Initial Frustrations and Questions

[bk6583]

This may be premature as I'm really still in the beginning stages of learning this game system but I have been trying to digest the manual, rhave been reading these posts, have gone through the tutorials several times, and trying to play this game.

Combat: I've read the tips over and over yet once a battle starts I still don't get it. I try to commit a corps and all I get is that red lettering telling me I can't. I literally fumble around and for reasons I never understand I can finally move somebody into the commitments screen. I click engage and hear lots of sounds and see the results but never see why what happened just happened. I would love a very detailed tutorial about how to really make this combat screen work and why I can or cannot move units through all of those boxes.

Sieges: I started to play 1914 as German against AI using Army by Army activation. I move into Liege and am faced with "Besiege", "Bombard" and "Assault". The posts I've read seem to to inicate bombard first, then click besiege. I do that and click "Engage" both times and am then faced with besiege and bombard buttons greyed out. Seems my work for this combat is done. Yet I can't exit out of the combat screen unless I click "End Siege" (or I guess click "Assault).

Sieges continued. Next turn (Aug) my German Army is sitting in Liege and I activate it. Not sure where to go from here and so I click "Enable Movements". Nothing else happens. I muck around and finally get to Sep and activate this army and again can't get anything to happen.

Ending turn. I did read some posts about this yet I'm still lost. Can't end turn because other armies haven't been activated yet. Who or where are these armies?

[rattlesnake]

These are not the beginner's questions.
If you click a area there are sounds for example the railway sounds or something else.Sometimes you can't move the troops because they are locked or the other reasons.
You can choose Delay to the next stage
see the pop-up window.Where the troops are deployed.

[calvinus]

For a beginner I would suggest you to play in WEGO mode.
Army-by-army is indeed for expert players, and if you start immediately with such a gameplay mode, it's very hard!

[calvinus]

Combat: I've read the tips over and over yet once a battle starts I still don't get it. I try to commit a corps and all I get is that red lettering telling me I can't. I literally fumble around and for reasons I never understand I can finally move somebody into the commitments screen. I click engage and hear lots of sounds and see the results but never see why what happened just happened. I would love a very detailed tutorial about how to really make this combat screen work and why I can or cannot move units through all of those boxes.

When battle begins, deploy from the Rear to the Deployements. Then commit.
Then, during the battle, you can deploy from the Rear to the Deployments one corps per round.

Sieges: I started to play 1914 as German against AI using Army by Army activation. I move into Liege and am faced with "Besiege", "Bombard" and "Assault". The posts I've read seem to to inicate bombard first, then click besiege. I do that and click "Engage" both times and am then faced with besiege and bombard buttons greyed out. Seems my work for this combat is done. Yet I can't exit out of the combat screen unless I click "End Siege" (or I guess click "Assault).

Use the "Assault" option only when the enemy fortress is neutralized, unless you want to see your forces annihilated one by one. So the best tactic is to conquer the fortress by logorations (bombard and besiege) through several turns of siege....

Ending turn. I did read some posts about this yet I'm still lost. Can't end turn because other armies haven't been activated yet. Who or where are these armies?

Use shortcut keys A for armies to activate and M for mandatory offensives.
Watch also the Army Roster.

Anyway I suggest you again to master the WEGO mode before committing yourself to Advanced play modes.

[rattlesnake]

Sieges: I started to play 1914 as German against AI using Army by Army activation. I move into Liege and am faced with "Besiege", "Bombard" and "Assault". The posts I've read seem to to inicate bombard first, then click besiege. I do that and click "Engage" both times and am then faced with besiege and bombard buttons greyed out. Seems my work for this combat is done. Yet I can't exit out of the combat screen unless I click "End Siege" (or I guess click "Assault).

Be sure you have the artillery
Heavy, coastal and certainly siege artillery may be used to reduce a
besieged fortress,use the Besiege and bombard.
If you directly use "Assault " with your troops,you''ll find all your troops are deliminated one by one.

[bk6583]

Thank you for the prompt replies. This is an excellent forum. That said, I still can't resist a follow on comment. Regarding the battle screen, I really wish there was much more transparency. By that I mean I wish I could bring up a screen that provides all of the details of the battle, i.e., what all of the combat modifiers are impacting a given combat, similar to the Battlefront series where you get to see everything that influences the combat and you get to see what the odds are and in the end you know why a given combat result happened the way it did. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this game doesn't have this feature. So it would seem that even though this is a computer game, that I have to go into the game manual to reference all of the various combat modifiers and MANUALLY try to calculate everything that influences a given battle to get an idea of success or failure and the reasons why?

[poweraxe]

Well, the battle log that you can open during the battle shows exactly why a certain combat result happened(it shows the dice rolls, modifiers etc). Is that what you are looking for? There is a small logs button on the combat screen to open the combat log.