The Great War

I don't want to describe these as bugs, but I had some questions about whether certain functionality was intended or not.

1) On the Somme map, the Central Powers infantry units along the right-hand side of the map have 500 men instead of the customary 600. Is this intentional? I didn't notice any other 500-men units on any other maps. It makes it very easy to punch a hole in the line over there.

2) If an infantry or cavalry unit is disrupted (flashing red), you can move it and then – even if you click away from it – you can click back to it and press the Recover button. However, this doesn't work for artillery units or machine guns. I presume it's because they cannot fire after moving, but I would appreciate it if I could go back and click Recover after-the-fact. This is not a common problem, but there have been two or three times when I accidentally clicked away from the disrupted unit after moving it without clicking Recover. I attribute this to fat fingers and a small screen.

3) Units getting disrupted while moving at night is an interesting mechanic and, overall, I like it. However, it is possible to “heal” units by intentionally moving them at night and hoping that they get disrupted so that you can recover them. At the risk of sabotaging a viable strategy, I'll ask if this was the intended functionality.
3a) If not, it could be interesting mechanic to allow any unit – not just the disrupted ones – to “recover” during a night turn rather than move or attack. The downside is that if the unit is attacked it is automatically disrupted, even if it wasn't disrupted before it opted to recover. This could produce some interesting risk/reward scenarios for units at the front, while allowing units behind the front to rest and recover a bit.

4) On the Gallipoli map, reinforcements show up until the very last turn. This contributes to unit spam, slowing down turns for both the player and the AI. I would ask that there be a cut-off point for reinforcements. Maybe do the math and figure out how many turns it would take a reinforcement to reach an objective (either a diamond or a star). If the unit doesn't have enough turns to walk or sail that far before the end of the scenario (or far enough to shoot someone at the objective), don't populate that unit.

5) As a possible AI improvement, the AI is far too willing to leave an entrenched position (either a town or a trench) in order to attack an enemy. I can usually bait an enemy unit holed up in a town by placing a weak unit in front of it. The enemy will invariably Charge, kindly vacating the town or trench for me.

6) The Entente town at the top-center of the Verdun map seems to be some sort of super-town. Visually, it seems to combine a town with a trench, and it certainly fights as such. While defending it, I would frequently kill 100+ attacking infantry soldiers while only suffering losses of 2-10 men. Is this actually happening and/or intended?

7) The update clarified how much each level of trench defense is worth (8%) but this value still isn't showing up when you click on terrain with a trench on it. For example it will still say:
Defence: 0%
Trench: 6 (MAX)
Could we have the terrain description give the proper defence rating, please?

8) I would love it if there were some sort of “Sleep” or “Standby” command that I could issue to units so that when cycling through available units (via the > button at the top-right) I wouldn't return to the same ones over and over.

This is all constructive criticism. I like the game. I'll post as much on another thread when I get the time.

Great! Thanks for this! Very helpful comments here.

1. The Somme has some German units set as 500 instead of 600 because it was originally too difficult to break through their lines. In the latest update most of the 500 units were switched back to 600. If you or anyone else still think the German lines are too weak then please let me know.

2. Thanks for raising this problem because I don't think I've ran into it before. Yes, if a unit has used up its attack then it can't recover. And since an artillery piece uses up its attack if it moves, that's why you can't return to the unit and recover it after it has completed its move. I'll need to think of a way around this problem.

3. Thanks for the night healing idea. I'll keep this in mind. I might be making a few changes to the way morale and recovery works in the future.

4. Yes, I can make it so that reinforcements won't appear late in the battle.

5. I'll look into fixing this.

6. I didn't spot this! I must have accidentally given that unit a trench late in development. The trench for that specific unit will be removed in the next update.

7. Good idea. I'll look into that.

8. I'll need to think about this one. I've always tried to keep the interface as clean and simple as possible, and only show buttons and text blocks when they are relevant and necessary.

If you have any other thoughts then let me know.

I found some interesting results while testing the disorder retreat from weakend units.

Findings:
It would appear that if any obstacles such as Barb wire ,water ,soldiers, and the border of the map itself are in the way of the retreating units will instantly kill the unit. I was able to win most of the campaign by forcing units to retreat into these obstacles and made things drastically easy. It’s as if the AI couldn’t find another route and must take a straight line to evacuate.

Suggestions:
Perhaps the AI could create a better pathfinding or the soldiers and/or stop when an instant death object is in their way. Units encircled or pinned to a wall by other enemy units could attempt an escape by going through a disordered flanking unit, or simply surrender, removing them from the game, but not showing up as a causalities. Same with units that the border. I would like to see them retreat rather then showing up as a kill even though they were far away from danger.

Other Opinions:
Retreating into soldiers and causing an instant death is realistic to a sense if the unit makes a mistake into running into them, or pure strategy from the enemy to cut off any retreat for the units and destroying that unit. As for amphibious landings, I rather keep the instant death for the soldiers if they run into the water. Sure, it doesn’t make sense, but then it would make the landings impossible if I had disorder units crowding the beaches.

Final thoughts
Whether these are fixed or left alone won’t effect my perspective of the game since I find these to be commonplace. Some people may want smarter retreating units for them and/or for realism. Others would prefer to keep it the same to keep it easier for them by removing units and not having to deal with them again. I do not know it this was intentional or something overlooked but it seemed like an interesting topic discuss.

Perhaps have the AI be only able to move the retreating units in a safer path once they pass a certain threshold of squares. That way, the player or enemy AI can strategically force the retreating soldiers into a trap they’ve set up and won’t feel cheated. I’m not much of a coder so I wouldn’t know if this is possible or not but it seemed like a good idea to put forward. Only problem I would say about this is that perhaps the AI may try to constantly entrap the routing enemy regardless of the status that unit is in or leaving key areas. Then again, I don’t work with AI so I wouldn’t know. I’ll leave it to the Professional!

There’s this glitch in the battle of Verdun, where if you put your Howitzer artillery in certain squares on the Northern Hill as Germany, the French artillery can still hit you if shot at, even if no one can see your German artillery units.