World War One Questions

[Felix]

G'day,

I'm still plugging away at a WW1 scenario, and had intended to put a couple of unusual units in. I was wondering how effective these might be, and would like anyone's thoughts and comments;

- Labour Brigades. I've created these with about 150 or so civilian squads, about 12 Engr squads and some horse teams. The idea is that these will simulate the Chinese/African/Negro labour units, used to dig trenches etc. The only useful battlefield function they will have in COW will be to prepare secondary lines of defence; as they're not meant to fight, I made sure they were largely made up of civilians. Do you think this will work, and is it actually worth the bother? I thought it would be one edge that the British/Confederates will have over the USA. (The scenario is based on Harry Turtledove's 'Great War' series of novels).

- Transport Brigades. These are units of up to 250 trucks, nothing else. I thought that these would be placed near areas where supply was a problem, and help out the local supply situation through transport asset sharing. Thing is, I don't know if this is a localised phenomenon, or across the whole theatre. If it's the latter, then I'll get rid of them, as they'll serve no real purpose.

- One last point is artillery. The scenario uses the 25km hex scale. As it's 1914, this means that all of the arty will be range 1. I've seen some of the comments on range 1 arty in this forum, but is there anyway that the heavy arty brigades can carry out bombardments without doing an 'infantry assault' and without a minor unit doing a 'limited attack, minimal loss' move (which seems a bit sneaky...). I was thinking of a week long bombardment the turn before the offensive kicks off, similar to the Somme or Verdun.

Cheers.

[MikeJ]

- Labour Brigades. I've created these with about 150 or so civilian squads, about 12 Engr squads and some horse teams. The idea is that these will simulate the Chinese/African/Negro labour units, used to dig trenches etc. The only useful battlefield function they will have in COW will be to prepare secondary lines of defence; as they're not meant to fight, I made sure they were largely made up of civilians. Do you think this will work, and is it actually worth the bother? I thought it would be one edge that the British/Confederates will have over the USA. (The scenario is based on Harry Turtledove's 'Great War' series of novels).

It will probably work, but I don't know if it's really worth the bother. I mean, it couldn't hurt to have a few of these, so that you could just dig entrenchments with them every turn without having to use a combat unit, but at the scale you're talking about it won't be much of an advantage. Might be nice as chrome, IMO.

If you have any independent engineering units in your scenario, they'll basically be the same thing. Players would undoubtedly use any engineering capability these units had to repair bridges and such.. and if you opt to provide them with no engineering capability it'll take them a ridiculous number of turns to bring a hex up to a high entrenchment level.


- Transport Brigades. These are units of up to 250 trucks, nothing else. I thought that these would be placed near areas where supply was a problem, and help out the local supply situation through transport asset sharing. Thing is, I don't know if this is a localised phenomenon, or across the whole theatre. If it's the latter, then I'll get rid of them, as they'll serve no real purpose.

It's not a localized phenomenon, so you should probably abaondon them.

If you want to simulate a transport brigade, just use a supply unit? They improve supply in their specified radius, which sounds like what you're trying to acomplish here. If you don't want to give the player flexibiilty on this matter (eg being able to move their supply unit around), then you can just make static supply units in certain hexes.


I've seen some of the comments on range 1 arty in this forum, but is there anyway that the heavy arty brigades can carry out bombardments without doing an 'infantry assault' and without a minor unit doing a 'limited attack, minimal loss' move (which seems a bit sneaky...).


Unfortunately no.