Posts made by protevangelium

You may have already answered this, but do you plan to have a Kickstarter or similar setup so we can contribute to your costs?

What will the forts look like?

@Imperious:

Austrian color is here

Yes, that’s the color I had in mind. Probably my favorite uniform of the early war period.

The third gray-blue color posted is what I think of for Austria-Hungary. Pike-gray or what they called hechtgrau. It offsets them a bit from the Germans. A deeper blue, I would associate with France.

Turkey I tend to associate more with a khaki color, but not sure what shades are available to avoid conflict with the British.

I gather from what you write that miniature sets will not be sold separately from the game (other than the above indicated forts, etc.)?

Great map; I think the borders on this one are just about perfect.

I wonder, though, about the costing for the territories’ IPC value. USA seems a bit high, because I’ll grant you that the A&A1914 value of 20 is far too low. Or do you plan to reduce this during the USA’s neutrality?

Austria-Hungary (Hungary territory, especially) seems 1 or 2 IPCs off. Maybe increase Hungary by 1… or perhaps consider turning the Croatia-Dalmatia-Bosnia territory into two separate ones: Trieste and Bosnia. I noticed that the Austrian official history makes it a point to say how poor the rail network was in this region for moving troops. I like your addition of Montenegro.

As for the Med and Mid-East… I think the Persian Gulf coastline for Mesopotamia is a nice touch. The British actually did land here via sea, attacking the fortress of Fao in the process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fao_Landing Would Cyprus and Crete (Corfu, too?) work as non-value territories?

I notice that the neutral territories have no IPC value… do you have something in mind?

Otherwise, this is a pretty good map as-is.

I have noticed that a lot of similarly themed games have the CPs go first. The basic turn order does not bother me, but I’m more in favor of six months/turn representation. So countries like Italy, etc. would not come into the picture for a while. To offset this, you could bring in smaller powers like Romania or Bulgaria with “larger than neutral” armies at various points (i.e. pick a turn akin to year of entrance into the war). I will never give up on an independent Bulgaria! 

Though a bit concerned about disrupting the play order, I must agree that waiting for someone else to take their turn while I do nothing is very boring. Evern more so at a gaming con.

Do tell, do tell!

Thanks for the updates.

You sold me. 

How far off is the WWI set?

I see the “Rails and Industry” expansion set being considered for production.

What would hypothetically be in this set?

Is there a place to place a pre-order?

I would agree with tweaking the USW rule to favor bigger risk for greater reward. The sea zones affected really ought to just be those surrounding Britain and Ireland. Outside of a few U-boat classes, I don’t think many ventured into the Atlantic very far. Gamewise, this makes putting U-boats on station for USW a bit riskier with the Royal Navy near by. But Britain ought to be challenged with a real, potentially crippling, economic threat. I was never a fan of the mitigation of the original USW rules.

Allowing certain parts of the Med to be affected, too, might make the threat a bit more potent. This might counteract taking certain, previously allowed sea zones for USW in the Atlantic away.

@Chacmool:

@protevangelium:

Has a photo of the map been posted? Not sure if I missed it; I’ve seen the photos of the unit sculpts.

Yes IL posted an image on page 3 in this thread.

Thanks. I’ll check it ou.

Has a photo of the map been posted? Not sure if I missed it; I’ve seen the photos of the unit sculpts.

Obviously that one infantry piece must be Belgian! 

I would agree with the above points on straits in the game. The Black Sea straits should be difficult to move through, and an additional sea zone would enhance the effect.

The Denmark straits should be offset by allowing the Germans use of the Kiel Canal to move from the North Sea to the Baltic. German ships could make the transit in about a half-day. Control would obviouisly be contingent on control of the land territory.

Maybe instead of rail lines on the map, place indicators of where rail CANNOT go. Africa oviously had railroads, but between territories, they were virtually nil. Egypt and Sudan maybe?

Africa, in general can shrink in size.

The Chacmool/Flashman maps added Mexico, which was a good addition. Adds an an element of would-if and makes Mexico a serious annoyance for the USA. The U.S. would probably have prevailed in the end, but not before being bogged down in a great deal of guerrilla fighting. Nothing unites a nation faster than an invader.

I think he might want to go rectangular with it.

How have you worked colonial warfare into the game? Are these omitted, or are they abstracted some way into the game? I won’t whine if there isn’t a separate German askari sculpt, a KAR sculpt, and a Force Publique sculpt… though it would greatly impress me if someone made these…

@ossel:

Ok, good suggestions. What do you think of my original concept of doing away with the “diamond” design? It would basically require getting rid of much of Africa. I’d also want to stretch out the Western Front territories a bit; as several people have pointed out, they get pretty crowded late-game.

I’m a bit torn on this one… I see the benefit in having both styles of map (obviously not in the same physical map). The OOB version including Africa takes in some of the colonial warfare, but the small Western Front seems to be the prevailing complaint. What about the German colonies in blow up boxes? I’ve seen some WWI games do this. This might even be a good way of including the USA, as you really don’t need all of the North Atlantic; most of the U-boats didn’t even go out that far (some could and did reach the USA, however)

To get the ball rolling,

-Poland should not have a coastline; this should belong to East Prussia.
-Bulgaria should have an Aegean Sea coastline
-St. Petersburg should be reflected as a capital and a spawn site.
-Hungary might also count as a capital territory. Some would argue with this, but the economic loss of IPCs and the political damage from its loss basically cause Austria-Hungary to crumble. It was an empire held together with baling wire. The PTR add an interesting element of economic and political collapse. A-H should be the weak political link in the CPs, just as Russia is for the Allies. And I say this as a great lover of playing the A-H empire.
-Maybe raise Bulgaria and Romania an IPC. The addition of Bulgarian resources (reluctantly given) and Romanian plunder (taken without asking) really helped Germany prosecute its war effort at a time when the blockade was starting to put the hurt on it.

Well, for starters, Bulgaria needs an Aegean coastline, Poland no coastline, and some re-configuring of Russian territory to reflect St. Petersburg.

I can add this to your linked post talking about a revised WWI map (thus bumping it). Others have worked on versions of a WWI map, but you can never have too many! Some prefer a global scale; I was fine with the area A&A 1914 portrayed, as this was where the majority of the fighting took place. The only battles outside that scope were largely naval ones, a skirmish in New Guinea, and the siege at Tsingtao (though these intensely interest me and have for nearly two decades). The benefit of a global map is that you can use it for circa 1900 Great Power scenarios.

Ossel,

Do you have your own version of the OOB map for A&A 1914, with corrected map flaws?

The monotony of the fronts, esp. Western, doesn’t bother me either in this game. I would like to have seen more development of a railroad/strategic movement capability for non-combat movment and forts (i.e. sieges that require a diversion away from the “attack 'o stacks” and control certain elements of attack, movement, etc.). Static front lines are just a characteristic of the time, but countries like Germany should have been able to benefit from a superior rail system (and interior comm lines). Other countries like Russia should not be rewarded for having a comparably inferior one. The Allies, of course, benefit from near total command of the oceans; they go where and when they want to.

But alas, this is where house rules come in, and I’ve seen some pretty creative ones so far. The PTR were a good start.

The game system really handles house rules very well. And I might be in the minority, but the lack of R&D in the game is one thing I find a plus. It keeps things under control.