If that is the case I would like to see specific examples. In what way would realism in the period of 1836 - 90 suffer? A lot of things in WWI was different, but an awfull lot seems to have remained the same. Infantry assaults, en masse, with bayonets and cavalry charges (even with the occational use of lances, apparently). Couldn't technology perks mold the combat gradually, leading to WWI style combat in the late game?
I will admit that my knowlege of tactics in WWI is limited at best, but it seems to me that a simulation of WWI would require little more than the simulation of trench lines from Switzerland the Channel coast. Not such a daunting task by the looks of it. Sure, the situation on the eastern front was quite different, but the question still remains: why would it be impossible to implement better WWI mechanics?
The problems is that there are, at the moment, only two ways of modelling combat in province-based games. Either combat is something that happens "inside a province" between stacks located in the same province as in EU3, or "between provinces" between armies located in different provinces as in HOI3.
WW1 was a war across continual fronts hundreds of miles long, and involved battles lasting months. The defensive power of a single army corps in WW1, and the range of the weapons they had, was sufficient to defend a province a prevent anyone entering it without a heavy battle. A WW1 general could arrange attacks from multiple directions at any point along the front, and could call those attacks off relatively easily. It is therefore reasonable to model fighting as something that happens "between provinces" using the HOI2 "move = attack" system, since this allows the pincers-movements and front-to-front battles of WW1. Since there was a limit to the number of troops that could usefully be concentrated on a single front, stacking hundreds of thousands of troops in a single province and attacking from there would simply result in many unneccessary deaths without meaningfully increasing the attacking power of the attacking force, and would also result in the weakening of other fronts. The "inside a province" EU3-style model is therefore not appropriate.
The Franco-Prussian war, fought over much the same ground as WW1's western front, involved armies of hundreds of thousands concentrated into what, in game terms, is a single province, and fighting for a day or a few days at most. No army could really defend an entire province from attack, at best they could bring another army to battle once it had entered the same area. It was not possible for an army corps to defend a front many miles long in the way you can in HOI3. During the Franco-Prussian war, to have lined the frontier with troops in the way the generals of WW1 did would have been suicidal, since they could easily have been destroyed in detail. Instead battles in the Franco-Prussian war were more along the stack model, since the range and power of the weapons used was small enough that hundreds of thousands of soldiers could line up shoulder-to-shoulder.
There is no way of easily accomodating a move=attack system and a stack-based system in the same game. Since the two options are digital with no middle position between them, there is no way of gradually transitioning from one to the other. If you try to switch from one system to another based on, e.g., technology, you will still be left with the problem that during the transition some armies will be using one system and others the other - what will happen when these armies meet?
EDIT: pretty much the same thing goes for Vicky's inability to model WW1-style naval warfare properly. Here's Podcat explaining why submarine warfare in Vicky is still impossible:
I really wanted submarines, but I didnt want half-assed submarines that were basically torpedo boats with a different name. Adding proper submarines would have taken longer than the entire expansion so it was not feasable. To work it would need:
- HoI3 style detection and sub hunting mechanics where ships need to be found randomly by patrols
- a different market and trade system where goods were transported so it could be attacked and sunk
- new blockade mechanics to make building submarines a good choice like Germany tried vs a stronger navy
If a modding group wants slightly different torpedo boats with low hull, good evasion and range they are free to do so, the system is very moddable, but I thought that to be a proper feature it should be done right
The main thing here to note is that, according to the developers, you need to go way beyond building an expansion to model WW1. You basically need a new game.
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