WW1 Gold - new patch, PBEM mode introduced

[Tamas]

OK the map scrolling and mouse cursor are slow as fuck. What's up?

if you launch the "configurator" there is an option to load all of the map at start alá' other AGEOD titles. It will make the launch of the game slower but it wont have to load the map graphics on the fly on your apparently old computer.

Also if you only have a single core CPU there should be a separate exe file optimized for that, but I think that's just for some people who had crashes.

[The Brain]

Old? Old??!?? STFU, Asian.

[Tamas]

Have you been hardcore enough to start in the "strictly turn based" mode?

[The Brain]

Have you been hardcore enough to start in the "strictly turn based" mode?

Is that the best mode?

[Tamas]

Have you been hardcore enough to start in the "strictly turn based" mode?

Is that the best mode?

It is the direct conversion of the boardgame rules, except that there are sub-options to turn stuff on and off, but of course you want everything on except maybe retreat before battle, I always hated that one

Basically, the default mode is like other AGEOD games: you give orders to all armies, AI does too, you hit end turn, they simultanously move and something will happen. I never preferred that, but until this latest patch I linked, the AI was buggedly passive in the turn-based mode. Now it's fine so it shouldn't stop you.

In the turn-based mode, the hearth of the movement is the activation of armies.

Depending on Initiative (that is a roll with a lot of drms, you can find links to the boardgame rules on the official forum if you are so inclined), one player starts the turn. He must activate his main army first, which you can identify by it's HQ stack having a more shiny icon IIRC. This is not just for posterity, as you can put more corps (units) into the main army.
So anyway, once you moved your main army you are free to activate the rest in whichever order. Your movement phase ends when all activations end. Yes that means you have to activate/hit done with armies you dont want to move, but that's life.

You can also coordinate once per turn, it means once you hit the activation button on an army, you get the coordination button (at the place of the activation one) for the other armies. You can try and add up to two other armies to the same activation, but this is again a dice roll, with stuff like general's abilities and distance factored into the whole thing. There a few cases of automatically successful coordination attempts (if you choose them), most notably the German 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Armies in Early August if you choose the Schlieffen Plan.

A pro tip is that if it is not you taking the moves first, hit pause asap and book your relevant armies for interception, you have to do that per turn IIRC.

Also, if you are the inactive player, you are entitled to one Reaction, which means you pause, hit the reaction button on the army, the game rolls if it's succeed, and if it does, you just have to unpause and wait for the current AI activation to finish, then you'll have an activation with the Reacting army before the AI turn continues.

Stacking units via drag and drop is a pain in the ass until you learn the idiocies of the interface in that regard, but there is, since some patches, a reorg button, where you get a screen to create new stacks in the hex and move units back and forth between stacks and also -most notably- change their army assignments.

[garbon]

Great Invasions wasn't that way.

[The Brain]

Did a quick game as Serbia in that 4 turn scenario. Interesting. With boardgame rules of course.

"Central Powers Win! Draw!"

[Tamas]

BTW, for combat, the key is morale. Each unit has a little flag to the left of its picture:
orange: elite (+2drm on 1d6 morale checks)
yellow: veteran (+1)
purple: active duty (0)
grey: reserves (-1)
white: conscripts (-2)

The morale "damages" you can receive are also very important For most of these you lose a manpower point from your reserves as well, beside the unit being flipped (IIRC if it was already flipped you lose an additional manpower point)
shaken: the unit is taken out of combat for a single round.
disorganized: the unit is taken ouf of the entire battle, but will remain on the map with it's stack
out of combat: out of the battle and removed from the map, will return to be place freely in the next turn
eliminated: as the name suggests

Artillery is king, as you get column shifts on the CRT, assuming you have ammunition for it of course. Defending forts serve as artillery, for the first three rounds at least. I can't remember if the original "they shoot 3 rounds for free then must get ammo" rule has been implemented, but I think it wasn't.

Speaking of ammunition, in the GC you have all these factories (ammo, planes, zeppelins) placed all over your map, but the icons for most of these will be crossed over initially.
That's because you still have a high civilian production rating, this is something you must reduce gradually via political actions, at a cost of national will loss. It will also cost National Will on the long term as well, since a quarterly check is performed on NW and while high civilian production makes it easy to keep people content, lower can be very bad.

National Will is the hearth of everything, you win or lose the war through it. There are elaborate rules for the loss and gain of it, including strikes, revolts, mutinies, various kinds of revolutions and such. The game actually calculates these well but it is very opaque on them when it comes to enemy countries, that's probably my biggest annoyance with it right now, but it is unlikely to change at this stage.
This can be very confusing for a newbie, since when countries enter the instability zone (NW 20 or lower), some WILD swings in National Will are possible as revolts attempted and fail, new governments are elected, new war-preferring (or anti-war) governments take over via revolutions and such. But getting actual news on those when it's not your country, well it's pretty hard. You just end up being happy for almost-collapsing Russia at one turn, and being dissapointed at them having 27NW again the next one. Of course, if you have some routine, you know that this means their parlaiment wasn't full pacifist yet and they managed to enact a new government which gives you 27NW.

National Will also affects morale check bonuses for all units. But, morale checks are also affected by nationality, and this is most apparent in Austria-Hungary: you do NOT want to send slavs against other slavs, but they will serve well against Italians. After Franz Joseph dies, all your nationalities except hungarians and austrians will get a morale penalty.

Speaking of A-H: plz don't be gay and don't play the GC as a 4 players game. The boardgame was always meant as either a two player game, or a close team play 4 player one (actually in the board game, in case of 4 players one player controlled a major front, not a country), which is of course impossible to recreate with an AI.

[The Brain]

Speaking of A-H: plz don't be gay and don't play the GC as a 4 players game.

OK. OK.

[crazy canuck]

Tamas, you should have said there was a gay option.  Marti would have purchased it for sure.

[KRonn]

I don't usually play multi-player, so how is this game with the AI? It looks a bit interesting, and I'm thinking about getting it.

[Tamas]

I don't usually play multi-player, so how is this game with the AI? It looks a bit interesting, and I'm thinking about getting it.

I think it is decent. It is an AI of course, but among the better wargame AIs I have seen. In 1914 it follows the plan it choses (you must select a plan from the given choices. For Germany, for example, you have Schlieffen, but also a plan to go straight the French border, or to an East First strategy, or even a schlieffen through the easy terrain or Switzerland), then in trench warfare it choses Great Offensive targets like a human and acts accordingly (though it's levels of preparation for big offensives wary).

IIRC you have two sliders to tweak the AI: one is agression, the other is the level of bonus it has on fog of war. Once you have some routine I would suggest a slight increase on both from the default, that seems to yield the best results for me.

[KRonn]

Thanks for the info Tamas. The game also seems to have some production to work with, according to your posts. You need to move production from civilian to military, pacing it to try and avoid unrest? Is there any research on new items/tech, or is that all abstracted? Such as tanks were brought in late in the war. Do they just appear or do you have to make some effort towards encouraging their development?

Also, how are air power and navies handled in the game?

[Tamas]

Thanks for the info Tamas. The game also seems to have some production to work with, according to your posts. You need to move production from civilian to military, pacing it to try and avoid unrest? Is there any research on new items/tech, or is that all abstracted? Such as tanks were brought in late in the war. Do they just appear or do you have to make some effort towards encouraging their development?

Also, how are air power and navies handled in the game?

Production: Civilian production level starts from 9-7 depending on the country. You dont have a separate indicator for military production: the lower the civilian is, the higher that is meant to be. The most dramatic change in that is the number of ammunition you can produce per turn. (The Entente powers can receive munition-production capabilities from the US relatively easily).
You buy stuff from economic points, the lower civilian production is, the higher your ECs. Beside ammo, you build units of course. Now, each country has a monthly flow of manpower points. Except that for each infantry or cavalry unit you build, the monthly flow for that quarter is reduced by one. So if you cover the fronts sufficiently, don't spam units: you may regret it. For example, you flip back units via spending manpower points, but you can't spend more in a turn than the half of your total reserves. Deplete and collapse. Besides these things, you can build extra diplomats, ships, mines, and allocate money to tech.


Tech: It is actually much much more custom than in the boardgame, I assume to avoid bitching over lack of control, or I don't know. In the boardgame you drew two tech chits and chose which one you attempted to research, and of course there were some date stamps. The date stamps are here as well for a few things, but you can actually choose from a list to what try and research.

[Tamas]

Regarding the naval stuff: the awesomness of the boardgame design while technically is implemented fully, looks less sexy, due to the interface probably.
The tactical battle part is intact, so is the potential to some huge NW losses if you run into a sever beating. Formations, surprises, distances, are present but abstracted.

The operational part is also kind of there: paying economic points for fleet actions, various missions, control of sea zones for supply, you name it. It's just.. feels cluncky. But the end result is roughly the same: due to the high potential cost of failure, you don't dare to move out much.



Air units are attached to HQs, and you select the mission for them on the menu of the HQ. There is a roll to be made, and it is very very heavily influenced by the attributes of the planes, which in turn are mostly decided by the various air-related techs. So don't expect to be flying CAS missions regularly until you built some decent 1916s airplanes and invented some stuff. You are better off sticking to recons in the early game. When planes end up performing missions around the same place, an air battle may ensue. Occasionally, an Ace would surface from one of these battles.