"1914_0820_01s_Nancy" Protected hexes questions

[KAreil]

I'm playing through France'14 with my loyal opponent krmiller/Ken and we encountered something strange:

At the Allied 3rd turn the reinforcements for the French (retreating troops) arrive on the Eastern edge but on the German 4th turn their reinforcements (pursuing troops) arrive. This has routed most of them, I'm quoting Ken:

Last turn I moved my arriving units as far as I could and could not get them out of the protected zones.  Bad enough they arrive shot up, disordered, and with high fatigue while the Germans appear to be at full strength but now a large number of them are broken and probably out of the fight.  Then on this turn I bring two stacks of reinforcements adjacent to a couple German stacks and nothing happens to them, they even shot at my arriving units.  Seems only the Germans get the benefit of protection for their reinforcements.  And once again I can't move all my units far enough to get them out of the protection zone. 

Is this really intended?
I don't know much about that battle but routing all the French troops without chance to move them out of the protected hexes in time seems odd - were this troops really in such a bad shape?

Is this how this should work and is factored into the balancing scenario?

[Mr Grumpy]

I am attempting to get some answers to your questions, I have not played this scenario but if the French cannot clear the protected hex's before the German units entry triggers the "broken" penalty for being in such a hex it does seem odd?

There is a mention of the protected hex's in the scenario notes, but the text does not answer your questions.

"From turn the third turn on, two German and two French Corps will arrive along the length of the east edge of the map. Pay close attention to the protected hexes under the View > Shade menus. The French units will arrive first and then the pursuing German units will arrive the turn following. These arriving units represent the eastern tip of the French salient that was pushed back from about the vicinity of Diueze (10-20km off the east edge of the map)."

Did your French opponent know the protected hex's were there or only discover them once his units were broken?

[krmiller]

I attempted to move the French units out of the protected zone without changing into travel mode, this is impossible and I had a large number of them get broken when the German units came on.

I subsequently ran through the first couple turns playing both sides.  By placing all units in travel mode I was able to get all but 8 out of the protected zones.  However this leaves them in travel mode making them big targets.  The big problem is none of the units that broke were adjacent to German reinforcing units when they came in, they were 2 or more hexes away yet they were still broken.  Any French unit within the protection zone is broken whether a German unit comes in adjacent to it or not. 

Moved the arriving Germans forward and on the following French turn there were several French units that came on adjacent to the German units now on the map and none of the German units were Broken, in fact they shot at the arriving French units.

If this is how it is supposed to work the scenario is poorly designed or badly biased to the German.

[Mr Grumpy]

OK thank you for your feedback it is always very useful, I will pass it on to the designer.

As you have discovered units do not have to adjacent to be broken, they simply need to be in any protected hex.

[krmiller]

OK thank you for your feedback it is always very useful, I will pass it on to the designer.

As you have discovered units do not have to adjacent to be broken, they simply need to be in any protected hex.

And that is the problem, the German protection zone is 5 hexes while the French is 0.

[krmiller]

OK I did some more research, it appears the engine has a bug.  I looked at the scenario in the editor, all reinforcements for both sides have a Protection setting of 1 which should only effect enemy units that are adjacent to the arrival hex.  Apparently the game engine is either handling that setting differently than the ACW game and is using the shaded protection zone instead, have sent Rich a zipfile with game files showing the problem.  Getting the engine to work with a Protection setting of 1 hex would solve this problem.

[Volcano Man]

Hello,

Sorry about the delay -- it was the Christmas break here, and then work started quickly after that to catch up before New Years holiday again. So, quite busy here (I was under the impression that the older you get, the less busy you become, but that is apparently not true!).

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. To answer the question:

This is by design. It may appear that all units have a protected hex value of 0 or 1, but some deliberately selected HQs or other units on the Central Powers side intentionally have a value of 6, to exert a large radius to force some/most/all (depending on what the player does) French units to break in order to force an initial retreat to be carried out. If you turn on "Shade protected hexes" feature, and look at it from the Allied Powers side, you will see a large shaded area, while if you look at it from the French side, you will see a smaller one.

This is done for several reasons, but this is where I remind everyone to read the notes.

"From turn the third turn on, two German and two French Corps will arrive along the
length of the east edge of the map. Pay close attention to the protected hexes under the
View > Shade menus. The French units will arrive first and then the pursuing German
units will arrive the turn following. These arriving units represent the eastern tip of the
French salient that was pushed back from about the vicinity of Diueze (10-20km off the
east edge of the map)."

While that doesn't explain it in great detail (but it does draw attention to the shaded hexes) -- there are several reasons for how things work here:

1. The east side of this map is the edge of the overall campaign map. Unfortunately the campaign map did not include the area covering the French 1st Army's offensive. I wish it would have, but I was not responsible for the map creation, and at the time this was pushing the limits of what was possible and practical, so it is what is is in that regard (like Mona Lisa with no eyebrows).

2. Because the map doesn't cover anything further east, then the French withdrawal and German counter offensive there cannot be represented. However, these forces historically start showing up along the east edge of THIS map around turn 3 and 4. The only way to represent that is by having the French arrive as a withdrawing front line, with the Germans behind -- but with pressure placed on them by the protected hexes, causing some of them to break, yes. This is the ONLY WAY that the French can be forced to historically withdraw, because otherwise, and I am not fool here -- 20 years of game design have taught -- the French would immediately stop and dig in where they sit, with the Germans trapped on the east map edge, forcing the Germans to assault along every square inch of map from the edge.

3. Because some French units are broken, this encourages the French to pull back, making the map edge position untenable. However, these broken units are easily recovered because they can be pulled back away from the front line to recover from being broken (broken status is only a long term problem when the unit is a maximum fatigue, and it is detached, and so on). Think of it as a temporary problem to force the French from doing something gamey (like holding the east map edge). Essentially this approach forces the French to give the Germans some space on the edge of the map, by forcing them to historically pull back a bit. What they do after that is up to them. However, when I didn't do this in the earliest versions of the scenario (if I recall) then the complaint was that the Germans are boxed in on the map edge, so the decided on approach was clearly the lesser of two evils.

-------------------------------------

So essentially I had to make lemonade out of lemons with this scenario, given the restricted map area. The only realistic alternative would be to have the French arrive in their eventual positions, fixed, then have the Germans arrive opposite of them - sort of materializing in the rear areas, but that is what would really be bad design, in my opinion.

That is not to say that there could not be further improvements made in how the scenario behaves, but it has been the way that it is now since 3 JAN 2015, so it would have to a seriously different and substantial change to warrant adjustments at this point.

As a side note...

Also, if there is a complaint that France '14 is 'on rails', forcing historical outcomes -- this is false. (In my opinion) My duty as a responsible game designer is setup the stage historically, then go mostly "hands off" so that it plays from there. I am setting up the racing car on the starting line, pointing it in the appropriate direction, giving it the amount of fuel, etc, and then it goes where you take it, but of course there are and must be guardrails along the track so it doesn't go off a cliff, within the limitations of what I can do as a designer. I am sure we can think of quite a few old wargames that quickly go off a cliff right after it begins - this is broken design.

The most complicated thing in wargame design is figuring out how to do all these things while providing a minimum of guardrails. Yes, in F14 there are reinforcements that arrive at (or close to) historical times, supply drops at (or close to) historical times, units that get fixed when something historical happens, and other such things, but these are all effects representing events beyond the scope of the battle being fought, and are "historical outside influences". In the case of this particular scenario, the withdrawing French and advancing Germans (from the east map edge) are a historical start point, to bring about the historical flow of the battle where the French attack northeast of Nancy was being flanked, by the fact that French forces were being rolled up.

What happens after the reinforcements arrive, and how the French are handled in their retreat from the east, is what may or may not change the battle from its historical outcome (certainly both sides can always do better or worse than was historical after that).

But then again, maybe that particular scenario is not one of the better ones in F14. There are, after all, four different phases of the entire 1914 campaign being represented in the title, so there should be quite a lot to choose from.

Maybe not the expected answer, but I hope it helps!

[KAreil]

Thanks a lot for this explanation.
I was thinking along this lines but "breaking" the French units seemed a bit harsh.

We have switched to Japan'45 for now but I'll keep the saved turn and we might go back to the scenario later.

Looking forward for the next FWWC title.

[Mr Grumpy]

I can fully understand your question about this, the protected hex's feature does carry the most severe penalty and when it occurs it is quite a shock!

The next FWWC title is still in the development stage, it is very difficult to know when it might be released so I will make no guesses on that score.