You know a little bit before a big fight in Total War? where you prepare for the battle ahead by changing the position of your units; Setting up the formation, positioning your lines, and generally making everything nice and orderly. The Great War: The Western Front has the same thing. Only, here, the pre-war phase represents the entire month leading up to the war. And it is not neat, but a brutal reflection of the struggle that has been going on for years.
You’re not just moving units around. You are preparing the battlefield for the further conflict. You will dig trenches and protect them with barbed wire. You’ll fill those trenches with infantry, and defend your territory from machine gun nests—creating a killzone to punish any push into any man’s land. You’re changing the landscape for years to come, in search of a modest victory that could slowly push the war in your favor.
(image credit: Frontier)
This is a World War 1 RTS, which means victory will not be quick and easy. The Great War: The Western Front’s mantra is that it will be a ‘battle of the inches’ – marginal gains that will gradually turn the war in your favor. Whether you choose to play as the Allies or the Central Powers, you will not be painting the strategic map in your own color. Instead, you win by crushing your opponent—taking an action that will put an end to their ‘national will’. It is the main resource of the campaign, and if either side drops it to zero, they lose the battle.
In a hands-off demo, Petroglyph gives me an overview of Theater Command Mode — the campaign’s grand strategy layer. Here, each turn represents a month of combat, and players are presented with events to answer and missions to begin. Events are a classic grand strategy affair – a problem with multiple choices that impact your various resources. In the demo, we see soldiers suffering from shellshock, and have the option of ignoring it – losing the national will but saving money – or solving the issue by spending some cash.
A mission to command requests an attack on Drocourt. If this is accomplished within three turns, it would mean a major boost to the national will of the Allies. But ‘attack’ does not mean ‘catch’. Rather, the objective is to capture a specific control point on the battlefield. If successful, it will reduce the Central Powers’ hold on the area – represented by the stars on the tile.
(image credit: Frontier)
“We don’t want to overwhelm the player with 30 battles per turn,” says lead designer Chris Baker. “So what the player can focus on is determining the major battles they want – it may be representative of the major battles in history, but the player is defining what they are. We think That player will have four or five battles every three or four turns, but they’re all going to come together.” The idea here is that, if multiple battles take place in the same area at the same turn, its defenders will suffer a morale penalty – they will break easily and surrender faster. By attacking from multiple fronts within a single turn, you can reduce its hold and potentially take over territory.
Each map remains consistent throughout the battle. Drokert’s battlefield is already battered and scarred – a sign of the previous battles that have been fought here.
“At every turn you don’t attack an area, they’ll get back one of their stars,” says Baker. “So if you’re going to go for that line, you have to make sure you have a very coordinated attack.” This is made easy by the fact that your units are not limited by movement, and can be placed anywhere on the map once per turn. The era meant that soldiers could just get on a train to get where they needed to be. And while this might sound strange to grand strategy fans who used to worry about supply lines and logistics, it allows the game to focus on being an RTS first and foremost.
Loading into the Drocourt attack, we enter the Field Commander mode – where the RTS battle takes place. Each map remains consistent throughout the battle. Drokert’s battlefield is already battered and scarred – a sign of the previous battles that have been fought here. The old trenches remain, and are a potential point of vulnerability, meaning that the pre-planning phase also needs to take into account what already exists. A vast network of trenches only works if you have the manpower to defend it, and so what was strategically valuable in one battle may become a point of weakness in the next.
(image credit: Frontier)
“Each battlefield is represented from one area to another,” says Baker. “So this area doesn’t have a battlefield, but a battlefield it shares with a neighbor. The more you fight on those lines, the more scary you’re going to see. What happens is that through each battle the layout of the trench becomes more complex. It’s not just yours, but the enemy’s too. You can see the enemy becoming more detailed as you fight these battles. But you have to be careful. If you have too many trenches and you can’t fill them all, your enemy will jump in and take advantage of that. So the layout of the trench is very important.”
eye in the sky
In addition to building new trenches and fortifying defenses, you can also use the planning phase to attack the enemy – setting off days of advanced artillery firepower in an attempt to create a path for your final attack. When the battle begins, an observation balloon reveals what has happened to the battlefield. An enemy trench has been destroyed, and they are reinforcing their troops – a clear indication that the bombardment has had an effect. We also see that the enemy has an observation balloon of its own, and therefore begins an air balloon destroying mission to intercept their intelligence.
In the Great War the planes are autonomous, but will follow the orders you are given. Here they set out to find and destroy the balloons, but there are other missions as well. In fact, in response to the balloon busters, the Central Powers launch an air superiority mission to bring them down. The Allies responded in kind, starting a fight for control of the skies.
(image credit: Frontier)
With aerial warfare at a standstill, the Central Powers attacked our trenches, sending their troops through forests to conceal their approach. We launch an artillery strike on the area, but without a precise position to target, some of his men escape. In an attempt to suppress our forces and neutralize our defence, the Central Powers are also shelling our positions. But eventually barbed wire and machine guns do their job. Some soldiers who survive the mob at No Man’s Land are defeated in a melee battle in the trenches.
You can also use the planning phase to attack the enemy – setting up days of advanced artillery firepower in an attempt to create a path for your final attack.
The time has come to counterattack. Using control groups, you can set up waves of attacks that will help push you into No Man’s Land. The Allies first send through a few tanks to fire, before following up with the main infantry push. But even if we make it to the trenches, the enemy will become stronger. This is where mines come in.
The Tech Tree of Great War is present at the command level, which means that as the years go by, your options will gradually expand. This is a comprehensive list that includes everything from infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft, but also espionage, economic upgrades and defensive options. Earlier in the demo, Baker selected the Death from Bottom option, which unlocks ‘Undermining’ – a literal interpretation of the concept.
(image credit: Frontier)
Situated during the pre-war phase, these mines – literally a bunch of explosives packed into a tunnel dug under enemy lines – will now make their presence felt. The explosion cuts off the enemy’s attempts to reinforce, and also takes out some artillery, lessening the pressure on us to push into No Man’s Land. This is further facilitated by our own artillery, which is now firing a rolling barrage that hits a smoke screen to obscure our troops.
As our soldiers begin to filter into their line of trench, the battle changes. With the Reinforcement Cut Off, we are able to start clearing the stretch of trenches using our experts, who followed behind the main push, to make the most of our profits. The skirmish is over, and we occupy the control point with little resistance.
Fighting can continue at this point, but the Allies call for a ceasefire to accomplish the objective – ending the fighting and, thus, the mission. The result is a major victory – a control point was captured and the Central Powers suffered heavy losses. But even a minor victory will have an effect on the national will. At this point in the game, it is 1916. However, as the years go by, that effect on the national will will become more and more apparent until eventually you are facing heavy penalties. “Because sport is based on national will, there is a definite end,” Baker says.
(image credit: Frontier)
With careful, tactical play, you can only extend the war to 1919. First, if a player is playing a certain way he can theoretically increase it.”
There is an inherent danger in basing your game on World War I. Even so, it is depicted as a war of marginal gains and losses that add up over the years until one side has the literal will to fight it drains. But Petroglyph is focusing on the right things—the ruthless battle of tyranny, the technological arms race, the years of destruction being written down the battlefield itself. It’s annoying, but cleverly charming: an RTS where there’s no real winner, only the side that loses the most.
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