Military-rules and explanations (version 3.3)

Overall
Each nation can purchase military forces. Some are available from the start of the game, some have to be researched before you can build them. Apart from the naval-units, every unit built will arrive in the nation's capital.

Movement
There are 3 types of movement in 1914: by rail, by road or by sea.

Rail-movement
When you order units to move by rail they will use some of your railcargo-capacity for that turn. This is not automated in the turnsheet, so if you order a military railmovement make sure you have enough railcargo available.
If a nation is at peace economic railcargo-orders will overrule military railcargo-orders, meaning that it's possible that your movement orders won't take place.
If a nation is at war military railcargo-orders will overrule economic railcargo-orders, meaning that some of your outgoing trade won't be delivered.
1 railcargo-factor can move 1.000 Military Points based upon the following:
1 INF, Stormtrooper or Marine will count as 1 Military Point
1 Light artillery will count as 10
1 Medium artillery will count as 15
1 Heavy artillery will count as 20
1 Cavalry will count as 3
1 Armoured Car will count as 7
1 Light Tank will count as 15
1 Medium tank will count as 20
1 Heavy tank will count as 25

Railmovement is restricted in areas that your nation didn't control at the start of the game or where loyalty is below 80%

Road movement
Road movement stands for simply walking towards you're destination. The standard road-movement distance a unit can move is 500 KM's per turn. When moving through mountainous terrain or swamps, movement will slow and could even be halved.
Weather also effects movement. Dry weather places no restrictions on movement. Rain, winter and severe winter does and can even stop movement, especially for mechanized units.
Roadmovement is restricted in areas that your nation didn't control at the start of the game or where loyalty is below 80%

Sea-movement
Troops can embark on Transport ships and sail to specific destinations. This kind of movement is the fastest way to travel. There are some risks, especially when at war. Transport ships (and their cargo) can be sunk by enemy ships or subs. There is a chance Transport ships will encounter storms and sink if sent out in severe winter. Ships can move a distance of about 3,000 KMs's a week, which also takes into account embarkation and debarkation of units.

Airplane-movement
Airplanes and Zeppelins can move 1.000 Km's per turn.

Entrenchment (version 3.3)
WW1 was also known as the "War in the Trenches." This game isn't meant entirely to replay WW1, but is set in the same time-period, so we made a special rule on entrenchment.

At the start of the game it is not possible to order your units to entrench, and this will only be possible once your nation is at war AND has fought at least 3 medium to major battles. This is because before WW1 almost every army in the world was more or less an 'attack'or 'mobile'army.
The only way you can entrench before you are at war is to build fortifications in a certain area. AT the start of the game each nation can build fortifications to a certain level, but it's possible to research a higher level of fortification.

Once you can order units to entrench, it means that they will start digging in the ground and make a foxhole. You will have to issue this order each turn again if you want your units to keep entrenching. Every turn a unit continues to entrench, their entrenchment level will rise. If you order the unit to move somewhere else, they can't take their entrenchment-level with them.

The only units that can entrench are: Infantry, Marines, Stormtroopers and Cavalry (which will act as Infantry once entrenched). Artillery can't entrench because they need some line of sight, however they will always be placed somewhat behind your front-line and are therefore less vulnerable to Infantry-attacks. If your troops are overrun it's possible your artillery couldn't escape in time (or only partially) and they will suffer high losses or be destroyed.

Every turn you will be notified of the entrenchment-status of your troops. We cannot give you an exact table, because there will be many things that will be taken into account (such as terrain, morale, INF-level, weather, etc.).  You will have to experience the effects of entrenchment yourself, as was is 1914, but everyone can figure out that the higher the entrenchment-level is the better the defense. If the enemy is entrenched at a very high level, you will need many more troops, supported with lots of artillery to win the battle. Stormtroopers are one of the answers against entrenchments (See Stormtroopers) as well as heavy artillery, howitzers and seige guns.

A player can order his artillery to bombard enemy trenches. This will not result in many enemy soldiers getting killed, but will bring down the enemy entrenchment-level. Needless to say that Heavy artillery can do more damage than Light Artillery.

When a player attacks entrenched forces, but has to fall back, the entrenchment-level of the defenders could go down, the exact number depends on the casualties taken and the kind of attacking forces.

Fortresses (version 3.3)
Certain cities or places are designated as fortresses with a certain entrenchment-level (see: fortresses). The level of these fixed fortresses cannot be upgraded. Troops entering a fortress will be at the fortress entrenchment-level from the moment they arrive. If you want to defend the area or city with a higher entrenchment-level than that of the fortress, you'll have to build new trenches just outside the fortress.
Units in a fortress don't control the entire area in which the fortress is situated. In order to do this you must also have an army out in the field. The main advantage of a fortress is that as long as it isn't taken you still have an army in a place where your enemy doesn't want it (and this could also be behind enemy lines). It will also make sure that that your enemy won't receive any conquered resource-production.

Occupying an area (version 3.3)
In order to occupy an area and control it as a conquered area (to receive the IP-output) there are several conditions that must be met:
- There must be no army present from the nation to which the area originally belonged
- If there are also armies present from your allies, they must tell me that they allow you to be the occupying nation
- There must at least be 1 army of you present in that area with a minimum of 10.000 men and it must have been ordered to occupy the area.

Poison Gas
When you've researched and bought poison gas you can use it. The main problem with poison gas is that it doesn't know who the enemy is. In other words, if the wind changes you're men will suffer the consequences. Every time you use gas there's a slight chance the wind will chance. The great advantage of poison gas is (with a little luck) you can kill many enemy soldiers, without losing one yourself.

Maintenance
Your units use supplies, utilities, steel, fuel and money as maintenance. In the maintenance-section of the turnsheet you see the amount of resources your armed forces will use every turn. If units engage in battle (land, sea or air) they will use a certain extra amount of supplies and utils (battle-costs). These battle-costs depend on which units engaged in combat, their level, the kind of combat and the enemy resistance. Below each army in the army-sheet you see the basic numbers that army will use as batle-costs.
If units run out of supply or utilities they will fight with less strength and eventually surrender. Remember airdrops aren't possible so when your units are surrounded they will have no supply-line. Units are considered to have enough supply for 2-4 turns.

Weather
Weather also plays a role in the game. There are 4 types of weather: Dry, rainy, winter and severe winter. Weather will have the following effects on movement (100% = no effect).

Dry
Train-movement: 100%
Infantry road-movement: 100%
Cavalry road-movement: 100&
Light-Artillery road-movement: 100%
Heavy Artillery road-movement: 100%
Tank road-movement: 100%
Airplanes: 100%
Zeppelins: 100%
Sub's & U-boots: 100%
Naval surface-movement: 100%
spotting range at sea: 100%

Rain
Train-movement: 100%
Infantry road-movement: 80%
Cavalry road-movement: 80&
Light-Artillery road-movement: 80%
Heavy Artillery road-movement: 60%
Tank road-movement: 50%
Airplanes: 10%
Zeppelins: 10%
Sub's & U-boots: 100%
Naval surface-movement: 100%
spotting range at sea: 80%

Winter
train-movement: 80%
Infantry road-movement: 60%
Cavalry road-movement: 60&
Light-Artillery road-movement: 60%
Heavy Artillery road-movement: 40%
Tank road-movement: 60%
Airplanes: 0%
Zeppelins: 0%
Sub's & U-boots: 0%
Naval surface-movement: 80%
spotting range at sea: 80%

Severe winter
train-movement: 60%
Infantry road-movement: 50%
Cavalry road-movement: 50&
Light-Artillery road-movement: 50%
Heavy Artillery road-movement: 0%
Tank road-movement: 60%
Airplanes: 0%
Zeppelins: 0%
Sub's & U-boots: 0%
Naval surface-movement: 60%
spotting range at sea: 60%

Battles
Land-battles
When you order your men to attack, or defend against an attack a battle will ensue. You can give whatever order you want to the GM regarding how you want to fight the battle, as long as it is possible (airdrops are not!). Although you can be as detailed as you want, try to keep it within reason.

Things to remember when you go to war or are to engage the enemy:
- Be aware that morale will go down if you declare war.
- Be sure to have enough supplies and utils.
- Make notice of the weather. Units will suffer from the same percentage they have for movement in battle.
Infantry will fight at 100% in dry weather, 80% in rain, 60% in winter and 50% in severe-winter.
Fighters will fight at 100% in dry weather, 10% in rain. and will be grounded in winter and severe-winter.

Naval-battles
If naval units from 2 countries are in the same area there's a chance they will encounter.  This chance will be higher if one of the fleets is ordered to search the enemy, and will be lower if one of the fleets is ordered to evade the enemy. Having an aircraft carrier with observers will increase your spotting range very much. If enemy fleets find each other, they will automatically fire.

Air-battles
In air-battles only fighters can attack other airplanes or zeppelins. So sending your bombers or observers into the air without fighter-coverage is not a good idea, unless you want to get rid of them.

Battle-results
All battle-results will be posted in the Planet.

 

Blockades
If a country is completely surrounded by hostile nations, military forces (or both), the nation will be considered blockaded. It will be tough to get some foreign resources into the nation. You can order merchants to act as blockade-runners and try to sneak through the enemy ships. If they are discovered and sunk, their cargo-load will be lost. It depends on the arrangement you made with the nation that has sent the cargo whether or not you would still have to pay for the lost shipments.

There are several ways to blockade a nation; If a nation has no harbors and no coasts, it will be blockaded when all land transport-routes go through hostile territory. No resources can go through. If a nation has harbors and no overland trade routes, it will be blockaded when all harbors are sealed off by enemy vessels. These enemy vessels must stay in the vicinity of the harbors to effectively blockade. Submarines and U-Boots can also blockade a nation, especially if it's an island. If the target nation has no destroyers to hunt the subs down and there are enough subs to patrol around the island, they will have a high chance of sinking all merchants. However, there's always the possibility merchants will slip through.
Once a nation is blockaded shipments from the World Auction System will also be disrupted. The longer the blockades lasts the less you can buy or sell to the World Auction System.

In WW1, Germany almost succeeded to blockade England in 1916. At that time German U-Boots sunk many merchant vessels.

Spying (version 3.3)
It is possible to conduct spy operations, as well as conduct covert-operations. In the turn-sheet you can order a covert-operation in the diplomacy-sheet. As there are many different covert-operations you can specify each operation in the sheet or in your written orders. Your spies have also a general succes-%. This percentage can go down if the target-nation has spend money on counter-intelligence or when your morale is low. On the other hand if your morale is good it will go up.
There are 5 different spy-orders. All have different costs ranging from $10 to $100, but all have also different chance of succes. It's up to you to decide which spy-option you want to use.

 Counter-Intelligence
You can spend  money on counter-intelligence. The more you spend, the smaller the chance of succes of your enemies will be and the higher the chance you will detect enemy spies, saboteurs and assassins before they can do any harm. If you spend money on counter-intelligence it will last for 1 turn.