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Grey Hunter posted:I'm thinking about calling it, not only because I've lost, but because the turns take an hour to do, in a solid block. My Son is now waking at 4-5am and Its getting hard to find that block of time. (Hence the sporadic updates) Little Grey is way more important than watching the Central Powers get their noses rubbed in it.
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Jun 3, 2017 05:18
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Night10194 posted:Little Grey is way more important than watching the Central Powers get their noses rubbed in it. Wait, I thought the choice was between this and another WWI game, not between this and some Greyspawn. Spend the hour teaching your kid about the Great War, Grey. You're British, that's like all you're expected to do as a father. And by "teach" I mean keep doing LPs with that hour.
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Jun 3, 2017 05:29
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TildeATH posted:Wait, I thought the choice was between this and another WWI game, not between this and some Greyspawn. Spend the hour teaching your kid about the Great War, Grey. Hell, give him his own army command. At least he'll probably beat Cadorna. 
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Jun 3, 2017 06:16
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Surrender with dignity.
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Jun 3, 2017 06:47
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TildeATH posted:Wait, I thought the choice was between this and another WWI game, not between this and some Greyspawn. Spend the hour teaching your kid about the Great War, Grey. You're British, that's like all you're expected to do as a father. Yeah, its just that I have trouble fitting an hour long, no pause turn into my schedule, I have time to LP, but not in the long blocks this game is demanding. Processing the turn is a long job, and its longer when you have to take images. Its not like I'm ignoring the spawn, its just when he wakes my free time is over.
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Jun 3, 2017 06:58
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If the game was on razor edge or fun mechanics-wise or really cool, I'd say go for it. But this one is weird, messed up, has real weird mechanicsinherent to it and doesn't seem to simulate WW1 very well. So go ahead and drop it - otehr fun stuff comes first.
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Jun 3, 2017 07:18
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It's been a fascinating LP so far, but more in an "jesus, ageod." way than a "this is cool" way.
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Jun 3, 2017 15:01
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glynnenstein posted:It's been a fascinating LP so far, but more in an "jesus, ageod." way than a "this is cool" way. Same. I kind of tuned out after it became clear the game was not working as advertised. Completely ignoring France was boneheaded, but the pockets we made not being closeable, every battle being a mobile one, etc.
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Jun 3, 2017 17:30
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I think you can drop this.
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Jun 3, 2017 18:23
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Kavak posted:Same. I kind of tuned out after it became clear the game was not working as advertised. Completely ignoring France was boneheaded, but the pockets we made not being closeable, every battle being a mobile one, etc. In fairness, those 'pockets' were encirclements many hundreds of km across, and were not being held because the troops between the two pockets got hammered and were tired after trying to hold it for weeks (and a lot of them were Austrian). Troops sneaking through your lines doesn't really happen in static fronts - I've not seen it once in France when the lines are relatively stable. I'm still trying to figure out the combat postures and battles, but I suspect it does have something to do with MTSG. IMO the biggest problem is the giant kill stacks the AI creates. I still think you can beat that (assuming relatively equal strengths, which we never really saw in the GH game) by hitting the flanks - if they've got 2.5 million dudes in one territory, everything else is gonna be thin (this is not an ideal solution in a WWI game, for obvious reasons). The problem is, GH was frequently outmatched by the W. Allies alone AND half of what he did have was not in front of France. It's something I've been noticing in my games too - I think one of the main ways to 'fix' the engine to make it playable is to turn off fog of war. At least that way you can see where the blob is, and move your own blob in front of it. I suspect the game would work quite well in multi-player; you just need a gentleman's agreement to not do wildly ahistorical things like 2 million man steamrollers in a single territory or try to sneak several divisions through a static front. TL;DR: the problem is that the engine just can't model WWI properly. e: If someone is familiar with modding AGEOD games at all, I'm wondering if it's possible to increase the entrenchment bonus by 50% or something like that across the board.
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Jun 3, 2017 18:35
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What might have helped this game would have been reducing the amount of supplies that troops can carry, but increasing the supply generation rate greatly. Also, by making supply attach to the regions (it seems like it is attached to the troops?). It seems like this game simply doesn't model that it is impossible to keep 2 million men in a tiny area supplied for sustained periods of time. Still though, for all the effort spent at trying to jerry rig this game engine to handle WW1, they could have either modified the core engine or just made a new one that could have done it.
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Jun 3, 2017 19:05
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there's apparently a big overhaul mod that tries to fix a lot of the game's weirdness, but it also splits the alliances up into individual countries and obviously the AI wouldn't be able to play it all, so it's only really a viable option for multiplayer
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Jun 3, 2017 19:05
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twig1919 posted:What might have helped this game would have been reducing the amount of supplies that troops can carry, but increasing the supply generation rate greatly. Also, by making supply attach to the regions (it seems like it is attached to the troops?). It seems like this game simply doesn't model that it is impossible to keep 2 million men in a tiny area supplied for sustained periods of time. When Grey turned on easy supplies, any unit in a province with a town was treated as being in supply, no matter what. By default, supplies only collect at towns with depots or harbors, and are then forwarded up to 3 provinces to the next depot or supply train. Any stack that you expect to be away from a depot for more than a couple turns needs a supply train in order to not evaporate. The supply system is actually pretty good, but it's been turned off.
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Jun 3, 2017 19:21
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So basically grey hunter turned off supply trains and then attempted to win the game by pocketing enemy armies. hah
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Jun 3, 2017 20:08
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twig1919 posted:What might have helped this game would have been reducing the amount of supplies that troops can carry, but increasing the supply generation rate greatly. Also, by making supply attach to the regions (it seems like it is attached to the troops?). It seems like this game simply doesn't model that it is impossible to keep 2 million men in a tiny area supplied for sustained periods of time. Oh trust me, the game does *not* need to increase supply production. They could probably halve it without a noticeable effect. And troops do run out of supply fairly quickly - if you don't send a wagon along (which slows the entire stack down), a bog-standard corps will run out of supplies and start foraging in 4-6 weeks (2-3 turns), which will start to wreck their cohesion and manpower. Any faster than that and it would be almost impossible to keep any units in the field in supply. Supply wagons carry along extra supplies to delay this, but they're expensive, slow, and when they're empty, you have to move them back to a depot and wait for them to fill up - they'll fill up faster and divert less supply to your troops the further back you can send the wagons. In W. Europe for example, where there's depots and cities and railroads all over the place you can generally move a few territories ahead without worrying about supply too much, but everywhere else it's definitely a factor. You have plenty of supply, but it just piles up at home. dublish posted:When Grey turned on easy supplies, any unit in a province with a town was treated as being in supply, no matter what. By default, supplies only collect at towns with depots or harbors, and are then forwarded up to 3 provinces to the next depot or supply train. Any stack that you expect to be away from a depot for more than a couple turns needs a supply train in order to not evaporate. The supply system is actually pretty good, but it's been turned off. Actually, *most* of the system is still on. As far as I can tell, all Easy Supply does is guarantee that a unit 'in a friendly structure' is fully supplied. They will still start eating supply when they move away, but any unit in that territory is supplied (I assume in addition to the supplies that would normally be produced there). I assume this does not impact munitions at all, but I haven't seen anything that says so either way. Munitions is the major bottleneck, much moreso than general 'supply'. The Entente in particular will run out of ammo and needs to build extra munitions factories from the start of the game. It's only consumed by ships and medium/heavy/super heavy artillery, but each unit only carries enough ammo for a couple battles, and consumes more if you use the 'Bombard Forts' decision or use a battle plan like 'Long Preparation Bombardment' - and you don't have much production for it at start. They also have units like supply wagons that can carry lots of extra ammo, but those units are also slow, almost prohibitively expensive to build more of, and unless you can rail them back to cities deep in your home (as Germany I try to rail empty ones back to places like Stettin, Hamburg, and Munich when possible), they can take several turns to replenish. The more battles you fight, the more artillery you have, etc. the faster you run out of munitions. Constantly grinding away at units in an encirclement should deplete their ammo, at which point they can only use light artillery and inf/cav in battle - one medium artillery piece is more than 4x as effective as one light artillery piece - and those battles should start tilting more and more in your favor as you grind out the pocket. I'm sort of OK with GH not being able to hold that Poland-sized pocket closed in 1915 - Russia hadn't been worn down by years of war yet, and it's not WWII. Liquidating that pocket SHOULD take a year if you can keep it closed. GH, I'm very interested in what you built when - not like a turn-by-turn description, but what did you focus on, did you try to distribute builds equally among the different countries, etc. From most of what I've seen on the AGEOD forums, 'veteran' players focus German units over AH/Ottoman, mountain units over regular infantry, and medium artillery over all else (assuming you have enough infantry to put in front of them) because pound-for-pound they're the most effective combat unit in the game. Heavy artillery is slow and very expensive, light artillery is weak, and most divisions have an organic battalion of it anyway. The 'optimal' corps seems to be a good general, a mountain division, an infantry division (consisting of two infantry regiments and a light artillery battery), and two medium artillery units. Since mountain divisions are in very limited supply, they usually just get put in the armies while each corps gets a second infantry division.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:18
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Irrespective of supply, in my opinion armies cut off from retreat and not quickly rescued should suffer horrifying morale penalties, to the point that they usually surrender en masse. Is there any precedent for encircled armies in WWI holding out for months, and not just defending but attacking?
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Jun 3, 2017 20:24
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MANime in the sheets posted:Actually, *most* of the system is still on. As far as I can tell, all Easy Supply does is guarantee that a unit 'in a friendly structure' is fully supplied. They will still start eating supply when they move away, but any unit in that territory is supplied (I assume in addition to the supplies that would normally be produced there). I assume this does not impact munitions at all, but I haven't seen anything that says so either way. Isn't that what I said? I admit I don't knot the details of the system, but I don't think anybody really does. It'd be great if the game had some decent documentation for all these mechanics, but AGEOD is lax in that regard. MANime in the sheets posted:GH, I'm very interested in what you built when - not like a turn-by-turn description, but what did you focus on, did you try to distribute builds equally among the different countries, etc. From most of what I've seen on the AGEOD forums, 'veteran' players focus German units over AH/Ottoman, mountain units over regular infantry, and medium artillery over all else (assuming you have enough infantry to put in front of them) because pound-for-pound they're the most effective combat unit in the game. Heavy artillery is slow and very expensive, light artillery is weak, and most divisions have an organic battalion of it anyway. The 'optimal' corps seems to be a good general, a mountain division, an infantry division (consisting of two infantry regiments and a light artillery battery), and two medium artillery units. Since mountain divisions are in very limited supply, they usually just get put in the armies while each corps gets a second infantry division. Mountain divisions provide their movement bonus to an entire stack, so it's a waste to have more than one in a single army. On top of doing more damage per hit and firing at longer ranges than light artillery, medium artillery has a rate of fire way higher. It makes no sense given the terminology, but I guess AGEOD couldn't figure out a better way to model medium artillery's superiority? In my last CP game I built all the available medium artillery by the end of 1915 and had to start using one medium and one light in each corps.
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Jun 3, 2017 20:30
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dublish posted:Isn't that what I said? I admit I don't knot the details of the system, but I don't think anybody really does. It'd be great if the game had some decent documentation for all these mechanics, but AGEOD is lax in that regard. quote:Mountain divisions provide their movement bonus to an entire stack, so it's a waste to have more than one in a single army. On top of doing more damage per hit and firing at longer ranges than light artillery, medium artillery has a rate of fire way higher. It makes no sense given the terminology, but I guess AGEOD couldn't figure out a better way to model medium artillery's superiority? In my last CP game I built all the available medium artillery by the end of 1915 and had to start using one medium and one light in each corps. Yeah, I think by default Germany can only have 10 mountain total, and they start with one that activates on turn 3 or 4. There *is* an option to turn off force pool limits, so theoretically you could have one for every corps...
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Jun 3, 2017 20:49
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Once I ran out of German MedArt, I just started pumping out heavies. By that point I had 140 NM anyway so the war was basically over, though. I wish I had gotten to see tanks in action; has anyone ever been able to use them much? Has anyone put any effort/energy into the colonial or naval games at all? I don't think I ever lost a single colony in my Germany game (NM victory in Spring of '16), even Tsingtao, which the Japanese breached 10 times but never assaulted, but I didn't do much outside of the main theater myself either. Is it plausible to somehow extract Lettow-Vorbeck from Africa and give him a corps in Europe with his crazy good stats? I'm also not sure what I was supposed to do with von Spee and the commerce raiders at the start of the game (if anything). Also unsure if building submarines against the AI is worth it, considering that the UK morale system is basically broken if you're using the AI anyway.
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Jun 3, 2017 21:47
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My build was basically just trying to get troops and artillery out wherever I was most under threat. I never had chance to do much planning.
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Jun 6, 2017 08:11
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Yeah, this game has some issues that folks have brought up - not that ninja British divisions aren't awesome, mind.. But, logistics, the fact the AI can cluster a couple million men over about a 20 mile area in an attack, the.. Let us call it oddities of how it handles logistics.. The fact England can't be made to surrender.. The game's engine is focused on medieval warfare and Renaissance era gunpowder. It seems not to have handled scaling up to industrial level warfare particularly effectively going off the back and forth. Someone put it best, earlier in the thread, forgive me for not remembering who; but the fact the game handles WW1 warfare as mobile stands against it.
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Jun 6, 2017 09:05
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wedgekree posted:Yeah, this game has some issues that folks have brought up - not that ninja British divisions aren't awesome, mind.. There was plenty of mobile warfare in World War 1, but yeah, the game not handling the trenches of the later Western front is a definite problem.
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Jun 6, 2017 13:36
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Gret you made an entertaining spetacle out of a terrible game and i salute you for it. Seeing the Turkish army wiping the floor against Italians, French, English and Russians without dropping a beat was amazing. It's also amazing how closing the Suez Canal isn't a major disaster for the allies, but welp.
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Jun 6, 2017 22:33
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Mans posted:It's also amazing how closing the Suez Canal isn't a major disaster for the allies, but welp. I haven't double checked since the game came out, but it used to take longer to get to Suez via Gibraltar than it did going the "long" way around Africa. Due to the way the game measures distances and travel time between sea zones, the canal was more useful as a shortcut into the Med than through it to India.
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Jun 7, 2017 13:49
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dublish posted:I haven't double checked since the game came out, but it used to take longer to get to Suez via Gibraltar than it did going the "long" way around Africa. Due to the way the game measures distances and travel time between sea zones, the canal was more useful as a shortcut into the Med than through it to India. Just loaded up as W. Allies to check this. Sending a liner from Portsmouth to India uses the Panama canal to get to the South Pacific and then to the Indian ocean lol
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Jun 7, 2017 17:22
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Yeah, I was able to pull all the German ships in the Pacific around Africa and through Gib pretty quickly. TBH though, thats a minor quibble, the game basically happens in Europe. The only thing the CP has out there is Tsingtao, and everything in it is locked. The Bismark islands are out there, but have no units.
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Jun 8, 2017 00:51
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Part of me wants to see this through just to see how horrible the peace treaty will be. But really Russia should be out of the war with the pocket you set up.
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Jun 12, 2017 02:01
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GH, can you share the last save you have? I don't want to play it out, but I'd like to get an idea of how many divisions/batteries are in play by that point of the game, how forcepools and production for each side look, stuff like that.
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Jun 12, 2017 02:21
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