Good evening,

some part of it is just plain stupidity by AI, others are tweaks PDX made in recent versions. But obviously, the AI cannot handle some stuff and changes (Warfare in WWI as you all may know is vastly different than in WWII).

We played a game yesterday to test stuff out in the 1910 scenario. My friend took Germany, I took Japan (because I did not want to have as much impact on the game).
Things went the way they should an war started...and then, well...
Austria failed to beat Serbia and sent all her men there to die. The German/Russian front went into a stalemate. France was a stalemate anyways. We decided on the plan that did not pull Britain into the war. Italy joined but there is no real benefit in fighting a three font war (as it should be).
Despite my best efforts grinding myself through a third of Russia from the east AND (however that happened) Britain joined the Central Powers by event and took all her Puppets into the war, all went downwards.
The AI lost Millions of troops and yet pulled more divisions out of their back from whereever, Russia won a six-front war (against Naval Invasions from GB, Austria and Germany, Japan and the Raj and Turkey) and I really don't know how :-)

Well, that's a lie, on my part at least. Besides Japan being of no real help because it looks tremendously underpowered/weak it's all the stacking. Since recent updates of HoI there is NO benefit in offense - defense became WAY too strong. This is even more evident when fighting WWI while lacking the Breakthrough Power of tank divisions - you attack a division with ten (larger, better equipped) Divisions and while your divisions each may have 30 Attack, the Defenders stack up to 2000+ defense. This is ridiculous and gets even more of a chore if you bring trenches and forts into the equation.

Please don't get me wrong - WWI WAS a meatgrinder, offensives were hard to pull of, casulties were high and so on. I really like the idea to play alternate histories from 1910 and forth, and I like and appreciate the effort you guys put into the mod.
But as it is now, there is little to no reason to pull off an offensive war (from a gameplay point of view) because a reasonable dug in division will halt any progress.

Thanks for reading.

edit: Just for your information, I don't really know if anything changed. By luck or by skill, the first game I played with Germany I beat Russia, then Italy and then took France - last one was luck though. Italy was a chore and Russia was rather easyish...