My earlier post was pure speculation. I had never actually played the Great War scenario (except if you count that one time before I learned how to do anything, which I don't). But, in the past couple of hours, I played the scenario, and I'll try to sum it up as best I can.
1. I set the Trade window to buy as many reg. clothes, small arms and canned food as I could, and I didn't touch anything else. That went just fine, I will now testify to my earlier statement. I also converted 5 POPs to soldiers on the second day, and generally every few weeks after that. I didn't go nuts with it, but I think I had to convert about 2 or 3 dozen. I aimed for the largest groupings of farmers and laborers, of course.
2. From the very beginning, I set my naval maintenance to 0 and ignored my colonies. I knew I couldn't have won a war on or over seas. I also maxxed out my education budget, but the war ended before I learned anything.
But, I have learned from this that you don't need to research anything to win. Kill the education budget, that'll save a lot of money.
3. I did not re-enforce my eastern border at all at first. Instead, I sent 40+ divisions into Belgium, and had the rest sit in Alsace-Lorraine for a couple of weeks until they were needed. Since I struck Belgium right away (as opposed to my earlier game), they didn't slow me down much, and I Schlieffened my way into Champaigne and Ile-de-France before the French could move any real forces to stop me. No divisions stood between Belgium and Paris.
I then divided my troops just enough to move west through Normandie and the Loire Valley, while most of my attention was focused on turning southeast to cut off French forces in western Lorraine. I never attacked unless I had 2:1 odds and they weren't dug in. I looked for easier targets, or waited a week to move new forces into position. I only attacked Verdun when it was completely surrounded, and even then, I attacked from four directions and with a 2:1 troop ratio; they weren't even dug in, since they were attempting a breakout.
Every available division was on the attack along the entire front. By the end of the year, Paris was mine, western Lorraine had fallen, and I was stomping through the Loire, meeting only enough opposition to occasionally halt an army or two, but never to slow me down all over.
4. All new divisions I built (first available in early December) were sent to the Eastern Front, along with 25-30 divisions of the army that conquered Verdun. My eastern armies were collapsing in western Poland, so my re-enforcements arrived just in time to prevent Prussia from being cut off. I never tried to go toe-to-toe with the Russians, as they numbered far too many. I would simply aim for smaller armies, abandon my fortifications, and tried to slow their conquests a little. Because of this, they only succeeded in capturing 2-3 provinces that weren't along our pre-war borders, and nothing that cut me off.
5. By this point (January), France was doomed, even the most dellusional Gaul could see that, so I peeled off enough forces to the east for a spring offensive as I could, while leaving just enough to continue the offensive along two fronts, just to prevent the French from digging in anywhere. They managed to raise a couple of sizable armies in the SE, but I interdicted them before they could do too much damage. Even if they had thrown my back, my forces further west and northwest were meeting nothing strong enough to slow them down. After the grand encirclement at Verdun, they simply couldn't match my numbers. I took every opportunity to encircle them, such as pushing them back into Brittany. They launched several suicide attacks, and I let them, while I sent would-be re-enforcements around them to cut off their escape, leading to their destruction.
6. By March, I was ready to launch my counter-attack against the over-stretched Russians. I wanted to create a pocket around Pozen and encircle them, but I didn't have enough divisions over there yet, so I allowed them to continue their offensive in the center, while I took out their flanks, and then moved in re-enforcements to the center of the fron in great numbers to pop the bubble. After a couple of horrible defeats on the flanks, the Russians were stopped completely, and in April, I formed a great pincer to cut off two of their armies around Pozen. Once they were eliminated by my largest group of re-enforcements, I put almost every division in the East into two great armies, and threw myself towards Warsaw. With slightly greater numbers - local superiority, mostly, though by this point, I had almost as many divisions as the Russians (190ish to 180ish), since I kept building them - their armies collapsed. But I didn't have time to exploit this, as the war ended while the last Russian army in German territory was about to be thrown back across the lines by 15 divisions (including 11 that were
just created and deployed in the province in the thick of the battle).
7. East Prussia never fell, despite never being re-enforced. Memel fell right away, without protest. Since I kept divisions in East Prussia and didn't move them for the first few months, the Russians focused their offensives in lightly-defended Western Poland. I had only one army to stop them there, so I kept it moving, and I made sure to give it my best leader and to constantly re-enforce it. It won almost every battle that it was in, since I kept it larger than any Russian army (maybe 8 divisions), and it never attacked a captured province (the enemy could have dug in). Only when East Prussia was in danger of being cut off did I move their armies westward. Even then, once the threat was lifted - about two weeks later - the Russians armies sent to fill the vacuum were thrown back, before they could take control. Russia was beginning its massive attack, but was again largely ignoring East Prussia.
8. Once the Russians were being thrown back in western Poland, and were beginning to lose provinces that they owned, the Versailles event fired, and the war ended on May 15, 1915. (5/15/15)
9. French partisans were a major pain. I kept about 10 divisions behind the lines to swat them away.
10. I built perhaps 30-40 units before the war ended. Given my resources, I could have built a lot more, so I think you'd have plenty of wiggle room.
11. I was almost 90K pounds/debt, but it didn't matter. The point of the game was the win the war at any price. I'm sure that, given 4.5 years, I could have dug my way out of it.
12. I retract my earlier statement about Russia's strengths. One-on-one, they were no match for me, but unless you have numerical parity or are well dug-in, their number will absolutely swamp you. I think I got lucky a few times in my game, as the Austrians actually took a few provinces from the Russians and tied a lot of their divisions down. They even stalled the Russian advance into Silesia quite well, shortening the line for that one mobile army.
13. I saw one British division on the Western Front, and that was just south of Nantes, around March. Had they committed historical numbers to Flanders (which the French never defended), I probably wouldn't have been able to collapse the French line in time to wheel east and prevent the Russians from capturing Danzig and Stettin. The war might have actually lasted a year. But good for them, their boys are still alive.
