New WWI IH

[Sarmatian]

I think that will involve too much micromanagement and is essentially flawed. I could keep 1,000,000 soldiers 1cm from opposing troops and 5,000,000 one a half cm further to come to their aid.

I believe it would be better to know approximately where opposing troops are and app. their number.

For example in the case of Russia I've stationed 1,000,000 troops 2cm south of Moscow, you could inform other players like this: There are Russian troops somewhere in the vicinity of Moscow, their number is between 0 and 2,500,000.

That way all the players will know app how much troops there are and where are they. I feel that this game will involve mostly massive battles, often involving few million men. It would be impossible to hide army movements on such a scale. Also, it would prevent possible "hoarding" of troops in your territory - for example I train 30,000,000 soldiers and mass them in Ukraine and unleash them all at once if a frontline is broken. In that day and age it would be impossible to hide app. number of soldiers from the enemy and their general location. I find it hard to believe that Germany didn't know how much soldiers Russia had. I mean maybe they didn't know that there was exactly 13,290,173 but they knew that there were between 12 and 15 millions. And maybe they didn't know exactly the place where they were but I doubt that they didn't know whether 3,000,000 russian soldiers were in St. Petersburg or in Caucassus.

This wa you could show on the map general location of all troops and their app. numbers. Then each turn just post the map and everyone is happy and informed. If you must talk to all players via PM each turn and then to check all PM's to see if there are any troops 2cm from their leader, you'd get confused pretty quickly. At least I know I would. Also, armies can be stationed in the capital or base withour a leader. So that could potentially lead to situation where Austrians don't know that there is 4,000,000 strong French army on the outskirts of Vienna if they don't have a leader there.

So to sum it, IMHO, this is the easiest, cleanest and most simple way.
But, it's your call of course, just making a suggestion. I don't wan't to hijack your IH

P.S. Sorry for the long post