ORIGINAL: jscott991
I've played GoA dozens of times over the last year (and more if you count when I first bought it) and the activation system is something you have to get used to.
I will say that it completely rules out historical results in 1914 and 1918. The Germans simply can't match their initial progress using Frank's activation system, and that's a major problem. If, in order to accurately simulate the war's middle years it can't model its early and late years, then something is off.
GoA also has serious balance of forces issues. The size of the Austrian army is radically understated and the Russian front is not accurately modeled at all (the Czar can form a continuous front in 1914, something that didn't happen until 1915 at the earliest in the real war). Russia's supply problems are vastly under simulated. GoA's balance of forces is far too heavily skewed to the Allies.
The map in GoA is also not that great. The first time an AI Italy threatens Munich by punching through the Alps, you know something is off.
I have to say I disagree about the inability of GOA to simulate 1918. The games I played that far ended up with a very fluid and mobile endgame. See for instance this AAR “Ulver vs. Geoffrey or Germany goes east while France goes to the Desert “
tm.asp?m=1902732
That being said you are absolutely correct that it is quite unbalanced in favor of the Entente. Although arguably that is quite historical – if they failed to win in 1914 that Central Powers always had the odds stacked against them. Only the complete collapse of Russia allowed a brief window of opportunity in 1918.
You are so right about the map of northern Italy with the traditional German offensive across the alps – really needs some impassable hex sider.
In the final analysis Commander – the Great War has the edge in interface and polish. Much more user friendly and intuitive while it does the navel war just terrible and really lack a diplomacy aspect. In terms of Replay value my money is also on GOA in virtue of it’s free setup and the fact that declaring war on Belgium is optional.
Allowing a free setup and a pre-war diplomacy phase really would help a lot there.
) – so in a sense I haven’t played the game at all really but I already fear that we will soon see some pretty standard mandatory opening moves develop. Here it would be interesting if players had to pick war plan options secretly varied the setup or even allow for a deployment phase where we could deploy as wanted. Should immensely improve replay value. If this becomes a smashing success I would love to see an expansion with a pre-war diplomatic and warplanes phase that would vary setup and possible even shuffle the entry of minors – a few could plausibly have flipped and Greece could easily have entered – in fact she formally did eventually.
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