@The_Good_Captain said:
Awesome! Well, for this game - we can play as long as you like but the CP will offer concession. Been a uniquely rough one.
The offer is accepted. I was happy enough to even contest Ruhr last turn, but after I took it outright with such minimal loss I immediately thought “I think this game just ended!” Not sure what lessons (if any) I want to take away from this game since the big shellacking the CP navies took the first turn skews it… having 2 UK Transports immediately available is pretty huge.
As it is I’m completely satisfied with my defense of Russia and the US’ Balkan adventures, they more than met my expectations. I actually didn’t want to move into Karelia last turn but figured I should even though Belgium is now way too thin, since if I didn’t you could split your Artillery between there and Finland making it too dangerous to land back up there again. But since now all your spare Infantry up there are gone splitting up is no longer possible so I always have an outlet to drop somebody off safely.
If you were curious about the Italian attack into Tyrolia I figured it was the last chance I could make such a move given that you were relying on the Ottomans and not AH to clean out the Balkans. Since it’s guaranteed to be contested on the AH turn that’s an 8 IPC swing in my favor already before we add in the combat results, and maybe you might even move some Germans there if you thought I wanted to stick around.
At the start of French turn 5 I was wishing I had moved up to Picardy instead of Burgundy and the French Fleet was in the channel. In that situation I might have loaded Kiel with both the British and the French plus hit both Ruhr and Alsace, with the goal of causing a crisis on where to move your reinforcements and lower your income by keeping your territories contested. Not 100% sure that plan might be worth it as I didn’t crunch all the numbers. But of course the French fleet is not there, as it isn’t clear to me what the best Entente play is for their ships once the CP navies are out. In the future I may make going to the Channel a standard move for the French so I at least have it as an option. I belatedly did it this game and was worried you might get suspicious as to why I was moving those ships of a sudden. One possible kink in this scenario is that based on what Krieghund said, when I take Kiel with France, they risk the mines but the UK will not on their turn. Now if the Germans move in to contest Kiel, then the mines are back. So that’s something to consider there.
From my end of the board it looks like the biggest risk you took was using the Ottomans instead of AH to deal with the Balkan threat. My own general staff would likely conclude it’s just far too risky since the ground you cede in the Middle East is likely not recoverable so your gains are forfeit due to the UK enrichment. And now the onus is on AH and Germany to keep Russia sealed since you declined the RR. But of course my whole overall plan calls for you to make exactly those kinds of hard choices. Maybe the only yellow card I give you in that area is not using that last smidgeon of AH troops to clean out the small amount of UK left in Sevastopol to make sure that the Ottomans had full freedom of movement on their turn, as I mentioned earlier.
So I obviously watched all your 1914 videos beforehand-
Patton said :
Rommel you magnificent b-, I read your book!
And I don’t think you went into a full discussion on Tanks, so I wasn’t sure what would happen when they became available in this game. To me they are like Bombers in the WWII variants, really awesome when you have a bunch but the opportunity cost to get them is quite high, so buying enough to make them a real game-changer is a calculated risk. The best use feels like just having a few around to help take the hits when picking off blockers, so in this particular game I might have just only ever used them in India. But when you started buying them for Germany, it felt unwise to let you be the only player over there to have any. In a similar vein the air war fascinates me since it gets to resolve completely while the ground battles don’t (plus you still get your strafe shots in!). You only need a surplus of 1 plane to get the Artillery bonus, so any surplus you have over that is potentially a waste of money. If I’m the economic leader I’m quite happy to match you plane for plane as you keep spitting them out since the opportunity cost for you to have such a large air force is so high. From my end of the board the biggest mistake I made was losing the 3 French Fighters, I should have staged them in Venice to support the Italians since I could have flown them back to Alsace/Lorraine if needed in an emergency. I do still support the concept of making such an attack, though, since if your response is to crank out more planes instead of Infantry then strategically I count that as a win.
Hmmm… that covers just about everything… oh, wait, the Americans. I debated a lot trying out the “Spain First” strategy in this game but decided against it. All my instincts keep telling me not to go there because of the extra delay and the lack of mobility you get from not having Transports in the Mediterranean. As you can see I’m not opposed to getting around to it eventually. With the movement rules, I can move units into contested Spain from the US and move a matching number (if any) out of it without any disruption to the flow of units into Europe. But as I said in this game I was going to be more patient and only start that process when I could hit Spain with 12 units rather than the 10 I went with (10 being what I consider the bare minimum to even attempt moving into Spain, YMMV).
Alright now I think I’m done. ;)
David S. Pumpkins said:
Any questions?
