EP '14 mechanics/balance

[ComradeP]

C quality MG and field gun units can at least disrupt like everybody else, and the assault system doesn't treat them kindly when the infantry in their hex is disrupted as the support weapons end up taking the losses. A and B quality support weapons will always cause more problems for the attacker than their C and lower quality counterparts because they're unlikely to disrupt, slightly lower fatigue gain doesn't change too much about that.

It can be odd to see a precise 90 men loss result for the defender, killing an MG unit whilst literally not touching the infantry aside from evicting them from the hex, but you get used to those things as the assault system usually selects a target rather than spreading the losses over the entire stack.

A quality units (and some B quality units like French colonial forces and the lesser gods amongst Guards units) don't get replacements. If a C quality unit takes about 100 losses, it loses ~10% of its strength but can recover quickly, but for the A quality units the losses are permanent.

The most practical way to employ A quality units or other units without replacements when it comes to minimizing their losses, namely having them as a second wave behind something that soaks up the opportunity fire and weakens the defender a bit, already means their fatigue gain will usually be limited and they get a bonus at the moment as is. Having a handful of slightly more functional "true" Guards or elite units in balance terms doesn't weigh too heavily compared to allowing the vast majority of the other units to stay in the fight a bit longer. If you end up using the A quality units more, that also means they might grind themselves into a pulp more quickly than they do now.

As a complete aside: I've just reinstalled France '14. JTS customer support kindly provided a new download link after I lost the original one when formatting.

The Grand Campaign options are nice, however at the moment a number of the French units that arrive as reinforcements moving up to the Ardennes in the case of the Plan Michel (these are further away) and the XVII modified war plan are not Fixed at the start, so they can march into the Ardennes unopposed as the Germans are Fixed. This also means that achieving termination is easier because they only need 1 or 2 additional objectives to win after marching to the objectives they can reach whilst the Germans are Fixed.

They do have releases assigned to them, so it might've been a case of forgetting to Fix them after adding the new strategy options.

I might create a seperate thread about those strategy decisions, as they're an interesting mechanic and worth of an in depth look as to how they influence the game and the incentives they offer.

[Nitram Draw]

A quality units (and some B quality units like French colonial forces and the lesser gods amongst Guards units) don't get replacements. If a C quality unit takes about 100 losses, it loses ~10% of its strength but can recover quickly, but for the A quality units the losses are permanent.

I've always wondered why some units never get any replacements. Is every loss a death or incapacitation for those units only? Surely some could make it back in a 30 day period. Same with artillery, couldn't some be repaired? These same units get replacement in the smaller scenarios but not in the long campaigns, at least in France '14.

[Kool Kat]

As a complete aside: I've just reinstalled France '14. JTS customer support kindly provided a new download link after I lost the original one when formatting.

Gents:   

A "best practice" is to save a game copy with installed mods to a CD! That way, if your original install gets corrupted, you'll always have a backup copy available to reinstall.

Also, as an aside... I am enjoying this thread.   I don't have any interest in WW1 and will not be purchasing France '14... but am following the tactics and strategy discussions with interest!

Thanks to all the contributors! 

[Volcano Man]

The Grand Campaign options are nice, however at the moment a number of the French units that arrive as reinforcements moving up to the Ardennes in the case of the Plan Michel (these are further away) and the XVII modified war plan are not Fixed at the start, so they can march into the Ardennes unopposed as the Germans are Fixed. This also means that achieving termination is easier because they only need 1 or 2 additional objectives to win after marching to the objectives they can reach whilst the Germans are Fixed.

They do have releases assigned to them, so it might've been a case of forgetting to Fix them after adding the new strategy options.

No! This is correct. The releases are assigned to them for the other strategies (when they choose a defensive strategy, otherwise they would get a "head start" on the move over the offensive strategies in some places). Historically they were marching into the Ardnennes before the Germans were.  I appreciate your evaluations, but don't worry I have it under control.  ;)

I am actually playing the Grand Campaign now with four other testers, and it is being refined. The version in the game right now has been improved quite a bit and I think we are near perfection in the updated one. One big issue in the public version is that the German armies do not release on the right day, but all this has been fixed for the next update which should be "soon".

[jim pfleck]

I disagree on the fatigue---I think F14 (and EP14) does a better job than the other Tiller games of preventing endless fighting and fighting to the last man. improving the recovery rate or lowering the accrual rate will change the game a fair amount and make it more bloody. It is already plenty bloody, imho....

[Nitram Draw]

To bad there isn't a marker for each day a unit fights so after so many days fatigue would be regained at a much slower rate. Then you could increase the daily recovery rate so that units who completely rested overnight would be relatively fresh in the morning but they would burn out if they remained in combat for say 7 days straight.

[ComradeP]

I've always wondered why some units never get any replacements. Is every loss a death or incapacitation for those units only? Surely some could make it back in a 30 day period. Same with artillery, couldn't some be repaired? These same units get replacement in the smaller scenarios but not in the long campaigns, at least in France '14.

It's a guess, but I'm guessing it is primarily meant to give a way to kill them. There's no rarity modifier for equipment that is produced in limited numbers or troops with very, very limited replacements like Guards.

When it comes to never recovering something, the only thing I still don't understand is why the bridging system is so inflexible in JTS games. In most wargames with bridging, you can build a bridge and move on. That's also not very realistic, but having to maintain every single bridge with units that never get their bridging equipment back if they leave the bridge never feels "right" and it can become downright problematic if you have only a handful of bridging units to cover several rivers or have situations like with 1st Army in Clash of Empires where you build a bridge and then your men become Fixed, so the enemy can move in and force you to leave the bridge or lose the bridging unit.

Just like many operational ideas were Napoleonic in WWI, so were the bridges which consisted of the usual boats or wooden bridges as far as I know. Modern specialist bridge building equipment didn't exist at the time, or not in today's quantities.

A rare tank, or all the vehicles of a battalion can be recovered either over time or in an instant, but not bridging equipment. I fear that's one of the things that will never feel "right".

A "best practice" is to save a game copy with installed mods to a CD! That way, if your original install gets corrupted, you'll always have a backup copy available to reinstall.

I know, my other installers were all saved on a USB stick, but the France '14 installer got corrupted when I moved it somehow.

I disagree on the fatigue---I think F14 (and EP14) does a better job than the other Tiller games of preventing endless fighting and fighting to the last man. improving the recovery rate or lowering the accrual rate will change the game a fair amount and make it more bloody. It is already plenty bloody, imho....

Well, regard for human life wasn't as high in early WWI as in WWII, and men were willing to make sacrifices that most people wouldn't consider either in WWII or today. They could also recover from a slaughter, many troops being from the lower social economic classes who at that time often still had a rough life. I mean: standard tactics came down to loose lines of men charging MG's and (entrenched) enemy positions with limited supporting fire and they could do that for a while before breaking down.

I agree that fatigue can be sort of ignored too easily in the WWII games with limited numbers of units, but in FWWC it can increase very rapidly. Battalions can take losses in terms of strength as they're big, but the fatigue from even limited attacks can be severe.

No! This is correct. The releases are assigned to them for the other strategies (when they choose a defensive strategy, otherwise they would get a "head start" on the move over the offensive strategies in some places). Historically they were marching into the Ardnennes before the Germans were.  I appreciate your evaluations, but don't worry I have it under control.  ;)

If you pick the historical options, it deliberately doesn't play out like it historically would? That seems odd, as the Ardennes area is the only area where that seems possible. Further to the (south)east and in Belgium the movements can evolve in such a way that they will be close to the situation in the start of the normal early campaign, but in the Ardennes the French have an edge over their historical counterparts.

I made a mistake when counting the VP's, as I counted the Belgian VP's as German at the start, so the French marching in there wouldn't actually lower the German VP's. Still, it does seem strange that with the historical options for both sides, the French get to make an orderly advance deep into the Ardennes before the Germans get there.

To bad there isn't a marker for each day a unit fights so after so many days fatigue would be regained at a much slower rate. Then you could increase the daily recovery rate so that units who completely rested overnight would be relatively fresh in the morning but they would burn out if they remained in combat for say 7 days straight.

If such a feature would be included, movement distances would also need to be tracked, which makes things complicated. Currently, you can march from Berlin to Moscow without gaining fatigue provided you do it in daytime, that's just how the system works (like most wargame systems, which present an idealized war where movement and supply tend to be simplified compared to the combat mechanics) but making fatigue more detailed for combat would make the system seem more uneven when it comes to the way you normally gain fatigue.

[Nitram Draw]

If such a feature would be included, movement distances would also need to be tracked, which makes things complicated. Currently, you can march from Berlin to Moscow without gaining fatigue provided you do it in daytime, that's just how the system works (like most wargame systems, which present an idealized war where movement and supply tend to be simplified compared to the combat mechanics) but making fatigue more detailed for combat would make the system seem more uneven when it comes to the way you normally gain fatigue.

I was actually thinking of it as a way to control morale. If there was a way to separate the morale from the fatigue level then it would work better. Units that fought one day and suffered high losses or did hard forced marches should still have the same zeal over the short term.
Over the course of time maybe they would become demoralized after days of hard fighting but a lot of fatigue in this game system has to do with movement, or lack of rest, as opposed to combat fatigue accumulating over the course of days. To me one would affect your morale a whole lot more than the other. Both would make you physically tired though.

[ComradeP]

Everything being linked to quality makes the system both simple and complicated, cutting some of those links would have a direct effect on something else as well. That's what makes balancing so tricky for these games.

In the majority of the wargames I've played (if represented) fatigue, experience and ammunition influenced combat value either directly or indirectly (in the shape of the amount of times a unit could fire) but did not by themselves have a negative or positive effect on something else, but in these games everything is linked and combined into bonuses/penalties.

Abstracting fatigue into something else than an effect on both firepower and quality would be challenging with the current system.

[Nitram Draw]

Everything being linked to quality makes the system both simple and complicated, cutting some of those links would have a direct effect on something else as well. That's what makes balancing so tricky for these games.

In the majority of the wargames I've played (if represented) fatigue, experience and ammunition influenced combat value but did not by themselves have a negative effect, but in these games everything is linked and combined into bonuses/penalties.

Abstracting fatigue into something else than an effect on both firepower and quality would be challenging with the current system.

I guess cutting the link is what I am suggesting then. At least cutting it for a certain amount of time. Both would affect combat still but one would 'react' slower than the other.

My thoughts were that quality is a measure of training, experience, morale and fatigue is a measure of physical tiredness and unit cohesion, or they are mostly measures those things. A better trained unit doesn't lose those things just because they are tired or in combat for a number of hours in a row. They may lose unit cohesion but not their training so quality should not change as fast as fatigue but over time it could be permanently affected if you don't pull units out of the line and really rest them. Basically if you want to always lead with the same units their quality may be permanently reduced.