Was there a CP playbook for France first, Italy first and Russia first?

Four points I guess:

1. I usually stack Ukraine with Russia. Trying to attack the Central Powers will lead to what actually happened in World War 1, Russia getting steamrolled and politically collapsing.

2. It seems to me like your France isn’t playing aggressively enough in the face of Germany focusing on Russia. You didn’t mention the French once if your report, when it seems to me like you could have made a serious push for Ruhr, which would have either crippled the German economy or forced it to actually send units West.

3. If Russia is proving a challenge for you, you can always march troops from India -> Persia -> Sevastapol to keep the Russians alive. Even under tournament rules there’s nothing stopping the UK from dumping it’s entire income in India and rampaging across the Middle East. The Ottomans shouldn’t be able to put up too much of a fight unless you’ve got a really strong Ottoman player. This gives you free reign to either wipe out the Ottomans or prop up the Russians long enough for the Americans to win the game for you.

4. If the Italian front is stalling and Americans aren’t needed in France, you can send the Yanks to Italy instead. If you’ve established Allied naval dominance and the Austrians aren’t putting up any serious fight in the Trieste/Venice region, a steady line of Americans will probably be enough to ruin Austria’s day, or at least force them to divert troops away from Russia.

Has anyone tried my tactic page 1 and 2?

Using artillery as coastal defense/reinforcements en route is a good strategy.  Going for Paris first isn’t. Why? You cannot stop the Russians and the British will be destroying Ottomans.  Austria Hungary will get hit badly as well by combined Italian and Russian forces. Alternatively, the Allies can divert Italian and British units to France to stop you from taking it.

To support CdeG, although I have played 1914 just twice, both games featured an axis focus on taking out Russia (no Russian Revolution) while Turkey holds on, leading to an axis victory.

The tanks don’t really get rolling like you said until turns 7-9, but that is when you are going to need them. Our last game the CP won was around 16 turns, so got lots of use of the tanks.

Kim

Yeah, thats a big help.

My guess is that they decided it was too close to Germany. Almost certainly this is why they’ve vandalised the map to give East Prussia to Poland. Also Moscow is more central and so, with plodding infantry movement, its needed for Russia to be able to reinforce the southern front with new units.

@DarthShizNit:

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

@Yavid:

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

@Yavid:

There is no way to balance the game and have Italy be able to swing.

Sure there is. You just need to have the side it ends up on be determined by an investment of IPC, and whoever loses gets their IPC “invested” back.

Conceptually this would be along the lines of making promises to Italy and then if they don’t have Italy on their side, they don’t have to fulfill the promises.

Another way to do it would be to tie Italy’s entry as CP to preposterous, unlikely success against France, which would also be tied to an even earlier US entry.

Obviously it’s not easy, but to say their is “no way” is exaggerating just a bit too much.

How about no way to make the game historical and balance with an Italy that swings.

If we assume that thereis no way that Italy would have joined the CP, then I would agree with you.

Which is what we do looking at the political scene in Italy in 1915.

Funny that that game starts in 1914 then.