Should Cow Make a Strategy Guide for 1914?

@Wittmann Thanks!

@drsnidely:

I’m not an expert either, but I disagree that fighters are a luxury. I think they’re absolutely essential, unless you just want to throw infantry into the meat grinder. I agree with most of the rest though.

Fighters are not a luxury. You defiantly need fighters.

@DessertFox599:

Going full Russia in my experience is a standard play by the Cp. All of them are bordering Russia, and it becomes a meatgrinder in our games in which Russia has two or three battles (one for each power), or one or two battles with a combination of Austria and Germany. Ive even had battles with all 3 cps in there. Its not too difficult to defeat Russia especially with the tourney rules i always play with. France is fun for me cause you gotta think outside the box.

I usually set “Traps” as Russia. It draws as many units as possible into the Eastern Front long enough for America to land in force in France.

It gets pretty chaotic, Russian bear gets real, Ottos are in a stalemate, AH is backed up to his capital, I like to take Italy at the same time… USA can liberate Italy and that makes me a sad panda sometimes. AH is where things get wonky. It is primarily Germany that had to leave what is east of germany, east of germany and everything west of germany west of germany machine gunning their way  to france. It is kind of cray. The starting stuff east of Germany is generally enough to keep Russian bear enough spaces away from you long enough for you to deal with it later.

Imo the Austians have only one viable option for its navy and that is an A1 attack on the italien navy. The odds are not the austians favor, but if successfull together with a successfull G1 against the royal navy, the French navy has a tough choice where to go.

protevangelium makes some great points about how lopsided the sea’s were, and sub warfare being the best option for the CP in the war. Subs are a bit lacking in this edition as well as others IMO (nearly impossible to raid convoys, or inflict econ damage). The Austrians, and Turks were very limited in their abilities. The Germans did have a more modern surface fleet (tried to enter a naval arms race before the war), but failed in comparison to the Brits. In this game the Germans can get temporary control of the North Sea early though and add to their fleet. Once the rest of French Fleet comes up the UK still doesn’t need to build much to protect allied transports OOB (two French BB’s is a nice way to start for the allies rebuild). If the allies want to knock the German fleet out, then it could get expensive, but do they need to, or just set-up a multi national defense that the Germans can’t touch to keep allied transports afloat. Then there is always the 1-2 punch if the allies want to go aggressive. I still believe the problem lies with the French fleet (and the abilities of the sub to a point).

When we play we always reduce the Atlantic French Fleet to just a cruiser (swap BB for cruiser and remove the transport). We have done this even before Larry introduced it in the Tourney rules. It does help for game play, and better reflects what the French had in the Atlantic. The French Atlantic fleet was more of a support to the Brits (not nearly equal). Before the war the French naval focus was in the Med not knowing the intentions of the Italians (fearing an Italian attack which the game doesn’t reflect).

It would have been nice for the sub to have a larger roll in this edition having more raiding ability or sz’s to attack econ. Should destroyers be introduced so subs have a better survival rate? Maybe the naval set-up cost should be tweaked. BB’s at 12 IPCs is too cost effective IMO (should they be 15 IPCs?), no one buys cruisers. Just thinking out load……don’t read to much into it. WB

Hypothetical question: If the attack resolution rules for 1914 were the same as the other A&A games, which current first moves would you change and why…for example, I would change my opening moves by AH to build up forces to attack Italy first and just build up a force in Galicia rather than attack Venice and Poland…I would still have to attack Serbia, but I would hold off on Albania…

@Flashman:

Germany did a lot of trade with adjacent neutrals, especially the Netherlands and Sweden, so maybe Germany gets a certain ammount of IPCs from these without having to invade.Â

That will be interesting. It seems like a Norway-Denmark NO-type rule would be good, except supposedly the game was said not to be complex enough for NO’s. Maybe to avoid confusion one of the German seaside territories will have a larger than expected income. I’m not sure if the Unrestricted Submarine Warfare phase will be for more than just Germany, but if it were, then the allies could take out the “convoy” between Scandinavia and Germany.