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?

You can't advance in stacks of infantry battalions. That ain’t gonna work. The Germans start with 1 million 175,000 men most of them on the front line. You have to be ready to take some hits. German indirect fire is a real problem for the French. You have to plan well with the big siege guns. German field guns too can be very effective. In the first few turns the French are dug in but after you force them to retreat (and you can) German 75s wreak havoc. One good tactic for field guns and MG sections on the attack is to move them into position at night and then open up at Dawn when you have the first turn. There are weak points in the French lines. There is plenty of space for maneuver. The game is 153 turns. Try to win it on turn 153.  jonny

Apart from the several places in the line where divisions have run into each other and are stacked deep and in contact on turn 1, I've avoided stacks of infantry, knowing perfectly well that the built-in alt-fire rule will cause havoc. But it has proved all but impossible to close to range with single bns: between his turn and opportunity fire, any bn is disrupted in a single turn, and often the second wave gets the same treatment. 

Several comments regarding the value of indirect fire from heavy guns, and I take the point. However, at the beginning of my last turn I noted that plotted fire from three heavy bttys directed on a hex occupied by just one MG section and one 75 btty resulted in three "no effect" results. That alt-fire effect again: the same game function which produces carnage against densely-occupied hexes produces zip against hexes held by just 30 machine gunners and 12 field pieces. Of course, given several days of 1915-16 style preparatory barrage, I'm sure there will be some sort of effect eventually - but at that pace, I might as well revert to 1915 German thinking: dig in deep and wait for them to come. 
 
It's not that I was oblivious to the situation: I know perfectly well to expect a reasonable simulation of WWI to reflect the imbalance of defensive firepower to offensive capacity. There's a good reason why the war turned into bloody stalemate, after all. But I also know that the 1914 German offensive did manage to reach the Marne in reality, and at the moment I simply cannot see that, or anything even remotely like it, happening with any human player who is not actively attempting to roleplay early-war French offensive doctrine. I don't think I can even force the line of the Sambre, much less the Marne.