Chevalier Plays AGEOD Let's Play/AAR

[Brian Shanahan]

Hm, after 17 days of no word from the Central Powers, now the dropbox folder with hte turn files is empty. I'm worried the game might be dead, or I need to finish against an AI.

Sounds dodgy. They should at least give you a concession if they're not willing to play on.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

After a week of no response on the Slack server, I finally got a brief message that he was "battling a crash", which DID kill one of my Civ VI pbems.

I'll give it a few more days, then if we hit a month with no turn, I'll finish out 1916 and 1917 against the AI, as in my previous AGEOD games.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Disaster! I attempted to load the save myself and was hit with a crash as well. My only backup save is from early April - the start of the Spring Offensive.

I'll load it and attempt to advance the game state roughly as before, so this war can have a conclusion.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Spring Offensive Bet - April & May, 1916

With no word from the Centrals player in a month, and no new save coming in, I conclude that he's abandoned the game, and decide to proceed against the AI. Unfortunately, as noted, my late May save is corrupt and I am forced to replay April and May against the robot. The result is a pretty radically different 8 weeks, as the robo-Kaiser is much more aggressive with his armies and navies, and more pro-active in shifting units for defense. So, instead of the largely passive defenses of the former human and a cautious retreat to the Rhine, instead we see enormous counterattacks launched in the Rhineland, in Lorraine, and in Anatolia (I also blunder many of the British transports in a very near debacle in the Dardanelles). There are literally dozens of battles and possibly over a million men in the Bet version of this offensive, so I'll try to just hit the highlights.

Starting with the Western Front:



The Battle of the Moselle unfolds over April and May, in general with this pattern: French forces move east through the Ardennes, driving the German defenders before them into the Rhine at Bonn. Trier and Bonn fall, before part of the French armies turn north to envelop Aachen, and part turn south to liberate Alsace-Lorraine. The Germans stage a massive counteroffensive against the northern flank of the penetration, throwing their men headlong into the Belgian defenses near Malmedy. The result is that nearly two entire German armies are trapped and destroyed in the north, but casualties on both sides are catastrophic.

On the northern shoulder, something like 7 French armies shove aside 3 German armies on April 1. The French lose 60,000 men, the Germans 50,000 in the bloodiest battle in months:


(only the last battle pictured, there was a skirmish the day before against an isolated German corps).

The first major city to fall is Trier, stormed by Joffre by April 7. He suffers 8,000 losses but the entire garrison of 12,000 men is captured:



So goes the first two weeks.

Irritatingly, the Belgian forces of Namur and Liege randomly flip back to German control as I convert the save to singleplayer, albeit ungarrisoned:


In Italy, the opposite happens and German garrisons re-appear in Italian fortresses surrendered by Austria. Irksome.

Anyway, I dispatch a pair of Belgian divisions back to flip those provinces to my control, and the offensive rolls on.

By April 15, Joffre is driving the German army back from around Bonn (uh, again), losing 30,000 men to inflict 15,000 casualties, but forcing the Krauts to the east bank of the Rhine:



Just to the north, the city of Cologne is stormed in street-to-street fighting lasting until April 24. Half a million Frenchmen are involved in the fight for the city and the surrounding countryside, and 1 in 10 of them falls. On the other side, there are 350,000 German defenders in the area, and over 60,000 become casualties, including all 20 tanks the Germans deploy for the first time:



The casualty rates are ghastly, but I bet the Germans bleed out first, and the frontline is still advancing.

As April turns into May, the Germans launch their counterstroke. On the northernmost shoulder of the bulge, General von Bulow orders his First Armee to attack out of Aachen, attempting to storm the Belgian trenches around Malmedy and cut the supply lines of the Entente offensive forces moving to his south. The result is the bloodiest battle of the war so far:


The blow mostly falls on the Belgian Army, with the French in support. In defense of their native soil King Albert leads his army courageously, 280,000 against 225,000 attackers - and the Germans so bravely attack that over half become casualties. 50,000 French and Belgian soldiers fall, but over 120,000 Germans of First Armee are removed from the Fatherland's order of battle.

Now for the southern flank. At the Saar, just on the southern side of the Moselle, General de Pau leading 4 full armies beats back von Mudra's single German army, inflicting over 37,000 losses for 15,000 of his own:


Note that I have hundreds of tanks and dozens of planes, the Germans have no such wonders. 3,000 guns vs 600 as well.

Two weeks later, de Pau successfully leads his men into the forests of Pfalz, where they catch an isolated German corps attempting to hold the line and more or less destroy it:


18,000 Germans fall compared to 13,000 Entente soldiers, and VIII Korps is no longer combat effective. In fact, a few days later, on 8 May, VIII Korps is unable to resist opportunistically crossing the Rhine at Koblenz:


Note that despite the high numbers, most of those are non-combat troops. VIII Korps itself loses 90% of its remaining strength in the comparatively tiny skirmish, which is the only reason I shared it.

Meanwhile, on 6 May Gallieni leads two more French armies into Saarbrucken, attempting to exploit the lack of German defenses to the south and drive them out of Alsace entirely. He meets a German army under Kurfursten Alexander, and in a ferocious brawl inflicts 20,000 losses for 10,000 of his own:


Alexander retreats, but in a mix-up the German 12th Infantry Division escorting a convoy of supplies to the front misses the memo, and is surrounded and captured entire by Gallieni on 9 May:



It's not all positive for the Entente, though. On the southern end of the front, French commanders mistakenly believe the Centrals are evacuating all their positions in Alsace-Lorraine and moving back across the Rhine. They order an offensive despite the lack of army headquarters in this area - and Falkenheyn mousetraps them, railing in massive reinforcements and shredding the French corps at Saarbourg:


General Picquart loses 70,000 of his men, while Falkenheyn loses only 40,000 and has administered a solid bloody nose.

By 15 May, the Moselle Offensive stands thus:


The region north of the Moselle has been competely overrun, except for the German First and Second Armees still attempting to attack Malmedy. Otherwise the French army has reached the Rhine and one army has even gotten across it at Koblenz. To the south, five French armies are moving into Alsace-Lorraine but face more substantial German forces, and there's heavy fighting ahead in the last two weeks of May.



The Alsace-Lorraine offensive on 15 May. Gallieni has just captured an entire German division in the center, and on his left French forces are rolling up the west bank of the Rhine. On his right Fifth Army and supporting corps are moving into Metz, which will cut off Thionville fortress on the Moselle just to the north. The southernmost flank sees the bloody debacle at Saarbourg fortress.

On May 16, the German counteroffensive continues. First Armee losses another 40% of its strength, continuing to attack the stout Belgian defenses. The Belgians lose an equal amount but hold their lines:


Joffre orders the Belgians to go over to a counterattack and begin driving First Armee out of the positions it's captured in the two-week offensive.

On the same day, Falkenheyn swings his reserves north from Saarbourg and attempts to stem Gallieni's rush south. 400,000 Germans meet 300,000 French in another cataclysmic encounter:


Honors of the day are about even, 80,000 German casualties vs 70,000 French, but Falkenheyn concedes the field to the French army. Considering we were on the attack and outnumbered, it shows how low German morale is growing. They may go over the abyss before summer's end - unable to muster up enough will to fight even if they have a material advantage.

They can still bite, though. 17 May sees cavalry pursuit of Picquart's defeated corps bag numerous French prisoners for only trifling German losses:



That's more than compensated though by the surrender of Koblenz with its 24,000 man garrison on the same day:



France now has a firm bridgehead on the east bank of the Rhine.

Back in the south, as Falkenheyn retreats from the Battle of Lorraine, he leads his survivors to security at Metz - only to meet the French Fifth Army beginning its assault on the city. It looks for a while like the Fifth will suffer the same fate as Picquart's defeated army, but Gallieni has his jaws clamped on the German army and within a few days he arrives on Falkenheyn's heels, putting pressure on the German rear. Beset east and west, the German commander at last orders a retreat back to Saarbourg on May 28, leaving Metz - and 50,000 of his own men - behind. The French lose 30,000.



May draws to an end as First Belgian Army continues its counteroffensive against the survivors of First Armee near Aachen.


36,000 of the 60,000 survivors fall as they are gradually driven back to their start lines of 6 May, while the Belgians lose 28,000. The battle here has been horrifically bloody, but in three weeks of combat First Armee has been virtually destroyed, reduced from nearly 230,000 strong on 6 May to only 25,000 ragged survivors now. Joffre orders an immediate pursuit to the city of Aachen.

Final situation in the north as of 1 June:


Most armies are transiting east towards the far bank of the Rhine in this sector, but First Army will be attacking Aachen from the east to polish off the German First and Second Armees. No major forces are south of Dusseldorf or north of the Main river as far as I can tell. If I can clear my flanks we can thrust deep into Germany soon!

In the south:


I've managed to promote 4 corps commanders to army commanders as a result of the successful battles, and they'll be forming 11th - 15th armies soon near Luxembourg from my numerous loose corps. Thionville is isolated with about a full German army inside - 650 power - while Falkenheyn's main force of 1500 power has retreated back to Saarbourg. There are also 4 other German formations of corps-size in the area, which I think are armies depleted from the May fighting.

This post has grown long, so I'll cover Italy and the East in a second post. Here's the objective screen, though. See how casualties have spiked for both sides in the last two months of fighting! Also note the terrible Central Powers morale and the high Entente morale.




In answer to Rolf's question about the French mutinies, they're scripted, BUT only if our National Morale is low.


Our NM has been holding steady at about 75 after the numerous victories over the last 8 weeks, so no danger of that in the near future. Natural decay will take over a year to get to that point, so it won't happen before the fall of 1917 at the earliest, and that's if we don't gain NM from anything (which we will).

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Spring Offensive Bet - Other Fronts

Now to cover Italy, Anatolia, Palestine, and the war at sea.

In Italy things go, well, better and worse for me. The AI aggressively moves in more units to fully cover the front, and a bug spawns Austrian garrisons in the surrendered fortresses from earlier, so I lose Trent and suddenly have a gaping hole on my left flank:




However, Cardona isn’t beaten QUITE so badly at Fisch fortress, and the Italian front largely settles into a modestly bloody stalemate.




These little battles of 5,000, 10,000 casualties are charming compared to the grotesque massacres going on in France right now.

The largest battle sees Cadorna’s Second Army get a foothold near Villach against Eugen von Osterreich’s defending army, losing about 15,000 men on both sides:



Except Cardona pushes things too far and loses 20,000 men trying to exploit his ‘advantage’:



With a 10-1 advantage in numbers he manages to drive a lone Austrian corps out of Gorizia…suffering 20x as many casualties as the Austrians do in the process:


How is that even possible!?

First Army to the south is much more competent, bagging nearly all of Fiume’s garrison at light cost by early May:



At the same time, Cardona finds another corps he outnumbers 3 to 1, and drives it off, inflicting 7,000 losses for only 22,000 of his own:


Truly a Glorious Victory for Italia!

So, the situation by 1 June in the Italian theater sees mostly victory on the right flank, which I attempt to exploit into Austria proper, while the center is stalemated and the left flank is a chaotic mess as I try to sort through the newly-spawned Austrian garrisons with no real offensive troops save my handful of alpine troopers:



Anatolia is much more bloody.

Here, in general, Kitchener leaves 1 army and 2 supporting corps to hold the mainland, while he shifts 3 other armies to join Fourth Army near Gallipolli. HOwever, while I see the mines are clear, I idiotically forget that I haven’t taken the forts in this timeline, and I get my transports blasted to kingdom come by the Dardanelles forts on either side. We’ll see what comes of that. Meanwhile, the Turks at last bring their armies down from the Caucausus, leaving the robo-Tsar to run free while they begin to really fight for their homeland.

Kitchener secures Izmit’s surrender, with 12,000 troopers, on 2 April:




He then repulses a Turkish counterattack just north of the city, losing 13,000 men and inflicting over 23,000 casualties on a 60,000-strong Ottoman corps:



Here is the situation on 15 April when I begin to recall all armies save First British Army to Smyrna, for transfer to the European side:




So far we’ve advanced almost with no opposition save the lone Turkish army, but a new corps appears and attacks one of my support corps - repulsed, but a harbinger of things to come:



First, early in May John French somehow loses 10,000 men attacking half his number of Turks at the Bosporus:


He manages to inflict a like number of losses, but with a second Turkish army turning up in his rear I get uneasy and order a withdrawal to Izmit to regroup.

In the meantime, my transports as noted get shredded by fortress artillery and my landings on the enemy coast are in grave jeopardy. Finally, another Turkish corps turns up near Ankara in the center and begins battling my light troops there:


So, I need to hold my right flank, regroup French’s army and hold my ground here, and get the rest of the BEF sorted out on the beach and HOPEFULLY successfully seize Gallipolli and move on Constantinople. I have no ports here, but I think I can manually land supply wagons over the beaches, and manually ship them back to Smyrna to get refilled. That’s the plan, anyway.

Kitchener with the headquarters army manages to get ashore and brush aside a defending Ottoman corps on 16 May:



And the next day, Kum Kale falls at last so hopefully I can evacuate my surviving transports:



However, my defending corps on the right flank is being slowly driven back by the Ottoman reinforcements from the Caucausus:



On May 23 there’s a large battle that still sees me driven back, though the Turks lose more men and I can hope they’ll run out of steam:



So, as of 1 June, here is the BEF’s current situation:


I have 4 armies ashore in Europe, but apart from Fourth Army they’re all in various states of disorganization as a result of the chaotic landings. The transport force has been seriously damaged and if I suffer any more damage, my ability to move the BEF may be impaired. To the east, Turkish counterattacks on my lodgment in Anatolia are growing in intensity. My plan here is to first, regain cohesion, second, reduce the forts and secure a sea line of communications, and finally, third, move on Constantinople and eliminate the Ottomans by the end of summer.

Supporting this effort is the war in Palestine. Arabia has joined us, but fields no major armies yet, so I’ll ignore them beyond that note.

As before, the Turks launch a huge counterattack on our flanking force in the Negev and are slaughtered:


This is the last lopsided victory, sadly. A second battle the same day sees us lose 10,000 men for only 7,000 Turkish losses:



That does largely exhaust the Turkish defenders, and they retreat north towards Jerusalem. I occupy Gaza and el-Arish without a fight, pushing up to establish a front from the Mediterranean clear to the Jordanian desert:


This will cut the railroad to Mecca and enable the Arabs to successfully drive the Ottos out of the peninsula, once they get themselves organized.

On 21 May, the Ottomans attempt a counterattack at Gaza, neatly repulsed:



Leaving us here, as of 1 June:



The main Ottoman army is i nJerusalem and can overmatch any one of my 4 corps. I do have one general capable of leading an army now, but I need to bring him to Kitchener to get promoted, which is logistically difficult. For now I can continue to leverage my superior numbers to flank the Ottos out of each defensive position, and hope to liberate all Palestine by summer’s end. Even Syria and Antioch? Stretch goal.

The last bit of news from April and May is the High Seas Fleet comes out and aggressively attacks the blockade, but the Battle of Jutland is mostly indecisive:








In a series of skirmishes over several days in the North Atlantic, the HSF and the Grand Fleet maneuver carefully around each other but neither side commits to decisive action. I lose 13 ships, the Germans 14, no idea what class or type fo ships since the battle reports screen bugs out on me. By May the HSF has fled back to Wilhelmshaven, again running right over my submarine screen with no effect. Damn.

Anyway, there we are. The Centrals player has abandoned the game, so I’ve loaded the AI instead. That led to some dramatically different results, but a helluva lot of battles and excitement. I don’t think either side can keep this tempo through the summer, but I still have a lot of fight left in my armies so I can press my advantage.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

June - July 1916 - Breaking the Deadlock

Since April 1916, the smashing success of the carefully prepared Entente offensive has shattered the German lines in the west. French armies have reached and even crossed the Rhine from Aachen as far south as the Main River, while the Kaiser’s legions have fought back from their positions in the north, near Dusseldorf, and the south, in the hills of Alsace. The fighting in Italy is a confused mess, while in the Ottoman Empire the British Expeditionary Force steadily closes the ring - and the glittering towers of The City, Constantinople, are in sight.

We’ll begin in the north. You’ll remember from last time that the fighting here has centered on Malmedy and Aachen, as the two German armies, First and Second, which had been defending Aachen ever since their ejection from Belgium in the previous summer, are holding the northern flank of the penetration. Early in May von Bulow’s - Second Army, I believe, checking my notes for 1914 - launched a massive attack on First Belgian Army near Malmedy, which was fought off with over 200,000 German casualties by the start of June. Now we’re counterattacking from the south and east into Aachen to eliminate the remaining German defenders of the city.




Joffre hurls half a million men in three armies - First Belgian, First, and the reinforcing Ninth - against the 250,000 defending Germans. By 6 June Crown Prince Wilhelm has ordered the abandonment of Aachen, but not before 50,000 men on each side have fallen.

However, things don’t go quite according to plan. Contrary to orders from higher headquarters - I sure didn’t plan this and had no clue it was coming - First Belgian orders a pursuit of the retreating Germans across the Rhine, into the city of Essen. The result is a contested river crossing against a heavily reinforced, entrenched, and fresh German army under Max von Hausen, covering the retreat of First and Second Armee’s survivors:


It’s a grotesque bloodbath. By 12 June, 100,000 Frenchmen have fallen, as have 75,000 Germans. A bridgehead is won in Essen, but the French grip on the blasted ruins of the city is extremely tenuous. In fact, the ensuing struggle for this area will suck in reinforcements from both sides and last all summer.

To the south, in Lorraine, Gen. Gallieni leads Fourth Army and a handful of others against von Mudra, defending Thionville fortress:


The French attackers lose 30,000 breaking into the complex on 10 June, the Germans 20,000, but the fortress is breached - however, von Mudra heroically manages to lead his survivors THROUGH French lines and escape towards Metz to the south! Bah.

The midpoint of June is reached and brings incredible news from Austria: The ancient emperor has died!


Franz Josef can die at any point in 1916, randomized - historically he made it to November - and the ensuing blow to Habsburg unity and cohesion represents a massive -10 NM blow to the Central Powers, over 20% of their remaining National Morale. The central empires are truly in a death spiral now, as their low morale means they suffer more defeats in the field - which in turn lowers morale MORE - and makes it impossible for them to claw back morale by winning victories. This news galvanizes Allied headquarters and instead of resting and consolidating, an all-out push for final victory is ordered. This war may not see 1917 at this rate.

In the south, progress in the second half of June projects to be slow. Most of my main armies are now tied up reducing German citadels either on the Rhine or on the old frontier, and I need a few weeks to organize new armies (using the newly promoted commanders) to take the field against the remaining field armies:


Here, my goal is to finish the fortresses, which will free up about 4 armies, and bring on my follow-up armies (12th - 17th armies) to clear Alsace.

In the north, it’s a bit touch and go.


First Belgian’s unauthorized spring across the Rhine dragged First Army with it, and I only have Ninth and the weak Army of the Alps in the theater as reserves. I don’t think I can hold Essen, but worse, the losses here might threaten my hold on Aachen. The result is a large threat to the flank of the forces further south, and I daren’t push deeper into Germany until I can get that stabilized.

So, plan here is to bring up one more army to reinforce the northern flank, and try to pull back and use Aachen and the Rhine as a bulwark for the most part. I want to pivot MOST armies to the south, where the majority of German forces are concentrated - I’d like to trap and destroy as many of those in Alsace as I can, try to push through Bavaria to link up with the Italians, and only then drive towards Berlin with all my armies united (most likely in 1917).

On 16 June, the Germans indeed counterattack at Essen and throw the Allies back over the Rhine. First Belgian loses nearly 40,000 in the scramble for the bridges:



The clearance of the fortress continues, as Gallieni continues to roll south and fights a ferocious battle against Falkenheyn at Metz the same day First Belgian is getting its ass kicked at Essen. The French lose 30,000, the Germans nearly 60,000, and the great fort is taken:



Gallieni pursues Falkenheyn to the west, and after a week of hard marching, manages to cut off and all but destroy the German IV and V Korps. Less than 400 survivors escape to the east:




On top of the welcome news of the Battle of Saarbruecken, we get this:


The Yanks are coming! The United States declares war on the Central Empires, citing the violation of the Monroe Doctrine as Mexico threw in its lot with the Centrals in the spring. Congress responds to President Wilson’s call on 1 July, and the Americans are on their way over the Atlantic to “make the world safe for democracy.”

I’ve never played long enough to actually involve the US, so the mechanics are new to me. It looks like the US will begin auto-spawning formations in my territory, and I don’t need to manually recruit or ship them unless I can find the spare change for extras. With hundreds of British, French, Belgian, and Italian divisions still in my force pools I see no need for that yet.

By 1 July, then, you can see the death spiral truly in action, as from 1 June to 1 July their national morale drops from 52 to 29 - 23 points, nearly half, in only a month.


This is a combination of things - the heavy defeats (entire units, especially fortress garrisons, being wiped out hurts NM by 1 or 2 points each time, and losses in excess of ~40,000 in a lost battle will also hurt NM), the death of Franz Josef, the entry of America - which has by this point convinced most German soldiers that the war is lost. The people are growing restless but haven’t broken into full-blown revolution yet (although Austria and the Ottomans are growing close). Once again the Entente is urged to push through to final victory, continuing to rain blows down on the creaking edifice of the Imperial German Army.

With the defeat of Falkenheyn, I’m free to pour into Alsace in July:


I don’t intend heavy attacks on entrenched positions, but I want to occupy undefended territory and fix the Germans in place, while my real blow comes from my left and sweeps down the east bank of the Rhine to trap and destroy the majority of the German army.

In the north, the Germans are on the attack, launching a joint attack on Aachen with nearly all their remaining reserves:


I am forced to divert one army from the southern push to try to shore up that side.

In the center, on 1 July de Pau defeats von Bayern’s remaining 50,000 men at Frankfurt, and the Germans abandon the city after losing nearly 60% of their force defending it:


French losses number another 15,000.

De Pau pursues, however, and nearly all of Rupprecht’s remaining combat troops are surrounded and forced to surrender. Only a tiny remnant of I Korps escapes:


Note the entirely destroyed units near the bottom of the German ledger.

And by 13 July, as his survivors flee north, virtually all of von Bayern’s army is captured:


A massive victory, over 60,000 Germans removed from the rolls and essentially no force left in the center to oppose us - once the flanks are clear.

Calls for an armistice are becoming clamorous in the Central Powers, and Austria is rocked as Czechoslovak agitators begin to threaten the monarchy itself. With no Franz Josef to command loyalty, the fractious nationalities of the Habsburg empire are making themselves known:


Another 5 National Morale down the drain…

In Alsace, Gallieni meets an unexpected check on 7 July, as von Einem throws his fresh army into the fray. The 200,000 Germans manage to stop Fourth Army for a few days, both sides losing about 10,000:



It matters little. By 15 July Centrals morale is down to 23, another 6 points lost in the first two weeks of the month. At this rate, the war will last until mid-September, perhaps.



At sea, the largest naval battle of the war is fought on 21 July, 1916. The Imperial German Navy, stymied in its efforts to use the dreadnoughts and battlecruisers of the High Seas Fleet, attempts instead a raid in the style of the jeune ecole. In the misty, storm-tossed North Sea, a swarm of submarines, torpedo boats, and destroyers stealthily closes in on the Grand Fleet, intending a grand torpedo ambush of the British blockade before racing for home.

Abruptly, out of the mists to the east, though, looms a new fleet. The position of the blockading fleet is well known - no one in the German flotilla expected a threat from this new quarter. The strange ships quickly make the point moot, as they open fire. The German sailors turn with desperate courage and charge the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers of this new naval squadron, which coolly and calmly shreds them with carefully aimed heavy guns. 34 of the 61 German ships never see Wilhelmshaven again, and the United States Navy has proven Alfred Thayer Mahan right in open battle:


William Sims, who led the US naval squadron to Britain, finds himself in battle only 3 weeks after the declaration of war, while the British navy has gone three years without fighting such a large battle. Sims becomes the major US hero of the war, and in fact the Battle of Sharks and Minnows, as it comes to be known, is the only action US forces will see.

Back on land, de Pau defeats a fresh German corps sporting strange yellow flags:


Seriously, I have no idea who these fellas are.

Otherwise, late July sees mostly the Germans pulling back and the French cautiously pursuing.
In secondary theaters, in June, little changes. The major Italian armies are still besieging Austrian frontier fortresses near the Sava River, but in the rear the “sudden Austrian seizure” of the Alpine redoubts has led to huge Austrian raids on the northern Italian plains, disrupting rail lines and hampering my efforts to raise and form reserve forces into fresh Italian armies.

And Cardona manages a win:


His 350,000 men manage to crush a powerful Austrian force nearly ⅓ their size, inflicting a devastating 800 casualties on them in return for the trifling loss of 8,000 Italians. Medals and promotions all around are ordered at Italian headquarters in Gorizia.

Anyway, the main problem is dealing with these raids. For whatever reason, I can’t get either Third Army or the army of the Alps - the first two formations I send to try to seal the breach - to actually ENGAGE the Austrians. Instead they slip around, tear up rails, capture artillery, and generally raise such hell that the entire Italian front becomes paralyzed through the summer:


Italian armies are still very poorly trained and undergunned, but I’m raising as many artillery pieces as Italy’s limited industry will allow. And I’ll try to keep up my offensive on the right wing - Vienna is within striking distance, if I can take Zagreb and Graz first.

Cardona actually manages a solid win, capturing a German division at Samovar and losing only a few thousand men in the process:



But at Trent I find that two entire Austrian corps are moving through the vacant fortresses I had meant to guard my flank, brushing aside the Army of the Alps as they do so:


The threat to the left flank paralyzes my forward offensive in Italy, as does the stubborn defense of the fortresses in the passes, but I find the Italians can fight hard in defense! Second Army successfully repulses a large offensive by a mixed Austro-German army, inflicting 3:2 losses despite being heavily outnumbered:


The Battle of Asiago is the largest Italian victory of the war, for the record.

In Thrace, Marshal Kitchener personally leads his reserve Indian corps into battle, losing 18,000 men but wiping out one of the three fortress complexes defending the Dardanelles:



As does his old Boer War comrade, Ian Hamilton, leading Third Army to victory further south against another fortress complex at the entrance of the strait:



Only Gallipolli fortress itself remains, STILL besieged by Fourth Army, where Duff is STILL inactive! Maybe his activation roll is bugged, or I’m just spectacularly unlucky, as he’s spent six months now sitting on his ass.


The debacle with the transports has left most of my British armies VERY disorganized and a bit understrength, but I have a firm grip on the European shore now, and there’s not a lot of organized opposition between me and Constantinople. I have every confidence of capturing it by September. I also rail two corps - fresh from the siege of Kum Kale - to the east to shore up that flank as Ottoman pressure increases.

FINALLY, on June 16, 1916, after something like 4 or 5 months of siege, Kitchener is able to intervene personally and get Duff to storm the bloody goddamn fortress of Gallipolli:


It costs 20,000 more men, but the way is at least free and clear for the entire BEF - at least four armies - to march on the Turkish capital.

We move in pulses, marching and resting to slowly recover cohesion, but six weeks later the BEF becomes the first foreign power to assault the great City since Mehmet II himself:


The defenders, outnumbered 5:1, fight bravely, and inflict 30,000 losses on the King’s troops, but themselves lose over 35,000 and are driven into the walls. Second Army is ordered to begin the siege while Third & Fourth Armies cover the rear, and First Army begins a renewed march on the city from the Asiatic side.

So, by August 1, Constantinople is at last under siege - 11 months after the BEF began operating against the Ottoman Empire. Far more than the Turks, my greatest enemy has been mud, terrain, and weather. Seriously, look at my cohesion:


Almost nil. Although I have many troops, the difficulties of keeping up cohesion has rendered my tempo very slow. I will now need to camp outside the walls for a bit and build my morale for a storm of the city on September 1.

Finally, in Palestine, the Ottomans prove they’re not to be underestimated. My attempt to cut the Jordan railway fails. The poorly led Indian corps, 60,000 strong, is ambushed after a long and tiresome march through the desert by 40,000 adept Ottoman infantry & desert cavalry:


The tired, thirsty, and footsore Indians rout, and their nameless commander orders a retreat back to El Arish. We have no choice but to reform before trying again.

So, by June 16, Palestine stands thus:


I & II Corps of the Army of Palestine are poised to move north against Jaffa and Jerusalem, while III Corps pulls back from that beefy Ottoman army that roughed up IV Corps. The desert and the hills make life difficult here, destroying cohesion.

Some support is on the way, as Persia looks to be in at the kill and declares war on the Ottomans. It’ll take their small army months to threaten anything useful, though:



Anyway, the Army of Palestine rolls forward, and on 28 June Gen. Douglas arrives at Jaffa, routing the small garrison there and capturing the port city:



By 1 July, then, his corps seems clear to continue pushing north, while II Corps to the east has taken the Holy City itself under siege:



The next day, he attacks - against apparently the same XLV Corps that was defending Jaffa, somehow heavily reinforced in those 4 days. It doesn’t matter, as the Ottomans lose 10,000 men and the city:



Two weeks later, as Douglas cautiously marches north from Jaffa, another Ottoman army, 50,000 strong, comes down the railway and immediately attacks. The Second Battle of Jaffa is a much larger affair than the first, but at the cost of 6,000 casualties I Corps knocks out ⅓ of the attacking Ottomans and sends the rest retreating north.


Still, Douglas orders a pause to rest and consolidate - the desert marches are absolutely BRUTAL on cohesion and it’s impossible to advance rapidly in this theater.

He also orders a young officer, an expert in Arab affairs, T. E. Lawrence, to go to the Arabs and organize fresh armies for the revolt:



Two days after the Battle of Jaffa, King Faisel leads his small Arab column into the undefended Hejaz, liberating the cities of Mecca and Medina from foreign Turkish rule for the first time in centuries:



Nothing more affects this theater by 1 August. The Army of Palestine now defends the line Joffa-Jerusalem and is resting and reorganizing, while the Arab Revolt is in full blaze and will soon see everything beyond Palestine lost forever to the Ottomans. Persia is in the fight now but can’t reach anything before 1 September at the absolute earliest (and with no cohesion at all).

Score and objectives after 2 more months of bloody fighting:


4 more morale lost in the last two weeks of July. They lose if NM hits 5 or less, so at present rates…maybe October 1?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

August - September, 1916: Germany’s Last Gasp

August starts with the Central Powers reeling. Kaiser Franz Josef is dead. The Russians control the Vistula from its mouth to the Carpathians, and their armies are loose on the plains of Hungary threatening Budapest. The Italians, despite furious fighting along their alpine flank, are tearing down the border fortresses and other than the city of Graz there’s nothing between Italy’s First Army and Vienna. Romania regrets joining the losing side, as the Tsar also is nearing Bucharest. The Ottoman capital is under siege and its European possessions overrun, most of Anatolia is lost, Arabia is lost, and the surviving Ottoman armies are recoiling through Syria and Mesopotamia, pursued by British, Arabian, Persian, and Russian forces. US naval forces have already bloodied one German attack, and the first American Expeditionary Force is landing in France this week. And the Western Front is in tatters - Frankfurt and Cologne have fallen, the Entente pushing over the Rhine in force. The German armies are in two tattered clusters on the north and south flanks, desperately clinging to fortress cities in an effort to slow the Allied advance. Everyone can see that the war is over - there will be no second Miracle of the House of Brandenberg - and yet the Kaiser refuses to hear talk of peace, insisting on fighting on from his Festungs until the last man.

One of those, Festung Metz, falls on 2 August, taking 16,000 Germans and a like number of French with it:



The same day, Festung Thionville also is stormed, but the 9,000 men of the garrison massacre three times their number of Entente soldiers before surrendering:



Meanwhile, Joffre continues to lead the main French advance, thrusting south over the Main River down the east bank of the Rhine. His intention is to surround and destroy the last German armies in Alsace:


Mainz falls, including the brigade of tanks defending the city.

On the northern shoulder, the never-ending struggle for Aachen continues. 50,000 more French and an equal number of German soldiers have fallen in the first 5 days of August:


The fight for this city has consumed two full months now, as we surge back and forth over the Rhine. In fact, First Belgian again pursues across the Rhine to Essen, and AGAIN is driven back - although Rupprecht loses twice as many men as we do:



The advance in Alsace encounters another German army at Saarbourg, as one of my fresh armies - I believe Seventeenth but I’m uncertain throws itself headlong at a greater number of Germans:


We lose 50% of our force knocking out only a quarter of the Germans - 60,000 losses to 45,000 - but the Kaiser’s men are so dispirited that they abandon the field anyway, hastening ot retreat towards the shelter of the Rhine.

That’s an effect of their low National Morale, which is down to 17 as of 15 August:


Notice also the 1.5 million men they’ve lost since the start of the offensive in April. This has been the bloodiest period of the war since the autumn of 1914, and we’re not going to alleviate the pressure. Keep battering them down!



So the situation stands thus. I have about 5 armies deployed in the north - 3 on the west bank around Aachen, 2 on the east bank. German assaults on Aachen are constant, and my army’s over-aggressiveness in pursuing them has kept my cohesion low. I’m going to attempt to push north up the east bank with the limited forces available, to try to lever the Germans out of Essen and settle the battle in my favor.

But the main effort is in the south, where I have closer to 10 armies:


This is where the major remaining source of German power lies, and they’re defending along the Rhine but not further inland. Every spare man is headed to this front in an effort to compress and destroy the German army. Once that’s done there’s basically nothing between me and Berlin, Vienna, etc. The war will be over.

As August wears on, particularly in the north the Germans resist ferociously. Rupprecht von Bayern musters his men for the last death ride of the German army, unexpectedly lunging at Cologne instead of Aachen!


The outnumbered First Army gives ground, but not before inflicting 3:1 losses. Fully 75,000 Germans are dead, wounded, or missing in the struggle - a few more such ‘defeats’ and the war will be won!

So by 1 September:


Still fairly balanced in the north but I have shifted reinforcements that way, and we still are advancing against thick opposition in the south. I can’t charge headlong into battle here without needless casualties so we’re moving forward cautiously.

There are still battles, though. For example, on 1 September Gallieni’s Fourth Army secures Kaiserslantern, on the banks of the Rhine:



On 8 September, Rupprecht repulses First Army’s effort to recover its positions around Cologne:


It’s unexpected for a German army to fight so stubbornly at this stage of the war - Rupprecht von Bayern may be the German commander with the highest reputation after this war (Hindenburg achieved nothing in the East in this timeline).

Similarly, another German force fights stubbornly at Mannheim, on the east bank of the Rhine in the south. 100,000 total casualties evenly distributed:


Notice my lack of corps structure - so many commanders have been promoted to army heads that I no longer have quite enough mid-level corps commanders. The French army is starting to resemble a Soviet-style structure from the 1940s, multiple armies with only divisions underneath them. It’s still better to have a general leading an army than a corps, though - otherwise I have corps and divisions with no army head! But it leads to results like this, where the weaker divisions can get bloodied on the battlefield.

The flanking move in the north pays off, as by 12 September General Humbert’s Army of the Alps, despite being heavily outnumbered, staves in Rupprecht’s flank. 50,000 Frenchmen and 65,000 German casualties as Gotterdammerung continues:



The Italian front for the last six weeks we covered:
On 1 August, Cardona manages to force the surrender of Flisch fortress, only six months or so after besieging it:


That frees us up to push deeper into Austria - the shell of defenses between us and the Danube plains is growing very thin.

General Brusati’s First Army, probably the premier Italian formation, inflicts a crushing defeat on an isolated Austrian corps at Zagreb:




Zagreb & Graz are the last two major cities before we reach Vienna. We could be in the Habsburg capital by Christmas, if the war lasted that long. I keep pressing, attempting to use the reserves to stave off the main crisis. Speaking of…



My fifth army is again defeated, as there are 200,000 Austrians surging through the Alps towards my vulnerable left flank. This isn’t catastrophic since I have enough ports in Istria that my armies won’t be isolated, but it is annoying. I can’t get reinforcements (and the new artillery pieces!) through to the main armies until I can contain and drive back this penetration.

So by 15 August here’s the Italian front:


Those Austrian elements behind my lines just keep…slipping through? They capture the territory and I can’t seem to engage them with anything, especially the force at Padua near Venezia and the random commander at Capporetto near the Isonzo valley. It’s maddening. This whole area became a buggy mess when the save was ported.

Interestingly, on August 23, the exact same day as Rupprecht’s death ride at Cologne (see above) the Austrians launch an identical death ride at Vittoro Veneto:


Second Army, despite being outnumbered 2:1, loses 30,000 men but inflicts 80,000 casualties. 23 August might be termed “the black day of the German Army” for these results. Two victories but over 150,000 men dead, as they exhaust their last offensive power.

The Italian Front, 1 September:


Apart from the ongoing disaster along the Adige, things are looking good. We’ve only Klagenfurt and Graz between our armies and Vienna, so I order the advance, while I use my cavalry corps to cover the flanks. Third Army is hors de combat after Vittoro Veneto, so I pull Fourth Army out of its 2-month siege of Forli and dispatch it to try and clear Padua of the invaders. If that succeeds, then it will move into the Alps and cover that flank, while my reserves can at last move north and secure the LOC towards Vienna. I’ve also got Italian colonial troops arriving from Africa, and once the Ottos are done the BEF will probably deploy in this theater.

Speaking of…The situation in Thrace on 1 August:


We had just won the Battle of Constantinople, but my cohesion is too low to storm the city’s defenses yet. So this is going to be a bit of a sitzkrieg through August and we’ll attempt the storm on 1 September. Note also the French fleet guarding the Bosporus - this does approximately nothing, as the Ottoman fleet freely transits back and forth from the Black Sea to the Aegean all through August. Bah.

By 1 September, little has changed. Most of European Turkey is overrun as we close in on Edirne and the final Turkish army on the Continent, and our line in Anatolia is thin but adept use of the railways to shuttle reserves back and forth has held the line:


BEF commanders have earned enough experience that I form a Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Army. Sixth & Seventh are a bit skeletal and will be filled out with fresh reserves coming from the Commonwealth, but Eighth is a consolidation of my corps in Anatolia and is cohesive enough to drive on Ankara, so that’s what I order for September.

I also order the storm of the great City. Kitchener hurls 300,000 British soldiers at 40,000 Turkish defenders. It’s a bloody battle on both sides, but by 15 September, after extensive house-to-house fighting, the last Turkish defenders are holding out in the Topkapi Palace:




The defense is stubborn and we can’t raise our flag over the city quite yet, so we’ll finish the assault in the second half of September.
Finally, Palestine. August sees the “Battle of Riyadh,” an event memorialized in Arabia as their battle of independence, but was little more than a pub brawl (involving TE Lawrence):



Otherwise, we build our cohesion through August for the next leap up the coast, then on 1 September begin an advance north to Haifa and Raab:



The Ottoman Army of Palestine attempts another brave counterattack just north of Joffa, but it goes the same way all their previous counterattacks in this theater have:


Neither side engages especially closely - no one wants to be the last soldier to die in this war, after all. In fact, that’s the last field engagement in Palestine, I believe.

15 September sees the first US ground troops arriving:


I order them to rail to Nancy, though they won’t actually reach the frontlines before the armistice. America has substantially less postwar influence in this world…on the same day the Central Power’s morale ahs fallen to 13:



There’s an event, the Fourteen Points, that auto-fires sometime after the US joins the war. It reduces Centrals morale by 10, so they’re on a knife’s edge. The war could end at any moment.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

September - October 1916 - Home Before the Leaves Fall



Time to finish things. The morale of the Centrals is close to total collapse. Entente armies are moving almost without opposition into the heartlands of the enemy on all fronts, and there’s little they can do to stop me at this point - nothing, in fact.

For example, a new “army” is forming to defend Kassel in the center of the Western front:


But inspection reveals Karl von Bulow now just commands a single corps and some supporting detachments.

The main remaining concentration on the northern flank is the confusingly-named Karl von Below’s army and Rupprecht’s heroic but tattered army, together massing about 4 corps around Essen:



The “army” at Dortmund just to the north seems to be mostly 1 corps and a hodgepodge of support units:



So, the overall situation on 15 September 1916 stands thus:



The main German concentration is still in Alsace and, increasingly, Baden, as the Krauts pull back over the Rhine steadily. Their right flank is still hanging open, however, and I am gradually shuffling forces further and further east to envelop them. About ⅔ of my available armies (12 out of 18 or so) are on this front. I wish To End All Wars allowed me to make army groups below the national level! I’d place the northern flank under one HQ, the eastern Rhine push under a second, and one final army group of the armies in Alsace. That’d definitely make coordination easier. Ah, well.

Anyway, the Germans continue to counterattack in the Dusseldorf area, and again force back one of my armies - but lose nearly twice as many men doing so:



In the south, the Germans continue to withdraw without engagement, and we begin our next round of sieges.

The final battles of the war are fought in the East, however, as September draws to a close. In Anatolia, on 24 September, Sir John Monash leads 8th Army, a new formation of the former Anatolian garrison troops, into Ankara in triumph. There’s a bit of skirmishing with the Turkish defenders but most are surrendering just as quickly as they can:


On 30 September, 1916, General Douglas reaches Amman with his corps in Palestine and, despite being outnumbered 70,000 to 50,000, immediately launches an attack:


The Turkish Army of Palestine narrowly holds its positions, but suffers significantly higher losses. Before the battle can be resumed the next day, 1 October, both generals receive word from Constantinople that leads to an immediate armistice.

In Thrace, the last Turkish soldiers are in two widely separated groups - the handful of diehards in the Topkapi Palace, and Abdullah Pasha’s LXXI Corps, a ragged formation of 25,000 or so survivors disintegrating as it flees towards Bulgaria. The BEF occupies Edirne without a shot and LXXI corps loses half its men as prisoners to British pursuit:



Meanwhile, in Constantinople, the Topkapi Palace surrenders at last, and the Ottoman capital is in Allied hands:



Events move quickly after that. Upon news of the conquest of European Turkey and the capture of the Sultan, riots break out in Damascus, Antioch, Mosul, Baghdad - the few surviving major cities of the Empire. When the nearby garrisons mutiny, in many cases even joining the rioters, full-scale revolution breaks out. The discredited Sultan is ignored, but the new Emergency Provisional Government of National Defense, meeting in Antioch, sends out a plea for a ceasefire and an armistice. Kitchener refuses to halt his victorious troops on all fronts, but continues negotiations. Soon, the crumbling Ottoman Empire capitulates entirely.

The chain reaction on Romania, Austria-Hungary, and Germany is rapid. The new Kaiser, Karl I, has no prestige, nowhere near the level of public support that his ancient uncle had enjoyed. The word of the fall of Constantinople and the collapse of the Sublime Porte rapidly sours the mood in Vienna - even the average man on the street can read a map, and knows where that million-man British army is likely to be headed next. With Russians baying at the gates of Budapest, Italians a scant 200 kilometers from Vienna in Graz, and French forces beginning to pour into Bavaria, Karl also signals to the Allies that he’s ready for a ceasefire. Isolated, with Bulgaria about to declare war, Russians overrunning half the country and drawing near Bucharest, Romania has no choice but to follow Austria’s lead.

So, by the last week of September, Germany is left alone. The army at Dusseldorf is brave but on its last legs, as four months of continuous savage fighting along the Rhine has bled it white, and ever-more Frenchmen gather from the south. The larger army in Alsace has tried desperately to hold Germany’s final toeholds on the west bank of the river, but with French armies in their rear racing for the Danube and the Bavarian Alps beyond, their commanders see little hope. As his allies tumble, Kaiser Wilhelm attempts to order one last death ride by the still-intact High Seas Fleet against the British and American blockaders - a dramatic victory at sea can break the blockade, lift morale, and revive Germany’s fortunes, he thinks. Revolution in Russia is only a matter of time, and then the Ostfront armies can be hurled upon the western Allies, throwing them back into France and opening the door to a negotiated peace. But the sailors refuse. Enough men have died for Germany already - they don’t intend to be the next. THe soldiers and police in garrison in Wilhelmshaven quickly join the mutinies, and soon general strikes have spread throughout the entire Baltic coast of Germany. The revolution spreads to the inland cities - from Hamburg to Magdeburg, Dresden, Munich. Citizens’ councils proclaim peace with the Allies, opening their cities to the victorious invaders. German army units begin to disintegrate as soldiers drift home, eager to avoid Allied prison camps (or more hopeless attacks on Aachen in the north). By 30 September, the Kaiser has no choice but to abdicate and flee to the Netherlands. The same night, Germany’s revolutionary government contacts the Allies and asks for a ceasefire. The next morning, 1 October, 1916, the Entente accepts. The guns fall silent, and the Great War - the shooting phase of it, at least - ends.




So, that concludes our playthrough of To End All Wars, and with it my showcase of some of AGEOD’s catalog! In this timeline, the war lasts just 2 full years, from August 1914 through September of 1916. That’s still enough for about 10 million combined casualties - 5 million from the Centrals, 3 million from the Western Entente, and 2 million from the Eastern. The fall of Constantinople cost the Centrals 10 National Morale, which dropped them below the 5 NM threshold for immediate defeat.



Their victory points are higher than mine, partially because I spent a few thousand promoting commanders in the final summer of the war, but I hold more cities and my points would tick past theirs if the war somehow stalemated until 1919.

Things moved quickly once I opted to take it singleplayer - each turn only took a half-hour or so, often less because I knew in general what each army was going to do before the turn arrived. And the Centrals dropped out just at the top of that slippery slope of National Morale, where the low morale led to lost battles - which then cost further morale - which led to more lost battles - and so on. It’s an effective mechanic to accelerate the resolution of a mostly-decided game. A human might have slowed me down more - we already saw that he immediately evacuated his army from the west bank of the Rhine when we broke through his defensive lines, and he kept a full Ottoman army covering Constantinople - but he might not have, either, since fundamentally the Centrals were no longer capable of winning battles except with a massive numerical advantage and at a horrendous cost in casualties. So most likely he might have spun things out until December or so, but Constantinople was doomed, his fortresses were doomed, and those facts alone meant he was doomed within 6 months.




A final overview of the Allied gains and our order of battle on 1 October. Here is an overview of Europe on 1 October, 1916, with the surviving Centrals capitals marked in yellow. As you can see, the Russians really are this close to capturing Bucharest and Budapest. They’ve also got a strong line north from the Carpathians all the way down the Vistula. The Italians have broken through the Carinthian mountains and are on the Danube plains south of Vienna, near Graz, while the Austrian alpine offensive is still going strong. The French have captured all of the west bank of the Rhine sans the Colmar pocket, and are east of Frankfurt nearing the Weser River in central Germany. Between the territorial losses and the collapsing armies, it’s a situation very akin to March, 1945, for the two Kaisers.

The East is even worse:


European Turkey, including Constantinople, is fully occupied. Western Anatolia is under Allied control and Ankara has just fallen. British troops are steadily pushing north up the Levantine coast, and Persia and Russia are putting pressure on the Turk’s eastern borders. A bit of Serbia is overrun in the north, but the Serbs are still in the war, and Bulgaria (the massive green blob between Serbia and the Ottomans) was at 98% intervention when the game ended - meaning in the autumn Bulgaria would have joined, certainly causing a final collapse in Rumania and in turn leading to the collapse of Austria’s southern and eastern flanks.

All told, we deployed about 3.5 million men in active armies alone to conquer this. The following maps do NOT include any garrison troops, troops training, support units, or divisions/corps operating without a higher level commander (except in Palestine), since those were used exclusively for defense. Only my units capable of effective offensive actions - ie, armies led by 3 star generals - are counted. We have nearly 30, by the end.

The Western Front


The French, Belgians, Americans, and Portuguese deploy over 20 armies on this front, totalling nearly 2 million soldiers - over half my total strength! Moving counterclockwise from the north:

First Belgian Army, 132,000 French and Belgian soldiers, holds the left flank at Aachen.
First (French) Army, 65,000 men, badly battered in the fighting around Aachen and needing reinforcements. This formation has fought bravely in the Ardennes, Belgium, and Aachen areas from the start of the war and is probably the most distinguished army in France.
Second Army, also grognards, 120,000 men, holds First’s right.
The Army of the Alps, only released once Italy joined the Entente, and never fully fleshed out, was rushed here as reinforcements due to the ongoing German counterattacks. 57,000 men.
Ninth Army, formed in the spring of 1915, a bit chewed up. 72,000 men.
Tenth Army, brought north as reinforcements, 112,000.
Cavalry Army, 5,000 horsemen, holds the far right flank in this theater. Not capable of fighting, really, but great at rapidly seizing territory.
Joffre’s Headquarters & Central Reserve, quartered in Frankfurt, 94,000 men.
Eleventh Army, shielding the right flank of the southern advance.117,000 men.
Sixth Army, a bit chewed up and needing reinforcements, the tip of the spear. 88,000 men.
Fifth Army, 128,000 men. Fresh from sieges and ready to drive up the river.
On the west bank, Seventh Army, 75,000 men.
Behind Seventh Army is Third Army, entrained for the northern front with 111,000 reinforcements.
Fourth Army, 107,000 men on the bank of the Rhine.
Twelfth Army, 104,000 men in reserve behind Fourth.
Thirteenth Army, 101,000 men on the northern flank of the Colmar pocket.
Fourteenth Army, 66,000 men linking Thirteenth & Seventeenth.
Seventeenth Army, 118,000 men holding the western edge of Colmar.
Eighteenth Army, 118,000 men holding the southern edge of Colmar to the border with Switzerland.
Nineteenth Army, a new formation still assembling near Nancy, 100,000 strong.
Fifteenth Army is also still building in the rear, 86,000 men.
The AEF, 65,000 strong, had reached the neighborhood of Nancy at the time of the Armistice.

A few notes. You can see that ⅔ of my available strength was concentrated on the southern front, even though it was less violent than the north. There were more Germans here and I wanted to bag them. Initially, Third - Seventh Armies were the only army level formations here, some initially defending near Verdun, others north of the Mosel at the start of the offensive on the southern wing. Twelfth - Nineteenth armies were formed only in the last few months from newly promoted commanders in the offensive, and you can see that in their lower total guns - I had more bodies than I had heavy artillery, and in many cases these armies were formed from the loose defensive corps I couldn’t fit into armies earlier. Some, though, are purely divisional groupings, making them even more fragile.

There is no Eighth Army, as that was my designation for the massive depot and training camp at Nancy. Apart from the grognardiest grognards in First - Fifth Armies, practically every soldier in France passed through Nancy at one point or another during the war. Nancy is where I would entrain every single fresh division I raised, every single artillery regiment, every single field hospital or engineering section, to be organized into corps and ultimately armies and then sent to the front.

There is also no Sixteenth Army, as that was briefly the designation for Joffre’s reserve before I decided it was confusing me too much and leading me to forget Joffre’s role. So, minus those two missing armies, but adding in the Belgians and the Americans, we have nineteen armies in this theater opposing ~6 German formations.

Italy:


Italy has only 5 real armies, six counting the ad-hoc force near Padua.

First Army is the only really effective force, 109,000 strong. They cleared the Adriatic coast and then rolled north through Samobor, Zagreb, and had just arrived in Graz at the time of the armistice.
Second Army, 92,000 strong, did the bulk of the fighting at the frontier forts. They reached Klagenfurt and were about to storm it to clear First Army’s line of communications.
Cardona had the central reserve of 106,000 men just to Second’s rear.
Third Army was badly roughed up attempting to hold the left flank against that massive Austrian force. 83,000 men badly needing recuperation and reorganization near Caporetto.
Fourth Army was the first one built up with new recruits after the war started, 123,000 strong. They besieged Fiume without result (I mistakenly called it “Forli” earlier), before being diverted to counterattack the Austrians on the Lombardy plains.
“Army of the Alps” is not a real army, it’s 42,000 men who cannot engage the Austrian light forces holding Padua for whatever reason. Due to the cutting of the rails, every fresh gun regiment I raised for the field armies ended up in this force instead until I can restore the railway.

In general, notice that Italian armies are somewhat undergunned compared to their French counterparts. Combined with lower overall morale and weak leaders, Italian units don’t punch at nearly the same weight as we’re used to. But, as we saw, they can fight very stubbornly in defense, and if the war had continued Italy would have made a name for itself with the decisive march on Vienna. All told she fielded about half a million men.

The East:


Virtually the entire BEF is concentrated in European Turkey. This is mostly because I devoted an army each to clearing the three coastal fortresses blocking my shipping (I lost many ships to those forts when I mistakenly sent in the transports in May!). Then it seemed most sensible to just drop a hammer on Constantinople to get the Turks out as rapidly as possible and move on to other fronts. Anatolia and Palestine were not even secondary theaters, more like tertiary or even quaternary!

First Army, 85,000 men, marched OVER the Bosporus, lead the fighting Belgium in 1914, and most of the fighting in Anatolia in 1915.
Second Army, 110,000 strong.
Third Army, 124,000 men, mostly South Africans.
Fourth Army, 122,000 men, mostly Indians.
Fifth Army, 85,000 strong, mostly Canadians.
Sixth Army, a new formation still assembling. 54,000 men, would incorporate a French corps from Anatolia and a few other divisions to come up to strength.
Seventh Army, a new formation, mostly ANZACs, 88,000 men.
Eighth Army, put together from reserve forces left behind to defend Anatolia in May, 87,000 strong in Ankara.
The Army of Palestine has no 3-star commander, and in fact only 2 corps-level generals, so it punches below the weight its numbers suggest. Still, the 4 separate corps number over 130,000 strong.

Not included are the Persian army, or Lawrence’s Arabs, which number only a few thousand each in entirely inconsequential theaters.

A spreadsheet of the full OOB is located here.

I might do one more post reviewing the war, mistakes and good moves on both sides, lessons learned, but otherwise we’re just about done here! Thanks to all of you still following along over a year and a half after I started this project! :D

[Brian Shanahan]

One thing I meant to say the other day, the yellow flag you saw was a variation of the yellow-red-yellow flag of the Grand Duchy of Baden in use between 1848 and c.1866. Don't know why it popped up in this game.

[Cyneheard]

One thing I meant to say the other day, the yellow flag you saw was a variation of the yellow-red-yellow flag of the Grand Duchy of Baden in use between 1848 and c.1866.  Don't know why it popped up in this game.

"The Emperor is illegitimate and we must restore the German Confederation" separatists? That's funny.