Serbia '14

[Elxaime]

After some discussion with my opponent Elxaime for the 4th Invasion scenario and my Central Powers and Serbian experience in the 1st Invasion scenario, I'd like to discuss Chetniks.

Currently, they feel overpowered. They have a 3 hex Deception effect radius and Patrolling only works if the Patrolling unit is 1-2 hexes away from the Chetnik unit as the Deception unit has to be in range of the Patrolling effect. Switching to Patrolling requires full movement points, so you can't switch to Patrolling after moving.

If the Serbian player mixes Chetniks with frontline troops, which even when not done deliberately is difficult to avoid in some situations when moving units around, most if not all T-mode movement will result in the moving Central Powers units becoming Disrupted. This is particularly tricky for the low quality Austro-Hungarian units. A detached, Out of Command, Disrupted D quality HQ has No Morale, for example.

Support weapons like MG's and Field Guns can't be brought up to the frontline or moved away from them without a Patrolling unit covering the Chetnik unit. That makes retreating quite difficult for the Central Powers as well, particularly in difficult terrain where you would ideally use the road network.

The ability to shut down T-mode movement along lengthy portions of the frontline (there's no shortage of Chetniks usually) is very powerful and I would say not historically accurate, as the Deception effect moves "through" the frontline.

Decreasing the radius to 2 hexes could work, but that wouldn't remove the problem when Chetnik units are stacked with combat units at the frontline.

Maybe the Chetniks are meant to infiltrate behind Central Powers lines, but that would make the issues even worse.

As my esteemed opponent in 4th Invasion describes, the partisan effect means units that require T mode to move spend most of the game disrupted, since the effect reaches across even massive front line stacks.

The partisan effects in FFWC are a system that was imported from their use in other titles.  

I can only speak to Bagration 44' for their use in WW2 era titles.  There, the Soviet partisans start far behind the German front.  I can't recall if the deception range is 4, I believe it was.  But the modeling seemed OK given the battle occurred during summer, meaning movement rates were higher and also the Axis had artillery and air power to deal with them.

In MC titles like Danube 85', movement rates are high, and artillery and airpower are so powerful, that the deception units work pretty well - they have a powerful impact but can be countered.

For WW1, especially Serbia 14 where weather and mud slows movement to a crawl, the partisan impacts multiply.  There is no real counter, since indirect artillery takes a while to get set up and there is no meaningful air attack capability (both of the latter being historical).  Not sure whether this is intended, but the reality ends up being most Central Powers machine gun and artillery units spend the game disrupted once they near the front lines.  As pointed out, patrolling doesn't help since the deception range is greater.  As increasing patrolling range would have a potentially imbalance impact pro-CP, since it would enable them to use indirect fire farther into the Serb rear than historically they were able to, perhaps the solution lies elsewhere.