Prussia in Peril - East Prussia '14 Central Powers AAR - major victory turn 114

[ComradeP]

The opposing forces, unit types:

This being FWWC, unit types are highly "standardized" though the presence of 2nd and 3rd rate forces creates some variety.

(Screenshots taken from the 1st Masurian Lakes battle starting situation, as not all unit types have arrived on the map in our game yet).

I'll only show units with different stats, not all unit types. 




The Germans eventually receive two Guards formations from the Western Front, one regular and one reserve. The difference being that the 3. Garde Division is all A, whilst the Garde Reserve Division has B Guard unit and C quality Reserve infantry units. Note the higher Assault rating and the lower Defense rating, like Russian/French infantry.

Some German divisions have an attached Jaeger battalion. This was a design decision, the alternative was attaching them to Corps. Some Jaeger battalions come with bicycle and MG companies, but not all of them. Reserve Jaeger battalions have the same stats. The best thing about the Jaeger battalions is their Speed of 5 and that most of them are B quality.

Regular infantry and Ersatz units have the same stats. The Germans have the best all-round infantry of any side in FWWC.

Reserve infantry battalions have slightly worse Assault ratings but are otherwise identical to regular units. There are some differences between regular and Reserve formations on the divisional level, but I'll discuss those later.

The majority of the Landwehr units have +1 quality level as a design decision to represent a home ground advantage. Their SA rating of 1 makes them less effective at the frontline, but they're good at delaying actions and attacks against Russian cavalry.

Aside from good all-round infantry, the main German ace is their indirect artillery. In this case, the limited number of regular divisions in East Prussia makes the advantage less pronounced but it's still there. Most of the artillery in Festung Koenigsberg is mobile, which helps.

Engineers come in two main flavours: pure bridging engineers and combat/bridge engineers. As you can see when you check their stats, bridge columns have no business being at the frontline.

The German army only made half-hearted attempts to reorganize its cavalry formations to deal with modern firepower, resulting in "traditional" cavalry units with different stats for each type of cavalry. Most divisional cavalry consists of dragoon squadrons. Cavalry Assault ratings are quadrupled when they assault whilst mounted. Massed Kürassier charges hit like a ton of bricks when used at the right time. It's worth noting that only Uhlan units can use recon spotting.