The Great War Western Front: Campaign Strategy for Early Win

Difficulty (Normal)
Will potentially work on the hardest difficulty if the concept is followed as a wholeConcept of the Strategy

• Have the troops home before Easter the following year (16 turns)
• Make the enemy react to you & not vice versa by being aggressive & retaining the initiative
• Cripple the enemies gold/national will by inflicting massive defeats with overwhelming firepower
• Concentrated spearhead attack to cause encirclement
• Protecting the corridor of the spearhead Division
• Main technology investment in Logistics/Intelligence/Infantry

• Push from Ypres to Hasselt to cause first encirclement
• Use elite troops & cheap French units (or whatever you prefer but have a high unit concentration)
• More troops, the more supplies
• You’re on the attack, try not to invest in expensive trenches, they have an upkeep of supplies to the region.
• Deploy as much as you can in the deployment phase its cheaper
• Recon is king, Unlock lower balloon upkeep cost & later Air superiority tech
• Leave behind 3-4 Corps ideally with 1 elite Corp to protect the corridor as you push to Hasselt
• Invest in supply depots for these hexes protecting the supply line of your spearhead.
• Avoid fighting over 3-5 Star hexes where possible & instead seek to bypass & encircle them.
  The Spearhead & the Encirclement

  Ideally what you should be aiming for for your first pocket of German Corps
  

  The Encirclement Penalty

  The negative modifiers the ai will have. As you can see, they’re pretty huge & well worth your time.
  

  Date achieve in my Campaign

  

• Push from Liege to Bastogne with Northern Army
• Push from Verdun to Bastogne with Southern Army
• Pincer and pocket German forces in 2-3 turns
• Don’t build up an army in Verdun until you’re ready to preform the operation or the the ai may attempt to check it.
• The ai will be spread thin regardless anyway with trapped corps in the northern pocket & central soon to be pocket.
• If feeling bold also push from Liege to Kreuznach, the path should be open & uncontested.
• Victory will occur most likely soon anyway
• You’ve now beaten the ai before its had a chance to research or develop any technology that could prove harmful to you while also exhausting their gold in replenishment & kept the ai reacting to you instead of the other way around.
• Reinforce any hexes with Corps & Supply Depots where the enemy looks to be concentrating forces, 3-4 Corps can pretty much counter anything with a supply depot. Remember these are holding actions, the spearhead & encircling of the enemy will land the knock out blow, just protect your corridor of your spearhead to ensure its not you being encircled.

Note that the enemy cannot move, so once they have that negative modifiers, abandon the front and move them to the new front stretching from Liege to Verdun

Briefing

• Start with tech that gives gold
• One point in Trenches
• One point infantry
• One point in Air
• Free Corps Tech in Logistics
• Further develop cheaper Balloons in Air
• Rush Intelligence tech with the Care package line be-lining for “Citizen Support” which is basically blitzkrieg. With this Tech you can attack twice, and if doing so, the ai will not be able to replace its supplies for the 2nd battle, you’ll be able to tell as their trenches will fall into a state of disrepair of no longer being able to maintain them.
• Additional tech points, boost Gold output to allow for Blitzkrieg use & invest in Troop firepower line

• The ai will not attack up & down the line on the campaign map, to do so will expend alot of their supplies, so you can expect the ai to make logical attacks either to break your corridor or concentrate forces to match any of your concentrated forces.
• Ensure you have atleast 3-4 corps to match at a minimum with a supply depot in contested/embattled hexes. Or atleast 1/3rd in strength compared to the enemies forces.
• Remember you only need to hold for 20min, meaning that so longs the ai doesn’t clean sweep you, they have gained nothing on you apart from a slight hit to national will at best, but they’ll most likely have a harder hit to gold with the casualties you inflict.
• If heavily outnumbered, dig in around your command post & sod off the other objectives, let the enemy take them & then take them back later within the last 4mins of the battle once the enemy have exhausted their supplies/manpower attacking you.
• Corner camping works, especially if the command post is int he corner
• position your artillery at the back behind your command post
• Ensure you have Fighter protection to see off enemy bombers, hence needing atleast 1 point in Air Techs
• Don’t bother with balloons for defending.
• Supply Depot in HexBuilding your Trenches
• Don’t go mad with your trench lines, they cost upkeep in supplies which you will need for artillery / air support / troops.
• Build your trenches around your command post, something like this, or however you prefer but this works for me.
• Don’t build communication trenches where possible or you expect trenches to be overrun.
• Build cheap bait/picket trenches ahead of your main trenchline with no communication trenches covered by MG/artillery.So if lost you can easily take them back or hammer it with artillery & adsorb enemy attacks. Try to build these trenches a good distance out while still supported if terrain allows. Below example could do with the trenches being a smidge further out, you can see by the MG coverage that there plenty of room with overlap for the killzone.
• Remember the ai cannot build trenches in your deployment zone, so there an advantage to having open/dead ground, makes its easier to retake your lost objectives and fight in a WW2 manner of manverour and close artillery support.
• Machine gun nest placed in 2nd line to keep them out of grenade range

I fount this to be a cheap use of supplies but effective trench system for corner camping and then striking out later to retake capture points or even raid the enemies lines taking out artillery, balloons etc.

Best composition early game for the guide and early win for defending critical/heavily contested hexes/regions.

• 1 Corp of Elite (Ideally French for cheap supplies)
• 1 Corp of Regular French (Cheap)
• 1 Corp of Regular French or whatever you fancy
• 1 Air Wing – you’ll most likely be out of range of enemy artillery, but not their bombers.
• 1 Heavy Artillery to help morale shock & damage advancing companies & help retake ground
• 1 Light Artillery for suppressing enemies while your companies shoot them to death in open field battles.
• Deploy all Elite Infantry first and have them hold all trenches, use regulars to scout, fire behind trench lines atop of trenches
• There is no friendly fire with rifle companies, or blocked line of sight from friendly units, so machine guns and companies will overlap their fire hence the Trench example above.

• More Corps in a Hex means more supplies
• More supplies means more artillery and bombardment doing the kill
• 10 Corps attacking will get you roughly about 1800-2000 supplies which is plenty
• Bombard trenches into submission before sending your forces then supress with artillery
• Launch attacks with multiple waves at the same time targeting the multiple layered trench lines
• Support with artillery, and drain the enemies supplies by bombarding them for the first 5 min
• Suppress MG nest, etc all the usual stuff
• Concentrate your attack on one side of a map and then roll down the line
• Leave a token force picketed across the length of the map to fend of any forlorn attacks by the ai and support them with your artillery.

• 5-6 Heavy Artillery for smashing the enemy trenches
• 1 Light Artillery for quick suppression to unforeseen problems i.e MG nest
• 1 Balloon to lift fog of war for artillery use
• For the rest use Elite Infantry to take trenches

If you want to see a text book assault, skip to 18min

Thank you to the Devs for a good portrayal of this conflict, this is a very well done World War 1 game.

Hopefully in time we’ll see DLC that will further refine the game as a whole, steer clear of power creep, potentially get a “versus campaign” and would encourage the Devs to perhaps look at the Close Combat series on persistent map control instead of the Star system which is good, but if wanting to develop this title or any future titles, bigger maps that remembers what points are held by the ai or player, so you can continue a battle on the last held objectives from the previous battle, if that technically possible.

Its difficult to explain what i mean, other than the Devs should perhaps try a Close Combat campaign to see that you can have multiple battles on a single map with the line going back and forth for capturing objectives & therefore gives a feeling of taking a map in yards, securing bridges etc and helps develop a narrative of a beleaguered battalions fighting to take control of for example Anrhem Bridge while losing one of their supply roads on the battle map that leads to another hex which happens to be a supply drop zone held by another airborne brigade, allowing for more strategic and tactical depth combined.

But this is probably the best representation of World War One game to date. Thank you.