I do not understand what criteria the game uses to assess who wins a naval battle. In a major fleet action to counter a German raid, the Grand Fleet faced off against the HSF and after 15-rounds of combat the RN lost 5-ships and one squadron while destroying 5-ships and two squadrons. All sunken German ships were battleships or battlecruisers whereas the RN lost four battleships and one armoured cruiser.
After acheiving surprise the RN sinks a larger part and greater percentage of an inferior force and the game awarded victory to the German AI.
This seems just all wrong, but similar apperant pro CP bias in naval combat have been noted elsewhere around here. How are the victors in naval battles actually determined?
80+ views and nobody else sees this effect?
Perhaps the lack of response from members of the WW1G Team is that my opening post was taken as being sarcastic, in reality it is nothing of the sort.
Have fought out three major fleet actions each running to 15 combat rounds and each terminated by the computer. In every case the RN outkilled the HSF and in every case the German AI was declared victorious by the computer.
Although a small sample, to me the results seem unambiguous, the evidence is that a bias does exist in how the game assesses naval combat results but whether it is pro-AI or pro-CP is unclear.
It matters. A pro-AI bias may be seen as a tool to balance game play and so while disagreeing with the philosophy behind it, one can at least understand. On the other hand a pro-CP bias is just being very creative with history, something which would be a huge disapointment given the care and attention lavished on the land combat system and the diplomacy and event engines.
In the meantime, I suppose the British Grand Fleet stays at home or flees at initial contact since to all appearences it has no prospects of victory at sea whatsoever. How unlike the 1914-18 reality and sadly unworthy of the rest of the WW1G design.
Perhaps the lack of response from members of the WW1G Team is that my opening post was taken as being sarcastic, in reality it is nothing of the sort.
Have fought out three major fleet actions each running to 15 combat rounds and each terminated by the computer. In every case the RN outkilled the HSF and in every case the German AI was declared victorious by the computer.
Although a small sample, to me the results seem unambiguous, the evidence is that a bias does exist in how the game assesses naval combat results but whether it is pro-AI or pro-CP is unclear.
It matters. A pro-AI bias may be seen as a tool to balance game play and so while disagreeing with the philosophy behind it, one can at least understand. On the other hand a pro-CP bias is just being very creative with history, something which would be a huge disapointment given the care and attention lavished on the land combat system and the diplomacy and event engines.
In the meantime, I suppose the British Grand Fleet stays at home or flees at initial contact since to all appearences it has no prospects of victory at sea whatsoever. How unlike the 1914-18 reality and sadly unworthy of the rest of the WW1G design.
Modding the Naval War
With Calvinus dealing with important real-world issues, decided to do some digging and revisit how WW1G treats the naval war, particularly in the North Sea theatre. What follows are (admittedly subjective) observations of the game and the historical context behind how it appears to work. Fortunately the WW1G Team provided a means to tweak the game so I will also offer up modding suggestions and the rationale behind them.
WHAT'S IN A GAME?
First off, need to go on record as firmly believing that nothing the Kaiser's surface fleet could do would have made one iota of difference to the German war effort. Leaving aside hype and propaganda (of which Churchill's pronouncement, repeated ad nauseum, about Jellicoe being the "only man who could lose the war in an afternoon" is probably the most quoted) I think there is plenty of objective evidence that my statement above is accurate. The German Navy was fatally handicapped by a deadly combination of geography and technology. Both sides had bet the farm on the theories of A.T. Mahan who proved himself to be a rather worthless prophet in that very few (if any) of his theoretical predictions about Sea Power and the Decisive Battle actually came true. Because of this, a tie in the naval war had to give Britain the win since fate placed her right on Germany's foreign trade jugular.
So much for what might have happened, in the wargaming world it is a given that "If only the HSF had done "X" or sank "Y" Germany would have won the war. Therefore game developers need to give gamers what they wish and expect and gamers fighting as the CP in WW1 really expect that the Wilhelm's superb dreadnaughts could actually make a difference.
Eight times I played out the Jutland scenario, four as Britain and four as Germany. Only once did the RN win and ties always went to the HSF. This appears hard coded and the only criteria for victory in a naval battle seems to be numerical losses. This is exactly what is expected by the vast majority of gamers but does it reflect the reality of the actual naval war?
In a naval wargame, counting losses is generally the yardstick for "winning" or "losing" but in the historical context of WW1 this is probably the least accurate means of determining which side "won" any particular encounter. Even at Jutland where the HSF outkilled the RN in numbers of ships, tonnage and lives, none of these things mattered strategically and one can argue with plenty of evidence that after the battle the HSF was far worse off tactically than it had been before while the strategic situation remained entirely unchanged. On the morning of June first, Scheer had fled from a vastly superior force, abandoning his cripples to their fate in what was effectively a rout. It takes a considerable amount of imagination to get a victory out of that but after spinning the yarn for over 90-years, "everybody" knows the HSF "won" at Jutland. This would be near impossible to model in a game setting without using bean counting as the sole criteria for battle victory is reasonable in game terms. Claims of German victory at Jutland ring hollow in any historical context unless one just counts losses.
The only unambiguous victories for the German surface forces were Coronel in November 1914 and the convoy action of the cruisers SMS Bremse and Brummer on 17 October 1917. In both battles the Germans had managed to bring overwhelming material superiority to bear but only Coronel had any strategic impact and that lasted barely a month. The scope of WW1G prevents replication of the effects of either of these battles or similar fictional actions.
THE ROYAL NAVY'S POISONED PILL IN WW1G
Examination of some of the tables and rules used by Le Grande Guerre disclose how the RN has been handed a situation unlike that faced by the Admirals of the day.
The following are from the [color="Red"]TurnRules.csv[/color] file, in the remainder of these examples, they are extracted from the [color="red"]GrandCampaignTwo[/color] folder.
[color="SeaGreen"]195;TR_NavalCombatModifier;1;100;TP_Military;GER;1[/color]
This appears to provide the German Navy with a +1 advantage although nothing relating to the modifier is indicated in the detailed Battle Log. Whether it modifies the die roll or CRT column or something else entirely is not clear but since (+) is good and (-) is bad, this rule gives the HSF an advantage over every other Navy in the game.
Further into the file we find:
[color="seagreen"]239;TR_NavalCombatModifier;1;100;TP_Military;ENG;-1,4[/color]
Here is the RN's poison pill, automatically it is placed at a disadvantage compared to the HSF and every other navy! In effect the British Fleet is inferior to all others. The .xls file in the Modding Folder the value is shown as -1.4 but I could not determine whether the value represents a decimal (, as the decimal sign in Europe) or some other parameter.
Having established rules that place the RN at a disadvantage in all naval combat we move onto rule:
[color="seagreen"]240;TR_NavalDefeatNationalWillEffects;1;100;-;ENG;-4,1[/color]
In addition to the (entirely reasonable) NW costs for losing ships, Britain suffers four-times the NW effects of any other country in the event of a naval battle lost. Having set the RN up for probable defeat with the previous two rules, this rules also guarentees that the effects of that defeat will be exaggerated beyond the historical. Once more though, I am unsure whether the second digit is a decimal or has some other significance.
All the above is in addition to the Defective Shells technology which automatically handicaps the RN even more until it can be researched and adapted. No wonder the vastly superior Royal Navy suffers defeat after defeat at great cost to the war effort, events that have no real-life counterparts in the actual event.
CONCLUSION
It would be wrong to discount the possibility that I have misinterpreted the effects of the three Turn Rules above but I don't think this is the case. In any event, the values may be changed, I have done so and although it seems that tie's still go to the Germans, getting that tie has become significantly more difficult for the HSF in my WW1G universe. Likewise, the British now suffer the same NW loss as other countries since no doubt the propaganda machine would spin defeat into victory.
If you are modding any .csv files, do not forget to copy and save the original somewhere safe.
My aim here was not to run off like a soup sandwich, come across as a mindless rivet-counter nor to try and appear that I know more about naval warfare than the Le Grande Guerre team. All history is subjective and the developers have the vast majority of popular accounts to support how their naval warfare model is interpreted. Rather, I think I understand entirely why the Turn Rules noted above have been implemented and am hugely grateful to them for providing the means to mod alternatives.
Cheers
WHAT'S IN A GAME?
First off, need to go on record as firmly believing that nothing the Kaiser's surface fleet could do would have made one iota of difference to the German war effort. Leaving aside hype and propaganda (of which Churchill's pronouncement, repeated ad nauseum, about Jellicoe being the "only man who could lose the war in an afternoon" is probably the most quoted) I think there is plenty of objective evidence that my statement above is accurate. The German Navy was fatally handicapped by a deadly combination of geography and technology. Both sides had bet the farm on the theories of A.T. Mahan who proved himself to be a rather worthless prophet in that very few (if any) of his theoretical predictions about Sea Power and the Decisive Battle actually came true. Because of this, a tie in the naval war had to give Britain the win since fate placed her right on Germany's foreign trade jugular.
So much for what might have happened, in the wargaming world it is a given that "If only the HSF had done "X" or sank "Y" Germany would have won the war. Therefore game developers need to give gamers what they wish and expect and gamers fighting as the CP in WW1 really expect that the Wilhelm's superb dreadnaughts could actually make a difference.
Eight times I played out the Jutland scenario, four as Britain and four as Germany. Only once did the RN win and ties always went to the HSF. This appears hard coded and the only criteria for victory in a naval battle seems to be numerical losses. This is exactly what is expected by the vast majority of gamers but does it reflect the reality of the actual naval war?
In a naval wargame, counting losses is generally the yardstick for "winning" or "losing" but in the historical context of WW1 this is probably the least accurate means of determining which side "won" any particular encounter. Even at Jutland where the HSF outkilled the RN in numbers of ships, tonnage and lives, none of these things mattered strategically and one can argue with plenty of evidence that after the battle the HSF was far worse off tactically than it had been before while the strategic situation remained entirely unchanged. On the morning of June first, Scheer had fled from a vastly superior force, abandoning his cripples to their fate in what was effectively a rout. It takes a considerable amount of imagination to get a victory out of that but after spinning the yarn for over 90-years, "everybody" knows the HSF "won" at Jutland. This would be near impossible to model in a game setting without using bean counting as the sole criteria for battle victory is reasonable in game terms. Claims of German victory at Jutland ring hollow in any historical context unless one just counts losses.
The only unambiguous victories for the German surface forces were Coronel in November 1914 and the convoy action of the cruisers SMS Bremse and Brummer on 17 October 1917. In both battles the Germans had managed to bring overwhelming material superiority to bear but only Coronel had any strategic impact and that lasted barely a month. The scope of WW1G prevents replication of the effects of either of these battles or similar fictional actions.
THE ROYAL NAVY'S POISONED PILL IN WW1G
Examination of some of the tables and rules used by Le Grande Guerre disclose how the RN has been handed a situation unlike that faced by the Admirals of the day.
The following are from the [color="Red"]TurnRules.csv[/color] file, in the remainder of these examples, they are extracted from the [color="red"]GrandCampaignTwo[/color] folder.
[color="SeaGreen"]195;TR_NavalCombatModifier;1;100;TP_Military;GER;1[/color]
This appears to provide the German Navy with a +1 advantage although nothing relating to the modifier is indicated in the detailed Battle Log. Whether it modifies the die roll or CRT column or something else entirely is not clear but since (+) is good and (-) is bad, this rule gives the HSF an advantage over every other Navy in the game.
Further into the file we find:
[color="seagreen"]239;TR_NavalCombatModifier;1;100;TP_Military;ENG;-1,4[/color]
Here is the RN's poison pill, automatically it is placed at a disadvantage compared to the HSF and every other navy! In effect the British Fleet is inferior to all others. The .xls file in the Modding Folder the value is shown as -1.4 but I could not determine whether the value represents a decimal (, as the decimal sign in Europe) or some other parameter.
Having established rules that place the RN at a disadvantage in all naval combat we move onto rule:
[color="seagreen"]240;TR_NavalDefeatNationalWillEffects;1;100;-;ENG;-4,1[/color]
In addition to the (entirely reasonable) NW costs for losing ships, Britain suffers four-times the NW effects of any other country in the event of a naval battle lost. Having set the RN up for probable defeat with the previous two rules, this rules also guarentees that the effects of that defeat will be exaggerated beyond the historical. Once more though, I am unsure whether the second digit is a decimal or has some other significance.
All the above is in addition to the Defective Shells technology which automatically handicaps the RN even more until it can be researched and adapted. No wonder the vastly superior Royal Navy suffers defeat after defeat at great cost to the war effort, events that have no real-life counterparts in the actual event.
CONCLUSION
It would be wrong to discount the possibility that I have misinterpreted the effects of the three Turn Rules above but I don't think this is the case. In any event, the values may be changed, I have done so and although it seems that tie's still go to the Germans, getting that tie has become significantly more difficult for the HSF in my WW1G universe. Likewise, the British now suffer the same NW loss as other countries since no doubt the propaganda machine would spin defeat into victory.
If you are modding any .csv files, do not forget to copy and save the original somewhere safe.
My aim here was not to run off like a soup sandwich, come across as a mindless rivet-counter nor to try and appear that I know more about naval warfare than the Le Grande Guerre team. All history is subjective and the developers have the vast majority of popular accounts to support how their naval warfare model is interpreted. Rather, I think I understand entirely why the Turn Rules noted above have been implemented and am hugely grateful to them for providing the means to mod alternatives.
Cheers
-
Chris Ferrous
- Corporal
- Posts: 60
- Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2010 4:31 pm
Congrats on your Baby daughter!
Calvanus,
I just hit 50 my daughter is 33 and is the light of my life, we have a phenominal relationship and I am further blessed by the fat that she is beautiful both inside and outside.
If a man has a daughter he will be the only man she may love unconditionally her who life!
As they get older you can say no to any one but them! LOL but they will keep your heart soft for your whole life!!! If mine could find the right mate I am so looking forward to a granddaughter!
I just hit 50 my daughter is 33 and is the light of my life, we have a phenominal relationship and I am further blessed by the fat that she is beautiful both inside and outside.
If a man has a daughter he will be the only man she may love unconditionally her who life!
As they get older you can say no to any one but them! LOL but they will keep your heart soft for your whole life!!! If mine could find the right mate I am so looking forward to a granddaughter!
-
Chris Ferrous
- Corporal
- Posts: 60
- Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2010 4:31 pm
Returning to the topic of debate:-
I've been giving the naval side of things a bit more attention in my most recent game and as a result several naval battles have ensued.
Large fleet actions have been real hammerings, and it's been touch and go, and remarkably similar to the trenches with one having to constantly assess the risk; do I slug on?; will the enemy break?, and will I have anything left?
I have inflicted a couple of defeats on the German Grand Fleet, one of which was quite severe with 7 German ships hitting the bottom to 4 British. The other battle was more even but the German fleet fled and thus lost.
Small fleet actions conform more to your description, and it's difficult to assess what's going on. Most of the time one side or the other slips away not wanting to press the encounter and I have singularly failed to pin down and kill the German 'colonially based' squadrons. These have usually been with shorter range vessles attempting to close on a capital ship which may fire off one salvo before retreating into the mist with no losses either side and a draw declared.
So, in summary, I find the British seem to win big actions but it takes a hammering of both sides to do so.
(I did keep a screenshot of one of the victory screens to show you but I seem to have lost it in my last clear out!)
I've been giving the naval side of things a bit more attention in my most recent game and as a result several naval battles have ensued.
Large fleet actions have been real hammerings, and it's been touch and go, and remarkably similar to the trenches with one having to constantly assess the risk; do I slug on?; will the enemy break?, and will I have anything left?
I have inflicted a couple of defeats on the German Grand Fleet, one of which was quite severe with 7 German ships hitting the bottom to 4 British. The other battle was more even but the German fleet fled and thus lost.
Small fleet actions conform more to your description, and it's difficult to assess what's going on. Most of the time one side or the other slips away not wanting to press the encounter and I have singularly failed to pin down and kill the German 'colonially based' squadrons. These have usually been with shorter range vessles attempting to close on a capital ship which may fire off one salvo before retreating into the mist with no losses either side and a draw declared.
So, in summary, I find the British seem to win big actions but it takes a hammering of both sides to do so.
(I did keep a screenshot of one of the victory screens to show you but I seem to have lost it in my last clear out!)
Thanks for the feedback. I find the naval game overall very frustrating and so made those minor mods detailed above but since then have not had any significant naval battles since to test the changes in a campaign setting.
Still dislike the ability of German naval detachments to exist, essentially forever on the high seas if they get good fleeing rolls, in the face of overwhelming Entente superiority. As I recall, Calvinus has addressed this somewhere as a deliberate design choice but I do not know if this was a feature of the boardgame. Any machine-age warship cut loose from a friendly base had a useful lifespan measured in weeks, the adventures of SMS Emden notwithstanding.
It's good to know that the Grand Fleet can actually win, at least in your world. Perhaps my sample size (from the opening post above) was too small and some of what I am seeing is more the result of poor dice rolls. Not entirely convinced though but now that I have more data am better disposed towards giving the benefit of the doubt.
However, would still like to see them address the spelling errors in the RN ships and see the entire Russian navy redone on historical lines as have written about elsewhere on these pages.
Still dislike the ability of German naval detachments to exist, essentially forever on the high seas if they get good fleeing rolls, in the face of overwhelming Entente superiority. As I recall, Calvinus has addressed this somewhere as a deliberate design choice but I do not know if this was a feature of the boardgame. Any machine-age warship cut loose from a friendly base had a useful lifespan measured in weeks, the adventures of SMS Emden notwithstanding.
It's good to know that the Grand Fleet can actually win, at least in your world. Perhaps my sample size (from the opening post above) was too small and some of what I am seeing is more the result of poor dice rolls. Not entirely convinced though but now that I have more data am better disposed towards giving the benefit of the doubt.
However, would still like to see them address the spelling errors in the RN ships and see the entire Russian navy redone on historical lines as have written about elsewhere on these pages.
-
Chris Ferrous
- Corporal
- Posts: 60
- Joined: Thu Aug 26, 2010 4:31 pm
I agree entirely about the German 'commerce-raiders'. It seems very difficult to actually hunt them down and even then to pin them down and kill them.
Generally speaking in comparison to the British Navy the Kriegsmarine seems over-represented. If certain features of naval warfare are going to be abstracted then obviously we can't expect every single unit to be represented so only the units 'free to roam' rather than those carrying out mundane tasks should be playable. We don't have mine layers/sweepers for instance.
As reported elsewhere by another correspondent a few weeks ago, I've just experienced the Falklands being invaded! How on earth Germany could afford troops (as yet unidentified) to take Stanley, and how they sailed with impunity across an Entente controlled ocean I've no idea. Especially since I've permanently had at least one French and one British squadron chasing around the Atlantic at great expense for the whole war! Even the 'Atlantic' fleet has made regular forays down there. Meanwhile German Colonial troops seem very keen on defending the shrinking pocket at Konigsberg. (I understand a 'blockade runner' event permitted that one!)
As for the Pacific, yes it's a big big place, but again the German squadron has never been intercepted even once, and I seem to be prohibited from actually declaring a raid or blockade of the Bismarck Island base.
As for the Russian Navy, well, I suppose it's toned down to reflect just how little use was made of it, in an offensive manner anyway.
One more thing; is it possible to support a landing by bombardment? Or even to specify a bombardment of a specific target?
The nearest order I can find to that would be naval raid but that seems to produce a randomly selected target adjacent to the patrolled sea zone, and even that is subject to a random 'didn't turn up' die-roll. How would I set about attacking a specific place?
Generally speaking in comparison to the British Navy the Kriegsmarine seems over-represented. If certain features of naval warfare are going to be abstracted then obviously we can't expect every single unit to be represented so only the units 'free to roam' rather than those carrying out mundane tasks should be playable. We don't have mine layers/sweepers for instance.
As reported elsewhere by another correspondent a few weeks ago, I've just experienced the Falklands being invaded! How on earth Germany could afford troops (as yet unidentified) to take Stanley, and how they sailed with impunity across an Entente controlled ocean I've no idea. Especially since I've permanently had at least one French and one British squadron chasing around the Atlantic at great expense for the whole war! Even the 'Atlantic' fleet has made regular forays down there. Meanwhile German Colonial troops seem very keen on defending the shrinking pocket at Konigsberg. (I understand a 'blockade runner' event permitted that one!)
As for the Pacific, yes it's a big big place, but again the German squadron has never been intercepted even once, and I seem to be prohibited from actually declaring a raid or blockade of the Bismarck Island base.
As for the Russian Navy, well, I suppose it's toned down to reflect just how little use was made of it, in an offensive manner anyway.
One more thing; is it possible to support a landing by bombardment? Or even to specify a bombardment of a specific target?
The nearest order I can find to that would be naval raid but that seems to produce a randomly selected target adjacent to the patrolled sea zone, and even that is subject to a random 'didn't turn up' die-roll. How would I set about attacking a specific place?
As reported elsewhere by another correspondent a few weeks ago, I've just experienced the Falklands being invaded!
Meanwhile German Colonial troops seem very keen on defending the shrinking pocket at Konigsberg.
The Falklands thing was probably by me, I have run on about it rather a lot and no doubt some around here consider it tiresome. That and seeing the Qingdao garrison conduct operations to conquor Singapore and French Indochina while the Kaiser's African levies battle amongst the forests of East Prussia with their fezzes and obsolete Mauser M71/84 blackpowder rifles.
My modding solution to these irritating little phenomenon was two-pronged:
1. Lock all German colonial forces in place until July 1916. Instructions to mod this can be found in Post #18 here:
http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=18460
Rationale: As mentioned elswhere, Germany's colonial forces are greatly over-represented in WW1G, probably on a scale of 20 times historical values. By itself however, this is not a significant issue provided the German player or AI is prohibited from using these units in an offensive capacity. Preventing the movement of the colonial garrisons tends to replicate the historical war in Africa better, a relentless Entente advance while the outnumbered Germans cling to their colonies as best they can.
Why release them in July 1916? By that time, except for the highly mobile forces of Von Lettow-Vorbeck, the war for the colonies was essentially over. However, Lettow-Vorbeck survived by being mobile, in game terms he completely abandoned German East Africa (now Tanzania) when he conducted limited operations in the Belgian Congo (now Zaire), Portugese East Africa (now Mozambigue) and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). If the Entente has left effective German forces in Africa by mid-1916 they deserve to have the latter go on the attack; the German colonial governments would have had two-years to prepare.
2. Removed all German and Austro-Hungarian naval transport capacity.
Rationale: Simple, Germany's Great General Staff had no amphibious warfare doctrine, never developed one and lacked the shipping to conduct naval transport of the scale used in WW1G outside of the narrow confines of the western Baltic Sea. It is however, a rather inelegent solution but given the house rules that I impose upon my own personal gameplay, one that is entirely reasonable. Turkey and Italy retain a reduced naval transport capacity since the former requires it thanks to geography (the Sea of Marmora for example) and the latter had expeditionary force experiance as recently as 1911.
The relevant file is [color="DarkGreen"]:\World War One Gold\Data\DB\SeaTransportCapacity.csv[/color]
Simply adjust the values to taste using M$ Wordpad but save the original somewhere safe before editing.
For variety, the Blockade Runner event still fires and appears to work as designed so Africa can still offer up the occasional surprise but will never be decisive or even particularly important. It should continue to act as an exclusive drain on Entente resources as it did historically.
Locking the colonial forces in place and eliminating CP naval transport capacity that had no real-world equivelant serves to prevent or at least reduce the prospects of enacting CP stratagies that were for all practical purposes, essentially impossible. I think imposing these restrictions make the game better by preventing totally ahistorical possibilities and am greatful to the designers for providing the tools to mod the game accordingly.
calvinus wrote:No feature about bombardment before landing has been worked out.
No issues with this, opposed landing were rare and naval gunfire support problematic. Naval bombardments only became reasonably efficient once special purpose monitors or older battleships refitted specifically for inshore operations and provided with suitable high-explosive ammunition were deployed. The operations where these ships were actually effective is well outside the scope of the game.
For all its impressive appearance, noise and drama, the sad fact of most naval gunfire support has always been that it looks far more effective that it actually was. This was particularly the case in the Great War where the shore bombardments in support of the troops at Gallipoli was almost entirely ineffective. In essence, the wrong types of ships shot the wrong ammunition at the wrong targets with guns, fire control systems and communications unsuited to the task.
As the British would learn in support of operations at Gallipoli, on the Channel coast and in Palestine (and the USN would learn in the Pacific in WW2), naval gunfire support required special ships, specialized training and specific interservice doctrines before it could be effective. None of this fits into the WW1G model in my opinion.
Return to “WW1 : La Grande Guerre 14-18”
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests