The Belle Game Sans Merci -- a pitiful attempt at a WW1Gold Russia AAR

[JasonPratt]

I recently compared AGEOD's World War One Gold to a librarian who looks like Rachel Weiz (see: The Mummy), who, happening to research World War 1 one day, fell in love with it, and fell in love so hard she decided not only to research ALL THE WORLD WAR ONE but to cosplay as World War 1; whereupon she designed an extensive costume that not only incorporated ALL THE WORLD WAR ONE but made it supernaturally gorgeous and artistic. Then having done so, she insists on rubbing it up against you because she knows you'll like it, too.

Sure it's cumbersome and a bit janky in execution, and maybe somewhat insane on how it applies some of the details, and more than a little frightening in its intensity and dedication to its topic, but if you're turned on at all by the topic... well... 

"Look, see this? You can make it... do things."

"Uh."

"Fascinating, isn't it?"

"...the... uh, what... what exactly does this do?"

"Try. And see what happens." {sideways smile with flirty eyes} "You know you want to try, don't yAAOUCH, NOT LIKE THAT!" {scowls}

"I'msorryI'm sorry, it's just, I don't understand--!"

"Try again." {mysterious stare} "You must. I insist."

I've also joked before that the game (especially the map) was designed by fairies attempting to drive men mad, and while I mean that as a caution I mean it as a compliment, too.

So, let's see if I can give some idea why I mean that as a caution and as a compliment.

But I have to warn you: I am definitely going to fail. Mere human attempts at description can only be pitiful. Because at best, all I can do is plod along afterward, somewhat in a daze of amazement and bemused annoyance, while the Belle Dame Sans Merci glides dancing before, behind, and around me, teasing her utter regality, insisting that you appreciate her efforts -- which if they aren't for you, then they aren't for you, and that's your loss.

Did I mention she's French? Because she's French.




See?! You know mere words will be useless to the experience of her curves and lines and trees and hills and the colored ink and things and ideas...

But all I have are words. And some photos I managed to snap of her.

So, to the mundane.

Long ago, before I got an Imageshack account, I tried my hand at making an Absolute Newbie tutorial for AGEOD's World War One: Gold, based largely on the (slightly screwy) tutorial(s) in the game itself, but with a very different order of presentation about the portions of the game.

I'll be repurposing parts of my original AbNewb tutorial as I go. And I'll be using Randomizer's compilation of community patching, found at the Matrix forum for WW1G, which can be downloaded from Mediafire here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/khh3nvbug7e4y29/Randomizer+Mods+for+WWICE.zip

(Be aware that at present, MFire will try to launch pop-up and pop-under ads, and who knows what other nefarious gobbledegook.)

There is no installer, and simply dropping obvious folders in various places will either accomplish nothing or could wipe out important files; so I was very careful about moving files from the archive to various game folders. This wasn't difficult, but I did want to call attention to how "manual" the process is.

I picked up a copy of WW1 Centennial before legal issues (which I won't go into) forced its retreat from Steam (or from being public on Steam anyway). Randomizer's collected community patch works with this version of the game, too, and for clarity's sake I'm mentioning that this is how I'll be playing the game. But I'll be calling the game WW1G.

[bbmike]

Question. Is the Randomizer compilation of community patching thingy necessary for the game? Should I not play the game unless it's installed?

[JasonPratt]

You can play the non-1914 West Front scenarios without it, but it provides some important naval balances and activation fixes for the Grand Campaign (and for any 1914 WF scenarios set around the Belgium area, which there aren't many of I think.)

You can still play the game without those fixes, but, well, here's the list of fixes -- a lot of them are quite important, and not only for the Naval side of the game:

- All navies have been fixed, spelling errors and non-existent ships have been corrected and deleted respectively. Modifiers have been edited to remove the uber-High Seas Fleet effects and a CP Player or AI should now only gain transient control of the North Sea with considerable difficulty.

- Austria can build U-Boats for the tonnage war.

- New leaders have been added to the major countries. These are available using the Appoint New Leader political action during an Interphase.

- There are additional ships in the shipyards and a few more heavy bombers for Britain and Germany to build starting in 1918.

- Both scenarios use the Stronger Belgium mod; an additional Belgian Corps at Genth and a minor fortress in Namur.

- The Russians have a small naval squadron in the Pacific.

- German colonial forces are locked in place until July 1916. This does no affect any reinforcements received through the Blockade Runner event.

- A redeployment phase is inserted before every 2-month turn.

- Naval control missions now require only three ship units so that minor navies can play too.

- The Germans should not be able to conduct naval invasions outside of the Baltic Sea. Their naval capacity is limited to two-Corps only, starting in 1916.

- Four missing German Corps and one missing French Corps on the Western Front now deploy as intended. There is an error in both Gold and CE that prevent them from initially appearing in the game.

- German siege and heavy artillery can now keep up with the infantry Corps.

- The Battleships to Turkey event fires as intended.

- Reinforcement units may be placed in any owned/controlled area and not just in towns/cities.

- Russian HQ's are slightly better at allocating reserves.

- Luxembourg is now German controlled. This prevents some nasty supply issues that can occur in Belgium if Liege does not fall.

- The Otranto Channel is no longer Austrian controlled.

[Barthheart]

Jason.... how the hell do you have all this time to write up so many AAR's!  :o

I want to know where you got yer time machine...... 

[JasonPratt]

1.) Clearly I have no life. (And no wife. But I repeat myself.)

2.) I type fast.

3.) I compose (or compost) things in the back of my head while working on other things.

[Barthheart]

Hmmmm... still seems kinda shifty to me....

[JasonPratt]

Well, it isn't like my other two AARs have been going anywhere fast recently FOR WHATEVER REASONS.  >:D

[Barthheart]

Well, it isn't like my other two AARs have been going anywhere fast recently FOR WHATEVER REASONS.  >:D

:D

[JasonPratt]

PRE-WAR AUGUST 1914: Warplan Phase: Getting To A Warplan At All

I'll be playing as Russia against the AI on the 4-player Grand Campaign. That means France will be played by the AI as my ally. (I told you she's French, while sadly I am only Russian at best...) Germany and Austria-Hungary will be independent team partners played by the AI.

All other nations in the game will be doing nothing except responding to our actions. That includes Turkey, which could in theory join me or France, or stay neutral, but will probably join Germany or AussyHun instead. If a neutral joins a player, that player will take over managing the neutral country's war effort including points of its economy and research. Which isn't realistic of course, but this is a boardgame.

Russia for example starts before the war with Serbia already on our side, and I can manage Serbia at any time by left-clicking on any of their troops or territories. Serbia doesn't get to have a pre-war plan or anything like that, unfortunately; which also means I can't shuffle their troops around in various ways before the war starts.

I'll go over the neutral nations in a subsequent post for the Diplomacy phase of this turn. Each turn represents a month or two or three months (mainly depending on the season or how far along the war has gone historically), but each turn has a number of sub-turns called phases where each player gets a turn playing that phase. There are even some unofficial phase-turns in the game! -- one of which I'm about to mention.

One slightly annoying design flaw (out of several still remaining) -- at least for someone working on an AAR -- is that the message log is lost by being reset between reloads. I didn't know this, and so didn't take archival screenshots of a few things that happened before the start of the Warplan phase of this turn. But as I recall, the French chose to complain to the British about plans to send a battleship or two to Turkey; and Germany chose to lend Turkey a mound of gold, or maybe just sent the gold there for safekeeping (not sure from the 'newspaper' report). Each of those players (both AI in this case) would have gotten an alert that a historical event choice triggered at the start of this turn, and then would have had to choose between two (or more?) options about how to proceed, each with effects to economy, diplomacy, where battleships are stationed, etc.

These were not the same as their warplans, nor their secondary warplan strategies, which came next after I unpaused the game. Or rather Germany's did; I haven't gotten a notice of France's warplan. I think I only heard from Germany because one of the characteristics of that particular warplan is that I will partially detect it. Germany will be going with the Moltke plan or some variation of it, where their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Armies are transferred to their East Front -- on our border, in other words. What the Austrians are going to do, and whether we'll detect it, I don't know yet.

I'm staying away from the map so far, because the map is gorgeous -- I mean gorgeous in the sense that it was designed by fairies to compete with Cthulhu in driving mortals mad. Which I mean as a compliment, but it can be... daunting... for those not yet used to it.

I sprang an example of that dauntingness in my introductory post already, so you know whereof I speak.

I'll only show part of it now, the safest possible part of it, in order to give you a brief look at the settings. (I'll be running the game with all the bling settings on.)




That doesn't look so intimidating, does it?

See the little minimap down in the right hand corner? And the red square in the minimap? That shows where I'm looking. At maximum zoom.

Why does Siberia look like a desert?? (Aside from it being in many places technically a desert, I mean, but not that color??) Well, it doesn't, because we aren't looking at "Siberia". We're looking at a physical corner of the map, which is designed like a super-large game board. Siberia does exist, in two off-map areas, Western and Eastern Siberia.




You can make out 13 or 14 counties of Donetsk on the left side of that screenshot. This is at maximum zoom, and that many counties can fit into that small a portion of the map at maximum zoom. Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing, but I wish there were more than three zoom levels.

The instructions call those hexes -- they don't look like it but they're standard map hexes -- by a couple of more general names which could just as easily apply to large areas, so I prefer to call them counties or territories. Those make up part of the Donetsk "region", and nations are usually made up of multiple regions. Regions are important mainly because capturing all counties in a region will give extra bonuses to that player and add extra problems to anyone originally holding all or part of that region at the start of the game -- typically reducing the National Will of the one(s) who lost the region. Which can go back and forth, of course.

National Will is not exactly the score of the game (those are Victory Points, although taking a region and important counties will score those, too), but NW directly affects how long a nation stays in the game. When it drops low enough, that nation is out of the game at best. In Russia's case it means the start of internal revolutions and civil war -- whether that means I'm out of the game or not depends on other factors.

So think of National Will as hit points. The more you have, the more damage you can take as a nation. Whichever nations (or factions, from diplomacy) survive to the end of the game, the one who has more Victory Points wins.

National Will leads topically to talking about Warplans. Each of the four major players gets one Warplan phase at the start of a Grand Campaign. As Russia, I go last -- meaning if I don't know France's and Austria's warplans yet, I won't (until maybe after the war starts). I did hear something about Germany's main warplan; and in a minute I'll talk about what kind of difference that makes for my choices. (I'm not playing Randomizer's "historical" setup which locks the players (AI or not) into taking the historical options; so each player is still free to take any of several warplan options.)

As a reminder, before any players took turns choosing warplans, the game triggered two historical choices, one for France and one for Germany. These occur at the start of each Grand Campaign, and had I been playing 2-player then as the Entente I would have had France's choice. WW1G will trigger a large set of event-choices in progression at the start of turns, and could trigger any of a different large set based on circumstances (and maybe a bit of randomization) as the game goes on.

Back to the Warplans, which is why this phase exists at all. Each main strategy, and each secondary strategy, not only affects how units start on the map, but also affect starting National Will scores (sometimes for other players, too! -- I'm probably going to get a boost in National Will thanks to Germany redeploying extra armies to our border); and can also affect the number of Events a player will draw, and how many the player can keep, later in the game's beginning (sometimes for other players, too, again, generally adding more Event options for them).

So for example, if I want the highest base level of starting National Will (not counting affects from secondary strategies, other players' strategic choices, or maybe Events I keep and play), and the highest base level of Event cards I can draw and choose to keep, then I should choose the Grand Duke strategy, which also happens to be the historical strategy: launch a pre-emptive two-prong invasion of an important but limited area of Germany, during the pre-Phase while I'm still not finished mobilizing. This will also tend to shuffle more Russian armies onto the German front for follow-up offensives.

The other major Russian grand strategy options are:

* The Nicholas Plan -- the tsar modifies the Grand-Duke plan by having 1st and 2nd Armies operating near each other instead of on opposite sides of the initial target of Koeningsburg. (I'm not sure whether they're together south or north of the target area, though.)

These plans are inherently insane, by the way, because the Germans are vastly much better fighters than I am at the moment. A surprise attack against Batman when you aren't fully prepared yet, will only annoy Batman into fighting you when you both are less prepared. (Note: not talking about WW1 batmen.)

* The Berlin Plan -- Russia skips the pre-August possibility of attack, and waits until more of our Armies reach the German front, with the thrust aiming for Berlin. This gets more troops to the front line before going into action, and doesn't fool around with a special thrust at K'burg. This is the most solidly traditional attack plan. It has two main drawbacks: the German player will automatically detect this plan (he has a chance of that for the other plans anyway, reducible by a secondary strategy), and assaulting the Germans by non-surprise with more troops still involves assaulting the Germans -- except now with no surprise and with more Germans already on the way.

* The Rasputin Plan -- the basic defensive plan. Don't assault anyone, let them come to us. We get to fight defensively, with our full strength gathered, and the Germs and Huns get to fight in increasingly bad supply situations. On the other hand, they get to land the first punches, including first choices on how to stack up on the attack -- assuming they decide to attack. Maybe they don't, maybe we sit on the border and glare. (Or Germany does, while the Aussi-Huns try their luck spoiling our attention first.)

* The Czar Plan -- line up to defend against the Germans but assault the Hungarians. (Am I thinking of the wrong guy for the "Nicholas Plan"?? ??? ) This plan tries to take some pressure off Serbia, and picks a fight with the less competent of the Central Power team. On the other hand, they're still better fighters than us, and they don't have to worry (yet) about a two-front fight. My tests at running a variation of this plan in Darkest Hour always met with disaster. But Gold is a different game.

We know the Germs have already parked three armies on our front, on top of whoever is already there. Even though we can still choose to move first for this Pre-August turn, they're there and will be able to move in a coordinated way, whereas I don't think they'll be trying to launch their own surprise attack. Moreover, those three armies would have otherwise gone (as historically) to support the other four armies (4th through 7th) on the Western Front. This move signals that they're willing to fight a slower war on the West, maybe without trying to go through Belgium, and that they'll be devoting more reinforcement corps and support chits our way than toward the West. They're giving up any real strategy of getting to Paris this year (though luck might still open the way). In fact they're literally giving away initiative in the West to France until October at the earliest.

I'm going to say that solves our first choice for us: they're a lot more competent than us already, and whether they mean to attack us or only bulk up the defense, they're bulking up against us. Attacking them or weakening our defense up there is not a good idea. The Berlin plan would concentrate more troops on that side of the front, but would also require our first moves to be attacks into what would not only be a nominally stronger defense but (because we'd be starting operations well into August) after they get to move against us first!

The Czar Plan, attacking into Austria instead of into Germany, although kind of attractive to me, still weakens our defense against a bulked up Germany.

Rasputin for the win. If it comes to that, there's a reason why a defensive muddy crud in Russia came to be called the Rasputista, isn't there? ;)

This starts us with the minimum base National Will, 29, but I expect that'll be boosted by Germany at least. We'll get to draw three extra Events, and to keep one. Germany also will get to draw and keep +3 and +1 extra Events. But then the choices of each of the Powers is likely to grant us some extras, too.

Next up: no, I'm not done with the Warplan Phase yet! Got to think about secondary strategies (if any), and what being able to choose from random Events even means...

[JasonPratt]

PRE-WAR AUGUST 1914: Warplan Phase: Secondary Strategies and the Utter Dang Dregs of Being Russia

Each of the Russian Grand Strategies allows the same choice of secondary strategies, as far as I can tell from flip-scanning comparison. I can choose one, two, or none; but there is no good reason to choose none.

On the other hand, since some of these things affect events, now is a good time to mention that as Russia I will almost surely suck the hind end of random and even unwanted events no matter what happens.

Here's how that works. Some events are scripted in the game to always occur; some (I think) are scripted to occur under certain circumstances; but others are parceled out on cards. There are a discreet number of these cards, I don't know for sure how many, but let's say 20 as a reasonable guess.

After I tell the game what primary and (if any) secondary strategies I'm choosing, and I advance to the next phase of this turn, the game will reckon up all effects to various National Wills and Event Draw/keeps, and then announce to each player any public Warplans and secondary strategies that were chosen (although not any secret results of even some public plans -- the CPs might know if I'm shuffling my Generals around, but not who where at first).

Then France will get first random draw of some number from the 20 card deck, and will get to keep a number. Then Germany will get to randomly draw some number from the remaining cards not drawn and chosen by France (which could include cards France drew but didn't choose to keep), and keep some number.

Then Austria.

Then last, me.

That means it doesn't matter if I can draw up to 20 cards and keep 20. I'll draw from the remaining cards in the stack. If that's three, that's three cards, even if I could have drawn 17 -- I can only draw 17 if for some reason 17 remain in the deck; and I'll keep however many from that stack my strategies say I'm allowed to keep, but obviously no more than however many remained to draw. If I can keep 6 cards, but only 3 cards remained to draw, then I can only keep those 3 cards (if I have enough draws to draw them -- it's possible to lose draws but to keep keeps, so to speak. Theoretically I could draw no cards but keep 6, which would be worthless of course.)

As a practical matter, there will almost certainly be no more than 3 or 4 cards remaining in the deck by the time I get to the draw. So any choice of combined strategy that ends with me in me drawing more than 3 or 4 cards is a total waste. Keeping cards, maybe -- although I'll be keeping cards almost certainly rejected by other players, maybe more than once: do I really want Austria's sloppy leftovers?? Well, I don't know.

It gets worse, or anyway more crazy, because some of the cards grant bonuses that anyone can use, and some of the cards trigger historical events that only one or a limited number of nations can use.

So I could get three cards that, for example, would give me a random number of extra munitions, a random number of extra diplomats, and a major bonus to using the fog of war in my favor for whatever turn I play it on. (Enemies can't see as far or clearly, and I can see farther or more clearly.)

Or, I could get three cards that, for example, give Germany a bonus to researching its shocktroops, give France and England a bonus to researching its tanks, and give Austria an extra artillery card on its Russian front. That doesn't mean I have to play them -- better for me to have the Austria and Germany cards than for either of them to have them, so I can guarantee they don't get that help -- but none of those are going to help me directly. I can play the card to help France and England research tanks quicker, which helps me indirectly, but that's all; and even then, it won't go into effect any earlier than whenever tank research naturally unlocks.

All right, what secondary strategies are even available to me?

* Radio Messages -- a counter-intelligence ploy with false radio broadcasts, nullifies the German 1914 radio interception advantage; but at the cost of most of my event draws (-2) and giving them more event draws (+3)! Also a touch off my NW (-1). I'm pretty sure this is the worst strategy in the group.

* Initiative -- sacrifices my base event choice (I only draw one card), and adds 2 to Aus-Hun NW, to give me +2 to my initiative in September. Since I'm choosing to be on the defense at first, this seems doubtful.

* Artillery -- costs 2 NW and my base event draw, and adds NW and event draws to Germany, and for what? +2 MUN (keeping one artillery brigade in the fight two rounds longer somewhere early in the war, or two brigades one round longer) and an extra artillery brigade, plus negating Russia's first-turn arty debuff. A very temporary and small early gain with a lot of cost involved.

* Prepare Serbia for War -- costs my base event draw (but not my keep), and adds NW and Event draws for Aus-Hun; but Serbia gets to start with all the combat chits it already has in the reinforcement pipeline. Granted, they may be weak troops (or maybe not -- Serbia has some butt-kicking elite and veteran corps on the ground to start with!), but a thoughtful cost for starting with however-many extra corps on the ground (presumably more than one). Naturally, this would tend to work better with a Czar plan -- which I'm not choosing.

* Reaction Bonus -- only costs most of my base event draw (I can draw one to keep), to give me a +2 to my reaction rolls for one turn, in September 1914, two turns from now (depending on what the Centrals do here in the Pre-August turn once we get to the moving-shooting phase). A very temporary bonus, but the cost is relatively low, and it gives me an increased chance for two free turns that month (once against Germany, once against Austria) for my Grand HQ Army (wherever it is) during my opponent(s)' own turn(s)! Reactions can be very useful. But the bonus doesn't guarantee even one reaction, and it only occurs for one turn (Sept 1914).

* Volunteers and Munitions -- sacrifices my base event draws (but doesn't sacrifice keeping any events, in case the Central Powers add me any), to adds a few Munitions (MUN) and Reinforcement Points (RP). These are spent during battles to help with punching the opponent better (munitions) and staying in the fight longer (RP). This can help touch up the first five or six battles, at a pretty cheap cost.

* Generals -- I sacrifice drawing and keeping all my base events (-3/-1) and -1 NW, to be able to shuffle my generals around secretly before the war starts. My generals aren't uniformly great and don't uniformly suck, so this can be a good idea. While the enemy will learn who went where by September, the important thing is that I can make permanent improvements to some armies. And make permanent debuffs to others, but I might be able to select less important armies for the debuffs. I may still be able to do this anyway except for some cost, however.

* Cavalry Shock -- sacrifices all (three of) my base event draws, to improve all my cavalry permanently. That seems suspiciously cheap for such a widespread and long-term effect; but on the other hand, I don't really know what it involves. I utterly failed to find any information on it in any of the manuals, or on the internet.

* Events -- I sacrifice 5 NW for +6/+2 Events. Depending on what events are pooped out at the end for Russia, this could be nice -- but that +6 is a fantasy, except so far as it may help offset a loss of events from picking some other strategy.

* Flowers on the Guns -- I sacrifice a secondary strategy for a +5 in NW and +3 Events draw (but not in keeping more Events). This is the only strategy that costs me nothing other than the strategy pick itself. It's also why I would be foolish to choose no secondary strategy: I would be throwing away hit points and future options for keeping something I can never use again anyway. On the other hand, as Russia, the extra event draw might be useless, except to offset what event draws I may be losing by another secondary strategy choice.

I've sorted these in an ascending order of my (absolute newbie) judgment of importance, except for the two main Event strategies which I'm putting last just to keep them in mind.

(I'll add here as an aside /reminder, that the designers regard "Flowers on the Guns", which is available to all players, to be the sole secondary historical option chosen by all four 'players' in real life. Anything else, or not choosing this, would be unhistorical; playing a "historical" warplan setup would lock me into only choosing that plus the Grand-Duke plan.)

The simplest and maybe most cost-effect pair would seem to be "Flowers on my Cavalry" (so to speak): I pay nothing for a permanent early bonus to numerous corps (namely my cavalry), and for a +5 to my National Will. I'll already be able to keep 1 card of the dregs; when Germany goes with the Moltke plan I'll be able to keep 2 cards; and who knows, maybe Austria's plan will let me keep all three-ish of whatever's leftover.

A more complex permanent bonus mix would be to go with a "Generals to Horse" mix (so to speak), sacrificing one NW and all or almost all my picks of whatever cards are leftover (which isn't much of a sacrifice) in order to get the two permanent early bonuses of cavalry buff and free starter general shuffling -- I can put my best generals on the strongest armies, or on the armies most exposed to danger. Maybe also on my GrandHQ (which may or may not be my strongest stack at first, I don't know -- I'll be able to change which HQ gets to be the prime one later in October.)

Another simple but more semi-permanent bonus mix would be to go with a "Cavalry Volunteer" mix (so to speak) where I lose no National Will, and lose no picks from events (only most or all of my event draws), but get my permanent cavalry bonus plus some extra reinforcements and munitions for helping buff up my first fights. No muss with trying to decide where to apply the strategy as with the general shuffling: the temporary extra help gets assigned quite effectively where it's most needed (the first few corps that have trouble surviving a fight) automatically.

If I had more confidence that I would be able to intelligently shuffle my generals around, especially given that the User Interface for doing so is likely to be sprinkled with the laughter of goblins, I'd go with "Generals to Horse". But "Cavalry Volunteer" gets me two benefits I won't have to guess about how and when to best apply, at no cost to my National Will, also at no benefit to my opponents in NW or Events, and because I'm Russia the combination probably won't make my ultimate Event dregs more dreggy than they were already, at best, going to be.

Whew! Almost ready to end this dang phase!

The last thing to try (after making sure my secondary strategies are selected), is to go ahead and assign money to research tech. Russian tech options are bleh, especially in 1914 -- I'll not only have to wait a few years, but wait until someone else succeeds in researching some things like tanks and stormtroopers before I can even try to research them for myself! But I can dang well research light machine guns. So I do.

When exactly I can spend money on other factors I don't know -- or even when assigning money to this will go into effect (probably at the end of my whole turn, not these "phase" turns, so that I'll have an option to adjust before August really begins) -- but light machine guns should at least help my air force (it's an air tech), and if the description is at all accurate to the game, it should help my land corps, too.

So I end my warplan phase.

And then I discover that every time I've been reloading the game, the game has been recalc'ing other nations' war plans. It has been saving my choices (if I've clicked any choices and saved the game), but not theirs.

Consequently, this:




Now, I don't think the game changes its warplans based on reading what I've saved! -- I have noticed in reloading the game several times (while working on this AAR) that sometimes unpausing the game after the reload throws up the Moltke plan announcement again, and sometimes it doesn't. That time I happen to remember it didn't show the Moltke plan -- which gets shown, remember, because one of its characteristics is that I partially detect it before making my warplan decisions. Why? Because on this reload Germany had chosen a different plan, namely the "Kronprinz Plan".

I don't know all the details, but the apparent gist is that all seven of Germany's first armies will deploy on the Western Front, instead of sending three of them here instead. Germany's initiative will be on the Western Front, not here -- except that France will be playing an event to give them an initiative bonus on the first turn. But (as the screenie shows), Germany has chosen to play a more diplomatic opening game by not invading Belgium.

Presumably the other 'players' get notes about what plans I've chosen, none of which were especially secret, although whether the AI can take my choices into subsequent account like a human player, who knows? Germany's warplan means I might have some chance at striking on the offensive now, even though I didn't array my arriving armies on an axis (pardon the pun) to push for Berlin (or anywhere else).

France chose Warplan XIII, which allows them to keep their initial "Shock" character but with some modifications -- I don't know what those "prudential" modifications are (I'm not familiar with all the other players' warplan options), but France normally gets strong bonuses to attack, and higher than normal friendly casualties, throughout 1914. My guess is that they sacrificed something to help offset those higher casualties.

I also get to see the secondary strategies for each player; and France chose what I would call an Event Cascade: Events and Flowers on the Guns. That's a good idea since France gets first pick of the Event cards!

Germany's secondary options involve activating one general early and moving another (Moltke) around.

Austria chooses Plan Prinz which scatters five of its armies fairly evenly on Serbia's and Russia's borders, but set to defend in depth -- so noted. They cede a contested territory to Italy, to help their diplomacy later and to free up a guarding Army, which sounds like a good idea to me, and then also put Flowers on the Guns (I think, I forgot to snapshot it).

After this, all players draw randomly from the event card stack, however many all our various strategems allow to draw and keep. As I expected, I got to draw and to keep three -- in fact I had to keep three! -- and those were quite likely the last three remaining in the deck.

Fortunately, two look very useful: one card will allow me a large bonus once when crossing a large river; and one card will give me a large bonus in one battle and grant a definite breakthrough. The third card helps the Central Powers by hampering the diplomacy between the Western Entente (France and Britain) and the United States. I'm definitely not playing thatcard, but then neither can the CPs now!

With the events now chosen, each player in turn (starting with France) gets their first opportunity to play any card(s) they want -- as far as I know, most or all event cards can be played whenever, but the first opportunity will be as each player works through their Diplomacy phase for this special pre-war August turn.

But that will be the next post.

[JasonPratt]

PRE-AUGUST 1914 -- DIPLOMACY PHASE

Now that all players have drawn and kept event cards, players can choose to play those cards whenever it's their turn or phase again. That means during the diplomacy phase of the pre-war turn, too. Naturally it would be stupid for any player to play a generic battle event card now; or to ever play a card that would grant some kind of benefit to the enemy -- which as you may recall from my last post, happens to cover two and one of my three cards respectively -- but some event cards are worth playing immediately to set up long-term effects as soon as possible.

Consequently, France plays four of its event cards immediately during its turn -- my guess is that these won't be its only four cards, because France always gets to draw events first and France chose a combination of secondary strategies that gave it what I call the Event Cascade. So I fully expect it kept more than 6 cards out of a very wide selection drawn.

If Germany and/or Austria played any event cards, I wasn't told; and I don't know whether I would have known about France's plays except that they're my ally. But since I won't be playing two of my cards for a while (and one of my cards ever), I'll report for France.

First, they played a Front Codebreaking card which will eliminate the Fog of War for the next turn (August, still to come), and give them a small bonus on rolling arty barrages and gas attacks -- the latter of which no one can have yet, and maybe not the former either, but getting an initial fog-free turn is a massive advantage for starting the war!

While that sounds like a great thing, the computer stupidly played it just before playing the Bolo Pasha event, which grants the same fog-dispersion benefit as the codebreaking card except for two turns (August and September in this case) plus stealing one random event card from either Germany or Austria (or maybe both, hard to tell from the wording). The French AI 'player' should have kept the codebreaking card to play later after September at least (if not after developing rolling barrages at least).

Thirdly, France played an initiative bonus card, which normally would help them roll for determining the play order next turn (August). I'm not sure it's helpful to play this on the pre-war turn, though, since Germany's plan may lock them in for first initiative, and France doesn't have to deal with Austria (yet?)

This brings up the topic of the order players take their turns and phrases. This order is generally fixed except for special circumstances: France, Germany, Austria, Russia. However, at the start of each main turn (not this one, because any military activity in the pre-war phase is governed by special strategic rules), the game rolls "initiative" for each player, which will determine the military phase play-order on each front. Even though I normally go last, there's a variable chance that I'll get to take any turn's military phase (not all turns have one) before Germany and/or Austria; a chance that may however be locked down due to other events or strategic results. If I had chosen to try a pre-august invasion against the Koenigsburg area, for example, I would have (probably??) gotten the initiative for that phase. Had Germany really gone with the Moltke plan (which they changed later because I didn't realize the 'players' all get to choose their warplans fresh whenever I reloaded during that phase), they would have (probably?) secured the military initiative for August on their East Front (against me) but would have locked initiative in favor of France on their West Front. Because Germany ended up choosing something else, the initiative locks are reversed for the coming August turn. I don't know yet whether those locks can be broken by dice rolls or whatever, but if they can't then France wasted that card. My impression from reading around in the manual is that those locks are set by various choices for August, and 'real' initiative only starts being rolled in Sept. Way to go, France.

Initiative also affects buffs or debuffs for rolling chances for reactions or interceptions, which I'll talk about later.

Finally France played the Air Tech card, which will give them a permanent +1 roll to developing any air technologies afterward; including those light machine guns which for all I can tell ought to help ground fighting, too, but which are listed as the first "air" tech. That's a well-played card!

Many cards, once played, are shuffled back into the 'event' deck and can be redrawn: at the start of each turn, each player gets to draw a semi-random number of event cards, some of which are automatically played as public historical events (not necessarily in favor of their side!) and others of which can be kept to be played manually later. That will include all four of the cards played by France so far, including the two France stupidly wasted. When-if-ever I play my two military bonus cards, the same thing will happen. I'm not sure it's even possible for me to play that third card to benefit the CentPowers, but if I did I'm not sure whether it would go back into the deck as a repeatable event. I'm sure not going to risk checking that out! -- so in any case, that event won't be going back into circulation, and the CentPs will have to live without it.

Phew! Can we do diplomacy now??

As I unpause the game after the reload, I get two messages that Germany has sent an ambassador to Serbia and to the Netherlands (i.e. Holland). I don't know yet if I just happened to detect those, and other ambs have been sent elsewhere already by Germany and other players, but if so I'm pretty sure I'll find out by looking around.

There are a bunch of other nations in the game, with semi-randomly generated attitudes toward each of the four players and toward the two 'sides' of the war (the Entente and the Central Powers). Normally, the second phase of each turn (including this special pre-war turn) involves sending ambassadors (also known as diplomats) to various other nations, and to trying diplomatic missions with ambs who are already in place. For this special pre-war turn, players are allowed to try diplomatic missions with diplomats sent this turn, the idea being that this turn represents where players would have already sent their diplomats in the lead-up to the war.

Each diplomat has a skill rating -- all three of mine are only 1 -- except for decoy diplomats who have a skill rating of 0 -- of which I have two, by the way. Decoys are meant to spoof the enemy players into trying to send diplomats with real skill somewhere they don't want you succeeding at. When nations come into the war, they'll often bring their own diplomats which can be used by the player whom they directly ally with; but Serbia unfortunately has no diplomats. I can however opt to send them some economic aid on any turn (or to any other directly allied nation who has declared war against the Central Powers).

Clicking on any territory of a nation (like for Germany) and then clicking the "diplomacy" button (up along the top row of the screen overlaying the map slightly) will open a window showing that nation's various attitudes toward us, whether those attitudes are locked, what buffs or debuffs we'd get (or our enemies would get) for changing any of those attitudes, and where they've sent any diplomats (though not their strengths).

Doing this for Germany I learn they've also sent diplomats to Turkey, Italy, Bulgaria, and Romania, which are all pretty reasonable moves -- frankly moreso than sending a diplomat to Serbia (which I suspect is a decoy). Turkey especially can help trigger reactions in other countries.

Overall, I want to delay Turkey getting into the war as long as possible, so I'm going to send all three of my 'real' diplomats there (for 3 diplomatic points), and send my 'decoy' diplomats to, I dunno, the United States maybe.

This is done by clicking a different button (the function of which changes on every phase by the way), down to the immediate left of the game's minimap, to bring up by diplomat management window; then clicking various buttons to select my diplos and "send on station". (For no actually good reason, the User Interface requires me to select a territory in any nation anywhere first, ideally Russia, before it'll open this window, even though the window only shows diplomats I control and the list of nations I as a player can send those diplomats. sigh.)

This naturally brings up a scrolling list of nations to work with, so I'll take the opportunity to list all the other nations in the game (and which players are sending diplos there).

Serbia (under my control for the war already): Germany

The United Kingdom (i.e British Empire): France sent a 2-level diplomat there, despite Britain practically being sure to enter the war already. MORONIC FRANCE, KEEP TURKEY OUT! {seeth}

Italy: Germany and Austria both have a mission there. A wise choice. Opening up a second front on France would be harsh, and Italy is the other regional superpower. There are limits to how many diplos I can send somewhere, so my third one will be going here.

The United States: no one there yet; it has a special rule where it slowly creeps toward Entente alliance, by the way, but enough diplomacy can speed up or reverse that. My two decoys go here.

Turkey: Germany and Austria (and now me with two diplos, the max I can send).

The list is set up to put nations already directly allied with my at the top; then the primary important neutrals; then everyone else in alphabetical order, so...

Afghanistan: no one yet.

Belgium: only France so far. Considering that Germany elected not to invade France through Belgium, this could turn out interesting.

Bulgaria: All players (except me) have someone here.

China: no one.

Denmark: no one (yet).

Greece:

Holland (Netherlands): both France and Germany, quite reasonably.

Japan:

Luxembourg: if I recall correctly, Randomizer's mega-mod starts Lux on someone's side already but I don't recall whose. This was meant to solve some supply-tracing problems depending on Germany's chief warplan pick.

Mexico:

Norway:

Persia:

Portugal:

Romania: Germs and France both here.

Spain:

Sweden:

Switzerland:

Albania: for no clear reason listed last. (Maybe it has an alternate name? The game puts Holland in its alphabetic place but calls it "Netherlands"; they mean the same thing, the "lowlands".)

There are several other countries in the game, but for various reasons diplomacy isn't allowed with them. Montenegro, for example, exists but follows Serbia so I already 'have' that country, too, in effect (including its one little army of veteran corps!)

While I can send my diplomats anywhere, so long as I don't overstack them in a nation, and so long as they can physically trace a path to that nation through allied or neutral countries, I can only try one diplomatic mission with one diplomat per turn. Naturally I chose Turkey.

With that, I end my 'phase' and proceed along...
 
EARLY AUGUST -- 1914

...and now, since no one elected to try anything goofy pre-August (myself included), the first full turn of the war officially starts. I think.

I honestly don't understand some of the things that happened and didn't happen here. My two decoys got to the US, but all three of my other ambassadors apparently went nowhere, and furthermore one of me skill-1 ambassadors went to skill 0! My guess is that Rasputin's arrival at the Tsar's court had something to do with all that.




He also screws with National Will, and his negative effects will continue until his assassination. I don't know if that's a locked trigger, or if someone played a card against me, or if I triggered it myself by choosing the defensive Rasputin plan.

Meanwhile, Britain declared war on the side of France; Germany gave Turkey a local battleship and a German admiral to guide their fleet; Turkey moved one point more toward the Central Powers and agreed to Limited Intervention (opening the Dardenelles to CP movement); France convinced Britain to start a blockade of the CPs; Persia opened the right of passage to all the majors (including me) as a way of staying neutrally out of the war; Holland moved a tick toward the CPs and granted them limited agricultural support; Greece and Serbia moved 1 point, and Romania 4 points toward the Entente; Bulgaria moved 3 points toward the CPs; Italy and Belgium didn't move at all;

Also, my tech got spent to no effect, yet, on those light machine guns.

Some diplomats got shuffled around, too. The new listings are:

Germany: Turkey, Greece, Holland, Japan, Romania.
Austra-Hungary: Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania.

France: Belgium, Greece, Bulgaria, Holland, Romania.

Oddly, Germany moved one diplo from Holland to Persia, and from Germany to Holland! That tells me the original diplo was a decoy, and so is the one to Persia.

I sent my two remaining good diplomats to Turkey, and sent my new (???) decoy diplomat to Italy because at this point why not?

(Nations can get more diplomats automatically on occasion, and also train more by economic activity.)

I can't try any political actions yet (under the National Will menu) -- I can see the possibilities now, the window has unlocked, but I'm not in the right phase to use them now.

But my Recruitment and Munition windows have not only unlocked but activated, so I schedule 2 new munitions to arrive each turn for three turns starting in November (I have to start production now for that to happen).




I can't do that for Serbia (or work on recruitments either), unfortunately, because they have no EcoPoints. (They would if I sent them points as Russia, though.)

To interpret the screenshot of that window, reading the top row from left to right: I currently have 10 MUN points in stock. (MUN points allow me to use arty and/or armor one time in a battle per point, if I have any special units of them around.) I'll start making enough this turn for 2 new MUN points (that's the factory icon) to start arriving each month during the turns listed at the bottom (Nov '14 through May '15.) It'll cost me 4 EcoPoints per turn (that's the dollar icon). And other things being equal (which they won't be), my net EcoPoints at the end of it will be +22.

So, what else can I spend my EcoPoints on? Well, for that I go to the recruitment window, which also "recruits" things like naval minefields and upgrades to unit firepower.

It might be easier to list what I can't spend money on yet. That list includes:

New cavalry corps (I'm not sure I can ever build new cav corps).

Any air squadrons (need more tech research for that).

Any assault troops (ditto research).

Any armor companies or squads or whatever (ditto research).

Any subs (ditto).

Any level 3 diplomats (not sure how to unlock those).

Any new HQs (maybe ever).


Okay, so what can I make?

1.) I can upgrade firepower one tick for all of any particular kind of corps already in the field. This is a huge project which takes a lot of time and economic power (although variably so depending on the unit type and how many of them are already on the field). It could be fairly cost-effective, if spread out in proportion, for major types of infantry and/or cavalry, though. (Cheaper to do so for cav, but they're naturally less powerful than infantry corps.)

2.) I can build some Czech, Polish, or Mountain Infantry corps. These will be veterans or better, and pretty kickass; I can also tick up their firepower automatically while in production (except for the MtnInfs who can't have "firepower" bonuses -- hard to drag cannons up a mountain). They'll arrive 4 turns later, or 3 turns if I spend more. As far as I can tell, these are unique special units: I can't have more than one Czech corps, once it's built that's it. New turns may unlock more options.

3.) Heavy artillery regiment (or whatever the unit size is). I already have one in the field somewhere. These won't be ready until June 1915 in any case, so ordering these early would be a waste of EcoPoints. At the moment I can only potentially build four more heavy arty "cards", three of which must be assigned to specific armies (one each). The fourth could go anywhere. They are otherwise completely identical.

4.) Battleship squadrons. I don't know if it's possible to float other kinds of squadrons later, but these 7 are all that are currently available. Naval building works a little differently: there are four stages until a squadron is fully operational, and three of the potential battleship squadrons are already at stage 2 in the shipyards; so I would be pretty stupid to start laying down other ones first! The later ones are only one point more powerful in any regard, so there is practically no advantage to trying to jump ahead on them either.

5.) I can build level 1 and level 2 minefields; up in the Baltics, I already have my coasts laid with them.

6.) Ambassadors up to level 2. (Level 0 decoys are free.) I can only train one at a time, and he won't be ready until the Jan-Feb winter interphase.

I decided to rush the Mountain Infantry corps (12 points) and to pick up a better diplomat sooner than later (10 points). I also realized I had been making a serious mistake devoting economic points to researching light machine guns, since those can't be used outside of air power (there's a different light machine gun research which won't open up until later in 1914), so I cancelled that. I tried to cancel the devotion of economy to research, but for some reason the game wouldn't accept that despite having cancelled all research at the moment (there still isn't much for Russia to actually research yet). Hopefully that won't drop out of the budget next turn!

With that, I'm done for this phase.

[JasonPratt]

And then she had a psychotic breakdown.  :P :'( :-*

Until legal issues get sorted out and Strabo (et al) can get back to patching the game, I'll have to leave things here unfortunately. Ran into a terrible freeze bug in trying to resolve the diplomacy for the 'official' August start -- which was still being called "Early August" so that's not good either, and might be indicative of the problem -- where in reloading my game to progress to the next phase the AI replays its diplomacy (that's expected by now, but potentially a real problem in itself if every time  I reload a game the game replays its prior moves that phase, i.e. the save game doesn't save what the computer has done already only what I've done)... and then freezes.

I had to reload all the way back a couple of saves to find a continuation that wouldn't freeze.

Fortunately the results weren't overly different than what had happened before -- Turkey got a little more CPish because my diplomats failed, but then my diplomat succeeded the next time and it edged back in my direction a point.

Unfortunately, when the military phase started, everything was going fine when Germany started its first battle against France.

Fortunately, due to France having played (no less than two of  ::) :P ) its anti-fog cards, the game decided I ought to be able to see Germany's side of that fight since Germany was 'moving'.

Unfortunately, the game had literally no idea what to do for showing Germany's side of the fight. It and France (which was obscured behind the fog of war) pulsed their little brains at each other for ten minutes doing nothing, and there was no way for me to quit the fight, or even to quit the game, so eventually I had to warm-boot the computer entirely.

I feel fairly sure this is an unexpected side-effect problem of being able to see Germany's move; but since no patches can be made now until when-if-ever legal issues are settled, it's going to be a fatal crash even if I get past the diplomacy AI freeze.

And so the pitiful attempt at a WW1G AAR ends more pitifully than I expected.

However, much of the rest of my initial tutorial remains valid with some discussions, so here's the link! https://www.grogheads.com/forums/index.php?msg=285784

That and the next post afterward features doc files in five parts of the consolidated entries for the original tutorial.

[besilarius]

This is too bad, Jason.  Was really looking forward to how the game progressed.  With your snarky/wise comments interspersed, it is really entertaining.
Oh well, maybe Bart will fill the void in your plans.  (Or else put a stake in them.)