@ABWorsham4
Playtested it:
2023-8-7-World-War-I-1914.tsvg
The Russians were certainly weakened but still held out well against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians.
They were real devastating though against the Ottomans. They killed many Ottoman units and acted as a crucial can-opener, speeding up the fall of Constantinople by 2-3 turns. While this caused several Ottoman territories to become dead income after Moscow fell, the British still were making a respectable amount of income.
Overall though, the game seemed to be in the hands of the Allies at this point.
The British were making good headway throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe, but they committed a fatal mistake which I think changed the tide of the game.
Moscow was captured by the Germans. The British liberated Moscow but forgot to retake a single territory bordering Moscow (Belarus was fully in reach and empty, but the British forgoed that one infantry in favour of attacking the Germans in Galicia, as the British needed that extra infantry to have the power/pips advantage), creating the Russian Revolution.
While this allowed the British to gain the income from the Ottoman territories captured by the Russians, the British lost the formerly Russian territories recaptured from the Germans and Austro-Hungarians and were robbed of a shortcut to Romania (from India to Romania through Sevatatpol takes 3 turns, from India to Romania through Constantinople takes 6 turns). The Allies also lost the aid of a Russian battleship on their side.
Meanwhile, Germany pushed through France, after having built up a rather shockingly large army on the Western front when nobody was looking, shattering every French army in front of them in one round of combat, capturing Paris in one round of combat, shocking everyone.
Austria-Hungary was crumbling at less than 30 IPCs, Italy was holding out, and the Americans were coming in steadily, and nobody thought Germany had the might to launch such an offensive.
Along with the Russian Revolution, this titled the game in favour of the Central Powers.
Germany then used this army to crush American forces in France (again, in one turn of combat, that’s how many German units there were), while pushing into Italy and Spain.
Germany was making 70+ IPCs, and the fall of France allowed the Germans to devote their full attention to repelling the British, which caused the Allies to slowly retreat away from Vienna.
With little to no reinforcements, the German army that captured Paris utterly crushed Italy and repelled American landings.
In the last few turns, with the British in full retreat from the Balkans, the Germans built up a huge navy and beat the Allied fleets into submission in a single battle in sea zone 9, annihilating most of the Allied navy in one turn.
The only thing stopping the liberation of Constantinople and the destruction of vulnerable American transports was the achievement of victory conditions after Germany captured Rome and the retaking of Paris from an unexpected American amphibious landing from the north of France.
Overall, a major Russian attack into the Balkans isn’t the worst idea, and with the game being imbalanced towards the Allies the game is certainly still winnable as the Allies and helps spice things up as well. It was later Allied mistakes that caused the victory of the Central Powers.
