Empires in Arms is the computer version of Australian Design Group classic board game. Empires in Arms is a seven player game of grand strategy set during the Napoleonic period of 1805-1815. The unit scale is corps level with full diplomatic options
Considering the problems when GB reaches naval dominance by destruction of the Sp, Ru, Fr- fleets (not necessarily all of them) how do people handle this (apart from Sp, Ru, Fr watching out for their fleets safety, which doesn´t work all the time).
In the group where I am playing now (ftf game) we play with two rule modifications:
GB cannot subtract political points from another MP.
A version of the continental system (modification of the rule found on the yahoo empiresinarms group) where GB loses political points if he can´t find enough trading partners.
Well yeah there's 3 aspects to this problem. The first is that unlike France or anyone else for that matter, GB can achieve complete AND lasting supremacy and put a deathgrip on the game, because of the difficulties from recovering from a major naval defeat. As a matter of fact, it happened in a majority of the games I played - even if no one in my circle of friends played GB more than once. Another factor is players mistakes; Spanish fear of the french, or the fault of the French player for being too agressive and pushing Spain away. Another common mistake I've seen is a mentally landlocked Russian - seeing his future exclusively in central Europe. Finally, GB by removing vps can make being part of an hostile coalition unattractive.
Taking GB's ability to remove vps is an excellent idea I think. It's a bit silly that GB can threaten to become so strong that only a coalition can defeat it, and at the same time even through defeat being able to deny victory to one or more major powers through the use of this rule. In other words, since GB is the only power that can hope to translate significant military success into a quasi certain victory, it shouldn't be so costly to be part of a coalition against what is in many ways the most powerful country - even if it's historically realistic.
