1.04.07 Observations

[easterner]

As is my want, as soon as patch comes out I start a game.

Some Obs.

Pr AI good as usual. Au much improved.

Rs AI actually entered Sweden proper, keeping war active (awhile, eventually withdrew). It had no clue what to do, but a slight improvement. No sign of Czar sleeping in Caucasus (though he could be in hiding under a stack) Rs siezed 2 coutries there, Ignored other 2 despite a DoW, lapsed war in Chehnaya, stayed out of Georgia. Needs some more Putin in its tank it seems.

Br keeps raiding Lille and Amsterdam to ever diminishing returns. Building an army in Cardiff to no known purpose.

Tu did good job taking Egypt, been somnolent ever since. Of course I've seen humans do the same.[:)]

Sp took Morocco quick, then declared on Algeria but stopped just over border, eventuially withdrew.

Problem: (not new)

3 French skeleton corps holding Berlin with 3 leaders. Giant Pr army drops in losing battle to superior Fr. morale yet killed off corps. Game crashed to stop as unable to move any corps because of unattached leader and no corps to attach it to. Forced to refight battle a 2nd time to get different result. Need mechanism for unattached leaders to be removed from map after combat.

Has anyone ever seen a Leader killed?

AI still does not build minor Free reinforcements.

Still can't burn ships after capturing a port in which they're blocaded.

Game Change Suggestion:

Start game with Economic Phase 12/04. Then player get reinforcements earlier as War started with Br back in 1802 so no reason 4 monts go by with nothing doing.

This was a house rule we used in board game. Players restricted to Base Printed production only. No storage of unused $ or MP from this phase. Existing $ & MP from 1/05 unused and it starts in play as normal.

[easterner]

Final Obs

Completed Fr & Tu campaigns.

FINALLY saw fleets burned after fall of port.  No effort to fight either.

Still haven't seen leader killed.

AI starts strong, grows weak after 2nd year. Gets catatonic frequently, parks armies somewhere and does nothing with them.

Still too many DoW on minors w/o then crossing border. Algeria, Chehnaya and Oldenberg all DoW then not attacked in Tu game. Spain sends too few troops against Morocco and if loses battle never re-inforces despite army snoozing in Spain.

[MarshallEllis]

Appreciate the observations, easterner. I too agree that it does tend to stale out after a while. I'll be playing some deep games (1809+) to see why the AI tends to stale  out.
 

[easterner]

Thank you Marshall E.
 
Each patch has improved the game.
 
Combining some sequences does indeed sound like a good idea for PBEM

[Grognot]

Played first game in very, very long time, using 1.04.07.  Solo campaign as France, heh.

Some observations
------------------
- Naval bug:
If you attempt to move a blockaded fleet into an adjacent sea area with an enemy unescorted transport fleet, and you say "yes, run the blockade", you eat the transport fleet but nothing else happens -- not even loss of movement points, let alone a battle.  This should be readily testable as France early on because the British AI blithely moves an unescorted transport fleet right outside the blockade of Amsterdam (and thus within the range of the Dutch fleets).

- Naval rules: 
Going by http://eia.xnetz.com/rules/eiarules-with-errata.html

it would appear that at least in original EiA, if the phasing power has both a fleet in a port being blockaded and a fleet outside, and he moves the outside fleet into the port, *he* has the option of either being intercepted on his way in (and thus a battle without the help of his blockaded fleet, but a chance at the wind gauge), or the option of never being intercepted, joining his fleets, and (if he still has movement points) fighting his way out against the wind gauge.  EiANW does not provide this option.

- Turkey, Spain willing to ally with France; Prussia, Austria allied with each other and commonly Russia.  Good.  It would not have been entirely amiss for Turkey to have periodically asked for a modest bit of financial aid, as money is perpetually the Turks' problem and a Turkish army that can actually move instead of maximizing forage points out of penury is slightly more menacing to Austria and possibly Russia.

Similarly, if the British situation is largely static (British-and-friends fleet tied up blockading French-and-friends fleet), it might not be entirely amiss for the British player to proclaim a bounty on dead Frenchmen...

- Didn't see any unit teleportation, game crashing, hanging; nor did I see enemies blithely co-existing in provinces without battles actually happening.  Good.  The severe issues with earlier versions were a big, big reason why I preferred to busy myself with other games -- it simply wasn't fun watching critical corps teleport themselves around the board instead of fighting, for instance, or *starting* my land phase with enemy corps blithely sitting in the same non-city locations as my own.

- Limitation:  too many units.  I was a bit surprised to hit this one, as it suggests to me that the unit limit is /lower/ than it used to be -- yes, I was cheerfully garrisoning every German capital I could and used the entire French (modulo a couple of light fleets) + COTR + Poland stack + other minors, but the North African corps were pretty much still off the board and quite a few other counters had been eliminated (e.g. the entire British and Spanish fleets, the Austrian fleet, the Russian fleet in the Atlantic, a Turkish light fleet, most of the Spanish, Prussian, Austrian and Russian armies...).

- There seemed to be issues where you could 'overgarrison' (over capacity) a just-taken city in enemy territory with a mixed-nation (minors and major) force, but factors would then seemingly vanish.  Not just excess ones -- all.

- Portugal was sometimes claimed to have received +1 PP when it participated in my victorious fleet battles.  I don't recall other minors doing so, although I sometimes used the Fleet of Fleets (i.e. including representation from every minor with a fleet, other than Venice whose fleet which I hadn't yet rebuilt) and regularly used minor forces in land battles.

- Turkey was willing to go a bit further in North Africa, but "war" with Austria and Russia was mostly war-in-name-only, with the only battle being a Turkish light fleet sinking an Austrian ship northwest of Ireland.   Turkey blockaded a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, but otherwise, that was it.  Turkish troops in the Russian/Turkish/Austria border region basically didn't move, and were sufficiently dispersed that they could readily have been destroyed in detail had either the Austrians or Russians cared to do so.  They weren't even responsive when I chose to backstab them with the aim of raising the whole Ottoman legions (before realizing the unit limit).

- English fleet blockaded Dutch fleet and every French fleet; good.  Bad -- it didn't adapt to the Swedish fleet that turned French with a Russian DOW (which didn't lapse, as t Russian AI put a corps right inside the border -- good) and likewise the Portugese fleet.  It was a bit messy early on, but I was eventually able to eradicate the entire British fleet in 1806, maybe late 1805.  And the Spanish somehow managed to let the Portugese war lapse -- bad, unless this was actually a deliberate (dangerous!  a stronger French fleet means less need for the Spanish fleet...) gift to me as their ally.  Also bad for UK:  they built up their army in Gibraltar (bad, in that Spain hadn't granted audience) and Persia, once Persia became a British minor.  Persia's pretty out of the way for the British army, barring a fleet-less war on Turkey which didn't happen.

- Prussia was willing to DoW me in 1805 and Austria made no move to back him up.  That's not good for either of them.  Instead, Chas. developed an appetite for pasta as doom came to Berlin.  *Very* dangerous at that point, with Napoleon on the loose, the British fleet depleted and any survivors busy, the Spanish fleet and Turkish fleets still allied to France, and the Austrian fleet completely incapable of evacuating an Austrian stack from its attack on Naples.  Best to worry about France first since Italy can be a nasty trap.

Essentially, outside of ally calls the AIs have no notion of sympathetic DOWs.  I didn't call allies against Prussia (not like I could have expected Spain and Turkey to do anything at all against Prussia), therefore no call for Prussian allies, and the Prussian 'allies' chose to stand aside while Prussia was rapidly digested.

- Some interestingly timed surrenders occurred.  Spain seemed eager to surrender before I broke into Cadiz to annihilate his fleet.  Don't know if that was deliberate.   Austria was a bit quick to surrender, but that's not entirely unreasonable when the Russian AI wasn't lifting a finger and the beat-down Prussians were on enforced peace.

- Russia did the usual DOW w/ Sweden, took Abo, and prevented lapse by staying just inside Sweden.  It never proceeded any further, however, even once Spring arrived (thus permitting amphibious assaults from St. Petersburg to Stockholm, say).  It was willing to back up Austria against France, nominally, but never sent any help, even Cossacks, and probably should have brought his Caucasian reserves westward when I landed my troops in Abo (cutting off from supply the hapless Russian factors still in Sweden, and threatening a march on St. Petersburg -- backed by another force advancing from formerly Prussian territory).  In a later war, I was able to take Moscow without the slightest threat to my supply chain -- this is exacerbated by the fact that Karelia can be ceded and with it St. Petersburg -- or to any of my holdings elsewhere.

[MarshallEllis]

Thanks Grognot!
 
On that transport eating thingy, do you happen to have a save of this?
 
 
 

[Erik Rutins]

Thank you very much for the detailed feedback.

[Grognot]

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Thanks Grognot!

On that transport eating thingy, do you happen to have a save of this?

A naval autosave, Jan 1805; Dutch fleet. I haven't tried varying the setup to put French fleets there as well and see whether it mattered that it was a pure minor fleet pulling this. Interesting note -- the transports get eaten (still gone if one plays through to the land phase) but I didn't notice them showing up in the build lists of any French or Dutch port.

[easterner]

My biggest problem with blocades is the affect of capturing the port. The blocaded fleet 'beams' out without engaging the blockading fleet.  As Turkey I blocaded every port in Black Sea, so I think I burned fleet when Odessa fell. As French my Dutch fleet was 'burned' 3x, yet not destroyed until 3rd try.  AS Brit I just took Copenhagen and next thing I know Danes are getting intercepted by my Channel Fleet having 'sailed by' (transporter beamed more accurate) 2 in-port fleets.
 
On a related issue one of my friends suggests a pop-up box message should occur to allow interception/or not by any in range fleets in place of current order system.

[MarshallEllis]

Actually, you should see in the logs that a battle was fought and the PC resolved it.
 
 
 

[wbm4x]

Have you set the intercept orders for each fleet? When I first started playing, I didn't realize you had to manually do this, and experienced much of what you describe. After setting the orders, however, intercepts always occurred. Whether my blockading fleets actually won, was another matter. [;)]

[MarshallEllis]

Technically you only need to set the orders for one fleet in the stack. I am scanning and looking for orders, one per stack.
 
 

[easterner]

My problem is as Ellis described. The Port battle was fought 'off-camera' and when victorious the ships appeared to beam elsewhere. I was indeed able to track down the battles results as the Marshall so instructed. The need to set orders has probably tormented most of us in our early games but I figured that out shortly after the initial game release.
 
Fle

[Jimmer]

You should not need to set any orders to intercept for a blockading fleet. The fact that it is in the BB should be good enough.

[Jimmer]

I have an observation, too: Big stacks kill little stacks. The AI doesn't fully understand this principle yet (one might call it a foundation stone of the game).

Invariably, if I am playing France or GB, I can own Sweden outright if the Russians declare war on it in the winter and winter land movement is turned on (so they can only go one space). They attack with two corps into Sveaborg (Viborg?) with two corps and a leader. So far so good.

But, as any human will tell you, they should also move one more corps into the empty spot just north of the city they are attacking. This to forstall a lapse of war, should they lose the combat. But, they always leave the other two corps behind with the other leader. I suppose to save money. Well, if they wanted to save money, they shouldn't declare war in the winter.

Anyhow, so now they have attacked whatever is in that city. Well, my "trick" is that I put a FULL Swedish corps into the rural zone of that area (plus a bluff corps in each of the two capitals). And, here's where the AI almost always makes its second, and fatal, mistake: They assume I'm going to withdraw (I am guessing) and pull one of the assault chits. Well, knowing that they are coming with a force only twice my size, and knowing they have no cavalry with them, and knowing that they are going to pull "assault", I pull defend. I've got cavalry superiority, they don't get to use their leader, etc. Almost a sure thing. I've done this tactic probably 50 times, and only once did they pull any other chit. A second time, they actually break me (two sixes works wonders sometimes). However, even that didn't work for them, because I broke them the same round.

I suspect a deeper logic problem in the AI. But, a quick fix would be to make sure that, whenever possible, TWO land areas are covered in a minor that the AI is attacking. Even a 1-factor corps forces the Swedes to at least attack. On a 2-1 table (because it's forest), there's no guarantee that they will kill this factor the first round, and the aggressor has a 50/50 chance of reinforcing in for the second round.

Actually, two other things need to happen: Get a cossack or some cavalry up there to fight with, and make sure both armies that attack are decent-sized, and with a leader.

Another option, though, is possible: Bring all four corps and crush the life out of the Swedes. It's expensive, but Russia shouldn't be attacking in Winter anyhow.

[MarshallEllis]

It understands the big stack little stack since it does understand the avg factor sizes of each nation's corps BUT the risk taking is a little too high maybe??? The big stack-kills-little stacks is not always the case with the morale element in the EiA combat system.

[Jimmer]

While that is true, it is balanced off by the fact that once a nation runs out of troops, the war is over (and lost). So, crushing ones opponent, even while losing politically, has its own rewards.
 
Besides, no matter what the luck would say, the big stack is STILL going to hurt the little stack. If the little stack wins, the owner of the big stack loses more PP than otherwise would be necessary. BUT, if it WINS, it totally routs the opposition, with all kinds of good things happening after that.
 
And, in the bulk of the battles, which is more valuable: 40 factors @ 3.1 morale or 20 factors @ 3.2? I'll take the 40 every time.
 
Now, your point still deserves attention, though. Sometimes, the strategic situation requires keeping some troops in reserve. IMO, this is rare, but when it happens, a "big stack" may not be possible. But, this is a situation which a major should never find itself in against a minor "neutral".