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It really didn't occur to me when I processed my turn of early June 1917 that the war was going to end. My NM was sitting at 128 and I figured I would take Petrograd which would put my NM up to 146. I even put my German Fleet of almost 11,000 PWR into the Atlantic Shipping Box to try to goad the WE into a fight. No naval battle, but still happened to gain 4 NM from other battles which put me at 150 NM. Surprisingly, no war wariness and voila, game over.

The EE still had 11 NM after Petrograd fell and I didn't even get the opportunity to play the Kornikov RGD. The WE still had control of Paris. Just a surprising way to end the game. What has been a bang up game goes out on a whimper. Oh well.

I did learn a lot from playing the game and think it is a great game to play -- very absorbing!

seathom wrote:It really didn't occur to me when I processed my turn of early June 1917 that the war was going to end. My NM was sitting at 128 and I figured I would take Petrograd which would put my NM up to 146. I even put my German Fleet of almost 11,000 PWR into the Atlantic Shipping Box to try to goad the WE into a fight. No naval battle, but still happened to gain 4 NM from other battles which put me at 150 NM. Surprisingly, no war wariness and voila, game over.

The EE still had 11 NM after Petrograd fell and I didn't even get the opportunity to play the Kornikov RGD. The WE still had control of Paris. Just a surprising way to end the game. What has been a bang up game goes out on a whimper. Oh well.

I did learn a lot from playing the game and think it is a great game to play -- very absorbing!

I'd think that this victory condition (winning after reaching 150 NM) should be removed from the game, it makes little sense IMO (besides being boring).

I agree with you, or is the correct nomenclature "+1"!

I understand that the NM is to reflect the will to fight, but I can't even see Russia holding up its hands because they lost Petrograd (they still had Moscow and a lot of backbone). I understand that because of the Revolution, Russia did call it quits so their spunk wasn't up to its usual par (a la Napoleon or WW2). With NM at 11 and land combat PWR at 18, they were close, but arguably not quite ready to quit.

But the WE?? No way would they have quit! In my game, their NM was still in the low 30's with plenty of troops, even though so far I had been able to get enough WE battle losses to keep their land combat PWR between 67 - 75 with the USA in the war for 6 months. It is what it is, but it felt hallow. I don't think there would be any tears spilled if the "win" condition was scrapped, but I do understand keeping the "lose" condition, after all, wars basically end up with someone losing and often with no real winners.

seathom wrote:I agree with you, or is the correct nomenclature "+1"!

I understand that the NM is to reflect the will to fight, but I can't even see Russia holding up its hands because they lost Petrograd (they still had Moscow and a lot of backbone). I understand that because of the Revolution, Russia did call it quits so their spunk wasn't up to its usual par (a la Napoleon or WW2). With NM at 11 and land combat PWR at 18, they were close, but arguably not quite ready to quit.

But the WE?? No way would they have quit! In my game, their NM was still in the low 30's with plenty of troops, even though so far I had been able to get enough WE battle losses to keep their land combat PWR between 67 - 75 with the USA in the war for 6 months. It is what it is, but it felt hallow. I don't think there would be any tears spilled if the "win" condition was scrapped, but I do understand keeping the "lose" condition, after all, wars basically end up with someone losing and often with no real winners.

Well, I'd say that, by what you have described, it makes a lot of sense for the russians to sue for peace, after losing Petrograd and being so morally and militarily weak. What I argue here is that, this mechanics of winning the war when you hit the 150 NM mark makes little sense, on the other hand, suing for peace after losing all the will to fight (in game terms, NM), makes sense IMO.

So in my opinion, the WE should've kept fighting and the game continued.

PS: Every situation is quite unique, so, both in the Napoleonic wars and in WW2 there were MANY factors at play, so it's never too simple to evaluate these situations.

Feeling empty about winning? Welcome to Ageod games. XD

Ageod games - it's more about the journey than the destination.

I've really only completed scenarios in AJE before, but they were satisfying wins. I've watched quite a few LP's and read AAR's and they ended satisfyingly and in the case of a loss, understandable (albeit we can argue about the fuzziness of some rules here and there), but my game ended without the fanfare of that "a-ha" victory. Maybe I'm just being too historical, or what I believe to be historically possible (as in what a CP victory would have entailed).

I can understand under the conditions that Russia would have folded (but I'll stand by the reknowned determinism that Russians have historically exhibited, but with the caveat that the Revolution would have weakened the national will to fight in this case, as I am recalling now that IRL, Germany took neither Petrograd nor Moscow). But I would still prefer to scrap the 150 "winning" condition and just keep the 0 "losing" condition. Or, in Russia's unique situation 5 or 10 or even 20 NM seems to make sense for them to lose.

I quite agree with HerrDan regarding the WE giving up - it just doesn't seem plausible even though the writing was on the wall I believe there was still a chance that if I had to get Russian NM down to 0 or 5 or 10, the CP's would have to keep their forces split up and give the WE a little more time to get the American build up to France in time. Would I have still won? Most likely, but at least I would have had to take the fight out of the WE before they folded. I assume the 150 condition is meant to prevent the player from having to go through the motions of winning battles easily, but that seems more realistic playing it out until the NM is low enough to really destroy the enemy's will to fight.

I really hope the developers take the 150 "winning" condition out of the game.

The NM dynamic carries over from other games where it can work very well.

If there ever was a drag-it-out-till-everyone's-prostrate kind of war it was WW1. So a bitter end option should be available.

When you think of it, historical WE win was also without that aha effect. There was never final push for Berlin in this war. But upper NM win should be achievable. I imagine quick victory by taking Paris in 1914 ala 1870 was quite possible.

If you have reached 150 NM it means that not only you held a lot of territory, but also won enough decisive battles. In my opinion, this combination can and should be a condition to end the game prematurely. You might have not gotten Paris yet, but surely the abstracted morale difference might be a condition for politicians to sue for peace.

Kensai, all I could go on is my "feel" of the game. I did not feel that I was in position to walk all over the WE. They still had a pretty decent front line (a few months before, it was broken and I thought they were done for, but they reorganized once I started seeing a few American stacks in the picture and the British and French even pushed me out of Compeigne). I actually extended the line a bit further towards Lyons and that sent a 5000 PWR stack around Paris to spread out further south, but their forces were still about parity with mine and I have no idea if there were more Americans in the pipeline which surely would have given the WE hope to dig in. I had been holding the same territory since Spring '15 with the exception of some recent gains south of Nancy once it was secured. Oh, and I did just make a push into Ravenna and Bologna, thereby threatening Rome and I was sieging Alexandria, Britain's last stronghold in Egypt. But when I saw the battles unfolding, my thought was, boy this is going to last well into 1918, and then it was over. That was how I felt. I know the AI does a good job of assessing where your forces are planning to move (I had long thought they they reacted to my moves, but I've been assured it doesn't do that) and I would love to ask the AI if they felt there was no hope on the western front or if they fell victim to the 150 rule

Ace, no doubt it was a bloody conflict. The American Civil War I fought in my 1850 Campaign in PON had over 600,000 deaths on each side, well above the real life numbers and although I didn't jot down the final turns tally, the death mark stood at CP 5,783,041 and Triple Entente 8,569,631 the turn before. I definitely leave a trail of blood when I play these games!

It is conceivable that the will to fight had been exhausted by the WE, the numbers on the field in the western front didn't seem to suggest that to me and I haven't seen enough of the game to know just how much force the US could bring into the game. I actually hadn't really fought the Americans in the war, but I was just beginning to see their stacks move in and around Paris the last two turns, but in real life, I believe they brought over around 4,000,000 troops in the final year. As of the beginning of 1917, I was losing 166,200 troops a month to the TE's 265,400 and it seems the Americans could have tipped that in favor of the WE if they were only beginning to bring their troops over. Does anyone know the timetable of US troops into the game once entering the war (which they did at the end of Nov '16 in my game)?

Not with a bang but with a whimper"

But I do have to underscore how AWESOME I think this game is; I will definitely be playing again since I did several things poorly in my game. I kind of want to play the WE to see how the US can affect the war, although surely a player will have more units on the field than the AI. I also want to play EE as it will definitely be more difficult than the CP. But I also kind of want to play the CP again at a more difficult level and be more cognizant of the 150 rule so the game can play out longer! Any future game will be a ways off as their is so much more to explore in AGEOD land! This game is definitely, and still, sitting at #2 on my list. Sorry, nothing will beat PON except PON2 (please, please, please).