France 14 Offensive Tactics

[Sir John Cope]

I'm bamboozled and at a loss. Turn 4, Home Before The Leaves Fall, I'm playing German, and I simply do not have an answer to French defensive firepower. German field guns are ineffective, MGs are shot to ribbons attempting to deploy, and any infantry battalion which manages to close to range is disrupted. 

The designer notes aren't much help: they refer to the Germans as an "unstoppable steamroller". Oh, yeah? As far as I can see, my best option is to run and hide: fall back out of range of the damn'd 75s and entrench. Is that really how you play this game?

This was my experience with F14 as well, every scenario plays out like Pickett's Charge, great fun for the defender and frustrating as hell for the attack, with only divine intervention to hope for in an offensive victory.  I was hoping for some of the fluidity and mobile operations that took place in August 1914 historically but if that even exists in the Campaign Games I never got there as I couldn't get past the "massive Stack - fire - everyone looks like hell" effect of the basic combat.  I am quite certain that the game models the reality of WW1 operational level combat very well, it just doesn't make for the type of game I look for.  I want mobile operations and fluid fronts.....I like France 1940 not 1914....the best operations are the ones where you move someone out of a position without much in the way of actual combat, and that is NOT WW1.

That seems about right - the game is called France 1914, but it sure as hell feels like France 1915. 

One explanation that comes to mind is that no French player in his right mind will retain the offensive doctrine of 1914, and instead will play like 1915.  

In reality, given the superiority of defensive firepower, the only thing which kept the campaign in the autumn of 1914 fluid was a French doctrinal & mental opposition to positional warfare. But with historical hindsight, any French player will dig in behind his 75s as soon as possible. And as far as I can see, there is no way for the German to stop him. 

A simple fix would be to suspend "digging in" until a given date, but that's not possible within the system.