Standalone WWI game.

[Lemont Elwood]

What if there was an "Entrenchment" option for stationary armies that binds them to a province in exchange for huge defensive bonuses (and which takes a while to finish), and that Entrenched army then deals damage to neighboring enemy armies? Then, there could also be a Bombardment button that potentially reduces the Entrenchment of the enemy.

Theoretically, as soon as Entrenchment is invented (and this would refer to Entrenchment as a tactic in field battles, not entrenchment around a besieged city or fort, as happened in the American Civil War and Crimean War) the best defensive strategy becomes dividing your forces along a line and entrenching them so that the enemy cannot break through. The enemy, in turn, would be best off entrenching opposite your line. At that point, it becomes a war of attrition which is won when one side can Bombard the enemy effectively and then launch a successful, conventional offensive.

This should work fine for WW1 in Victoria II. The trenches would also be naturally unsuitable for certain nations, at least in theory. If you have a big frontline (think United States or Russia), your forces would either have an incomplete line that could be circumvented or a very sparse, weak line that could be broken. If you have rather open terrain (think many parts of the Ottoman Empire), your Entrenchment bonuses will be small enough that they almost won't matter. Not to mention that various technologies would help you get past trenches. Stormtrooper tactis, armor, advanced aeroplanes, and the like would give you the means to overcome the Entrenchment bonus and defeat the enemy in a fair fight, so trench warfare won't stick around any longer than it would... in fact, with simply having trench warfare making it much more likely for these things to be invented, one should expect trench warfare to both rise and fall in a single Great War, as it did historically.

I'd love to see this stuff in Vicky II. I'd love to see a very simple submarine system as well. I don't think it's impossible.

 

[IHateThisCo]

A WWI only game will probably never happen. Just look at March of the Eagles? I think it was. You know, the game focused on a single war that didn't do well. Not that I wouldn't like one. The politics and developments around WWI I have always found more interesting than WWII.

 

[Klausewitz]

What if there was an "Entrenchment" option for stationary armies that binds them to a province in exchange for huge defensive bonuses (and which takes a while to finish), and that Entrenched army then deals damage to neighboring enemy armies? Then, there could also be a Bombardment button that potentially reduces the Entrenchment of the enemy.

Entrechment does not vanish when one army leaves nor does it pertain to one army only when another army occupies the same space.
You would need a transferable bonus. German Reserves send to reinforce the Somme for example receive, from day 1, the same use from the entrenchments such as they were, as units who had inhabitated them for the better part of 2 years.

Theoretically, as soon as Entrenchment is invented (and this would refer to Entrenchment as a tactic in field battles, not entrenchment around a besieged city or fort, as happened in the American Civil War and Crimean War) the best defensive strategy becomes dividing your forces along a line and entrenching them so that the enemy cannot break through. The enemy, in turn, would be best off entrenching opposite your line. At that point, it becomes a war of attrition which is won when one side can Bombard the enemy effectively and then launch a successful, conventional offensive.

The problem here, again, is that WW1 on the Western Front is a tactical, not a strategic problem.
While the trench networks involved seem vast to us, they are barely a scratch on the province scale of Vicky.
If an entrenched position was expectionaly deep it extended to 40 kilometers in depth (basically two complete lines, both with first, second and third trench and all trimmings, behind each other).
That is a smidge on the Vicky map.
Also Bombardment was not the key to the Kingdom in WW1. Only when bombardments got very short and very precise (for the Germans that was relativly early, for the French it was later and for the British that was latest) did the fronts move; before that the artillery itself prevented the infantry from moving and reinforcing since the no man's land was almost impassable as soon as any adverse weather happened (earth turned over incountable times by shells turns into a porridge like substance when combined with more water then the earth can absorb).

This should work fine for WW1 in Victoria II. The trenches would also be naturally unsuitable for certain nations, at least in theory. If you have a big frontline (think United States or Russia), your forces would either have an incomplete line that could be circumvented or a very sparse, weak line that could be broken. If you have rather open terrain (think many parts of the Ottoman Empire), your Entrenchment bonuses will be small enough that they almost won't matter. Not to mention that various technologies would help you get past trenches. Stormtrooper tactis, armor, advanced aeroplanes, and the like would give you the means to overcome the Entrenchment bonus and defeat the enemy in a fair fight, so trench warfare won't stick around any longer than it would... in fact, with simply having trench warfare making it much more likely for these things to be invented, one should expect trench warfare to both rise and fall in a single Great War, as it did historically.

THe problem is that the entrenchment bonus would also have to escalate.
Precise indirect fire, defense in depth, concrete bunkers, escalating levels of defense because the attackers lines of supplies get ever longer over ever worse ground and he also leaving his artillery behind while the defender can trade space for time while moving into ground that has been prepared and pre-registered for the defense.
There is a reason that the German defenses only broke in 1918 when the 2 million American soldiers had almost double the troops available to attack the German lines.

I'd love to see this stuff in Vicky II. I'd love to see a very simple submarine system as well. I don't think it's impossible.

I think WW1 on a strategic level is pretty unlikely.
Because it was stupid.
No player with a lick of sense would do anything but sit there while advancing the relevant techs while the AI would most likely kill itself heroically while attacking into waiting guns in red trousers.

 

[General WVPM]

There is a reason that the German defenses only broke in 1918 when the 2 million American soldiers had almost double the troops available to attack the German lines.

The role of USA in ww1 is highly overrated...
By 1918, the Central Powers were extremely low on resources, including manpower, rubber and food. After Russia was knocked out of the war, the Germans could use way more men in France, this allowed them to defeat the Entente during the Spring Offensive. But the Entente totally crushed the Germans in the 2nd battle of the Marne and counterattacked. Apart from losses in material and men, this was a huge blow to morale. Their situation only got worse and worse as they continued to struggle with resources, while the USA could send in more troops to aid the Entente. So they had their best chance since 1914 and they still lost. The German navy started their mutiny which triggered the rebellions that overthrew the German Empire and that allowed the war to end.

It's far more complex than USA winning the war through numerical superiority...

As for your other points, I agree.

 

[Klausewitz]

The role of USA in ww1 is highly overrated...
By 1918, the Central Powers were extremely low on resources, including manpower, rubber and food. After Russia was knocked out of the war, the Germans could use way more men in France, this allowed them to defeat the Entente during the Spring Offensive. But the Entente totally crushed the Germans in the 2nd battle of the Marne and counterattacked. Apart from losses in material and men, this was a huge blow to morale. Their situation only got worse and worse as they continued to struggle with resources, while the USA could send in more troops to aid the Entente. So they had their best chance since 1914 and they still lost. The German navy started their mutiny which triggered the rebellions that overthrew the German Empire and that allowed the war to end.

It's far more complex than USA winning the war through numerical superiority...

As for your other points, I agree.

But WHY did the break when they did?
One reason often given is that they lost 'the best' in the Springoffensive.
That is not entirely true and applies the same to the Entente.
Another reason given are 'revolutionary' new gadgets.
Those were used before and countered.

So how did the Germans counter these offenses normally?
They shuttled.
They shuttled troops from quiet parts of the front to the offensive ground, same with artillery, same with planes.
With the 2 million additional Americans (and lets remember the German front line only started to move backwards in earnest with the 100 days) there were no quiet sectors anymore.
Troops everywhere were just a few to few.

 

[LiberiusX]

There are 2 discussions going on in this thread:

1) Should PDS develop a WWI focused game?

This is complicated because the Eastern Front was very different from the Western Front. Any system developed would have to do more than model the static war of the Western Front, it would have to make it fun, perhaps by placing more of a focus on keeping the front intact rather than actually controlling it. This same system would have to be flexible enough to also model the more typical war of maneuver in the East.

2) Can Vicky or HOI encapsulate a Great War in with their current systems?

Though a few of you allude to the Eastern Front, I think this thread has a very Western Front focused view of WWI. You've got to keep in mind that WWI happened the way it did due to a number of special temporal reasons regarding the states of diplomacy and technology.

For instance, up until 1911, Britain was largely pro-German and Britain had been seeking an alliance with Germany, but the Second Moroccan Crisis caused Britain and France to reach an agreement over who would control security in the Mediterranean(France) and the Atlantic/North Sea(Britain). Had the First Moroccan Crisis triggered a general war, Britain probably would have stayed neutral to let France and much less powerful Russia scrap it out against Germany.

On the other hand, had the war occurred 10 years later, Russia would have had a much more developed railroad, industrial and supply network(largely due to financing by the French), not to mention military.

If we view the history of alliances as a fluctuation in the balance of power between said alliances, then the Entente and Central Powers in 1914 were transitioning from one that favored the Germans to one that favored the Entente. However, in 1914, each side was almost perfectly balanced against the other. Our WWI is largely a result of a probable event(assassination of an important national figure) occurring during this point of balance. (of course this is a generalization, because there is no doubt in my mind that France would have fallen before the USA entered the war if Italy had lived up to its alliance with Germany.)

By forcing crises at random times, Vicky2 actually represents the deterministic argument that a Great War was bound to happen, but keeps this argument flexible by not forcing it to happen on any set date.

In summary, as some of you have stated, there's nothing preventing Paradox from creating a WWI centric game that focuses on our historical WWI, while leaving the flexible Great War system in Vicky, though I agree Vicky, with minor improvements, could do a much better job making the war more realistic and fun at the same time.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

I can see a WWI game ONLY if it is about the combat. The player should not care about the years leading up to the war, and the years following the war.

A game about the politics of the war would require all the years of context that the Victoria-game-era presents. The rise of nationalism. Balkanization and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The strains within the Austro-Hungarian empire. The increasingly militaristic and antagonizing foreign relations of the German Empire after Bismark's death that ensured Britain would never side with Germany in a war again. Russia and France being friendly with Serbia to be called in to war. Austria Hungary calling in Germany. The death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to a terrorist being any legitimate reason to start a world war (the war itself was pretty pointless). We would need time after the war to actually appreciate what happened, the failed League of Nations, the rise of socialism and then fascism in Europe, increased tensions in the Colonial world, etc.

I personally don't mind how WWI is depicted in Victoria II, probably because the Great War in my games are usually comparable to that of real life: very bloody and long. The only problem is that the Great War really doesn't completely end a nation like it did in real life (the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire), and not nearly as pointless as the real war (if the war started more often due to a crisis or colonial dispute rather than conquest).