4000+ Provinces

[Arne]

I'm still encountering, with a fair degree of regularity, allied provinces of 4000+, and when they attack they easily shatter my defending army of 1000+. Is it really the intent to allow multiple armies to occupy a single province? Is there any limit?

Maybe my strategy (Germans, historical, in Grand Campaign) is wrong ... but by mid 1915 I seem to be way out gunned. Perhaps someone can provide some guidance playing as the Germans...

[ohms_law]

which version are you using?
There's been a bunch of improvements made to the AI in the 1.01 patch, but it's not official yet. You can still get it (the beta version, anyway) in the "Help improve" forum, though.

[Arne]

I am using the latest beta patch.

[ohms_law]

Ah, well... I know that it's still being worked on, at least.
As far as I know there's no limit to the number of troops that you could pack into a province. Really... whole cities of millions of people (London, Paris, Berlin, etc...) fit into provinces, so a few thousand troops shouldn't really be a problem. Considering that this is a World War I game (rather than, for example, an American Civil War game), I'd suggest condensing your troops into larger stacks.

[smokediver]

Arne, I use the latest beta patch, too. And I can confirm what you saw. The AI sometimes keeps even 5000+ stacks namely in Paris. I thinks this is related to the command penalty, which seems a lot lower for the AI than for the human players. I saw stacks using over 90 command points with a penalty of only 10 %. With a penalty that low it makes sense for the AI to stack troops. With a stack of 4000+ in Paris it is nearly impossible to attack or defend near Paris since the stacks in Paris often "march to the sound of guns". The command penalty for the AI needs to be checked in my opinion. A small advice: change the headline of your thread a bit. It is misleading.

[Kensai]

Actually, if Paris or any other non-coastal city or fortress has 4000+ troops I would be extremely happy. It means you can bring the rail artillery and bombard them into oblivion while they starve. 200000+ troops even in a city as large as Paris will have a hard time getting their supplies (ok, Paris given it's the capital might get away with it) and there should be horrible overcapacity penalties for the defenders. Other than that, I don't think there should be a limit in how many troops there can be in a region. Regions are huge geographical areas, it is perfectly normal to amass thousands and thousands of troops. The game already takes into consideration the "civilization" of the regions and the only real bottleneck is if they can be fed over time.


PS. I don't imply that the AI should build superstacks and defend, just that it could happen now and then and be a normal situation.

[smokediver]

Kensai, i think Arne did talk about 4000+ in strength (the value you can see on the map), not soldiers. In my games the AI positioned an army in Paris which would have needed 90 CP to be sufficiently commanded, while the AI had only one leader with 48 CP in command. But the army only received a command penalty of 10%. The penalty for the human player would bei 50% in this case. IMHO thats too much of an advantage for the AI. And since the AI didn't place its army inside Paris it wasn't possible to rush the rail arty in and bombard the french, because i just had not enough army commanders to raise an equally big force.

[ajarnlance]

Has anyone seen evidence of the 450 mile long trench warfare stalemate that dominated the western front from December 1914 for three years?? I think the game still needs a lot of work to recreate this immobile trench warfare. Maybe higher entrenchment values in the west, and higher patrol values to prevent deep raids which were very uncommon for most of the war in the west. Both armies should end up spread out in a huge line from Belgium to Switzerland, unless the Germans can make Schlieffen work very quickly before the trenches take over. There should be very few gaps, weak areas yes, but gaps no. The game should open and become more fluid in the west again around 1917 when new tactics and technology, especially tanks, returned the initiative to the attacker more.

[Kensai]

I was talking about 4000+ power and 200000+ troops, but I have written wrong for the first. Sorry. Anyway, my point remains.

ajarnlance, this is happening alright after 1915. Unless you want to risk suicidal attacks, after entrenchment level reaches 4 in the West (by November 1914) things become more static. In a PBEM game with Veteran activation rule I presume both sides will really think a lot before attempting to attack any place along the Belgian-Swiss front.