Hi everyone, I'm new to Ageod games, having received CW2 as a present last Christmas. I liked it so much that I now have EAW and am playing both. I've had very few problems, IMHO they are not overwhelmingly difficult to learn (at least compared with another favourite of mine, War in the Pacific AE!). However, I am puzzled by the way the RN is depicted, as at 1914. There are on the face of it nowhere near enough smaller ships. I only have the RN OOB for 1915 but at that time for example the navy had 82 destroyers and 45 submarines, whereas in the game I have 20 and 6 respectively. I may be missing something here, perhaps I'm expected to build these? I expect gameplay factors have an influence too. For example. the Royal Navy had numerous flotillas for estuarine and coastal defence and I can see why it would be desirable to present these abstractly.
The way that aircraft are handled also looks odd to me. Aircraft units are big collections of squadrons each of 6 aircraft and can be moved quickly, by rail (in that respect they are like the future German Flying Circuses). I seem to have about double the number of aircraft the RFC had at the time and squadrons (e.g. No 11 which were not formed until later in the war). I have not checked to see if France has nearly 10 times the number of aircraft Britain has, as it should. In August 1914, 2 and 3 Squadrons RFC flew from Dover to Amiens, I haven't worked out whether I can fly units yet or how range is calculated, as far as I can see you can't, air ops take place from the location you place the unit. That seems to prevent you spreading your squadrons out across your armies to get maximum air support. I did wonder whether it might have been better to have individual aircraft as an element and squadrons as the first level unit "container" but then I thought about how many unit counters you would need in 1918!
Not meaning to sound negative about the games, they're excellent and I'm sure a lot of thought has gone into these units and the way they are presented. But I am curious as to the reasons for the differences between the game and the historical situation.