How to make the Schlieffen plan work
Hello again. I don't know if the team already thought of this but I had an idea when I was thinking about the way the Schlieffen plan was supposed to be implemented and how to represent it in TGW. Currently, having enemy armies roaming enemy provinces produces no effect so, the Schlieffen plan which meant to entrap French units and cut their supply lines without besieging Paris would have little effect on France and the tactics will still be NTW ones albeit with a bit more significance. My idea was to create something similar with what the team of A Proper Empire Terra Incognita scripted in ETW. Supplies.
That way, several structures would have a supply storage and production capacity and would make Strategic warfare actually important. This means that without attacking The French cities you could still force their armies to capitulate.
My idea so far:
Now, this idea is just improving on what those guys in APETI did. They linked population to the amount of units you could have (iirc). Now in a WWI setting and with NTW mechanics this would be highly inaccurate. What I would like would be a resource limit.
The advantages of using resources over population:
Firstly, the production of supplies would be linked to something existing in game; wealth. The higher the wealth the more supplies you'd get. Then you have several several buildings which give you a supply capacity. I mean lots of it. Consider the current army group supply depot (or whatever it's name is. That building that allows faster replenishment and lower upkeep). This building would have a storage capacity of (let's say) 50,000 and generates 400 a turn. This supplies would be shells bullets, clothing, etc...
Let's look on how the supplies could work:
Peace time :
- Units consume 1x the supplies (they don't need so many bullets and all.
- Buildings would produce 1x supplies (They don't need so many supplies to build up).
War time:
-Units on enemy lands or in border regions outside any kind of settlement (being the capital or small cities or forts) would consume 3x that amount of supplies (attrition basically).
Units in "safe regions" or inside settlements in border regions would consume supplies as if they were at peace.
- Buildings would produce 2x the amount of supplies representing the industry gearing up for war
An example or how the Schlieffen plan could be made to work:
Let's say that uppon mobilisation, France has three 5,000 men infantry armies (not going into artillery as that'd complicate the maths and it's not required for this example) and that in peace time, each soldier of a French army would spend 0.5 supplies.
This means that each army would spend 2500 supplies a turn for a grand total on 7500 supplies in peace time. If you had a supply depot producing 500 and a city, in this case Paris, producing 20000 but holding only around 5000 supplies (for the home guard basically) you'd have a 20500 supply production per turn and a storage capacity of 55,000.
Now, as war is declared, you buildings start to generate twice the supplies (with a hit to city morale which already exists for wars) meaning you'd have a supply capability of 41,000 supplies.
However, assuming you decide to invade Alsace to recover national prestige (as the French really did), the French soldiers start consuming 1.5 supplies meaning that each army would now spend 15,000 supplies for a grand total of 45,000 supplies.
This would give you a choice to make:
1 - You can send all your armies into attack in a bid to achieve a quick victory.
Choosing this option will mean that you have a stronger attack but you can't replace your supplies fast enough so you'll run out sooner or latter. Let us see the effect:
Turn 1:
Starting supplies - 55,000 full storage
Your armies drain - 45,000
You restock - 41,000
balance - -4,000 supplies each turn.
Turn 2:
Starting supplies - 51,000
.
.
.
Turn 13
Staring supplies - 3,000
balance - -4,000 (assuming you keep your armies full strength so not to be complicated)
This would mean that if victory wasn't achieved in 13 turns, you'd start loosing morale and men and ended up going on the defensive loosing initiative and expending your army.
Option 2:
You keep one of the armies in reserve behind enemy lines for a total supply consumption of 32,500 supplies and ensure that you have reserves to follow if the first attacks fail and always enough supplies to keep the stocks brimmed to the top. Even though you'd loose force in the attack, you could press the attack longer seeing as the supplies would always be topped.
Now, let's consider one takes option two for the following example since taking option one in this scenario would make you loose your armies due to attrition in no time (as you shall see):
In this case you can still wage war and produce an excess of supplies. However, if you are held up in Alsace by german defensive units falling into a war of attrition and, another German army goes around and takes the supply depot, you'd loose the ability to store 50,000 supplies and 1,000 production.
This would mean that suddenly, you'd stop being able to supply your armies since you can't stock your supply stores making attrition once again a very important factor. The practical effects would be the loss of 1,000 production (you could only produce 40,000 supplies) and, more importantly, 50,000 storage capacity meaning you could only hold 5,000 supplies meaning you could only support 1/3rd of an army (roughly 1,700 troops). this would make your units get huge morale hits and loose troops at an absurd rate effectively rendering your armies useless in a fight.
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The example above is a very simplified version of what I'm thinking but shows what I have in mind. That is to make the defence of your lines of communication critical since you would risk loosing your armies and the game without a fight.
Counters for this, all buildings should have some storage capacity including Forts letting you hold your armies for a while even if production drops.
Now, for mechanic reasons I think cities own production should be low so that loosing peripheral buildings like farms would make your supplies drop (this would mean adjusting wealth generation). Imagine the Germans loose the mines in Alsace to some French marauding party. Considering the earlier example of 20,000 supplies produced, the productivity in the region should drop to maybe 12,000 supplies per turn (s/t) or something along those lines. This would make a policy of scorched earth possible and If you as Germany attacked the French production buildings and their supply depot, you'd achieve what Schlieffen wanted in the first place.
This would actually make the Schlieffen plan doable since it'd mean that if the French are investing on an offensive and you cut their supply lines, you effectively kick France out of the war economically due to a lack of logistical capability.
Note, this values are really just as an example I think they need to be different since one needs to consider the effect of all the buildings and achieve some kind of balance. This is just to show where I'm going with this. I think including supplies would be awesome and would make the experience that much greater.
Sorry for the long wall of text but I hope it's understandable and you find it to your liking.
Btw, another, easier way to implement this could be to give those supply depots a huge discount in the units upkeep and if you loose them the units would be like 5,000 upkeep making in effect an army unaffordable.
Cheers...
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Originally Posted by RO Citizen
