AltHist-A: Shall We Try Again?

[Marshal Villars]

Rules Summary "Player Aid Card":

1.0 Definitions
Defines a few terms in the other rules, including, "home province", "conquered province", "occupied province", and "yellow card".
2.0 Setup/Special
Requires that Austria and Prussia send a cease fire request to France on the first turn of the game and that France accept it. Also requires that Austria and Prussia void their alliance with each other as soon as they are at peace with France.
3.0 Protectorate Abuse Prevention
Prevents the transfer of whole protectorates or even portions of protectorates to other players at any time. Exceptions include several Spanish and Austrian territories at the beginning of the game and the regions of Wurzburg, Salzburg, Malta, Palatinate, Kleves, Berg, Malta, Corfu. See rules for details on these exceptions.
4.0 Increased Difficulty of Amphibious Operations
Limits the number of troops at sea for any given nation (see rule for details). Limits the number of troops a player can land in an enemy controlled province (see rules for details). Requires that players wishing to land multiple units per turn in enemy held provinces "plan" these invasions three to four turns in advance with the sending of a carefully worded email to our records keeper, Gil (see rules for details). Prevents troops from being given a landing order when their ships are in bad weather. Finally, the rule lays out a big Picardy-Kent-English Channel exception to all of this.
5.0 Quick Surrender Prevention
Stipulates that the earliest a nation may put in a surrender order to any nation which had declared war on it be in the fourth month of hostilities between those nations. The war may not end earlier than this--even by arrangement. That is, once a war occurs, it must run four months before the players can agree to end it.
6.0 Surrender Knock Out Rule
Once you have surrendered to another country, you may not declare war on ANY other nation (major or minor) for the next 18 months without that player's express written consent.
7.0 Peace Treaty Changes
When dictating peace terms: 1) home provinces (those with ONLY the player's flag in them) now cost twice as much to take (see 7.1 for a list of errors made in CoG:EE and reclassification of several provinces in Russia, Prussia, Austria, Poland, and Britain), 2) Leaders now cost three times as much to remove, 3) You can now force other players to liberate protectorates anywhere on the map, 4) You can force other players to create protectorates with their own lands and even force their liberation. This process is facilitated with a special treaty mechanism/procedure outlined in 7.5 and 7.6.
8.0 Neutral Territory Violation
When surrendering to a player, you have 4 months to remove your forces from his land and then you may not enter an order to violate his neutrality for a full two months after the end of the enforced peace. Players accepting a surrender must also vacate the loser's lands within 4 months and may not enter an order to violate his neutrality for a full two months following the end of the enforced peace. The only exceptions occur if players have a peace treaty term/regular treaty term which allows for such neutrality violations. 3 months after the end of any enforced peace, neutrality violation is governed strictly by vanilla.
9.0 Declarations of War on Nations Whose Lands You Occupy
Prevents you from entering a declaration of war on any player whose lands you occupy within the first three months of an enforced peace between you. However, if he has units on your lands, even the 3 month limit no longer applies. Additionally, no one may ever declare war on Britain while they have troops in England/Scotland/Wales/Ireland.
10.0 Forager Ability Abuse Prevention
Limits most nations to 2 irregular cavalry with forager status, plus 2 light infantry with forager status. Austria, Turkey, Poland, and Russia may have up to 8 irregular cavalry and 4 light infantry with the forager ability. Spain may also have 2 regular infantry units with forager ability (since they start the game with these). Other than this, forager status upgrades are disallowed.
20.0 Player Mistakes and Redos
Lays out some guidelines for procedures in the event of player mistakes. If a mistake is discovered more than one turn after it occurred, play continues, but there may be any number of yellow cards given out by Marshal Villars for it. Any player can call out a mistake, even if it does not affect him directly.

Hope that helps everyone!

[Marshal Villars]

Hold on. Even I am confused now.

France (Mus) was to start the game going. When done with his first turn's orders, he was to send the files to EVERYONE in the game.

EVERYONE is then to use Mus's files to do their turn, including Spain (or?).

And then... ????

Heck, even I am confused now.

How does a game get started? Mus?

[vaalen]

I have edited this post because Marshal villars has already adked my first question.

My second question is:

who do I , the Ottoman empire, send my files to?

thanks,

Vaalen

[Marshal Villars]

LOL. Vaalen, that is my question exactly.

Something is not quite right here--BUT! that isn't surprising because getting a CoG:EE game started isn't easy as pie for the uninitiated. Let's let Mus help us figure this out. He is a pro.

[vaalen]

Will do.

[Mus]

ORIGINAL: Mus

Initial files sent, let me know if anyone didn't receive.

Remember that your turns go to SPAIN, which is Randomizer.

Randomizer, have you done COG EE PBEM Before? There are some threads on the subject of turn merging that are important. Apparently if you interrupt the process you get incorrectly merged turns where only Spanish and automatically occuring moves (such as stationary diplomats performing their missions and fleet intercepts) take place.

Thread about it:

tm.asp?m=2132866

READ.

[;)]

Let me know if you didn't receive the files as I sent them all out last night. You guys all send your turns to Spain, Spain merges the turn and sends ALL Files out to EVERYONE, everyone sends their turns to Spain, repeat.

IW you didn't receive your files? I sent it to the same email used for all the other games.

[vaalen]

"READ"

I did. What you do not know is that I received files from you and Randomizer, which confused me, as this is my first PBEM.

I first pm'd Marshal Villars about this issue, which resulted in his post about the subject.

What is putting the word "READ" in capital letters intended to communicate?

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Brian, I have C&P'd screenshots and running order to the 'Warning for PBEM Merge' thread, don't know who your Spain is but he, "May?", find something useful there.

All the Best
Peter

[Anthropoid]

ORIGINAL: Mus
. . . Only time I have been truly impressed by march attrition was seeing your out of supply movements through Bavaria in heavy snowstorms in no frills and getting down to 20% strength and seeing Anthropoid get wacked for 30% losses in one turn marching through similar conditions on the Russian/Prussian border in Another PBEM. Both of those were Bonaparte in some of the worst conditions possible and should have resulted in huge hits IMO . .

I think my losses in that case were actually a bit more toward 20%, perhaps 24%. It seemed like hefty toll at the time, though maybe it wasn't actually, and I seemed to regenerate it with recruits pretty quickly . . . . Mainly I would just like to see "attrition" applied across the board, not simply while Marching (albeit at a substantially higher rate while marching). It is IMO, the lack of attrition while in supply and sitting still, but the sudden onset of attrition while in supply (or otherwise) while marching that is anamolous.

In reality, even an army in IDEAL conditions, and resting comfortably in posh encampments suffers _some_ non-combat losses ("attrition" for lack of a better term, though that term is used to refer to certain types of combat losses in some historical conflicts too . . .) cooks accidentally cutting off a finger and bleeding to death; guys fighting, one getting killed and one sent to the gallows; deserters, temporary AWOLers; stevedores getting crushed by crates that tip over; infectious disease; etc., etc.)

Sure it is fine if at the "easy" end of the difficulty slider there is NO "attrition," and the difficulty slider imposes more and more "realistic" levels of attrition. Just apply it across the board, not simply to units that are moving, and also consider applying it to naval units and even (perhaps) to civilian populations that are "under stress" (ones hosting large numbers of foragers, plunderers, besiegers, blockaders, maybe even ones that have agriculture set very low [and consequently are getting food through trade with neighbor provinces] and suffer bad winters, etc.).

[Mus]

ORIGINAL: vaalen

What is putting the word "READ" in capital letters intended to communicate?

That everyone read the turn order I already posted and was quoting.

I think our Spain just did his turn and created an ALL file. I don't think he correctly waited for everyone's files before merging as Andrew said he wouldn't be in for awhile.

Sorry if receiving files from Spain threw you off.

Randomizer, you need everyone's turn zero files before you can do your turn and merge and take note of the thread I linked to where Kingmaker has instructions on how to do it correctly.

Bad things happen if you mess up the order.

[vaalen]

Now I understand.

Thanks for the explantion.

[Marshal Villars]

I have a feeling the word "READ" in caps was a way to draw attention to the importance of it through all of the clutter and nothing more.

[Mus]

ORIGINAL: Marshal Villars

I have a feeling the word "READ" in caps was a way to draw attention to the importance of it through all of the clutter and nothing more.

Yeah, I would have had bright flashing lights if that was possible. Just trying to make sure it didn't get missed in the clutter.

[Marshal Villars]

Please note that the living rules are always kept 100% up to date. So, the official version of the "forager ability" rules are 100% up to date. You NEVER need to wonder what is the official version and which version we agreed on. If it isn't in the "living rules" (the second posting in the AltHist thread), it may as well not count at all. The living rules are the ONLY official version of the rules.

[vaalen]

I agree. I had read the first post by Mus,l but got confused by getting Spain's files unexpectedly.

ORIGINAL: Mus

ORIGINAL: Marshal Villars

I have a feeling the word "READ" in caps was a way to draw attention to the importance of it through all of the clutter and nothing more.

Yeah, I would have had bright flashing lights if that was possible. Just trying to make sure it didn't get missed in the clutter.

[Marshal Villars]

Should have my turn in within 3.5-4.0 hours. I have been swamped with work today.

[terje439]

sorry, but slept longer then anticipated today, will reply tomorrow at aprox 1200 CET

Terje

[vaalen]

Ottoman turn 1 has been emailed to Randomizer.

[Mus]

Rule sections 8 and 9 seem extremely overly complicated and redundant. When are they going to be rewritten? I remember sending you a simple 4-5 point rule that would cover all the bases. Expanding that very slightly and providing a couple more exceptions would cover any conceivable situation in 1 rule rather than 2.

Also, rule 8.2 states that a victorious power can't violate the neutrality of a defeated power without a valid free passage treaty. My question is why not? Vae Victis! The only problems with Vanilla IMO is it allows the defeated party to violate neutrality and it allows you to declare war/surprise attack from inside territory being violated.

I think these two rules could easily be merged into 1-2 rules with 4-5 clauses and a couple exceptions or less than half what it is now. I can rewrite them and post a proposal if you want.

Edit: It was 3 points and seemed to address all aspects of neutrality violation (including an unnecessary one regarding defeated parties not being allowed to violate the victors neutrality for the purpose of prosecuting a war, unneeded with the addition of 6.0) and declaring war while violating neutrality.

[Marshal Villars]

I will take a look at them again tomorrow. I have been working on this stuff the whole day. [;)]