Tanks Special Ability to Remove Defender hits!

@the_good_captain It is only during the pre-emptive artillery strike that tanks don’t cancel hits. Per the following paragraph, the land combat is conducted normally, except for battleship bombardment.

@Arne said in 1914 Introduce Tanks Earlier in Game:

Hi, are there any objections (except for the historical ones) to introduce tanks earlier in the game than round 4?

Other than historical reasons, I don’t know why you couldn’t start buying tanks as early as you please. It would shake up some of the established strategies. Whether that’s good or bad would be up to you.

-Midnight_Reaper

Thanks for the info Kreighund

When playing as the US, I usually have 2-3 transports waiting in New York Harbor for over-seas duty. I mix in 1 tank with the rest of the shipment because I find my US army gets involved in smaller battles of about 10 units (Africa, Mid-East, Eastern France etc). As I can only ship a limited number of units per turn, the tanks absorb hits every round and survives to be bolstered by the freshly arriving 2+ infantry.
For everyone else I think tanks are money poorly spent.

Anecdotal Evidence

Starlight Sniper

@Auztria:

I think that for a more fluid game we need cavalry units as well as adjusting the price of tanks. Tanks are devastating in large groups, but it’s hard for most nations to produce large groups of tanks at 6 ipc’s. Plus the early game is pretty monotonous with only masses of infantry and artillery attacking and counter-attacking. Cavalry could help spice it up a bit, maybe with 1/3 atk/def and a movement of 2 with blitz. If they cost 4 but could be boosted by artillery, they’d be a fairly viable unit but would probably fade a lot when tanks arrive.

To say that cavalry played a major role in the war or even that it had an equal level of survivability as infantry is a misstep at best, and revisionist at worst. Cavalry units were consistently BUTCHERED against machine gun-defended infantry lines, and quickly became obsolete. I actually think that the omission of cavalry from this game is one of the better choices of the designer. The early game is “monotonous” (as you’ve put it) with infantry and artillery, because the early WAR was “monotonous”; 1914-1916 was a period hallmarked by mass artillery-supported infantry attacks.

Now, I will grant that on the Eastern Front (as well as in other parts of the world, Mid-East, etc.) cavalry played a slightly greater part than on the Western Front, but I still don’t think it is worth adding an entire other unit to the game to represent this limited role.

If you ARE going to represent cavalry in the game (which I don’t recommend), you must then differentiate between entrenched infantry and mobile infantry, and make the cavalry 0 attack against entrenched. This is the only way it would make sense.

@Flashman:

As long as you have infantry to absorb hits on counter attacks, tanks will repay this by deflecting hits on your next turn.

One possible strategy is to build a stack of French tanks, attack with them, then reinforce the area next turn with British infantry.

But see tanks primarily as a means of breaking through a defender who cannot afford to hit back. They’re a war finishing weapon once you have the upper hand economically.

+1. Good post!!

When I say stacks I mean more than 10 units on each side.

A force that plans on attacking in a fashion that puts the enemy in a position where them attacking on their turn would be bad because they have too few artillery for offensive support.

We don’t know what happens when capitals are captured. I would assume they can still build there when contested, even though they’ll collect no money for the capital itself.

On past rules we can assume that all money is captured, the country cannot build new units or collect money, but can be liberated by its allies.