1914 Scenario - Starting Force Deployments

[Willard]

I checked the MOD forum and saw that someone was working on a mod to allow for the initial German troops (I think 6 units) to automatically be deployed east by the AI.

This and a conversation with a PBEM play partner got me to thinking about the initial force deployments for the Central Powers. For those of you familiar with AGEOD's World War 1 game, I believe there was an option by the Central Powers players to choose if they wanted to pursue a western or eastern front strategy. By selecting the eastern front strategy, the CP player would then have the bulk of the forces in the east. This would simulate the Kaiser making the decision to deploy not based upon the deployment/mobilization schedule of the Schlieffen plan but the alternate east first deployment plans the Germans also had developed.

Is there any option or mod that I have missed that explores the aforementioned scenario? I think adding in a decision right at the start would then allow the German player to pursue either the standard base west front deployment OR an alternative east front deployment.

Apologies in advance...I did search the forum first but had no luck.

Thanks, Willard

[mdsmall]

There is the "Sleeping Bear" mod for the AI which allows the AI to pursue a German east-first opening. See the link posted on the Mods and Scenarios board in this Forum. However, since it is a mod for the Central Powers as played by the AI, it also gives Germany a lot of extra units already placed in the east at the beginning of the game.

For multi-player play, I looked into developing an alternative German deployment option along those lines for a recent update to my Icarus mod. The easiest way of doing that would be to put far more German units in the deployment queue, so the German player could deploy his armies for a west or east first opening.

That then raised the question (at least for me) of whether the French and the Russians (and perhaps the Serbians and the Austro-Hungarians) should also be able to "improve" the initial placement of their forces on August 1, 1914. This led me to think about a scenario where the game starts in mid-July 1914 as the great powers are mobilizing, which allows all of them to move their existing forces within their own borders but not attack until war is declared on August 1st.

At that point, I concluded that was a different game than the mod I was developing. But if someone wanted to try writing a mod along those lines, I too would be interested in seeing how it plays out.

Michael