Moltke/Stack of doom

[Albert Herring]

OK, so I knew that starting the Franco-Prussian war was probably going to end in tears and that Moltke was quite good at his job, but I wasn't expecting to come straight up against a 12000 power SOD. 253 command points total and only a 23% penalty? What's going on there?

[loki100]

OK, so I knew that starting the Franco-Prussian war was probably going to end in tears and that Moltke was quite good at his job, but I wasn't expecting to come straight up against a 12000 power SOD. 253 command points total and only a 23% penalty? What's going on there?

dunno but he seems to have a habit of building that super-stack, in my Italy AAR, he's wandering around central Europe with a similar force (fortunately I'm not at war with them). There is meant to be a bit of code to make the AI break up huge stacks but they do still seem to form. I'd suggest 2 things - get into good terrain and defend. Remember the frontage rules will severly limit how much goes into action, so you can hold them off with some ease. Then, if you can, go for the supply lines.

[Jim-NC]

The maximum penalty for the player is 35%. I have read that the max for the AI is 23% (that would match what you stated). He has moved his entire army into 1 stack it seems.

[Albert Herring]

All but. After sweeping aside my units in the Saarland, the SOD besieged Metz which held out a couple of turns and inflicted a LOT of casualties; it then helpfully wandered off into the Vosges so I moved a couple of regulation 48 point armies in there with defend orders and he happily sat there engaged in a battle of attrition for several weeks, losing or stalemating battle after battle, and ran out of supply after a while; unfortunately the Communards then decided to do their thing even though the Prussians had got nowhere near besieging Paris, dropping my national morale from 120 or so to 6, so I sued for a winning peace blanche (ish, I got some trivial reparations).

Oddities: I got the Ems Telegram event after I had already made peace, which was presumably a bit pointless (although the message text was missing anyway). Napoleon III was deposed several turns earlier (the turn I declared war, I think) but seemed to be happy enough to carry on leading an army for the republic.

I assume that there's nothing more interesting to do with the Commune than to send in the troops and crush it? I'd much rather go with the rebels and declare a socialist republic, but assume that it's not possible within the game...

Also, the ability of the game to simulate unrestricted submarine warfare may well be a fine thing, but I think that the depredations of the Prussian U-boat fleet of 1871 on my trade fleets in the Caribbean and the South China Seas are a tiny bit overstated. Not sure what the Prussian navy consists of, but I assume it's a little smaller than the one that was blockading every Prussian port.

[Jim-NC]

There was a recent change to the hit % chance and amount of damage for ships attacking transport fleets. The AI tends to send all available ships into the trade boxes to attack your commerce. It will sometimes leave it's coast undefended to sink those transports.

The Ems Telegram is hard dated for a particular range, as is the Paris commune (ground conditions don't effect it, only that it is past a certain date, but before another).

Napoleon III will be a general for a while (if our MP game is any indicator), and just wait until he wins the presidency (after being deposed).

If you had captured your capital from the rebels your NM would have bounced back to over 100, maybe even closer to 200.