It's a shame that it ended, but the two of you have already endured your fair share of game kinks along the way. So... Outcome: inconclusive. Somehow, I doubt we've seen the last of you two duking it out.
Thanks for the AAR as long as it lasted and happy hunting in your future endeavors.
Its a pity that we triggered a set of small bugs with the new patch. Sometimes we just went back a few turns (so we restarted once the ultra-powerful Hussar but was found), moved back about 6 turns when Bautzen with a single HRE battalion enacted Stalingrad (which is more or less where we've given up). Others we just carried on, so the 'no move with return orders' (ie a circular move) bug hit us both, but it was the reason that Narwhal escaped bad damage in his retreat around Prag, but equally one of my corps escaped damage due to it. The last one we found was critical (I believe) to where we got to in the end. I lost one French army due to a mistake and Narwhal's trademark aggression but by that stage manpower on both sides had equalised when it should have been in my favour. In trying to redeem it (& I'd constricted Prussia to very little room), the other French army ended up starving. Now I think it was heading for a bloody drawn out draw as I couldn't see how to apply the final blow without these defeats but with the extra manpower (& it was totally unintentional and only came to light as Narwhal only had 1 safe recruitment city), it was heading quickly out of control.
Too bad this is over, but I enjoyed it for as long as it lasted
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Don't worry there will be more ... soon.
I'll echo the sentiments of the other commenters, it's a shame this is over. Interesting and a jolly good read as always.
One question, can Prussia win or do the Austrian numbers always prevail. After all real life was pretty damn close to 'Alien Space Bat' territory.
Well if the MP bug hadn't intervened, I think it was heading for a drawn out tussle with neither able to apply the killing blow. The problem was that Narwhal had not much less in the field than I did, and that similarity+much better leaders+much better troops is quite important and the game just fell out of control thereafter.
A shame. This has been an amazing AAR. I would have loved to read more.
Well played, both of you! This was the most balanced game, I have seen so far from you two. Loki100, you have clearly closed the experience gap that allowed Narwhal to snatch victory in your earlier AARs.
Any chance there will be a new AAR from either of you in the near future?
Yes there will (most likely), but it will be gameplay based not anything more clever. I think the other thing I've learnt in this AAR is that PBEM/MP is not conducive to a History Book treatment. To me (& this is only my view of the format) it works best when the in-game events and what happened are loosely aligned (so its not a re-enactment, but you can grab props from reality to scaffold the story). In truth, MP is about beating the hell out of your opponent and its a tussle of wills between two people mediated by the game engine. The constraint/restraint needed is missing.
If you look at my Great Patriotic War, I gave the German AI numerous boosts to make things like 1942 a genuine threat and then the Soviet entry into Germany a real hard fight for every vilage (& myself a boost to generate a siege of Leningrad). If that had been MP, it would have been no holds barred, if I could have won by entering Berlin in early 1943 that is exactly what I would have done.
However, we are going to start again, and I will generate an AAR on it (I feel guilty at abandoning any such project), but it'll be game descriptive.
thanks to all
