Potzblitz V24.2b JAN 1st 2024

A forum to discuss custom scenarios, campaigns and modding in general.

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imp44791
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by imp44791 »

You are absolutely right in pointing out that there are many different ways to enjoy a historical game (not just a wargame). But my preference is not for a close simulation of history (the usual "go read a book" retort). In fact, my motivation for historical games is exactly the desire to explore counterfactuals ("what ifs"). This is something that is frowned upon in academic history. But I find that counterfactuals are more intriguing when they are more plausible and the system more restrictive. It allows for a more intelligent solution. I also like to play SP for the reason that the emotions inherent in MP (people like to win) hinder analysis for me. My preferred format is indeed hotseat against myself (is this even possible in this game?), then traditional SP vs the AS (Artificial Stupidity). Anyway, for counterfactuals to work, they have to not only be plausible but also possible. This brings me to the "hard choices" approach that I like in games. Sure, take the nice profitable event - but bear in mind this comes with a downside. To give an example about battlefleet build times. They should be hard and expensive, but possible. But if Germany wants to go toe-to-toe with the RN, this means a diversion of resources from the land war. You can't have it both ways. WW1 naval operations in fact are very fascinating, exactly because out and out actions were so rare. There are lots of what-ifs. What if the Goeben had gone to Pula instead of Istanbul? Would an aggressive Souchon help muster the excellent Austrian Dreadnoughts in a nasty little battlefleet that the British would need to divert good ships of their own to contain? What if Ingehohl had taken the golden opportunity in late 1914 and sailed the HSF to trap the British BCs? And so on. But opening the Sound just so that there is a nice sea battle in the Baltic? I can see the fun people can have with that, but it's so implausible to me that I can't get into the scenario. Again, nothing wrong with that approach, it just doesn't give me pleasure.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Unwichtig »

Yes okay fully understand. Some of my suggestions are indeed a little silly and probably not important enough to be included in the game.
Thats okay.

As i said, i am not a histroian, but i kept digging in many many books etc. searching for additional ´very important´things that are not yet covered in the game and it got harder and harder to find any. Key battles, campaigns, generals, admirals, technologies etc. are already covered - i think.

So everything added from now on becomes harder and harder to justify to be "worth to be included" - especially as it all comes along with lots of work for the modder.
90% is not worth the efforts - hours of modding to add a minor, unimportant event that no one would play anyway? Hmmm, of course thats not happening.

Sorry for the very general question...Is there something you miss from a histrorical point of view? A "big decision" that players should be allowed to make?
An ultra-important event that is not yet in the game?
I am just interested what else i could look at after having played this game for 1,5 years now. It feels pretty complete to me :roll:
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Unwichtig »

Few weeks ago we had a discussion about Spain. At the moment Soain is not really part of the game and perfectly neutral.
Thats realistic - So its pretty hard to find a good justification to have some additional interactions down there.

There is hardly any activity (if any) in the western and southern atlantic. Also zero activity in Gibraltar / the Balearic Islands / Marokko etc.
So a huge part of the map stays silent throughout the game. I was thinking long time for a spanish way how to be included in the game. I dont know.

One attempt was to make spanish ports accesible for german submarines...to shorten the supply routes for them and have some "convoy hunting activity" west of portugal as well. Well, I found lots of sources about german submarine activity in spanish ports in WW2 - I am aware of that - But none during WW1.
The only thing i could find was a little private island owner on the balearic islands that approved german subs to go alongside his private property to resupply.
Then later the spanish government prohibited this by expropriating the land owner ensuring spanish neutrality.
But the source did not sound serious enough to me so i did not suggest this. It actually sounded very weird.

Are you aware of german sub activity in spain during ww1?
The only interesting ww1 related issue i could find was the founding of the spanish lead, "European War Office" as a ´neutral point of contact´ for both fractions.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Unwichtig »

Crash, same MP game, we both updated the previous script fix and continued for a few turns.
The Kaiserschlacht still rages on, i am about to take paris.
This time i double checked - i could not find any other script fixes.
ctgw.rar
(920 Bytes) Downloaded 29 times
imp44791
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by imp44791 »

The mod looks tremendous as it is. It has even helped overcome many of the limitations of the base game. The naval war is too gamey for me, hence the long post above. The main historical alternative that I'd like to see is the "slow burn eastern focus" thing that I mentioned in my original post - and which Robotron, very understandably, rejected as being too complicated. But for me this is the only alternative to mod-Schlieffen (i.e. what happened in history) that the Germans could have followed. Let the Balkan crisis boil for a little longer, playing the true backup to Austria rather than go for broke by attacking on both sides. It could have happened if some diplomatic messages had been stronger: e.g. if Lichnowski had succeeded in imprinting to Bethmann how inevitable British entry would be if Belgium was violated, or if the Willy-Nicky back and forth continued a little longer. Not very likely, indeed quite unlikely, but the only true alternative:

Russia and Germany mobilise against each other trying to bluff each other to stand down.

Russia finally declaring war on Austria mid to late August, but fully mobilised (as it is in the current Aufmarsch Ost setup, but with the Ninth Army (Warsaw-Lodz) fully there.

Germany declares war on Russia after a turn. France declares war on Germany after another turn.

Advantages for CP: better chance for Romania to stick to its alliance. Better (though still small) chance for Italy to be pro-CP. Bigger delay for British entry. Goeben back in the North Sea to make the BC fleet full strength, especially with Derrflinger about to be commissioned.

Disadvantages for CP: Less time before winter to achieve aims (which I would keep what they are: Poland or Baltic). Better preparation for the Russian Army (fully mobilised and ready). More time for the Austrians to be shown up for the paper tiger they were vs Serbia and hurting German morale pointing out that this was a corpse they were about to be shackled with. A huge mess with the readiness of troops who needed to be shifted East (best simulated by starting them all at 7s and 8s, showing the lack of readiness).

But this is all academic. It's a lot of work and probably only interesting to the likes of me.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Robotron »

@unwichtig: here you go.

I also upload any fixes to the separate bugfix thread so players don't have to manually search through the Potzblitz thread.
viewtopic.php?f=218&t=101239
Attachments
ScriptFixV12.4.2.zip
(376.89 KiB) Downloaded 35 times
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Slitherine's Commander the Great War - Director's Cut: POTZBLITZ mod!
FIND IT HERE: http://www.slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=218&t=77884&p=662610#p662610
uzbek2012
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by uzbek2012 »

Are you aware of german sub activity in spain during ww1?
The only interesting ww1 related issue i could find was the founding of the spanish lead, "European War Office" as a ´neutral point of contact´ for both fractions.

History of Spain. Part XII — World War I (Gran España) :arrow:
http://alternathistory.com/istoriya-isp ... an-espana/

Spain-1914: battles on the newspaper pages :D
https://www.dw.com/ru/%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B ... a-17615807

No one needs an ally
Image
Visit to Cartagena by the German submarine U 35, April 1917. Under the command of the most experienced commanders Waldemar Kophamel and Lothar von Arnaud de la Perriere, this submarine became the most productive during the First World War, sinking 226 ships and warships (538,498 tons) and another 10 (36,889 tons) damaged. It is noteworthy that in this endless series there was a place for four Spanish steamships (Imperial War Museums)
https://warspot.ru/9395-nikomu-ne-nuzhnyy-soyuznik

Image
https://www.promotour.info/spain/history/history41.php

In general what can be concluded Spain declared its neutrality but German submarines entered its ports + some enterprises fulfilled the orders of the Entente )
As they say there is nothing personal strictly business ;)
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Robotron »

uzbek2012 wrote: Sun Apr 04, 2021 3:15 pm some enterprises fulfilled the orders of the Entente )
I've no time to run the sites through a tanslator so could you please specify?
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uzbek2012
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by uzbek2012 »

Robotron wrote: Sun Apr 04, 2021 7:51 pm
uzbek2012 wrote: Sun Apr 04, 2021 3:15 pm some enterprises fulfilled the orders of the Entente )
I've no time to run the sites through a tanslator so could you please specify?

thanks to the declaration of neutrality. The warring countries needed food, weapons, uniforms, metal, and coal.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Robotron »

uzbek2012 wrote: Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:44 pm thanks to the declaration of neutrality. The warring countries needed food, weapons, uniforms, metal, and coal.
Good to know, thank you for the translation.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Robotron »

imp44791 wrote: Sun Apr 04, 2021 7:27 am I also like to play SP for the reason that the emotions inherent in MP (people like to win) hinder analysis for me.
And most people don't like to lose either. :wink:
That's probably the main reason for why most players shy away from multiplayer matches. I must admit I'd also count myself into that group even more so if the game is open for exploits like reloading a turn even in multiplayer mode. Even though once in a while we get reminded by forum staff that in general reload-offenders will be warned/banned I have my doubts whether old games like this are still closely monitored at all. The preferred way to go would be to only play against opponents you'd know for quite some time. I envy the Strategic Command WW1 scene over at Matrix forums, they really seem to be a bunch of gentlemen. Alas the game itself really turns me off. :?

My preferred format is indeed hotseat against myself (is this even possible in this game?)
Yes, both in theory and practice it is possible to mod this in...by a person that would be eager to spend a heck of a lot of time doing this for free. I'm not that person though, so...no. :|

Anyway, for counterfactuals to work, they have to not only be plausible but also possible. This brings me to the "hard choices" approach that I like in games. Sure, take the nice profitable event - but bear in mind this comes with a downside. To give an example about battlefleet build times. They should be hard and expensive, but possible. But if Germany wants to go toe-to-toe with the RN, this means a diversion of resources from the land war. You can't have it both ways.
"the nice profitable" Tirpitz event will be raised in cost to 15PP for a BC and 30PP for a BB with either one being ready on turn 9.
This will make a tangible dent on Germany's land unit build options at the start of the game unless a purely defensive stance is assumed, which is unlikely.
I'll also mod in a pro-war British alignment modifier if Belgium is not attacked when the Tirpitz plan event was chosen.

What if the Goeben had gone to Pula instead of Istanbul?
That's already in the game. However, for this to work the event "The Kaiser's Gold" must not be played so the Goeben will not be able to enter the Dardanelles and has instead to reach an Austrian port.

Would an aggressive Souchon help muster the excellent Austrian Dreadnoughts in a nasty little battlefleet that the British would need to divert good ships of their own to contain?
Maybe. All that it takes would be to mod in a 2nd Souchon that belongs to AH.

What if Ingehohl had taken the golden opportunity in late 1914 and sailed the HSF to trap the British BCs? And so on.
That option is impossible to represent in this game because of the rather specific conditions it would require.

But opening the Sound just so that there is a nice sea battle in the Baltic? I can see the fun people can have with that, but it's so implausible to me that I can't get into the scenario. Again, nothing wrong with that approach, it just doesn't give me pleasure.
I'm with you here. It's neither realistic nor balanced. If the RN wants access to the baltics then
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagenization
should be the only option. After that we can also talk about Fisher's Baltic plan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Project

Thanks for all the feedback, it's a big incentive to keep on expanding the mod.
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imp44791
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by imp44791 »

Robotron wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 12:37 am And most people don't like to lose either. :wink:
That's probably the main reason for why most players shy away from multiplayer matches. I must admit I'd also count myself into that group even more so if the game is open for exploits like reloading a turn even in multiplayer mode.
It's actually not even that, although it is annoying. It's that I sometimes want to roleplay a decision, especially a mistake, to see where the counterfactual takes me. That's why I like hotseat.

Regarding the reloading, this game in particular unfortunately tempts people to do this even in SP. The RNG is atrocious and the deviation from predicted to actual results too great to make much planning useful.
"the nice profitable" Tirpitz event will be raised in cost to 15PP for a BC and 30PP for a BB with either one being ready on turn 9.
This will make a tangible dent on Germany's land unit build options at the start of the game unless a purely defensive stance is assumed, which is unlikely.
I'll also mod in a pro-war British alignment modifier if Belgium is not attacked when the Tirpitz plan event was chosen.
Thanks. May I also suggest a British event in response, even if Britain is at peace? Basically give Britain the equivalent option (and at the same cost). Call it "We Want Eight, and We Won't Wait... once again" (since the original slogan was pre-war).

Lots of sources for this, but here's a BBC article with a couple of good public domain pictures you can use for the event image.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27641717
That's already in the game. However, for this to work the event "The Kaiser's Gold" must not be played so the Goeben will not be able to enter the Dardanelles and has instead to reach an Austrian port.
Thanks. Any historical reason why the Kaiser's Gold is a pre-requisite? I know about the Goeben being technically the replacement for the Erin/Agincourt seizures, but it would be nice twist to give the Germans the option to send the Goeben to Austria after all (with a small PP hit to the OE relationship). Anyway, this is minor and fine as is.

The other event from my original post that I would like to see reworked is the Easter Rising, but again, that's not super important
Thanks for all the feedback, it's a big incentive to keep on expanding the mod.
You are very welcome.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by uzbek2012 »

Last edited by uzbek2012 on Thu Apr 08, 2021 4:41 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Egge »

Robotron wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:24 pm The instant repair feature for submarines was added after forum member "cocolo" stated he'd rather suicide his subs into light cruisers to free up submarine build limit slots again rather than move them all the way back to a port and then lose multiple turns repairing them. I might as well revert that feature completely or tone it down to 5 strength points per repair action.
Maybe you approached the problem in the wrong way. Such a (terribly gamey) move was advantageous because it takes much longer to pull a damaged naval unit back to base than it takes to produce a new one. Have you tried increasing movement speed or construction time instead?
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Unwichtig »

Suiciding subs to speed up construction of new ones is a horrible feature and far away from realism.
I know its only a game and it will never be realistic, thats okay, but there were no such thing as suicidal kamikaze subs.
What kind of morale impact would such an order have on crew and ´new comissioned sub´ crews?
Countries already get a collapse point if one of their Dreads is sunk, i personally would not mind having an equal effect fot the loss of subs.
This does not need to be a complicated event, a small grey popup box would do the job informing the player what the effect is.

1st sub lost: -1% morale penalty. "First German Submarine Losses - German Navy Command stays confident that the newly introduced submarine weapon can change the outcome of the war!"
2nd sub lost: -3% morale penalty. "German Submarine Losses rise to unexpected numbers! First Admirals have raised the question: Can the submarines truely make the difference?"
3rd sub lost: -5% morale penalty. "Unsustainable submarine losses in the Atlantic! German Navy Command struggles to find additional volunteers for submarine service!"
Every additional sub lost: +5% risk (per turn) that "mutiny in either kiel / wilhelmshaven" is triggered automatically

OR the very powerfull submarine ´submarine ace´ von arnauld is removed from the game

Arnauld could be discarded / sacked if submarine loss is higher than 3 during the war.
I think thats a big penalty that does not even need to be linked to morale/collapse point.

Germany hardly looses any subs anyway - But something like this will prevent suiciding them. It would also make it more attractive for the entente player to sink them and hopefully lead to some additional naval activities.

Something like that. just an idea.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Unwichtig »

Robotron wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 12:37 am
I'm with you here. It's neither realistic nor balanced. If the RN wants access to the baltics then
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagenization
should be the only option. After that we can also talk about Fisher's Baltic plan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Project
I did not know this plan. Interesting. Hard to find some good information about it, especially as it never happened.
To me it sounds like an insane plan in which costs hugely outweigh the benefits.
Thats probably why it was not done - The Northsea Bloackade ´did the job´, why risk thousands of lifes and dozens of ships in a risky plan far away deep into enemy territory? Logistics must have been a nightmare and i have doubts if this ever could have happened unnoticed - How get an amphib force that size into the baltics without being intercepted first`somehwere in the danish waters? Whatever...

I am still open for strange plans like this, just to play it out. Maybe there are some unknown benefits.
I could at least imagine if germany striks east and their armies are trapped deep into russian territory, a few UK forces could stab them into their back and outflank them from behind. It would at least force germany to keep a few armies in prussia during the entire game to prevent that.

Hard to implement something like this. But i like playing it out and see how players implement this into their plan.
It would be nice to have a few ´entente war plans´ included. As it stands, CP can choose from 4 plans.
I like the (unrealistic) idea of having a war plan for entente as well in terms of "striking into germany first" before the central powers gets too strong.
I know thats inaccurate, but why not having entente opening up the war in a preemptive strike, violating belgium neutrality with belgium joining CP and CP on the defense instead? Madness, i know. But would be great to play.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by nehi »

Unwichtig wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 11:41 am It would be nice to have a few ´entente war plans´ included.
there are some for france/russia in historical schlieffen

france can be in the war before germans (once it randomly happend for britain too in my game), russia in same turn as germans
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Unwichtig »

Good afternoon,
some additional, very interesting feed back from my main multiplayer opponent ´damient´ and me.
(We now played 5 games and made quite some observations, so sorry for long post.) :oops:

We both love the game and will continue to play it anyway, so once again nothing is urgent.
We both know its a hard and unthankful job doing all the changes for free without getting a salary at all.
I just keep reporting things that i found strange, especially if my impression is that they can be fixed.
This time the feed back is heavily aiming on the endgame...so turns 45-60.

I think its important because most of the games end between turn 30 and 40 and you hardly get any reports of the things that are happening 1918.
This was actually the first MP game that took us until turn 61 (!) to be completed.

I think we both optimized our way of playing and at the end literally every countries army was exhausted - The game was incredibly balanced for a very long time. The end sounds very strange, it actually was not that bad as it sounds. I expected a defeat anyway so i did not care so much. Is was just a strange sequence of events.

Very Brief summary of events:

I play Entente, my opponent strikes east first. I defend france easily but i dont attack further than the few german fortresses. Too many defenders, static trench warfare starts. My Serbian campaign is poor, austria cedes transilvania to romania, romania join cp as well.
I gave Ottoman a UK Dread to keep them out of war as long as possible. My French/UK priority was to max. prepare for war on ottoman and preemptively strike before they join to knock them out asap. Few turns before ottoman officially joins, i declare war and cause severe damage. Ottoman keeps fighting but never recovers.
Preemptive Strike on Ottoman triggers bulgarian-ottoman defense pact (never saw this before, did not expect this, its brilliant!). Bulgarian, romanian and austrian troops finish off serbia. Austria does not cede trento to italy, italy joins Entente. As romanian, austrian and bulgarian troops line up to attack italy, france stands tall and sends 50% of its forces to italy for support. Italy can be secured at the ´Mont Verona Line´.
However, france has no reserves to ouflank germany via belgium. The innocent passage is not played to force germany to declare war on Belgium first instead.
Italian front stays stable for 2 years, and so is the french - german front. Looks like 50-50, no side can capture any hexes or they keep shifting between fractions turn by turn.

To fill up italian manpower losses, more and more french are required to defend italy. Equally, more and more british are required to defend gaps in the french frontline.
Ottoman surrenders mid 1917, russia surrenders early 1918. (First time that russia has literally almost no manpower left. Russian army is exhausted, manpower dark red. Russian guerilla tactics work perfectly against germany causing a severe delay of surrender. Key cities are defended heavily, vast territory is used to delay and cut of german troop movements. This works excellent in the game.) :mrgreen:

But: Germany get many convoys. The royal navy sufferes significant losses, the insane german submarine use inside the northsea and baltics make it, from our perspective, impossible to use the royal navy in any offensive way. Every offensive attempt is doomed to fail. I did the tactic against damient and won, he used it against me and won. At the moment we both have no idea how to deal with screening/shielding submarines. I dont go into details here, but we found some ways to cripple the royal navy without loosing a sub, it drives the entente player into madness. In all games UK looses morale and collapse points and is eventually knocked out of the war by the loss of their fleet whilst germany gets fluent, secure PP income. At the moment i can only recommend not to leave port with the RN and invest in airpower instead. This works much better now as germany and austria can only build 8 fighers whilst italy, uk and france can have 12. So in the longterm, airpower shifts to entente which helps a lot and is worth the investment. (Thats kind off realistic actually as entente did have more aircraft at the end).

Final turns 50-60:
I could see that UK was about to leave the war. The Northseabloackade was not sustainable, too many ships lost (+350 ships plus 5 french light cruisers), Dreadnought collapse points, indian revolution, zeppelin raids on london (gott strafe england), a poor kill-casualty relation, the irish revolution etc. lead to a collapse of UK in mid 1918. Surrender could have happened any time.

Politically and morally incorrect, i deployed britsh troops at the very first frontline and kept attacking anyway. Even the german-austrian army were exhausted, so i was aiming to make it even worse and ´scarifice units of a country that surrenders anyway´. At the same time i kept french army coprs in the second line allowing them to dig in and defend france at full strengh and full efficiency later.
Italy was already defended by french.

Then: UK surrender! UK troops in europe disappear, but the hexes to the french border stay british! Germany cannot attack france - France is now shielded by unoccupied hexes. So positioning units of a surrendering country at the very first frontline blocks it, if the nation surrenders - that must not happen. This is a big problem for CP as the german french frontline is only 3 hexes wide. But: France suffers collapse points for UK surrender. Germany MUST re-declare war on UK, an attack on france is not possible if they do not. UK rejoins next turn...with 42 (?) collapse points and dark red manpower. Germany occupies the empty hexes, one turn later UK surrenders again, Germany refuses as we are worried that france gets more and more collapse points because of that. We agree that UK will not be used any further in the war. Every turn, 4-5 collapse points are added to UK ending the game with +60 cp. :!:

One turn later italy surrenders, trapping my french army in italy. French units cant move anywhere, are cut of supply, cant be decomissioned. But germany can still attack and kill them. So italy trapped all french artillery etc. and they die with no resistance. So france gets a penalty by rescueing italy for more than 2 years? Why whould italy not allow them to leave? Entire french army suffers a slow death. How can i prevent that?
Without half the french army and many extra collapse points, france was a hopeless case. (French manpower was black, they had 2 collapse points when this chain reaction started, italy was secured as well).

It is sad as germany and austria were equally about to collapse. Austria was having riots and germany many demonstrations and both their armies were exhausted as well. ottoman surrendered.

At the same time, i was forced to play the following two events despite the fact that ottoman surrendered earlier: ´Sabbotage Oriental Express´ and ´Arab Uprising´. They both started to appear after ottoman surrendered, i did not require them anymore but was forced to play them anyway to free up the event pool again. Suggest to discard them once ottoman it out. :!:

Multiple unique events happened in 1918 that we have never seen before. I cant believe how much work you put into this creating events for late 1918 even though the game hardly reaches that far. So after many, many, many hours i saw the "Install Clemenceau", "Propaganda Campaign against Germany", "Ignite Finish Revolts", "Deploy Marine Korps at Dutch Border", "Bulgarian-Ottoman Defense Pact", "Berber Supressed" and many more events. for the first time. Amazing. Do you actually have an overview whats all included in the game? :P

Finally: An attempt to achieve the gallipoli raid by assembling ships in the aegis failed. I assembled a total of 6 french, british and italian units to trigger the gallipoli raid but again...austrian submarines did block the adria and caused equal losses like the german subs in the northsea. This is even easier as the entente med fleet consists of armoured cruisers and pre-dreads only which can not be upgraded with anti submarine weapons. If austria invests early in submarine tech and plays the adriatic sub event, they can easily get 4-5 subs by 1916 and sink the entente navy in the med as well. Advanced French Fleet was already supporting royal navy but also failed to do so.
It feels a bit like the way that entente players used to deploy subs in the baltic to sink german convoys, this has now shifted the other way around with german subs and austrian subs controlling the adria, eagis and northsea instead. German & Austrian fleet must never fear being ambushed as entente does not have subs...which makes offensive actions possible. Whilst entente ships, once ambushed, are surrounded and dead.

Very hard to find a mechanism to make that work. I love the submarines and they need to be in the game.
But the key problem is: Subs can operate both offensively and defensively against ships while ships can only act defensively against subs. Offensive submarine warfare does not exist in the game. I now think that a powerfull Entente "Q-Ship event" or an unexpected "Lost contact to submarine" event would help, causing significant damage to subs automatically and make their position public.

My favourite solution would be: Once a sub has strenght 6 and lower, it cant dive anymore. It will be surfaced all the time and can be attacked. That would be both realistic and also allow offensive asw for entente. Why would a damaged sub dive? It would not...and when its surfaced its position is overt. That would be amazing.
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Robotron »

Unwichtig wrote: Mon Apr 12, 2021 9:25 pm Good afternoon,
some additional, very interesting feed back from my main multiplayer opponent ´damient´ and me.
(We now played 5 games and made quite some observations, so sorry for long post.) :oops:
Nothing better than a detailed analysis to improve the game.

We both love the game and will continue to play it anyway, so once again nothing is urgent.
We both know its a hard and unthankful job doing all the changes for free without getting a salary at all.
If players enjoy the mod and give some feedback that's more than enough for me.

I just keep reporting things that i found strange, especially if my impression is that they can be fixed.
This time the feed back is heavily aiming on the endgame...so turns 45-60.
Been about time too, I guess.

I think its important because most of the games end between turn 30 and 40 and you hardly get any reports of the things that are happening 1918.
This was actually the first MP game that took us until turn 61 (!) to be completed.
What was the victory type of this match anyway?


I think we both optimized our way of playing and at the end literally every countries army was exhausted - The game was incredibly balanced for a very long time. The end sounds very strange, it actually was not that bad as it sounds. I expected a defeat anyway so i did not care so much. Is was just a strange sequence of events.

Very Brief summary of events:

I play Entente, my opponent strikes east first.
So any insights from this particular match must be taken with a grain of salt because of the non-standard initial situation.

I defend france easily but i dont attack further than the few german fortresses. Too many defenders, static trench warfare starts. My Serbian campaign is poor, austria cedes transilvania to romania, romania join cp as well.
I gave Ottoman a UK Dread to keep them out of war as long as possible. My French/UK priority was to max. prepare for war on ottoman and preemptively strike before they join to knock them out asap. Few turns before ottoman officially joins, i declare war and cause severe damage. Ottoman keeps fighting but never recovers.
Preemptive Strike on Ottoman triggers bulgarian-ottoman defense pact (never saw this before, did not expect this, its brilliant!). Bulgarian, romanian and austrian troops finish off serbia. Austria does not cede trento to italy, italy joins Entente. As romanian, austrian and bulgarian troops line up to attack italy, france stands tall and sends 50% of its forces to italy for support. Italy can be secured at the ´Mont Verona Line´.
However, france has no reserves to ouflank germany via belgium. The innocent passage is not played to force germany to declare war on Belgium first instead.
I'm confused about what event you are referring to. There is no such event that would force Germany to attack Belgium. Surely there must be a misunderstanding.

Italian front stays stable for 2 years, and so is the french - german front. Looks like 50-50, no side can capture any hexes or they keep shifting between fractions turn by turn.

To fill up italian manpower losses, more and more french are required to defend italy. Equally, more and more british are required to defend gaps in the french frontline.
Ottoman surrenders mid 1917, russia surrenders early 1918. (First time that russia has literally almost no manpower left. Russian army is exhausted, manpower dark red. Russian guerilla tactics work perfectly against germany causing a severe delay of surrender. Key cities are defended heavily, vast territory is used to delay and cut of german troop movements. This works excellent in the game.) :mrgreen:

But: Germany get many convoys. The royal navy sufferes significant losses, the insane german submarine use inside the northsea and baltics make it, from our perspective, impossible to use the royal navy in any offensive way. Every offensive attempt is doomed to fail. I did the tactic against damient and won, he used it against me and won. At the moment we both have no idea how to deal with screening/shielding submarines. I dont go into details here, but we found some ways to cripple the royal navy without loosing a sub, it drives the entente player into madness. In all games UK looses morale and collapse points and is eventually knocked out of the war by the loss of their fleet whilst germany gets fluent, secure PP income. At the moment i can only recommend not to leave port with the RN and invest in airpower instead.
We discussed this before and I've already built in measures to counter this in the next update.

This works much better now as germany and austria can only build 8 fighers whilst italy, uk and france can have 12. So in the longterm, airpower shifts to entente which helps a lot and is worth the investment. (Thats kind off realistic actually as entente did have more aircraft at the end).

Final turns 50-60:
I could see that UK was about to leave the war. The Northseabloackade was not sustainable, too many ships lost (+350 ships plus 5 french light cruisers), Dreadnought collapse points, indian revolution, zeppelin raids on london (gott strafe england), a poor kill-casualty relation, the irish revolution etc. lead to a collapse of UK in mid 1918. Surrender could have happened any time.

Politically and morally incorrect, i deployed britsh troops at the very first frontline and kept attacking anyway. Even the german-austrian army were exhausted, so i was aiming to make it even worse and ´scarifice units of a country that surrenders anyway´. At the same time i kept french army coprs in the second line allowing them to dig in and defend france at full strengh and full efficiency later.
Italy was already defended by french.

Then: UK surrender! UK troops in europe disappear, but the hexes to the french border stay british! Germany cannot attack france - France is now shielded by unoccupied hexes. So positioning units of a surrendering country at the very first frontline blocks it, if the nation surrenders - that must not happen. This is a big problem for CP as the german french frontline is only 3 hexes wide.
Not if Germany went by the book and invaded Belgium. That's what you get when trying out "exciting" new strategies, I guess. But of course you are totally right that a surrendered ally should not keep any control over another ally's original hexes. Unfortunately the function that controls that behavior looks perfectly in order and should work correctly but doesn't. Looks like I'll have to add further checks at the start of each turn.

But: France suffers collapse points for UK surrender. Germany MUST re-declare war on UK, an attack on france is not possible if they do not. UK rejoins next turn...with 42 (?) collapse points and dark red manpower. Germany occupies the empty hexes, one turn later UK surrenders again, Germany refuses as we are worried that france gets more and more collapse points because of that.
No further collapse points would have been suffered anyway. I'm surprised though I did not ban re-declaring war on a surrendered nation in PBEM, as is the case in singleplayer mode. Re-declaring has a great potential to be exploited by a unscrupulous player in my opinion. Once the problem with the neutral hexes by surrendered nations blocking access to map areas is solved I will remove the ability to re-declare in PBEM too unless some good reason to keep it in is brought up.

We agree that UK will not be used any further in the war.

Every turn, 4-5 collapse points are added to UK ending the game with +60 cp. :!:
Working as designed.

One turn later italy surrenders, trapping my french army in italy. French units cant move anywhere, are cut of supply, cant be decomissioned. But germany can still attack and kill them. So italy trapped all french artillery etc. and they die with no resistance. So france gets a penalty by rescueing italy for more than 2 years? Why whould italy not allow them to leave? Entire french army suffers a slow death. How can i prevent that?
Sounds like they did not have any source of supply left, probably all Italian cities turned neutral and the path to France was now cut off. If that was the case not much can be done about that.


Without half the french army and many extra collapse points, france was a hopeless case. (French manpower was black, they had 2 collapse points when this chain reaction started, italy was secured as well).

It is sad as germany and austria were equally about to collapse. Austria was having riots and germany many demonstrations and both their armies were exhausted as well. ottoman surrendered.
Sure. Normally a whole design studio would have tested such a complex game for years before release so such infuriating bugs would have been ironed out. Alas the player base for this mod is rather small and these days I simply lack the motivation for extensive testing so problems like the one you described are still a thing even more so if "unchartered territory" is entered by employing new "cunning plans". ;)

At the same time, i was forced to play the following two events despite the fact that ottoman surrendered earlier: ´Sabbotage Oriental Express´ and ´Arab Uprising´. They both started to appear after ottoman surrendered, i did not require them anymore but was forced to play them anyway to free up the event pool again. Suggest to discard them once ottoman it out. :!:
I'm surprised those weren't discarded. They should have been removed after ottoman surrender. Strange.

Multiple unique events happened in 1918 that we have never seen before. I cant believe how much work you put into this creating events for late 1918 even though the game hardly reaches that far. So after many, many, many hours i saw the "Install Clemenceau", "Propaganda Campaign against Germany", "Ignite Finish Revolts", "Deploy Marine Korps at Dutch Border", "Bulgarian-Ottoman Defense Pact", "Berber Supressed" and many more events. for the first time. Amazing. Do you actually have an overview whats all included in the game? :P
No, only the guys in the Potzblitz creativity department do...and they are usually drunk. :mrgreen:

Finally: An attempt to achieve the gallipoli raid by assembling ships in the aegis failed. I assembled a total of 6 french, british and italian units to trigger the gallipoli raid but again...austrian submarines did block the adria and caused equal losses like the german subs in the northsea. This is even easier as the entente med fleet consists of armoured cruisers and pre-dreads only which can not be upgraded with anti submarine weapons. If austria invests early in submarine tech and plays the adriatic sub event, they can easily get 4-5 subs by 1916 and sink the entente navy in the med as well. Advanced French Fleet was already supporting royal navy but also failed to do so.
Reduce AH submarine build limit to 1 and re-allow submarines for Entente also with build limit of 1?

It feels a bit like the way that entente players used to deploy subs in the baltic to sink german convoys, this has now shifted the other way around with german subs and austrian subs controlling the adria, eagis and northsea instead. German & Austrian fleet must never fear being ambushed as entente does not have subs...which makes offensive actions possible. Whilst entente ships, once ambushed, are surrounded and dead.
Clearly the way NOT to go would be to re-allow submarines for the Entente but rather make submarines more vulnerable.

Very hard to find a mechanism to make that work. I love the submarines and they need to be in the game.
But the key problem is: Subs can operate both offensively and defensively against ships while ships can only act defensively against subs. Offensive submarine warfare does not exist in the game.
Submarine vs submarine action is out of the question, this is not the Hunt for Red October.

I now think that a powerfull Entente "Q-Ship event" or an unexpected "Lost contact to submarine" event would help, causing significant damage to subs automatically and make their position public.
Maybe some damage by Q-Ships when attacking convoys but it must be a low chance or else subs will be even more discouraged from playing their historic role.
Killing subs outright via pure chance events feels too cheap.


My favourite solution would be: Once a sub has strenght 6 and lower, it cant dive anymore. It will be surfaced all the time and can be attacked. That would be both realistic and also allow offensive asw for entente. Why would a damaged sub dive? It would not...and when its surfaced its position is overt. That would be amazing.
How about making a revealed sub susceptible to attacks from any enemy naval unit, not just the unit that ran into or was attacked by the sub?
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Unwichtig
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Re: Potzblitz V12.04 MAR7TH 2021

Post by Unwichtig »

Good evening,

i give a detailed response tomorrow, i need to sleep. However, luckily i found this screenshot from the game.
I thought i deleted it but you can see:

1. Arabian revolution took place after ottoman surrendered, i can walk around for free and could capture all ottoman cities as well.
2. Half the french army was stuck in italy and bombed to death by germany very easily.
3. two important hexes north and east of metz and strassbourg are blocked. The british forces were removed, i think uk just surrendered 1 or 2 turns before that. Germany re-declared war on uk and it worked. but only to retake the hex, then uk immediately surrendered again.
4. I have not seen the final screen of the game. My opponent said france surrendered and he accepted. as we agreed not to accept another surrender from UK after they joined war again preventing france to get the collapse point penalty twice, the uk should still be in play (with +60 collapse points).
I reloaded the move, it crashes. Here is the crashfile:
ctgw.rar
(1.06 KiB) Downloaded 29 times
Italian UK surrender.jpg
Italian UK surrender.jpg (432.85 KiB) Viewed 1162 times
hope this helps.
I ll answer the sub questions tomorrow, but i think all your ideas will work and be great. especially the idea that, once a submarine has attacked a ship, ALL ships within movement range can counter attack for THIS turn only. They join the scene of action and fight the known submarineposition. Thats epic. This will automatically force subs to attack only when far away from the enemy fleet and the Royal Navy needs to send ships everywhere to have the possibility to immediately counter attack. sounds great.
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