Yesterday I played my first game of 1914 (against someone else, I already tried a solitary game to see what options there are).
CP won a victory by crushing the Russians and keeping the western allies at bay. The latter was easily done, because the allied player made some mistakes and my cruisers could kill off a couple of transports.
Pros:
-A really great looking game (map and mini’s)
-System with one round of combat and contested areas is refreshing
-Every power (except USA) has enough to do. Unlike the AA 1940 Chinese or French.
-Spaces on map makes it hard to conquer Paris, which represents the difficult struggle there
-The way neutrals work
-Loads of dice
Cons:
-Some sea zones are too close. From the USA and Canada you can go to western med in one turn, even further with cruisers.
-Tanks are too weak for their cost
-Its hard to keep track of IP with the contested areas. I often switched an IP number at both sides after a space gets conquered. While before that I already deducted the amount of IPs from the first owner. Just needs getting use to I guess, but some sort of reminder in the form of a contested zone marker would have been great. That way you actively need to remove that marker which reminds you automatically that you only need to adjust one country’s IP track.
-Switzerland. It should be strictly neutral/impassable. If conquered by whatever side it makes the fronts really ahistorical and less fun. You can move from Munich to Switzerland to Burgundy, or Northern Italy. Or the other way around.
-Some countries have a desperate lack of minis (German subs, British inf for example)
-No paper money
-Confusing IP tracking
Edit: Ottoman and Austrian army colors are way too similar. Confusing when both attacking Russia.
All in all a very good and refreshing game. And Global wasn’t finally finished after loads of Alpha set ups, so let alone a complete new era of warfare with new game mechanics. I guess there will be something like that for this game as well. After that Larry can work on a Imperialism game or even Napoleonic! ;-)