Italy active on turn 1... What?

@Dovenik-Hyseni

To respond to your points:

To be fair, I prefer stacking Galacia over hitting Poland AH1. I only brought up the possibility of hitting Poland as a hypothetical.

I don’t particularly care about winning in Serbia round 1. I only even attack Serbia at all because the rules of the game force you to. The rules of 1914 allow you to choose whether or not to press combat each turn, so you can simply have the Austrians not attack the Serbians each turn, which allows you to potentially roll 3s with your stack there instead of 2s (assuming the Entente presses combat).

That being said, I think I was a bit off in assuming the Serbia guys would be capable of hitting Romania round 2. You’d probably need to split the Galacia mega-stack to hit both Romania and Ukraine, depending on what Russia does.

You can most definitely contest Romania and Ukraine AH2 if you’re committing 100% of Germany’s buys towards Russia. Yes the battles won’t go in your favor initially (and you may have to spend some turns not pressing combat in Ukraine), but your objective in a Kill-Russia-First style of strategy should be to hit Russia on multiple fronts and force them to lose more troops each turn than they can feasibly replace. Starting fights in Poland (with Germany), Ukraine and Romania should be enough to accomplish this goal.

Side-Note: Your 10 INF/4 ART swings for 36 (8@3 + 6@2) and has a 60% chance to wipe the Romania stack in one round of combat. Those are pretty good odds, but it’s not exactly consistent, especially considering that a big chunk of your strategy hinges on having the Romania stack available to march on into Ukraine AH2.

On the topic of fighting/holding off Italy, I prefer killing Italy first as Austria over killing Russia first, but that’s beyond the scope of this conversation. However, because Italy goes after Austria, you can send some of your turn 1 buy into Trieste Round 2 to slow down Italy if you’d rather send 100% of the Vienna guys East.

I don’t have much more to add, really. If I were Russia playing against this I would just shuffle all of my units into Ukraine R1 and hope that France/Italy/UK can do something productive in other theaters.

Anyone out there given this a crack after DoMan and I put it together?

I agree. Larry isn’t trying to send us a message, this just wasn’t playtested enough. No way was the outcome of WW1 inevitable. Either side could have won the whole time.

@Razor:

Austria cant afford to lose Albania, but can USA afford the extra trannies it takes to contest Albania rather than shucking units to France ?

It would take the same number of transports.  France and Albania are both two movements away from the US.  Shucking to Albania puts US troops within 2 moves of 2 different CP capitols.

@Texas:

The biggest mistake I have seen is Germany contesting too many territories in the west.  You simply can’t produce enough infantry to sustain that.  I have found hitting hard through Belgium is effective while leaving Lorraine and definitely Switzerland alone.

I don’t know about that- hitting Switzerland gives you a lot of flexibility to hit Italy or Southern France.

I once had an idea for a version where hit points were equivalent to firepower, so:

Battleship 4-4-2 (4 hp)
Cruiser 3-3-3 (3 hp)
Destroyers 2-2-2 (2 hp)

Each ships would have the appropriate number of gun turrets, which can be removed when a hit is taken to indicate damage and reduced firepower.

Two hits slows down a BB, one a destroyer.

I’m coming down in favour of a 4 player game. Since the four principal nations: were

Germany

Russia

Austria

France

They would be the starting element for each player, in turn order.

With other nations joining in, we should end up with:

Germany, [Bolsheviks]

Russia, (Serbia)

Austria, Turkey, (Bulgaria)

France, UK, Italy, USA, (Belgium), (Portugal), (Greece), (Romania), (Arabia)

All nations within each group moving and fighting together.

One possibility is that, at a certain stage, Allies can be placed under an overall command and after that they all play together.

Ref: Supreme War Council and Unified Command

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68445/general-von-kuhl/unity-of-command-among-the-central-powers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_War_Council

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vWLoU9HVBeEC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=central+powers+unified+command&source=bl&ots=6BEE-CvHEp&sig=1ARJ-Cd3I-IAtUc93BZrS7XZO8g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9hX7UPqjE8eZ0QWd7YGADQ&sqi=2&ved=0CF0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=central powers unified command&f=false

@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.