Central Powers....any chance?

[RU Rick James?]

As subject, I've only played a few hours; however, it seems overly daunting for the Central Powers to achieve victory in the Campaign game.

[cssneed]

I have played 7 hours today so far it is late 1916 I am the Central powers on the normal setting. I will win probably decisively . the only thing I worry about is the blockade which I intent to challenge in 1917 once naval research in ready.

[RU Rick James?]

Thanks; do you mind if I ask whether you stick to a historical strategy or different one?

[ammianus]

I broke through the western line immediately in September 1914. Pushed horse unit and two corps, near Rheims. Then I filled the line, to make the front, and only then I finished Antwerp and Ypres.

Was able to get Boulogne before December, which cut the main channel port, and caused UK, to deploy further from the front. In Serbia I had two HQs for AH army, and several corps. But it was still hard nut to crack. Sacrifice was paid by losing Galician oilfields, and Chernowitz. But I kept Lemberg.

In the East Prussia, it went historical, Germans retreated from Memel, but kept Konigsberg. It was really bloody, and the city almost fell. But I was able to bring sufficient reinforcements and patch the gap, as well to surround two Russian corps at Tannenberg. When Mackensen arrived, the push East began

It is 1916 now, February. I surrounded Verdun, and took it. Took Epinal in the South. Amiens has also fallen. My reserves in the West are thin, but are doing their job. After initial setbacks on Isonzo (I also lost Trento due to advanced Allied arty), I was able to retake Trento, and take Udine, so Italians are in disarray. Serbia fell in mid-1915, which was facilitated by Bulgarian entry in the war. They have great HQ with Zhekov. But I made a stupid mistake, and lost Belgrade to the partisans. They seem to appear in BG and Pristina, if you do not garisson them, lesson learned.

I also invested a lot of DP into keeping Romania and USA out of the war. At least for now. i am doing unrestricted sub warfare, so we ll see. Greece is in the war on Entente side, but they are weak, and Bulgarians took Thessaloniki.

Ottoman Empire is the weakest ally, but they still hold the line at Suez. However in the Caucasus they are in front of Erzurum.

Thankfully their forces are few in number, due to my steamrolling in the East - they lost important fortresses like Kovno or Ivanovo. Also they lost Riga. And there is no way to stop Germans from advancing further. Even AH is making advance towards Ukraine.

AH miracously is doing really well. My only big mistake was losing almost entirety of its Fleet in 1915, just after Italy enterd war. But with Ottoman help, Entente had horrible losses too.

My only issue in the game, is this fleet aspect. As it seems to be quite abstract, and is more luck than strategy. Somehow I was able to preserve most of Hochseeflotte, and cause heavy losses among RN and French fleet. But it is more hide and seek than any coherent strategy. With a lot of luck.

But all in all, it is Feb 1916, and Russian national morale is very low, French is moving there too. My only issue in the West is superpowered arty, which brought my attack to a stalemate.

I still need to discover how to get similar arty, as at this point, enemy can not only shell, but also badly damage my unit, by arty, and then finish it off with its own units.

[RU Rick James?]

Thank you for the extensive comment. I've tried starting as Central 3 times (played each through mid/late 1915) and find; the # of Russian units seemingly limitless (easily pushing deep into eastern Turkey and Galicia while filling any gaps I create in Poland/Baltics), Serbia an ungodly nut to crack no matter how much I reinforce AH forces with Germans and Bulgarians, Brits just roll onto Jerusalem. The west seems doable, albeit a horrendous slugfest, except to do so would cause unrecoverable failures in the Balkans and Eastern Front.

[cssneed]

I pushed in France to get a straight and stable line , then stabilize the Russian onset , the I go after Serbia. Next stabilize Turkey and go after Russia.

[Sardaukar]

How to use the ottoman empire the first turns? technology spending or units purchasing like mountain corps? The russians in the caucase are painful

[Thorin]

Played only one game fully with Germany (AH ant Ottomans under AI control), Major victory in early '17, after taking Paris and the French surrender caused the Russian Surrender too.

Had a Russian first Plan, deploying the extra hq and the four units near the polish area (artillery for the western front.) Did not attacked Belgium, but pushed into france as much as could, taking nancy and one of the fortress. After the french attacked Belgium, rushed in to save Belgium, retaking Brussel and reaching the French border. From there it was a slow slugfest, where my goal is to kill more french, british and later italian units than what i lose. After some artillery and the tank research, could advance, knocked out verdun and started to move.

In east went ham on the weak Russian units, they have two or three times as many as you, but they are weak, in a normal fight you can take 1:3 or 1:4 easily, focusing a few units down and they number drops fast. After Warsaw we had to send a group and HQ to help the AH since they almost overrun by italians, so it was slowed own, but the norther group made good progress, liberating the entire Baltic are and closing on petrograd, while a second group ventured into Kiev.

The navy did his job too, first sinking the entire Baltic russian fleet, than posturing in the north sea, in '15 summer a big naval engagement happened with the entire german fleet and more than half of the UK fleet with some french peppered in. After the fog cleared, four german ship sunk for 12 uk/french, from there we had some smaller skirmishes, and in '16 summer went out in force to brake the blocked for good. in many small action we sank 10-15 ships, and find out, that the UK fleet was smaller than the German for the first time in history. After this the waters were clear for trading.

Sadly our allies did much worse, AH failed against serbia, and only managed taking belgrad in '16, and nothing more, failed to retake the oilfields until our forces helped them out, and even after they did nothing, and almost got overrun by the italians. The Ottoman Empire managed even worse, lost territory against the russians in the caucasus (they reached to the modern day ankara), lost the middle east to the UK and when the indian army took Bagdad, they withdrawn from the war, losing most of their "colonies." Luckily the UK could not send reinforcement in time to France, so the war was over.

[SA_Avenger]

Yes it seems you have to be very aggressive with France from the start otherwise it's game over. I managed to hold a defensive line against France until late 16 then loaded their side to see their MPP they had over 500 every turn (France and UK each) and a tremendous amount of troops compared to me.

[Thorin]

Yep, you need to take over as many mines as you can, each mean 3 mpp per strength, so 30 in total, taking over one before verdun and the belgian one means 60 more for you, and 60 less for them, the cities and other stuff can mean a 100 plus for you and 100 minus for them, and there are an other mine on the french-belgian border for easy taking, that means an entire fresh corps per turn difference. Also boost your economy as much as you can, at the end had 700 mpp with the germans before the surrenders, even with losing the netherland trade. Also if you can force the UK into heavy conscriptions they will start to lose industry as running out of mens in the factories, so even without actually taking over UK territories, just by killing them you can cause some economic damage.

[akmatov]

Just now downloading the game, but in reality a lot of the sea warfare was based on luck. On at least one or two occasions the Germans were almost within sighting range of smallish parts of the Grand Fleet with enough fire power to sink them, but were just barely out of visual range so missed the opportunity. Radar later made massive changes in what could happen but not in WW1

[Jorn Stones]

My Central Powers game turned out to go pretty easy after a while, except everything involving ottomans.. They didn't accomplish anything in the entire war besides retaking Basra and, after Russia got Brest-litovsked, taking the isolated caucasian federation. Didn't declare war on Belgium; instead I maintained the narrow front between france and germany there and focused on just taking a single hex of ground each turn, which worked fine. This strategy also allowed me to put all my reinforcements on the eastern front and take Poland, also relieving any pressure against AH whom had the focus to take Serbia, which they did by bypassing Belgrade and destroying the Serbian army before going back for the Capital. When Britain finally joined the war, france declared war on Belgium. I now had a longer front there and struggled briefly to avoid my new Belgian ally being destroyed, but managed to do so in the end. Eastern front meanwhile, Russia was getting completely destroyed at Ukraine, with both Germany and AH pushing. The final nail in the coffin was a swift redeployment of troops to the Latvian front, that had been quiet all war, and a rapid push north. After Brest Litovsk happened, with both Finland and Ukraine now supplying germany as well, I also declared war on Romania. Expecting a quick conquest, I was surprised when they pretty much immidiately surrendered due to Russia being out of the war, now they were supplying me too.. Just Italy, france, britain, and USA VS the military powerhouse at that point, which had itself maxed on artillery pieces, and had t3 infantry and tanks. Victory in 1917, sadly. I kinda wished to fight on and actually invade britain, then USA/canada, but no chance for that. :/

[More Like Trombley]

I actually find Central Powers easier to play as I find myself usually short on MPP as the Entente, especially with Russia. Germany's income is more than enough to cover all its expenses and aid A-H. Especially with mines as mentioned before.

Although it's not too hard to achieve victory with either side. I've got a CP Major Victory by early 17', and an Entente Major Victory by late 16'.

[Kiane]

I got Central Powers major victory in March 1916. Knocked out Russia in August 1915 and France in 1916. I could have gotten it far faster, but my pride didn't let me give up the cities to Italy. Without Italian reinforcements, France would have crumbled late 1915.

Strategy is taking Brest-Litovsk with cavalry turn 1, as it is unoccupied and in range, then railing over forces from the west to cut the Russian army in half just east of Warsaw, by deploying them north of Warsaw on the border and moving them past Brest-Litovsk. In the west you can just sit on your line and let the French hurl themselves at you, and attack them only when you're certain you can destroy a unit, and making sure only good strength units are in the line. You can advance if it's tactically viable, but mostly you just want to bleed the French, and they will indeed bleed hard.

Keep AH army in the south, and rail German troops to stem the tide on the southern Russian flank. By playing defensive you should be able to wear them down and push north to link up with your northern forces and complete the encirclement by cutting off both railways leading into the Warsaw area. Clean up the pocket and they're doomed. Ottomans are mostly worthless, except in the south where you can hold on the Suez and kill a couple British units, and hold in the north to pin down some Russians.

Keep in mind you get a major bonus for a unit that hasn't moved, so AH advance against Serbia should be slow and meticulous. The Serbians can't afford to lose any units, so you should try to destroy them by keeping your units in good supply and launching attacks with units that haven't moved that turn.

[Kiane]

As for the navy, you should keep your submarines out as a screen, with your surface fleet safely behind them. Once the destroyers come to attack your subs, you retreat the endangered sub, and move out your surface fleet against the enemy vessels, destroy what you can, and then withdraw once more to safety. Doing this you can destroy the combined French and British navy in 2-3 sorties. There's not much point though, beyond hurting French morale.

[RU Rick James?]

It's becoming quickly apparent a key is extreme early aggression on land in Poland and French mines while baiting entente naval forces rapidly crushing them piecemeal and retreating back to safe waters.