line reservists divisions.
Then removing 3 battalions from each division to increase no: of divisions by 33% at one stroke.
Adding some landwehr, landsturm and volunteers to this list to get a further 33% increase.
and then diluting the divisions some more such that a 1914 corps was 45000 and a 1918 corps was 25000 or even lesser.
But huge amount of machine guns, field artillery, mortars, flame throwers, grenades, early sub-machine guns, carbines and heavy artillery added essentially tripling or quadrupling a divisions firepower.
This meant a 1918 division at half size still had more firepower than a 1913-1914 one though less morale.

The others did or tried to do this.

Americans never did this.
British started but did not complete the process.
Russians- inefficiency and lack of resources esp. Officers and NCOs crippled their efforts.
Italy- No Money, Will, to do it.
France- Came a close second and added those powerful Renault tanks though French morale had come dangerously close to sapping they recovered amazingly and didn't go down the Russian and Italian lines.
Austria- Tried some half measures, not so successfully.
Minors- Not possible.
Turkey- still relied on cavalry in 1918.

Just curious to know, the basis of units in game-...

I have written my take on this elsewhere in this forum so here's the "short" version of Random's opinions on the topic.

Designing any wargame requires compromise and merely plugging historical numbers into the OOB's will probably create all sorts of non-historical results. The WW1G - La Grande Guerre team used the boardgame as a basis for the computer game and I suspect that there was a desire to retain as much of the "flavour" of the former as was practical. Hence the awkward unit step reduction as an example since a computer is more than capable of analysing sub-components of game formations and extracting reasonable casualties and combat effects as is done in other AGEOD games and ground simulations like TOAW.

What the WW1G-LGG team did do was create a game where the effects are historically reasonable even if the numbers do not necessarily fit the records. One example is the way that the game handles the Corps, the principle combat formation of the Great War. In 1914 virtually all of the Corps of all the belligerents were composed of two Divisions. Some minor countries eschewed the Corps completely and commanded divisions through an Army HQ and of course once the battlefields of Europe were left behind there were often no formal Corps organizations at all. Also, as the war ran on Corps ceased to be composed of two Divisions and might have up to five under command particularly for a specific operation. The expanding scope of Corps command coincided with the internal reorganization of the Division as noted above where the goal was to spread the finite manpower pool across more units by decreasing the typical number of battalions from 12 to 9 while increasing the available firepower.

The game models this change by purchasing firepower upgrades. Since the smallest manoeuvre unit is the Corps, the relative differences between the armies remains throughout the war but the combination of the Trench CRT with the combat modifiers provided by the technology improvements produces a reasonable recreation of the system and the transition from the mobile warfare of the summer of 1914 to the entrenched stalemate later. It's important to remember that the organization and equipment of the deadlocked Divisions and Corps in the summer of 1915 was for all intents and purposes identical to that in place at the start of the war. Over time the Corps may acquire additional firepower improvements that may eventually restore some battlefield mobility as happened in the event but much is also dependent upon non-combat factors like National Will. So WW1G-LGG produces an effect that has a solid basis in the actual history without a great deal of added complexity.

Another issue is how the game handles Africa. The entire German colonial armed forces both white and coloured totalled less than 8000 all ranks in 1914; about 10% of the French colonial assets (less the three Divisions of XIX Army Corps in Algeria in 1914) and perhaps 8% of the British colonial forces not counting the white Dominions of Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In WW1G-LGG however, the German colonial garrisons are huge and individually far more powerful than their Entente counterparts in most cases.

How do we rationalize this?

In the first place we need to recognize that if the OOB was to be based on historical numbers, the German colonial garrisons would be far too small to be represented in the game. This would allow the Allies just to send single units into the German colonies that would fall automatically after X-number of turns according to the characteristics of the particular colony box. Then there's the nasty little fact that the German colonial forces did threaten Entente colonies in East Africa, a state of affairs that can hardly be recreated by non-existent units. One solution for this is those enormous German colonial garrison since they force an Allied Player to allocate a historically reasonable amount of force to deal with the German colonies. The system adapted for the game is far from perfect, in Stock these huge German forces can range throughout the world conquering the possessions of the Entente in a manner both militarily impossible and historically unreasonable. However, the tools are provided to place a lid on these and one can modify the game to ensure that the Kamarun Garrison no longer invades the Falkland's or the Qing Dao unit stays out of French Indochina. Ironically reigned in so that they cannot behave non-historically, the big German colonial army actually forces the Allies to act historically and actually tends to produce reasonable results.

All games need compromises in the design but a game based on producing a given effect will often prove more realistic (whatever that might mean) than one where the designers elected to just plug in historical numbers and hope for the best. In Commander: The Great War the designers used a different philosophy, creating entirely non-historical units (Garrison Corps to defend trench hexes) and support units like Railroad Guns and a Corps strength Belgian armoured car unit composed of 12-vehicles that fights like a 45,000 man Corps; units entirely irrelevant at the scale of the game. The WW1G-LGG team took a different path in how they abstracted the OOB's and military forces and I suspect that's one reason why it produces a far better recreation of the major combat aspects of its subject.

-C

agreed

very logical explanation.

Yes= EAST Africa cost SMUTS and company a whole lot of men 10 times the casualties of the entire size of the OstAfric Askari Korps.