Altaris wrote:What was the date?
I believe early December 1917. The CP defeat was hastened by several factors:
- CP morale hit for Austro-Hungarian surrender
- CP morale hit for Ottoman surrender
- CP additional morale hit when WE occupied empty Constantinople after the Ottoman surrender
- WE morale boost when US entered war
- WE morale boost and French war-weariness boost for Clemenceau event
Morale changes from fighting were balanced out, aside from a massacre of isolated Bulgarians at the end that put the WE over the top. NM balance went from 50 to 24 pro-CP down to defeat in about four turns. At the end, it didn't matter how many troops the Germans had at Paris, they were not going to win a battle with 5 NM vs. the 60 WE NM.
The great error of the CP was in not playing the Lenin event when it was available early in 1917. I had thought I would save the -10 NM hit since I thought Kornilov would become available and allow a war-weariness victory to potentially happen. But Kornilov never fired, through about 10-15 turns all the way to the end of the game. By the time the CP reconsidered using Lenin, the Russians were down to less than 10 NM anyway so I decided to wait. Those extra tens turns put the Hapsburgs and Ottomans into the red. The Germans had a successful push on Paris going, but then their allies collapsed around them and with it their NM.
I see the dynamic now. CP simply HAS to play Lenin ASAP, then hope they can take Paris before the war-weariness of their allies causes collapses. If they fail to do so, the massive NM shifts that occur when their allies surrender pretty much seal their fate, regardless of what Germany has accomplished elsewhere.
My only design questions:
- it seems like the CP doesn't get a commensurate boost from EE surrender as the WE gets from the CP allies going under. When EE surrendered, multiple countries went out (Russia, Serbia, Romania) but there was only one shift, which I recall was a NM loss for the WE but no NM gain for the CP. When the Hapsburgs and Ottomans each went out, I suppose since they are considered majors while Serbia and Romania are not, the WE gets two separate shifts, one for each country.
- the Clemenceau shift seems huge - in our game France ended up with among the lowest war-weariness, despite fighting since the war began and just having had its mutiny; aside from the early war Atlantic-crossing NM boost, the CP really seem to get very little positive events, and of course they get hit hard with the big NM loss when Franz Joseph dies;
- the late war WE America entry boost also seems to basically be a "you lose" to the CP, since it becomes near-impossible to win battles when you have only 1/4 of the NM; I think between Clemenceau and Lafayette, the CP needs to have a 20 NM edge when they hit in order to keep going historically, which is very tough given that the EE surrender doesn't seem to give that much impact
WE did a great job with offensives, managing to take and hold about 5-6 of the Western German major cities for a year (until Hindenberg came over). The Italians took the Trento. There were also major WE offensives that kept the Balkans aflame while taking and holding Jerusalem in the Middle East. The EE meanwhile was very aggressive until the very end, helping take pressure off their allies.
So while I think the CP loss is attributable to player decisions - great WE play while CP erred in not playing Lenin right away - I do think some thinking needs to be given to the big NM shift events for both sides and how they affect game balance. In particular, I would question that the WE should get two separate major NM shifts for the Ottomans, one for surrender, and one for taking an empty Constantinople.
I am also still wondering about Kornilov. It just seems like horrendous luck for it not to fire for so long. I keep wondering if it has to do with Lenin needing to be played first.
I did notice in your ultimate mod you changed some of the objective cities that causes NM hits. So I imagine you have been giving some thought here. Perhaps there needs to be some more positive events or more resiliency before 1918. I can see the rapid collapse happening, since that is what happened historically. But it seems to have not happened so fast. I think part of it is the vanilla EAW makes it fairly easy to take ground - I understand Ultimate makes it harder to advance Napoleon-style. Whether that is more or less fun I guess is up to player taste.
All in all great game though. I just wished the huge NM shifts hadn't brought it to such a rapid end, since the Americans were entering and it looked to be a very interesting 1918.