@Imperious:
If they got there, the game is most likely over anyway. But in that case they fall anyway to Lenin. If they didn’t fall the “red set” of pieces would be even more invalidated.
The purpose of the Red pieces is to fight the “loyal” Russian pieces to stop them reopening the Eastern Front.
Really, you seem to fall into the trap of seeing “World War I” and “World War II” as single self-contained events.
WWII was in fact a collision of around 5 or 6 regional wars that happened to overlap. The “Allies” eventually co-operated, but didn’t even have the same enemies all the time. Only the Finnish-Soviet peace treaty stopped the UK and USSR being at war with each other.
So in WWI the Eastern and Western fronts were fought with little reference to each other; the armistice of December 1917 didn’t stop the war; that of November 1918 didn’t stop the fighting. The war in the east didn’t end in 1918; it collapsed into a series of regional conflicts going on well into the 1920s.
If the game is to have any resemblance to reality, it is this collapse of Great Powers, rather than military occupation, that brings victory or defeat.
Moreover, if the Russians KNOW they’re going to disappear into the ether at the end of turn 4, even if they have a better than average win ratio, they’re little more than a swarm of Lemmings, hurling themselves at the nearest German positions in complete disregard to holding any defensive line.
I’m wondering if, since there are no fighters on the map shot, Larry agrees with me that there were in effect no fighters in 1914. Since reconnaissance is unlikely to be a factor, early war machines are irrelevant.