You could treat it as impassible for artillery and tanks, so only Infantry can go in to it. This reduces the threat a bit that a big german stack can present to Italy and France at the same time.
Another idea is this:
The first time a power attacks Switzerland, roll a die and remove that many units as casualties. This represents the prepared defenses of the Swiss army.
We make Switzerland worth 4 IPCs. It had massive fortificatians, difficult alpine terrain and bank deposits that justify a much higher IPC than 1.
I strongly suspect that Switzerland was originally much tougher, but the designers decided to reduce it to 1 to release the bottlenecks that developed to the north and south.
If you make it impassable to heavy weapons, this should be balanced by a similar Pripet marsh tt on the eastern front, though I understand not everyone wants to change the map.
Maybe the game designers made it only 1 IPC to minimize the number of Inf. and Art. in the already “busy” area.
I played with Switzerland OOB in my initial games, but would probably look at an impassable option in my next one.
It’s just a matter of getting the crew together for that time commitment :|
Playing with the rules, we initially saw strategic value in taking Switzerland. It became a battleground with multi-national stacks fighting it out. Very impractical as far as pieces on the board, and it really dissolved the historic Great War Fronts.
We have now agreed to make Switzerland impassable, and the games flow much better.
I think it should be impassable.
I like the possibility of invading any country I want to.
Especially the french had plans for outflanking the german army via Switzerland.
Like I wrote before they should gain some IPCs maybe from Sweden or Norway…
Even though I understand that its not much fun to open this front with the oob-small-sized map. :|
I like the possibility of invading any country I want to.
I agree…but I think the G40 mechanics worked better, not sure why it was changed with 1914.
If a player decides to invade a true neutral country, then all the true neutrals should swap to the alternate power.
@Soup
Maybe the G40 mechanics were changed because in ww1 nobody of the neutrals seemed to care when one of them became “involved”.
It happened to Belgium, Luxemburg, Greece, Persia, Albania…
We use rule that attacker’s die roll get a +1 modifier. Defender’s roll un-modified.
Plus, tanks and planes are not allowed (or fly over).
I like making it impassible. But I think if you allow only inf still increase the worth of switzerland making it look less desireble to invade.
