I found myself numerous times on the loosing end in a defensive battle where I was outnumbered 1,5:1. I would have thought in ww1 era, attackers needed more favorable ratio to achieve a breakthrough.
Most generals have better offensive stats, so maybe better defensive stats for models or higher trench effect should be implemented?
Ace wrote:I found myself numerous times on the loosing end in a defensive battle where I was outnumbered 1,5:1. I would have thought in ww1 era, attackers needed more favorable ratio to achieve a breakthrough.
Most generals have better offensive stats, so maybe better defensive stats for models or higher trench effect should be implemented?
That seem's about right, you of course need semi-resonable numbers or exceptional defensive terrain ( to decrease the Combat Width ).
Offensive's in ww1 were abysmal as it is much much easyier to defend a location then it is to take one as such an increase in defensive capabilities would need to be balanced out by increasing the sheer amount of men each nation could through around as otherwise the battle's would lead to Horrific losses that could not be replaced by 15/16.
Entrenchment level makes a big difference. Each level of trench greatly increases the chance the defender will stick around, esp in the first turn.
In my mod, I further enhanced this by making trenches an actual terrain type (which also benefits from reducing the frontage allowed), but in vanilla, it uses a lot of the default AGEOD settings (though trench reduction of retreat % is much higher).
This was somewhat necessary to avoid having situations in 1914 where the Germans would get stonewalled by the Entente b/c they couldn't force a retreat.
In my mod, I further enhanced this by making trenches an actual terrain type (which also benefits from reducing the frontage allowed), but in vanilla, it uses a lot of the default AGEOD settings (though trench reduction of retreat % is much higher).
This was somewhat necessary to avoid having situations in 1914 where the Germans would get stonewalled by the Entente b/c they couldn't force a retreat.
Ace wrote:I agree about not having static lines, but it wasn't as erratic as this game can portrait. Combination of too much rail points and the same artillery stats for both defense and offense makes it impossible to defend against concentrated assault, be it from the Russians or from the Germans.
I disagree, Having the right Men in the right spot with the right command can turn almost any attack.
Picture Austria-Hungary's attacks against the Serbians.
Maybe - Artillery "counter battery/defensive" fires need a big boost (maybe 1.5 times boost) and unit weights esp. of Artillery needs to increase heavily, maybe keep the men at same weight but double the weight of all artillery guns (inc. light ones).
In, MP i do agree with ACE, on the Western Front, battles are still "fluid" and not so static and on the Eastern front, they are skewed due to HUGE stacks being moved around a lot on rails. If only the men get transported (minus the guns), you will have enormous increase in "body bags" which will force you - to stop doing this tactic.
In, MP i do agree with ACE, on the Western Front, battles are still "fluid" and not so static and on the Eastern front, they are skewed due to HUGE stacks being moved around a lot on rails. If only the men get transported (minus the guns), you will have enormous increase in "body bags" which will force you - to stop doing this tactic.
Rascals, would you live forever? - Frederick the Great.
- recorded tooAltaris wrote:So, Ace, if only the weight of artillery/munitions/etc, not troops, was increased, do you think it would have the desired effect? The downside of increasing troop weight is defensive reinforcements would be tougher to bring to threatened sectors as well.
Increasing weight could be an improvement as from Experience it's rather Easy to rail around massive armies especially as the CP.
I don't think defense is bugged at all. Just a few minutes ago this pop up screen appeared[ATTACH]37789[/ATTACH]. One very important thing I noticed is the entrenchement earlier mentioned, if youre in a structure, terrain, your stance and of course combat power. Now this last thing is a real tricky one. During the battle showed in this image I had an overall combat power of approximately of 1000-1500 (all armies and corpses combined). However I had an entrechement level of 5 with stance defending at all costs. In this battle I faced a Brittish stack with 2500 combat power (and later on some french stacks with 4500 combat power (!)). I thought the end of times was near. Luckily I managed to let every stack bleed deerly and of course I also took some massive casualties. But if you watch the casualty ratio for every side then it's obvious I dealt a massive blow to the entente. In this campaign my objectives were located in Russia so I could heavily entrench my troops on the west.
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@Salarmax
I think you are a new player, so i will not berate you with boring page long rebuttals but will provide a few pointers-
1. You are defending using the German Army against Anglo-French troops, the Germans have more experience at the start and are also slightly better than the French in 1914 and vastly better than the Russians.
2. You have more Artillery than your enemy, you have a fort, a river line (which needs to be crossed by your enemy giving him a penalty), further your artillery is Heavy and Medium artillery (a decent part of it, perhaps 25%) which itself gives you an advantage.
3. the AI attacked with inferiority in planes, guns, men and horses which is "STUPID" in terms of WW1 battles. You have 20% more men and 6% more guns (also better quality or more powerful guns), you have a strong fortress (giving you entrenchments) and the enemy has penalties (river crossing).
That is why you won.
In general- When players attack, they do the following-
1. Ensure preponderance of artillery esp. Medium and Heavies.
2. At least 1.5:1 numerical superiority in manpower.
3. Avoid River crossings (if possible) and avoid attacking Fortresses (unless absolutely necessary).
P.S.: ACE who wrote above is the best player in PBEM of TEAW and a few others who wrote are experienced BETAS, ALTARIS is the originator of the game's idea and has his own MOD, i am 100% sure they are not complaining in vain.
I think you are a new player, so i will not berate you with boring page long rebuttals but will provide a few pointers-
1. You are defending using the German Army against Anglo-French troops, the Germans have more experience at the start and are also slightly better than the French in 1914 and vastly better than the Russians.
2. You have more Artillery than your enemy, you have a fort, a river line (which needs to be crossed by your enemy giving him a penalty), further your artillery is Heavy and Medium artillery (a decent part of it, perhaps 25%) which itself gives you an advantage.
3. the AI attacked with inferiority in planes, guns, men and horses which is "STUPID" in terms of WW1 battles. You have 20% more men and 6% more guns (also better quality or more powerful guns), you have a strong fortress (giving you entrenchments) and the enemy has penalties (river crossing).
That is why you won.
In general- When players attack, they do the following-
1. Ensure preponderance of artillery esp. Medium and Heavies.
2. At least 1.5:1 numerical superiority in manpower.
3. Avoid River crossings (if possible) and avoid attacking Fortresses (unless absolutely necessary).
P.S.: ACE who wrote above is the best player in PBEM of TEAW and a few others who wrote are experienced BETAS, ALTARIS is the originator of the game's idea and has his own MOD, i am 100% sure they are not complaining in vain.
Rascals, would you live forever? - Frederick the Great.
Shri wrote:@Salarmax
I think you are a new player, so i will not berate you with boring page long rebuttals but will provide a few pointers-
1. You are defending using the German Army against Anglo-French troops, the Germans have more experience at the start and are also slightly better than the French in 1914 and vastly better than the Russians.
2. You have more Artillery than your enemy, you have a fort, a river line (which needs to be crossed by your enemy giving him a penalty), further your artillery is Heavy and Medium artillery (a decent part of it, perhaps 25%) which itself gives you an advantage.
3. the AI attacked with inferiority in planes, guns, men and horses which is "STUPID" in terms of WW1 battles. You have 20% more men and 6% more guns (also better quality or more powerful guns), you have a strong fortress (giving you entrenchments) and the enemy has penalties (river crossing).
That is why you won.
In general- When players attack, they do the following-
1. Ensure preponderance of artillery esp. Medium and Heavies.
2. At least 1.5:1 numerical superiority in manpower.
3. Avoid River crossings (if possible) and avoid attacking Fortresses (unless absolutely necessary).
P.S.: ACE who wrote above is the best player in PBEM of TEAW and a few others who wrote are experienced BETAS, ALTARIS is the originator of the game's idea and has his own MOD, i am 100% sure they are not complaining in vain.
LOL, you're right. But there are defenitely several doomstacks with a combat power of 4500. Mine is only (all armies and corpses combined) 1500 maximum. Then how is this possible [ATTACH]37793[/ATTACH][ATTACH]37794[/ATTACH][ATTACH]37795[/ATTACH][ATTACH]37796[/ATTACH] can you explain what happened here?
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@Salarmax
I will take your "BAIT" this time.
Let me start by classifying those battles into - B1 (Normal), B2 and B3 (very easy) and B4 (easy).
Now-
1. B1 - You were defending with favourable terrain modifiers (reduces frontage) and with a Fortress and had more Artillery (of the Medium and Heavy kind, not total). Also you would have had good dig-in bonus and probably your enemy attacked across the river (or part of his troops did).
2. B2 and B3 are the very easy ones - You have 2X the men and GUNS and it was a foolish Hara-Kiri by the AI.
3. In B4, you have numerical equality, a 25% shortage in terms of guns but compensated by the fact that your troops are fighting on a fortress, they are dug-in and probably have more medium and heavy artillery. Also your enemy definitely crossed a river and faced a penalty in terms of attack.
I think you need to post me battles, where the enemy had 1.5 times numerical superiority at-least when attacking, if you read on the Western Front, not a single ALLIED attack with less than 2X superiority in men and guns even came close to success, for all major successes 3X superiority was needed and that was achieved only in late 1918 on a local level with overall 2X superiority.
P.S.: I think you may perhaps need to do some reading on WW1 in General -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Frontiers - - start with that (but that is just for summary)
You can next progress to this - http://www.amazon.com/The-Battle-Frontiers-Ardennes-Campaigns/dp/075245255X (some political aspects of Zuber may be crap but the account of the German 4th and 5th armies in the 4 days of the fighting in the ardennes is overall very good, BTW- a young chap named Rommel was part of the 4th army and wrote his "infantry attacks" book based on these experiences and his later experiences in WW1).
and then this-
http://www.amazon.com/German-Army-Somme-Jack-Sheldon/dp/1844155137/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=51Hei%2BCRunL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR109%2C160_&refRID=0FN9PPRFP8HF6W0280BY
(shows the various battles of the Somme, with emphasis on the 1916 one- primarily a trench breakthrough battle which failed tactically, operationally and strategically though it succeeded on a GRAND STRATEGIC sense despite more than 2:1 numerical superiority in overall terms, at the start it had more than 3:1 superiority).
a summary of the same - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme.
I will take your "BAIT" this time.
Let me start by classifying those battles into - B1 (Normal), B2 and B3 (very easy) and B4 (easy).
Now-
1. B1 - You were defending with favourable terrain modifiers (reduces frontage) and with a Fortress and had more Artillery (of the Medium and Heavy kind, not total). Also you would have had good dig-in bonus and probably your enemy attacked across the river (or part of his troops did).
2. B2 and B3 are the very easy ones - You have 2X the men and GUNS and it was a foolish Hara-Kiri by the AI.
3. In B4, you have numerical equality, a 25% shortage in terms of guns but compensated by the fact that your troops are fighting on a fortress, they are dug-in and probably have more medium and heavy artillery. Also your enemy definitely crossed a river and faced a penalty in terms of attack.
I think you need to post me battles, where the enemy had 1.5 times numerical superiority at-least when attacking, if you read on the Western Front, not a single ALLIED attack with less than 2X superiority in men and guns even came close to success, for all major successes 3X superiority was needed and that was achieved only in late 1918 on a local level with overall 2X superiority.
P.S.: I think you may perhaps need to do some reading on WW1 in General -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Frontiers - - start with that (but that is just for summary)
You can next progress to this - http://www.amazon.com/The-Battle-Frontiers-Ardennes-Campaigns/dp/075245255X (some political aspects of Zuber may be crap but the account of the German 4th and 5th armies in the 4 days of the fighting in the ardennes is overall very good, BTW- a young chap named Rommel was part of the 4th army and wrote his "infantry attacks" book based on these experiences and his later experiences in WW1).
and then this-
http://www.amazon.com/German-Army-Somme-Jack-Sheldon/dp/1844155137/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=51Hei%2BCRunL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR109%2C160_&refRID=0FN9PPRFP8HF6W0280BY
(shows the various battles of the Somme, with emphasis on the 1916 one- primarily a trench breakthrough battle which failed tactically, operationally and strategically though it succeeded on a GRAND STRATEGIC sense despite more than 2:1 numerical superiority in overall terms, at the start it had more than 3:1 superiority).
a summary of the same - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme.
Rascals, would you live forever? - Frederick the Great.
@Shri.
I fully understand your point, you want the battle result to be the closest possible than historical ones.
I will not argue with your historical analysis.
But do not miss that it is a game and that the game have to be kept interesting. Game have to be fun.
Players have far more insight that WW1 old generals. They will not, like WW1 generals, commit themselves to create a "perfect offensive" and fail with heavy looses.
If offensive is too hard, players will not attack, not attack at all. Consequences may be heavy. A boring western front may be one of them. Or a russian player that will always have to face full attention of germany because it is pointless to go west. etc.
Trying to match too cloosely history may be counter productive with the fun of the game.
I'am currently playing a PBEM too as germany, i will post some feedback on my offensives eventually.
I fully understand your point, you want the battle result to be the closest possible than historical ones.
I will not argue with your historical analysis.
But do not miss that it is a game and that the game have to be kept interesting. Game have to be fun.
Players have far more insight that WW1 old generals. They will not, like WW1 generals, commit themselves to create a "perfect offensive" and fail with heavy looses.
If offensive is too hard, players will not attack, not attack at all. Consequences may be heavy. A boring western front may be one of them. Or a russian player that will always have to face full attention of germany because it is pointless to go west. etc.
Trying to match too cloosely history may be counter productive with the fun of the game.
I'am currently playing a PBEM too as germany, i will post some feedback on my offensives eventually.
@Stelteck
My friend, in fact the opposite is true in PBEM (i have played over a dozen including a massive 7 player one and a mega 5 player one) besides several "short ones" in the great mod created by BEN/Altaris.
Your great ally is - HOUSE RULES
Usually i do the following-
1. No naval landings in non-mined areas of the Ottomans. (Stops the Gamey knockout of Ottomans in late 1915 by a British Clusterf**k).
2. No units behind enemy lines without a leader (stops the useless rail cutting strategy aka SWISS CHEESE strategy).
3. British Allied units (Indian, Canada, Anzac and African) shall not start movement pre- November 1914 and Territorial British before late October 1914 - this allows the Germans to advance in 1914 and dig-in. (very essential for the Germans to survive).
4. A Russian player has to attack East Prussia in strength in September 1914 (minimum of 4 corps) - to activate Hindenburg .. otherwise gamey players do not attack Germany ever in the whole game. This leads to a very weak German Eastern front.
5. If i play Russia - i tell my Western Allied partner that he should make minimum 1 attack in the Western Front in 1915 and 1916 with 0.5 million troops (approx) and 2 in 1917. - - Russia needs all the help possible to survive otherwise the Germans crush them.
6. Play with "Traffic Penalties on".
All this and some more, forces the players to go anti--gamey and play a good game. Gamey tactics will finish off the CP by early 1916 itself which makes it boring for the CP player. In such non-Gamey set-ups the CP has a good chance to win.
And, i had great fun in all my PBEM games though at times there were "heated e-mail exchanges with my supposedly allied factions".
P.S.:- Altaris MOD has greatly reduced the shipping capabilities of the players (made it historical) such that no major naval invasions (aka D-Day in 1915/1916) is possible. This makes the CP a good candidate to play and increases their victory chances.
My friend, in fact the opposite is true in PBEM (i have played over a dozen including a massive 7 player one and a mega 5 player one) besides several "short ones" in the great mod created by BEN/Altaris.
Your great ally is - HOUSE RULES
Usually i do the following-
1. No naval landings in non-mined areas of the Ottomans. (Stops the Gamey knockout of Ottomans in late 1915 by a British Clusterf**k).
2. No units behind enemy lines without a leader (stops the useless rail cutting strategy aka SWISS CHEESE strategy).
3. British Allied units (Indian, Canada, Anzac and African) shall not start movement pre- November 1914 and Territorial British before late October 1914 - this allows the Germans to advance in 1914 and dig-in. (very essential for the Germans to survive).
4. A Russian player has to attack East Prussia in strength in September 1914 (minimum of 4 corps) - to activate Hindenburg .. otherwise gamey players do not attack Germany ever in the whole game. This leads to a very weak German Eastern front.
5. If i play Russia - i tell my Western Allied partner that he should make minimum 1 attack in the Western Front in 1915 and 1916 with 0.5 million troops (approx) and 2 in 1917. - - Russia needs all the help possible to survive otherwise the Germans crush them.
6. Play with "Traffic Penalties on".
All this and some more, forces the players to go anti--gamey and play a good game. Gamey tactics will finish off the CP by early 1916 itself which makes it boring for the CP player. In such non-Gamey set-ups the CP has a good chance to win.
And, i had great fun in all my PBEM games though at times there were "heated e-mail exchanges with my supposedly allied factions".
P.S.:- Altaris MOD has greatly reduced the shipping capabilities of the players (made it historical) such that no major naval invasions (aka D-Day in 1915/1916) is possible. This makes the CP a good candidate to play and increases their victory chances.
Rascals, would you live forever? - Frederick the Great.
My own prepared offensive on western front against humain player :
Defense was in normal mode so he probably ran a little too quickly, but results seems not bad for me.
Eventually, it was a little too easy to bring so much troops in surprise attack due to railroad, so i think increasing a little the weight of troops is probably the right approach.
Another point, i'am not sûre the ammunition production is balanced. This turn i still got +86 ammunitions in my stocks. (I only constructed around +30 ammunitions prod since the start of the game).
4 armies where use in this offensive, and the game tell me that the sum of all ammunition consumption in one battle is around 100 for all of them together.
It is quite low. Even 5 time this amount would not have surprised me. I should not have constructed any ammunition factory at all.
Defense was in normal mode so he probably ran a little too quickly, but results seems not bad for me.
Eventually, it was a little too easy to bring so much troops in surprise attack due to railroad, so i think increasing a little the weight of troops is probably the right approach.
Another point, i'am not sûre the ammunition production is balanced. This turn i still got +86 ammunitions in my stocks. (I only constructed around +30 ammunitions prod since the start of the game).
4 armies where use in this offensive, and the game tell me that the sum of all ammunition consumption in one battle is around 100 for all of them together.
It is quite low. Even 5 time this amount would not have surprised me. I should not have constructed any ammunition factory at all.
Ammo consumption is a lot higher than it displays. For EAW, ammo consumption happens per round but the display says per battle. It's misleading unfortunately. But you are using quite a bit more ammo in battles lasting a few rounds than the display registers.
I don't find your battle results to be unrealistic at all, apart from perhaps the # of troops involved. You have a 7:1 advantage in artillery and took a higher proportion of casualties. On defense, it's important to have heavy artillery in key spots you want to hold. Artillery does a lot of cohesion damage, and can really ruin an attacker's day.
I don't find your battle results to be unrealistic at all, apart from perhaps the # of troops involved. You have a 7:1 advantage in artillery and took a higher proportion of casualties. On defense, it's important to have heavy artillery in key spots you want to hold. Artillery does a lot of cohesion damage, and can really ruin an attacker's day.
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