Minor nation garrisons

[Dancing Bear]

Hi all
the number of minor nation garrisons is creating a problem with the maximum number of units. The original EIA did not allow minor nation garrisons outside their home territory, and we could avoid this problem if we stuck to the original rules. Some players like the ability to place minor garrisons outside their home country, but perhaps this is unbalancing, giving a big advantage to countries that typically have free states (i.e. France, GB, and Turkey) to the disadvantage of the players that don't typically have free states (Austria and Prussia).
Do you guys think that the ability to put minor garrisons outside their home country unbalances the game?

[Marshall Ellis]

DB:

I never thought about that difference but that would certainly help diminish the max unit issue!I guess I should change this back to the original EiA?

[Dancing Bear]

Well, some players really like this ability, so I'll let them jump in. I for one could do without it.

[Marshall Ellis]

I actually like the ability as well BUT if it's not true to EiA then I should recall it (I would think?) AND it could help solve a unit max issue.

[obsidiandrag]

I like being able to drop garrisons from minors.. Prussia however should go into the other catagory as they start the game with a freestate minor - and Austria only frees them if they can get a fleet out of it ..
 
I would suggest another option in the option window for allowing them to be dropped or not (thus taking care of both sides of the debate before it even begins..) 
 
BUT
 
That would mean having a fix for the number of units (Unless you changed the garrison to only allow one nation OR minor in each city.) and on creating a free state repatriate the regular infantry automatically so you do not run into this as much.  That is usually where I end up with the extra units anyway - and will go through later removing garrisons where there are multiple nations to allow for additional garrisons other places when needed (to get around the error)
 
OD

[Jimmer]

Optional rule 12.3.8 allowed minor free state garrisons outside of their minor nation borders. Judging from the rule itself:
 

12.3.8 DETACHING/ABSORBING MINOR FREE STATE FACTORS: If players wish to allow free state factors to be detached as garrisons outside of the free state's borders, they may do so, but the players must keep side notes on the nationalities of garrisons, mark nationalities on grey garrison/strength counters placed outside of a free state's borders or make their own garrison/strength counters for the various possible minor free states

 
the game designers seem to have made the other (non-optional) rule simply because there was only one color for counters for all minors. In the computer game, such a reason does not exist.
 
I have no problem with allowing minors to garrison places outside their home nation.
 
If you want to solve the max # of factors problem, increase the limits. Don't put silly restrictions back into the game just for that.

[Grognot]

Implement the "no reinforcements unless can trace supply back to corp's nation" rule and much potential cheese probably goes away simply because of the depot limits and costs.

[pzgndr]

Optional rule 12.3.8 allowed minor free state garrisons outside of their minor nation borders. Judging from the rule itself...
the game designers seem to have made the other (non-optional) rule simply because there was only one color for counters for all minors. In the computer game, such a reason does not exist.

This begs the question whether optional rules implemented in EiANW should be defaults or game options players select at start. It makes some sense to have many of these rules as defaults where virtually all players are using them, but maybe a survey is needed to verify? For instance, are there players who do not use the guard commitment option or should that be standard?? One reason to minimize the number of game options is to help minimize the amount of AI coding for how the computer opponent reacts under different rule sets. Just a thought.

For minor country colors, it would be good to have them as a subdued color of the MP controlling them.

[Dancing Bear]

This might be a good compromise. Or simply, no more garrisons than the number of mp each minor has (or many three times the mp). As pgndr points out this is an optional rule in the original EIA, so maybe it should not be the default setting.

Jimmer, I do think uncontrolled minor garrisons is unbalancing, and gives certain countries a significant advantage towards the second half of the game.

ORIGINAL: Grognot

Implement the "no reinforcements unless can trace supply back to corp's nation" rule and much potential cheese probably goes away simply because of the depot limits and costs.

[Jimmer]

ORIGINAL: Dancing Bear
Jimmer, I do think uncontrolled minor garrisons is unbalancing, and gives certain countries a significant advantage towards the second half of the game.

True. But, it comes at a price as well (they tend to have a lot lower morale than their controlling major).

But, it tends to free up home nation troops, which means bigger corps in the overall army, etc.

I agree that it should be an option, just like in the original. But, I wouldn't put a priority on making it that way. The "too may factors" design flaw needs to be fixed either way.

[Grognot]

On a related note, I'm thinking that perhaps we should allow Turkish feudal infantry to be in garrisons. I see three possible general classes of why the board game does not permit this:

1) bookkeeping; one must carefully track which corps are thus reduced, and apply special rules regarding stand down / mustering, to prevent the obvious abuse of generating infinite feudal garrisons

2) capability; there could be some doctrinal / ToE / etc reason why feudal levies were completely unsuited towards garrison duty, but I don't happen to know one (and haven't really studied the early-19th-century Turkish military, so it's unlikely that I would know). Perhaps they were not sufficiently trusted to operate as a detachment away from corps HQ.

3) balance; if this were judged to be bad for game balance.

As-is, Turkey is somewhat shafted in the garrison department because feudals can't garrison and Turkey can't recruit militia, and if we prevent minors from garrisoning then that leaves their rather few infantry corps. If the reason is mostly #1, that is theoretically solvable considering that we're using computers. It might require a change to existing data structures, because the present system needs to track nationality and factor type but not the originating corps. But if we track that, the game could permit the detachment, and then require removal of all (surviving) related detachments before allowing the 'new' corps to be put back on the board. Alternately, it may be thematic to require that the garrisons stand down before the corps is (although logic that forces this, raises the question of whether the garrisons should auto-die if the related corps is destroyed by other means, as well. Hm.)

[Dancing Bear]

Right now, the Marshall can probably fix the max limit problem quickly by removing the ability to add free state minors outside their own free state. This is the quick fix. Anything else is going to take a while.

If we want an option to place minor garrisons outside their home country in the short term, it will be without a fix to the max limit problem. Players selecting to have the option to place minor garrisons outside their free state can do so on the understanding that at some point the unit limit is going to be reached.

Players who made this choice will know what they are getting into and live with consquences (Players apply some self regulated guideline to prevent this from happening). Players who select not to allow free state garrisons outside the free state won't have to worry about it.

[Dancing Bear]

Grognot
probably your feudal garrison idea should go in its own thread. Can you re-post it, and let players comment on it seperately?