“It’s déjà vu all over again”
(Quote by Yogi Berra)
After digging through my wargame pile and piles of assorted notes and other amusing detritus, I discovered some 7 year old notes on WWI game design. What’s old is new again.
One of the key aspects of a good strategic WWI game, in my not so humble opinion, is how to place history-based limits on the players. The Germans did not conduct offensives every year on the Western Front. They did so every other year. Plus, in 1917, they staged a planned strategic withdrawal to a fortified line called the Hindenburg Line. Why would a player do that in a static warfare situation?
The French, on the other hand, conducted offensive every year, even when it wasn’t prudent to do so. Why?
The model that I’m going to try to incorporate into ASoC will be based on the concept of the “operations plan”. Resources, such as ammunition stockpiles or engineering materials, expressed in TGW series as “resource points”, will remain in a strategic pool after they are produced every production cycle. Armies will have access to these points according to their current posture: passive or active An army in a passive posture will receive enough points to be able to defend itself. An army in an active posture, as part of an operations plan formulated by the player, can receive any amount from the available strategic stockpiles.
My thinking on this is simple. It wasn’t just the lack of supplies that served as a brake on conducting offensives and/or active defenses. It was in how they were distributed. Furthermore, in a corps-sized game, I don’t want the players sniping at each other during quiet times on the front. A corps-sized game should not feature trench raids.
To illustrate, TGW uses an odds-based CRT and uses resource points to give attacking and defending units combat supply. Without combat supply, they attack/defend at half strength. If there is an imbalance, such as the attacker having combat supply and the defender goes without, then the odds ratio for the CRT will double. However, and this is a flaw, if both sides do without, then the odds ratio will be the same as if both sides were combat supplied. For example: 40 attacks 20 for a 2:1. If both go without combat supply, then 20 attacks 10, still 2:1. In a static situation then, the only reason to conduct an offensive would be to force the defender to spend combat supply so as to possibly gain a logistics advantage. While such planning could be interesting to grognards, it is beyond the realm of what the historical commanders were thinking. They wanted to win the war, either by breaking the front line stalemate or breaking their enemy’s morale. They were not trying to win an economic war. (At least, not explicitly.)
In order to recreate the quiet periods of the front as well as such offensives as Verdun, the Somme, the Big Push, as well as the Battle of the Frontiers and the strategic withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, players, through the rules, will need to formulate operations plans, complete with objectives and army assignments, and morale point penalties for not achieving offensive objectives. Futhermore, the French, with an active enemy on home soil, will have to formulate and conduct at least one offensive every year or receive a morale point penalty.
The rules here will have to be clear. The methods employed will need to be simple, yet flexible, with a clear and concise formula which shall determine resource point availability, number of armies employed in the offensive, whether armies will be acting in unison, via “linked” activations, and the morale point bonuses and penalties for success and failure. As I once read in some uncommented assembly code, now comes the tricky part.
Before I get there though, I have to determine the mechanics I’m going to use. I found some decent secondary research materials on the compositions of corps-sized formations for the various combatants. Coupled with the information found in other wargames, I think I can cobble up a decent prototype.