German Empire, not quite an AAR...

[HerrDan]

yep, committing the German 6 Army to drive deeper into Russia has usually led to a major victory

ROFL! That one made my day!

[HerrDan]

LOL!



Dunno if it is a bug, but I am almost certain the "outnumbered" surrender is present in PON regardless if an army has supply carts or an unblockaded port. Have seen it happening more than once with outrageous differences of troop numbers. Am I confusing it with an experimental version of the engine? Probably, I had started a game in the autumn of 2011, many versions have passed since then.

Anyway, be careful HerrDan!

I shall be careful, interesting enough they didn't move their huge forces stationed in Wilna, another thing I noted is that naval victories gives a great boost to morale. That battle in which I defeated their navy at the gulf of Finland gave me 8 morale!

I used loki's script for the russian naval builds, so I think that soon they will be able to fight my navi again...(I think with the event they stay locked in the port for about 3 turns if I remember correctly...)

I really wished I knew how to force events for a general appearing on the map, or disapearing, because that Alexander III makes me sick.

[HerrDan]

The russians counterattacks again trying to cut our supply lines and isolate our troops in Riga, we tried to stop them, although we lost good positions our armies managed to inflict severe losses on the russians while retreating.

The Battle of Memelland

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Battle in Masuren (actually the first battle in which we had more losses than the russians)

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Battle of Modlin

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And the front now

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Both Emil von Albedyll and Max von Bock und Polach were congratulated for their actions, despite losing good positions they managed to inflict heavy losses on the bleeding russian army!

[Kensai]

Do you have an open port and valid supply chain to the isolated area? Those troops may run into trouble if they stay long enough without a steady supply...

[HerrDan]

Do you have an open port and valid supply chain to the isolated area? Those troops may run into trouble if they stay long enough without a steady supply...

I was trying to capture the port of Riga with von der Goltz armee, but the russians resisted fiercely there so now that the army is running out of supplies I'm retreating from Riga and I'll try to stabilize the front, April was a dark month for us...

[HerrDan]

Russia launched an offensive in the month of April, we suffered heavy losses in this dark month, including the general von Blume that died in the Battle of Lublin.
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The main russian forces attacked at Kulmerland and we were unable to halt their thrust, at least we managed to drive the russians away from Masuren and Memelland, and we halted the russian counter-attack at Tarnow.
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So this is the picture of the current situation in the east. We'll have to abandon our goal of capturing Riga for the moment and concentrate our forces in driving the russians away from east Germany.

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[HerrDan]

While we're with our minds focused on our war with Russia, the United States uses the oportunity to declare war on Spain! The americans are pitiful...

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Our offensive in Wilna commanded by Blumenthal failed and we suffered severe losses as the russians took good positions in their fortresses, I think we already had enough of Blumenthal...

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This is the front by late May:

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[HerrDan]

Updating soon...

[loki100]

what is worrying is that with the return of good weather the Russians are starting to win battles and to inflict heavy losses. I guess that this has increased frontage deployable (probably bad news for you) and partially negated your advantage in close quarter combat (better morale. probably better cohesion) so they are doing well at long range.

this promises to be grim, and thus great fun to read about ... sorry

interesting to see the US-Spanish war start, wonder how well the US AI will cope with a complex naval war though

[HerrDan]

what is worrying is that with the return of good weather the Russians are starting to win battles and to inflict heavy losses. I guess that this has increased frontage deployable (probably bad news for you) and partially negated your advantage in close quarter combat (better morale. probably better cohesion) so they are doing well at long range.

this promises to be grim, and thus great fun to read about ... sorry

interesting to see the US-Spanish war start, wonder how well the US AI will cope with a complex naval war though

I think I won't be able to help the spanish as most of my forces are very busy fighting Russia and we cannot really spare many troops, although at the sea we could help with our pacific fleet stationed at the naval base of guam, but then again I'm not sure if it's worthwhile to continue to support the spanish...

What worries me is that the russians are now trying to capture Königsberg!

Edit: and I understand how fun it is to read about the others misfortunes

[Kensai]

It is always fun to see the human player challenged. And Germany going against Russia is a classic!

[HerrDan]

Summer began with major victories for the German Empire! God bless Emil von Abeldyll and von der Goltz! After we restablished our supply lines in Ielgava we resumed our offensive towards Riga and Russia commited a powerful army with the intention of crushing our summer efforts at Riga, but our 4th army, now united with elements from the 6th army, commanded by von Abeldyll and supported by our Baltic Fleet under Hans von Koester fought bravely and were able to turn the russian counterattack into their greatest defeat in the entire war until now.

Battle of Ielgava

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The russians blamed their losses on the lack of cordination and leadership in the first Battle of Ielgava, and they thought our forces couldn't manage to hold another thrust, so russian general Lyubovitski launched a second thurst against our forces with the aim of halting our advance in Latvia, but the 4th army showed greater resolve than he had expected so we managed to inflict the russians another major defeat that has the potential to be a turning point in the war!

The second Battle of Ielgava

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This is the front by early July, the russian army is commiting its larger forces against Königsberg, we're trying to tie as many russian forces there so that we can attempt to surround these forces and defeat them in the next season.

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Zoom at the situation is East Prussia:

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[HerrDan]

It is always fun to see the human player challenged. And Germany going against Russia is a classic!

Haha yes I love to see it too, I was just joking about "seeing other's misfortunes" lol

Now I think I got definitely the upper hand in the war, the russians understimated us and commited a huge mistake that I think changed completelly the course of the war... I'll soon update here with the last battles that happened in July!

[loki100]

good victories, it always helps when after a bad defeat, the enemy attacks again as that tends to lead to a lot of lost elements, but that Russian army at Koenigsberg is still very large and damgerous

[HerrDan]

Since the start of the war (even before, as we were already planning to wage war against Russia)the goal of our General Staff, already stated at the start of the war, was to use a Clauwitzian strategy to defeat the russians what we wanted and belived was the only really effective way of defeating the russians, that is to attract the bulk of their forces to our borders, even at the cost of letting them thrust into our territory, and then surround their armies and eliminate them.

At the beginning of the war, we sometimes forgot about these principles, commiting some of our forces to thrust deep into Russia territory (e.g our thurst into Latvia). Russia then mobilized its armed forces and began to counterattack us in spring, after defeating us in Wilna they began to commit their forces against our own territory, what almost led me to panick sometimes, but then as summer was getting near and the weather improved, we began to see that we could (and should!) use their thrust into East Prussia for our own goals, although we fought to halt them at Kulmerland we both feared (feared because the lost of a city like Königsberg would mean a huge loss of national pride and morale) and wanted (wanted because that was, maybe, our greatest hope of surrounding their main forces) that their main forces tried to march to Königsberg.

All in all, Spring was a bad season for us in the war, but then Summer began well, with our forces resuming their offensive operations in Latvia and trying to stabilize the front on East Prussia. With the two battles of Ielgava we somehow regained the initiative, inflicting heavy losses on the russians forces and morale. Now in July the russians tried again to regain the initiative in the war, this time attacking in full forceon East Prussia with the goal of capturing Königsberg. This led to a serie of battles throughout the east front.

Battle of Siedlce: The russians surrendered at Siedlce.

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Then the turning point of the war, The Battle for Königsberg commences

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The russian forces find themselves surrounded at Königsgberg, completelly surrounded, their only choice is to fight their way out

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The fight continues...

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The russian forces tries to rescue their armies entrapped at Königsberg

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[HerrDan]

Lyubovitski led an his army trying to save the russians from an even greater defeat

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The Battle of Riga, the russian garrison finally surrenders to von Albedyll 4th army

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The russian forces entrapped in Königsberg manage to escape complete destruction...

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But our forces commanded by Waldersee pushes further pursuing the russian forces

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the persecution continues...

[HerrDan]

The russian forces continue trying to retreat from Königsberg...

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And they finally suceed in retreating, after losing about 3/4 of their forces...

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These battles fought in July changed completelly the course of the war, the russians lost more men in these battles than in the sum of all the other battles they fought in this war and in their war with China together. Not even in my best hopes, I thought something like this would happen. They did exactly what we wanted them to do, they tried to assalt Königsberg when they made 1 breach there, but Königsberg is my most defended fortification (but even so I didn't think it would be so tough!), it's great to know that my efforts to surround their forces paid off.

[HerrDan]

This is the current picture of the situation, their main army retreated to Kulmerland, now we will try to close the gap and crush their forces, giving them no relief before winter comes!

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[loki100]

well done at Koenigsberg, that is the advantage of luring the AI onto a large fort ... it will attack with full commitment and that means you get the sort of battle sequence where heavy losses feed into lots of lost elements, thus pruning a huge stack down to a manageable size.

wee grumble though, I've a relatively slow internet connection and if all your images are .png loading is slow, can you convert to .jpg, makes little practical difference unless you are doing really clever graphical tricks

[HerrDan]

well done at Koenigsberg, that is the advantage of luring the AI onto a large fort ... it will attack with full commitment and that means you get the sort of battle sequence where heavy losses feed into lots of lost elements, thus pruning a huge stack down to a manageable size.

wee grumble though, I've a relatively slow internet connection and if all your images are .png loading is slow, can you convert to .jpg, makes little practical difference unless you are doing really clever graphical tricks

Of course I can do it, just tell me how >< I'm using greenshot, so I still don't know how to convert these images, can't you load them? I'll try to do it...

[Kensai]

well done at Koenigsberg, that is the advantage of luring the AI onto a large fort ... it will attack with full commitment and that means you get the sort of battle sequence where heavy losses feed into lots of lost elements, thus pruning a huge stack down to a manageable size.

Yep. But this is an extremely disturbing behavior by the AI that I hope catches Pocus' attention. I really don't understand why Athena does not hold on the siege if it has problems with cohesion or worn-out elements. This battle was a turning point indeed, but also a good opportunity to catch and fix certain bizarre behaviors.

The AI blew its chances here and dropped the ball. I am kind of disappointed.
It is so obvious what went wrong here. If only it waited one or two turns to get reinforcements in its units and regain cohesion. With so much artillery, it would have annihilated the defenders, even if they didn't surrender on their own due to the huge numbers difference.

Honestly, in other AGEOD titles I don't see such careless behavior, perhaps there are inherent limitations in PON (or it simply needs some extra rules). In SCW I enjoyed so much the small campaign of the North which I lost (as the Republicans) for few VPs while managing to keep on my objective regions, but the AI behaved remarkably well at mid-range aggressiveness settings, scoring victories after victories on the battlefield.

[Jim-NC]

It also appears that the Russian army may be running out of replacements. At some point, the AI can't keep up with the replacements necessary for such a venture (attacking a fort then retreating when it goes wrong).

[HerrDan]

Yep. But this is an extremely disturbing behavior by the AI that I hope catches Pocus' attention. I really don't understand why Athena does not hold on the siege if it has problems with cohesion or worn-out elements. This battle was a turning point indeed, but also a good opportunity to catch and fix certain bizarre behaviors.

The AI blew its chances here and dropped the ball. I am kind of disappointed.
It is so obvious what went wrong here. If only it waited one or two turns to get reinforcements in its units and regain cohesion. With so much artillery, it would have annihilated the defenders, even if they didn't surrender on their own due to the huge numbers difference.

Honestly, in other AGEOD titles I don't see such careless behavior, perhaps there are inherent limitations in PON (or it simply needs some extra rules). In SCW I enjoyed so much the small campaign of the North which I lost (as the Republicans) for few VPs while managing to keep on my objective regions, but the AI behaved remarkably well at mid-range aggressiveness settings, scoring victories after victories on the battlefield.

Well, maybe I didn't deserve to win that battle? (ironic ofc) In any case, I don't think they acted "bizarre", they commited a mistake, but if you wanna take a look at it realistically, only by looking at our armies position before the battle, it wouldn't be hard to guess that their armies would get surrounded if they didn't ordered a retreat, and the same thing would happen in real life if in a war one side allows its forces to get surrounded that's what happens (Tannenberg, Stalingrad etc...), I managed to surround their forces as I stated this is the strategy to beat the russians, I don't really see the point where I should not win, I only won this battle so hard because I surround the russian forces in Königsberg, if not they could have retreated (like they tried to do after they lost the battle, but as they were surrounded they suffered huge losses). I think that if a player can't get rewarded by cleverly winning a battle against the AI, THEN we would have a problem. The problem with the AI, is that they use "stacks of doom", and that is really hard to deal with as they don't suffer the same penalties the player does and we the player can't defeat such stacks, unless using some clever strategies, the stacks of doom thing is the real problem here, not what happened in my game, that was the result of them not retreating their armies and if they didn't use such a huge stack they maybe wouldn't have suffered that many losses.

Sometimes it's kind of frustrating when we win something and then it's because "the ai acted wrong", imagine if all armies in history acted "perfectly" what kind of wars would we have? As I stated the wrong thing that must be adressed is the stacks of doom thing, that is like the AI "cheating", because they don't get penalties and such stacks are impossible to beat on normal situations, so I would prefer to lose many battles because the AI used smart moves with their army stacks and not mostly because it stacked 80%(just to illustrate, I don't know what was the % of their forces there) of their forces in one almost invincible stack.

[HerrDan]

It also appears that the Russian army may be running out of replacements. At some point, the AI can't keep up with the replacements necessary for such a venture (attacking a fort then retreating when it goes wrong).

I think they weren't running out of replacements, I think they just tried to assalt a heavy fortification and as their army didn't have a place to retreat it ended up in a heavy defeat. Nothing unusual in the period, as it's the age of static defense and not moviment war...I think their losses on the first battle was maybe too high, but the rest of the battle was kinda expected...btw heavy losses when assalting fortification was also quite common at the time...

[Kensai]

Sorry if I sound like I want to diminish your victory. That wasn't my point. Studying other guys' AARs is an opportunity for me to spot limitations in the engine and contribute to improvements. That's my other job.

The AI can commit errors in "reading" your intentions. It can move to a wrong direction, for example. But it should NOT commit errors when it has the initiative. Choosing between assaulting or not should be a very careful business for the AI. I have studied too many battle logs these past three years (especially in PON) to know when a battle is doomed. These catastrophic results (400K dead, injured, and prisoners is probably one of the highest values I have ever encountered!!) are evident of too low cohesion and element hitpoints. If the Russian AI has run out of reinforcements, then it should somehow not attempt to assault and stay on besieging.

I wonder if this can be hardcoded to the AI's behavior somehow. When cohesion and/or hitpoints of the stack are low --> the AI should NOT be allowed to assault and simply maintain the siege. If this is too deterministic, perhaps there should be a percentage of attempting the assault, obviously extremely low (not more than 10%, just to abstract an impatient General).

[HerrDan]

Sorry if I sound like I want to diminish your victory. That wasn't my point. Studying other guys' AARs is an opportunity for me to spot limitations in the engine and contribute to improvements. That's my other job.

The AI can commit errors in "reading" your intentions. It can move to a wrong direction, for example. But it should NOT commit errors when it has the initiative. Choosing between assaulting or not should be a very careful business for the AI. I have studied too many battle logs these past three years (especially in PON) to know when a battle is doomed. These catastrophic results (400K dead, injured, and prisoners is probably one of the highest values I have ever encountered!!) are evident of too low cohesion and element hitpoints. If the Russian AI has run out of reinforcements, then it should somehow not attempt to assault and stay on besieging.

I wonder if this can be hardcoded to the AI's behavior somehow. When cohesion and/or hitpoints of the stack are low --> the AI should NOT be allowed to assault and simply maintain the siege. If this is too deterministic, perhaps there should be a percentage of attempting the assault, obviously extremely low (not more than 10%, just to abstract an impatient General).

I understand that you're working hard to get the AI to perform better, I just argued that it's something that can happen, and that what I did certainly contributed to the result of this battle (i.e I let them thrust into my beloved Königsberd and tried to surround them there, as I have mantioned before, I'm fortificating Königsberg since the start of the game, it's my most protected fortress with many guns etc, I've played this game before and I know how the russians are dangerous...). Some may argue that they still held the initiative, but in any case they made a very risky move by thrusting so deep into Königsberg without defeating my main forces there, in any case they had a hit on their morale the turn before with the losses on the two battles of Ielgava, so that probably affected the mind of their soldiers and their general tried to rush for what seemed to be a great victory ( ),as yourself pointed out there must be a chance for them to take this decision as generals many times commited this kind of mistakes, even I as a player sometimes lose my patience and act like that too (specially because sometimes I like to roleplay with my generals so I want to "have some glory too", this kind of thing is really fun ).

What I think should be adressed, if possible of course, is the AI tendency to always stack HUGE armies like that one, that would probably improve our game experience during wars. And last but not least, you can still cheer for the russians, the war isn't over yet! They still have a huge army and their morale isn't that low (75), indeed it's because I chose a bad (maybe good) moment to declare war on them, as they had just defeated the chinese so that their morale was really high, cause if not it would be already broken, as the naval battles at the start of the war alone gave me 14 morale.

[loki100]

I think the issue with the assault is to set it up you need to fully commit, so if the first attack goes wrong, the next will hurt you deeply, till you run out of organisation to continue.

I think this is a PoN issue for 2 reasons. First PoN has large forces (incl the AI monster stacks) and relatively few provinces - compare a PoN Austro-German war to Rise of Prussia. Second, PoN uses the simple command model, so you don't get the full army organisation of say Revolution Under Siege. This links to the mega stack issue as the AI can't build those in the games with the complex command structure, its not an issue in Wars in America (all the armies are relatively small) or in AJE (attrition and supply prevent the use of single monster stacks, and, again, in many scenarios the armies are relatively small).

I agree that if we could cure the mega stack then wars would be more interesting, at the moment there are a number of tricks to cull that sort of force, most are unrealistic but the player has no other choice but to use them. I'd rather a clash of multiple armies, with the risk of not committing/strange stack targetting etc, the result would be more dynamic and realistic wars.

At the end of the day, the AI is an AI, that in PoN is pretty good, and there are plenty of constraints on a player (if you use restricted SoIs). We want the game to have some dynamism and for the player to do better (so as to retain interest), so it doesn't worry me too much.

As to .png, one thing you can do is to take the image, open it in an editor (paint.net is great, and free) and save as .jpg. You'll see the resulting file is about 25-40% the size of the .png which makes a difference when loading a lot of images.

[HerrDan]

I think the issue with the assault is to set it up you need to fully commit, so if the first attack goes wrong, the next will hurt you deeply, till you run out of organisation to continue.

I think this is a PoN issue for 2 reasons. First PoN has large forces (incl the AI monster stacks) and relatively few provinces - compare a PoN Austro-German war to Rise of Prussia. Second, PoN uses the simple command model, so you don't get the full army organisation of say Revolution Under Siege. This links to the mega stack issue as the AI can't build those in the games with the complex command structure, its not an issue in Wars in America (all the armies are relatively small) or in AJE (attrition and supply prevent the use of single monster stacks, and, again, in many scenarios the armies are relatively small).

I agree that if we could cure the mega stack then wars would be more interesting, at the moment there are a number of tricks to cull that sort of force, most are unrealistic but the player has no other choice but to use them. I'd rather a clash of multiple armies, with the risk of not committing/strange stack targetting etc, the result would be more dynamic and realistic wars.

At the end of the day, the AI is an AI, that in PoN is pretty good, and there are plenty of constraints on a player (if you use restricted SoIs). We want the game to have some dynamism and for the player to do better (so as to retain interest), so it doesn't worry me too much.

As to .png, one thing you can do is to take the image, open it in an editor (paint.net is great, and free) and save as .jpg. You'll see the resulting file is about 25-40% the size of the .png which makes a difference when loading a lot of images.

I agree that the AI gives us no choice but to hide behind a fortress when it comes to face those monster stacks, and the AI in PON is pretty good I think, besides we players have many constraints and penalties that the AI doesn't have. Also it's interesting to mention that I didn't expect this great victory to happen as by lookig at that monster stack one get to think it's impossible to stop, so it's really good to know that it is not impossible to beat that kind of stack, specially because I did my best to assure that, in case they lost the first battle, they would have nowhere to run, I tried my best to surround their forces there at Königsberg, so it definitelly helped to make my victory such a huge sucess.

And I feel I need to mention here that the outcome of the battle was very interesting and not so unrealistic as Kensai comment makes it sound. It's perfectly understandable that a General can commit such mistakes as to underestimate the opponent and make a wrong move like this one, besides they only tried to assault my fortifications after they breached it, so I think there wasn't such a huge mistake on their part, I agree that if they tried to assault it before breaching it would be really something to worry when it comes to analising the AI performance, but that wasn't the case. And now to say about the outcome, perhaps their casualities were a little too high, but not THAT high when you observe the way battles happened in this period, the attacking force always had huge casualities when trying to assault a fortress, like I said before, it was an age of defensive warfare, trench warfare and so on, so it's expectable to see the attacking side suffering high casualities in this situation.(specially when talking about russian forces lol...).

To sum up, I think this kind of mistake is what mostly decided wars in the past (the AI most know how to commit mistakes too lol...), they got their armies surrounded attacking an enemy in a very good defensive position and, I must add, with many reserve troops to exploit their defeat, and they had to fight their way out, so the outcome ended up being "realistic" (by the way it's a game) as I want my game to be. All in all I can't really complain about these battles when thinking about a game of this time period, PON couldn't do it much better, in no other portraiting this period, I would have a so realistic world as the one I have here in my game, in this AAR you're reading.

Regarding the .png, I have already configured my greenshot to save my screenshots in the .jpg format, so the next screenshots I'll post will be in this format already.

PS: I know how great is to cheer for the computer when we read an AAR, btw I have always cheered for the computer when I see my friends playing ANY GAME, so I understand your frustration Kensai but I just don't understand all the commentaries about "realistics outcomes" etc, as this is so far, one of the most realitic AAR I've seen around, I don't really want to "conquer the world" here, and I'm not trying to dominate Europe as Belgium I want to experience "a bit different" world, in the sense of possible outcomes, like of course, I want to win the ww1 as Germany, something that was REALLY CLOSE to happen in rl, and to have a more dominating navy, again something that would naturally happen if The German Empire had just a little more time etc...but don't understand me wrong here folks, I really like this kind of discussion, I'm just arguing here about what I think.

Keep up with the good discussion

[HerrDan]

The russian armies entrapped in East Prussia continue trying to fight their way out, but Waldersee forces are trying to force them to surrender...

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Emil von Albedyll army manages to keep Riga against all odds, but I'm thinking it's gonna be hard to keep Riga if we don't eliminate the russian forces in Latvia and Lithuania, we manage to hold Riga against this russian offensive, but I don't know if we'll be able to resist there for much longer, maybe we'll be forced to retreat from Riga.

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Some of our forces try to march through Polotsk without my consent! And they suffer heavy losses...

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Even though we won the last battles in this summer and managed to inflict the russian severe losses we also had our share of losses and we can't afford to keep losing troopsthis way...

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[HerrDan]

Our 4th army is in a complicated situation in Riga, specially now that General von Albedyll retired, the russian armies for the moment are more worried about saving their forces trapped in East Prussia, but if they press us in Riga I don't know if we can hold on for much longer...

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The russian forces in Kulmerland have been defeated, but the ones in East Prussia are still fighting and tying a great part of our forces there...

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(thank God the russian forces are not commanded by Alexander III anymore, Alexander III should've been dead and gone quite some time ago, but now that he isn't there anymore my feeling of immersion kinda improved)