"Crises of the West" -- description of 1900-1950 units

[Leon Marrick]

People,

Been toying with a 1900 - 1950 scenario, named "Crises of the West" for quite some time now, but I've had to recognize that I am not going to be able to finish it. At present, it consists of little more than some unit descriptions and history.

I release the below to the public domain.


===================

The Long 19th Century (up until about 1910 to 1915)

Riflemen - cost 40
     Somewhere between a division and a corps of line infantry, mobilized by conscription in most armies other than that of Great Britain. This unit includes a small amount of light artillery (about 75mm), some machine guns, and combat engineers, but not much else. Riflemen have lots of hitpoints and can handle fortifications well, but are generally poor at attacking.
     German riflemen are good at attacking. British riflemen are good in defence, but expensive. Russian riflemen are inexpensive. Italian riflemen have a poor attack.
     After the introduction of smokeless power and repeating firearms in the later 19th century, the rifle seemed so effective that regiments of infantry needed no other kinds of weapons. This was demonstrated to be incorrect in World War I.

Horse Cavalry - cost 40
     Approximately a division of horse-mounted cavalry, including almost no supporting arms. Armed with sabers, lances, carbines, and pistols. Cavalry usually cannot stand up against infantry, but are great at reconissance and will chew up unsupported artillery very nicely.
     Realizing that the days of shock action had pretty well ended with the introduction of the repeating rifle, the cavalry nevertheless felt that they remained the premier arm for exploitation and reconaissance. In the Eastern and Middle Eastern theatres of WWI, they served important roles; in the West, they were mostly a waste of men and materiel.


Field artillery - cost 50
     Independant regiments of light, direct-fire artillery, with bores of approximately 75mm. Capable of winning battles in the field, but not against fortifications.
     Artillery technology had outstripped artillery doctrine. Although field guns had effective ranges of four miles on up, European artillerists still expected to site most of their guns in positions having a direct line of fire to the enemy.


The Great War of Empires (about 1910 to 1920)

Infantry - cost 40
     Somewhere between a division and a corps of foot-mobile modern infantry (or mountain infantry), including combat engineers, a few light anti-tank weapons, machine guns, grenades, and light/medium artillery and mortars. Good at both attacking and defending, and reasonably priced, infantry have lots of hitpoints and are very good at traversing difficult terrain. They are effective against fortified positions. They only lack speed and firepower. Killing an infantry unit lets you learn how to build them.
     German infantry are the best (they include the famous stosstruppen of 1917). British infantry are slighty better at defence, but fairly expensive. Russian infantry are poor at attacking but are very inexpensive. Italian infantry do poorly in both the attack and the defence. American infantry have especially high hitpoints (because of the very large size of their divisions in WWI) and cost more.
     The modern infantry was born in the trenches of World War I. Having discovered that direct-fire rifles could not win battles alone, foot-soldiers adopted Stokes mortars, fragmentation grenades, and so many machine guns that they become the basis of a squad's firepower. With these tools, and given sufficient artillery, armour, and air support, infantry became capable of breaching almost any system of fortifications.

Reservists - cost 30 (ideally should only be available to AI players)
     Somewhere between a division and a corps of foot-mobile reservists. Used as defence units so that infantry can be used to attack with. This separation of attack and defence is especially important for an AI player.

Early Tank - cost 70
     A couple of hundred heavy, primitive infantry-support tanks. Very good at attacking field positions, but not fortifications.
     Although expensive, slow, liable to mechanical breakdowns, and painfully vulnerable to artillery used in the direct-fire role, the tanks of World War I proved a valuable support arm to infantry attempting to breach an enemy line. They were not yet effective exploitation weapons.

Seige Howitzer - cost 120
     Independent regiments of heavy, indirect-fire howitzers or seige mortars, with bores of between 120mm and 240mm (sometimes even greater). Devastating against any defence, fortified or not.
     Between about the Russo-Japanese War and 1918, new advances in communications, weaponry, and training gave birth to modern, indirect-fire artillery. It was enormously expensive to manufacture and supply the massive guns used in the major battles of WWI in the west, but - between 1914 and early 1917 - they were the sole decisive arm of war.


Triumph turned to Ashes (about 1915 to 1945)

Paratroopers - cost 60
     A division of air-mobile infantry, carried in air transports and gliders. Paratroopers have better fighting stats but fewer hitpoints than regular infantry. With their paratroop, alpine, and ignore fortification abilities, these units have a real, if limited, role in modern warfare. They are, however, rather expensive.
     Starting in the 1930s, advances in air transport and infantry tactics made it possible for nations such as Germany and Russia to field small numbers of airborne troops. The great problems faced by these nations, and for those (like Great Britain and the United States) who followed them, were 1) how to gather enough air transport, and 2) how to keep paratroopers alive when attacked by mechanized forces. Both issues are very much alive today.

Marines - cost 60
     A division of marines. Because almost no ship can bombard in this scenario, marines are highly useful in seizing defended overseas territories, and there is no fortification that can stop them. They have fighting stats like paratroopers.
     Oceans have always been a barrier for land armies. Although the European powers used seaborne infantry with great effect against non-industrialized nations, only the marintime powers of Great Britain and the United States managed to field forces that could defeat modern armies from the sea.

Motorized Infantry - cost 50 or 70
     Between a division and a corps of truck-mounted infantry. Has the same fighting stats as foot infantry, a speed of three, and no alpine movement. Russian and German motorized infantry are rather expensive.
     Infantry have always had problems with mobility, both strategic and tactical. A nation that shipped men by sea or along rivers, or moved them by rail, could gain a decisive strategic advantage over a nation that did not. Neither waterways nor rails, however, allowed troops to maneuver freely in hostile terrain. It was the unarmoured truck that first allowed infantry to keep pace with armoured exploitation forces.

Partisans
     Partisans appear when cities are taken under certain conditions, and cannot be built otherwise. The nations most likely to generate partisans are Russia, Great Britain, Spain, and Yugoslavia. German cities will generate partisans only if taken by Russia. Russia may also get free partisans if doing poorly. Partisans are invisible, have alpine movement, ignore fortifications and zones of control, and are generally a real nuisance. Spanish partisans, known as Guerrillas, are especially nasty.

Light Tank - cost 60 (40 for Russia)
     Several hundred fast, light tanks and armoured cars. Light tanks are fast, have a sighting range of two, and are reasonably priced, but tend to die with distressing ease.
     The light tanks of most nations move at a rate of three. Russian light tanks are actually mixed cavalry and cross-country amphibious tanks, are much cheaper, and have road movement across all terrain. Because of the poor Russian supply system, however, they only get a speed of two.
     Starting in WWI, it became increasingly apparent that horse cavalry were obsolescent. However, armies still required reconnaisance and mobile exploitation forces. Light, mobile tanks and armoured vehicles seemed the perfect answer; in all major Western nations, cavalry forces adopted light tanks; first as an adjunct to horsemen, then as a replacement. The problem with light armoured warfare, however, is that light tanks do little better against heavy ones then horses do against machine guns.

Artillery - cost 100
     Independant regiments of medium/heavy modern towed artillery, great against fortified positions. Because of better fire control and commuications, and lower weight, these weapons are more cost-effective and slightly more mobile (they move 1 and a third squares per turn) than the seige howitzers of World War I.
     Starting in 1929, the American Army pioneered the use of advanced forward observer and plotting systems to combine widely dispersed batteries into a single network of fire. The effect on the Germans in battles such as Kasserine Pass and St. Vith was devastating.


The Great Ideological War (about 1935 to 1950)

Mechanized Infantry - cost 90
     A division+ of infantry mounted in half-tracks, with all of the weapons usually associated with an infantry division plus armoured assault guns and/or tank destroyers and often self-propelled artillery. Mechanized infantry have excellent fighting stats, especially in defence, and move fairly quickly. Like other infantry, they ignore fortifications. The price to equip a division with the finest in mechanized war gear, however, is quite high. All nations can research this technology, or learn it by killing a mechanized infantry unit.
     Trucks could take infantry into battle, but could not support them in combat. Towed artillery and anti-tank guns had poor cross-country mobility and little protection. The solution to these problems lay in mechanization: putting infantry, engineers, anti-tank, anti-air, and artillery in tracked vehicles.

Medium Tank - cost 80
     A tank division fielded by Italy or any of the minor powers. Has poorer fighting stats than Armour, Panzers, or T-34s.
     Designing effective tanks requires up-to-date technology, and fielding them requires a substantial industrial base. The only minor nation that made much of an impact in tank design was Czechoslovakia during the period immediately before WWII.

Armour - cost 80
     A tank division fielded by the French or British. Is not quite as good in combat as the panzers of Germany, and rather slower, but costs less.
     Both the French and the British fielded two kinds of tanks in the late 1930s and early WWII: infantry-support tanks (which were too slow to exploit a breakthrough), and cruiser tanks (which lacked both protection and hitting power). It took the British army more than three years of battlefield defeats to develop an armoured force capable of stopping the German Panzers, and their offensives remained sluggish throughout the war. The French, on the other hand, were never given the chance to learn.


American Armour - cost 80
     A (large) tank division fielded by the Americans. Has fighting stats as good has that of Armour, but the highest hitpoints of any tank unit. Also moves faster than most other tanks.
     Individually, a Sherman might not have been the world's best tank, but for every tank the Germans built in 1943, the Americans built five. After a rather rocky learning process, the US created some truly formidable armoured units. By 1944, no other army in the world could match American mobility and firepower.

Mech Cavalry - cost 80
     Several regiments of medium tanks, heavy armoured cars, tracked anti-tank guns, mobile artillery, and mechanized infantry, all part of a combined-arms battlegroup. Fast, has a sighting range of two, and is tough to kill. The Germans may research these units (given the right prerequisites); everyone else has to defeat a mech cavalry force in battle before they can organize similar forces of their own.
     It was the Germans who figured out how to combine mobility and striking power. They fielded combined-arms forces of motorized, motorcycle, or armoured infantry, engineers, fast-moving tanks, heavy anti-tank weapons (first towed 88s, then mechanized AT guns), and field artillery. All these weapons, used in a spirit of intelligent cooperation between units, combined with effective air and artillery support, made the astonishing blitzkriegs of early World War II possible. It was only when their enemies included some of these methods in their own way of making war that Germany's conquests ended.

Panzer - cost 100
     A panzer division fielded by Germany. Is the best of the medium tank forces, but also the most expensive. Represents both Panzer IIIs and IVs.
     The skill of German tankers in WWII, the quality of German tanks, and the effectiveness of German armoured doctrine have entered the realm of legend. Every other major Western power learned about modern mechanized warfare by losing battles to the Nazis. The great problem for Germany was that she had not the manpower, nor the supply system, nor the manufacturing techniques required to face either Russia or America on even terms.

Blitz Panzer - cannot be built
     A mechanized force (of indeterminate size) fielded by Germany. Has good fighting stats and ignores city walls. Germany may receive a collection of these units on up to two occasions; when these units are dead, there will be no replacements.
     Poland conquered in weeks. Denmark conquered in hours. France forced to surrender and Great Britian driven off the continent in a summer's campaigning. Even after two generations, these achievements still command respect.

SS Panzer - cost 140
     A SS panzer division. The most powerful armoured unit available, but extremely expensive.
     The Waffen SS forces got the cream of German tank production, and used them to deadly effect in many battles.

T-34 - cost 60
     A (reinforced) Soviet tank corps, equipped with T-34s. Has about average fighting stats, is somewhat slower than other armoured units, but very reasonably priced.
     More than any other nation, it was Russia that stopped the Blitzkreig. Her enormous size and population, her highly efficient production of armoured units, and her heroic willingness to sacrifice men and materiel for victory made the invasion of Russia Hitler's biggest mistake. Even in the years of triumph from 1943 onwards, however, Russian offensives continued to be hindered by the very poor Russian supply system.

Heavy Tank - cost 90
     A (reinforced) Soviet Guards tank corps, armed with KV-Is, KV-85s, or some kind of Joseph Stalin tank. Has good fighting stats but is fairly pricey as Russian equipment goes.

Self-Propelled Artillery - cost 120
     Independant regiments of medium/heavy tracked artillery. They have the same attack strength as regular artillery, but are considerably more mobile and slightly better protected. Historically, only the Americans built enough of these weapons to be able to mass them in large formations, but in this scenario anyone can research this technology.
     Since the early days of armoured warfare, it has been clear that, firstly, tanks needed infantry and artillery support and, secondly, that foot-mobile infantry and towed artillery could not keep pace with tanks. Because of the great costs involved, however, few nations during the time frame of this scenario mechanized more than a small fraction of their armies.



====================


R Riflemen, nil, 0, 1.,0, 3a,3d, 3h,1f, 2,0, 1, nil, 000001001000000
B Riflemen, nil, 0, 1.,0, 3a,4d, 3h,1f, 5,0, 1, nil, 000001001000000
G Riflemen, nil, 0, 1.,0, 4a,3d, 3h,1f, 4,0, 1, nil, 000001001000000
I Riflemen, nil, 0, 1.,0, 3a,3d, 3h,1f, 4,0, 1, nil, 000001001000000
* Riflemen, nil, 0, 1.,0, 3a,3d, 3h,1f, 4,0, 1, nil, 000001001000000
Engineers, nil, 0, 2.,0, 0a,2d, 2h,1f, 4,0, 5, Exp, 000000000000000
Fanatics, nil, 0, 1.,0, 4a,4d, 2h,1f, 2,0, 1, Fun, 000000000000000
Partisans, nil, 0, 1.,0, 6a,4d, 2h,1f, 5,0, 0, nil, 000001001000010
Guerrilla, nil, 0, 2.,0, 18a,9d, 4h,1f, 7,0, 0, nil, 000001001000010
Reservists, nil, 0, 1.,0, 3a,4d, 3h,1f, 3,0, 1, nil, 000001000000000
Marines, nil, 0, 1.,0, 7a,6d, 2h,1f, 6,0, 0, nil, 000000001000100
Paratroopers, nil, 0, 1.,0, 7a,6d, 2h,1f, 7,0, 0, nil, 000001101000000
Panzer, nil, 0, 3.,0, 10a,4d, 2h,2f, 12,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000
Blitz Panzer, nil, 0, 3.,0, 10a,4d, 2h,2f, 12,0, 0, nil, 000000001000010
SS Panzer, nil, 0, 3.,0, 13a,5d, 2h,2f, 14,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000
T-34, nil, 0, 2.,0, 9a,4d, 2h,2f, 6,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000
Heavy Tank, nil, 0, 2.,0, 12a,5d, 2h,2f, 9,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000
Light Tank, nil, 0, 3.,0, 4a,2d, 2h,2f, 6,0, 0, nil, 000000000000001
Light Tank, nil, 0, 2.,0, 4a,2d, 2h,2f, 4,0, 0, nil, 000000000000001
Horse Cavalry, nil, 0, 2.,0, 5a,3d, 2h,1f, 5,0, 0, nil, 000001000000001
Mech. Cavalry, nil, 0, 3.,0, 6a,6d, 2h,2f, 8,0, 0, nil, 000000000000001
Field Artillery, nil, 0, 1.,0, 8a,1d, 2h,1f, 5,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000
Artillery, nil, 0, 1.,0, 10a,2d, 2h,2f, 10,0, 0, nil, 000000001000000
Seige Howitzer, nil, 0, 1.,0, 10a,2d, 2h,2f, 12,0, 0, nil, 000000001000000
SP Artillery, nil, 0, 2.,0, 11a,3d, 2h,2f, 10,0, 0, nil, 000000001000000
Medium Tank, nil, 0, 2.,0, 8a,3d, 2h,2f, 8,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000
Armour, nil, 0, 2.,0, 9a,4d, 2h,2f, 8,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000
US Armour, nil, 0, 3.,0, 9a,4d, 3h,2f, 8,0, 0, nil, 000000000000000
R Infantry, nil, 0, 1.,0, 4a,4d, 3h,1f, 2,0, 0, nil, 000001001000000
B Infantry, nil, 0, 1.,0, 5a,4d, 3h,1f, 5,0, 0, nil, 000001001000000
G Infantry, nil, 0, 1.,0, 6a,4d, 3h,1f, 4,0, 0, nil, 000001001000000
I Infantry, nil, 0, 1.,0, 4a,3d, 3h,1f, 4,0, 0, nil, 000001001000000
A Infantry, nil, 0, 1.,0, 5a,4d, 5h,1f, 5,0, 0, nil, 000001001000000

[Boco]

Interesting idea to give inf higher hp's but lower fp than armor. Armor is strong on the attack, but less staying power in prolonged combat. Could promote a combined arms approach.

Did you start on a tech tree?

[our_man]

Leon, did you ever consider doing a FW update of Arabia Awakes? It was one of the best pre-CiC scenarios I've played; the options available with FW (e.g. events) would IMHO give it a new lease of life.