CoG and historical outcomes

[Uncle_Joe]

I think his argument isn't that he wants history recreated exactly but rather what could be historically plausible.

Yes, I made the same argument in beta, back when the total weight of the allies would come crashing down into Spain (after making peace with France). I had a game where there were over 750,000 troops attacking Madrid and the surrounding areas. [X(]

A lot has been changed since then. I'm confident that as more reports roll in and as the system evolves, that less and less of the 'flights of fancy' type of events will be occuring.

[malcolm_mccallum]

I'm not saying CoG is a bad game. It may be a very fine game.

The problem that I have with it is that the solutions to the problems presented by the game have to be 'gamey' solutions not 'principles of war' solutions.

My natural bias is so strong that I refuse to send my Grand Armee into Tyrolia to confront the Austrians. It goes against all the principles of warfare to attack a strong foe in natural defences, especially when they have doomed themselves by setting up in a place that they cannot maneuver from or supply themselves into.

Possible Rules for mountains:
Max 4 units can fight on either side in mountains and retreats aren't required. Decisive actions did not happen in mountains.
Attrition is extremely high in mountains
No more than 2 corps can cross a mountain provincial border per turn.

Get the fights into the lowlands where they were historically.

Also, invaders should be forced to detach forces to maintain lines of communications. If you do not have forces controlling an enemy province it is simply not available as a retreat path and the entire force must be surrendered if forced to retreat.

PoWs should be releasable on parole.

Guerillas are not player controlled forces. They cannot join armies and their normal function is to drain the economy and raise the attrition rate for any armies in the area, allied or enemy. What the Spanish player can do though is convert guerillas to regular troops with time and money.

Remove the naval invasion option entirely. Allow a force to land at friendly or allied ports only. Allow forces to land at unoccupied neutral ports but this causes a declaration of war (or something).

[munited18]

I love the "no control the Guirrelas" idea!



sorry for the bad spelling!

[Uncle_Joe]

I like many of these suggestions. Some are probably not going to be viable in the current engine though.

I very much would like to see having to detach units to guard the LOCs and in fact, it was something I lobbied for long and hard previously. Currently moving long distances does not sap your strength the way it historically did (and I dont mean attrition which is a whole different animal). This is why we get some of the 'interesting' situations that we see...armies arent constrained by their historical needs so they are capable of much more movement and momentum.

Good suggestions!

[ericbabe]

Possible Rules for mountains:
Max 4 units can fight on either side in mountains and retreats aren't required. Decisive actions did not happen in mountains.
Attrition is extremely high in mountains
No more than 2 corps can cross a mountain provincial border per turn.

There are size limits in battles already, and mountains impose a hefty contribution to the limit.

Also, invaders should be forced to detach forces to maintain lines of communications. If you do not have forces controlling an enemy province it is simply not available as a retreat path and the entire force must be surrendered if forced to retreat.

We have a rule very close to this; retreating into an enemy province without one of your supply depots imposes a +35% chance that

PoWs should be releasable on parole.

Guerillas are not player controlled forces. They cannot join armies and their normal function is to drain the economy and raise the attrition rate for any armies in the area, allied or enemy. What the Spanish player can do though is convert guerillas to regular troops with time and money.

Remove the naval invasion option entirely. Allow a force to land at friendly or allied ports only. Allow forces to land at unoccupied neutral ports but this causes a declaration of war (or something).

Some of these make sense but seem to me to be much more effort to implement than they would contribute to game playability. Converting guerillas, for instance, would be 1000 lines of code, at least, but I'm not sure it would make the game that much more enjoyable to people.

If we forbade naval invasions, wouldn't people complain that they couldn't invade Egypt as France?


Eric

[malcolm_mccallum]

The size limits in the mountains aren't severe enough for my tastes.

Napoleon would invade Egypt by going there when it was neutral and then going to war on it. There's alot of things about the Egyptian campaign that skew games of this scope just as you really can't model the british destruction of the Danish fleet without twisting the possibilities of the game out of whack.

The price of allowing naval invasions anywhere anytime is that the AI thinks of the oceans as all adjacent and trivial. That's what gets your Spanish/Russian wars, I expect. If the oceans were an opportunity for Britain to land at his liesure and sack Europe, why did they fight so hard to maintain a foothold in Portugal historically? Britain's continental allies become liabilities and offer no advantages if Britain can fight the land war without them. Britain's main focus in the game should be diplomatic, preservation of their tiny army, and preservation of naval dominance. Any system that turns them into Kamikazee Vikings, however much more fun that might be for the British players, is skewed beyond recognition.

Since Austrians can currently place supply depots in French territory at will, all you do by linking depots to Lines of Communication is to allow nations with gold to throw around to run rampant. I'm assuming the ability to drop depots in places where you do not have armies currently and where you do not have LoC to your supply sources is a bug.

If reasonable guerillas are too hard to code then simply remove them from the game. Make spain attrition heavy and force invaders to garrison provinces and you've achieved the sum total effectiveness of the guerillas in any case. Sure you may want them for colour but really they were not the heroes of Spanish resistance that British legend makes them out to be.

[pfhokie]

There should be some dipomatic option to arrange prisoner exchanges between nations. This would allow the countries to relieve their burden of the POWs but also would allow them to restock their own armies.

I understand that historically prisoner exchanges did quite often occur especially on the continent. The British and the French didn't do exchanges very often but that was mostly because they were in a constant state of war for about 20 years. The rest of the European nations often came to terms and were peacefully for a limited period of time.

[ericbabe]

ORIGINAL: malcolm_mccallum
Since Austrians can currently place supply depots in French territory at will, all you do by linking depots to Lines of Communication is to allow nations with gold to throw around to run rampant. I'm assuming the ability to drop depots in places where you do not have armies currently and where you do not have LoC to your supply sources is a bug.

Depots must be able to trace a path back to a supply source that is free of ungarrisoned enemies or they are destroyed. When I play France I don't get the depot chains that other players are describing because I tend to keep some ungarrisoned units to prevent these supply chains.


Eric

[malcolm_mccallum]

I recommend you swap it around. Put the onus on the supply depot creator to have troops there, not the one owning and controlling the territory.

Destroy depots if they are in a territory that does not have ungarrisoned (why ungarrisoned? Depots were in cities, not out in the middle of a field somewhere) friendly units.

What situation are you trying to model that discourages garrisons and encourages placing depots ahead of your army in enemy territory?

[kerguelen]

Anyway, thank you for the constructive criticism. If you have any concrete suggestions for improving the AI, I'd like to hear about those too.

I think one of the major problems now (which according to Mr. Z. is going to be addressed anyway) are the goal files.
I assume that the Provence +3 glory for Austria and the Tyrol +2 for France is only to keep them fighting each other (at least Provence, but even Tyrol was only given to Bavaria in 1805 but not annexed by France). However, I (playing 1792) usually end up with AI-France getting Tyrol and AI-Austria taking Provence in the next peace. Same with Britain and their goal-provinces in northern France: they usually get them pretty early. I think the option of keeping countries independent from enemies should be used much more often as a goal (that's what RL British did; furthermore if this is the goal than a country annexed by the enemy should be liberated in the peace agreement and not annexed by the victorious nation - which has keeping them independent as goal). May be Sea-Provinces could be given some attrition level ar something else, which can only be mastered reasonable with certain naval skills (like a total amount of docks or so, giving the British a huge advantage). The AI should maybe guard supply lines (depots) better. Maybe it's also possible to introduce feudal level as a goal: one goal for all nations should be giving France a higher feudal level modelling the return of the Bourbons. On the other hand revolutionary France should want to give other nations a lower feudal evel.
Such goals should rank higher on the agenda than getting provinces additional to your national core provinces (Prussia occupies Artois, although they have really no interests there).

@malcolm_mccallum
Concerning Eu and Victoria (which are my favourite games): They have their events to keep them somehow on track. And although I liked this idea in the beginning (EU2 was the first strategy game I really played, most others I couldn't even stand the demo), you realize the serious shortcomings after some time (insufficient triggers, advance knowledge). So from this point of view CoG is a completely different game.
AI not caring about their supply lines: Thats also very common in Victoria. Seems to be difficult to teach such things to AI.


So in total I really like CoG and I think those problems can be addressed. Especially games like this can show a lot of different weird outcomings and it might be difficult to find all those during Beta-testing. That's why there is usually a lot of feedback from players and lots of patches after the publishing of such games.

(Besides, what I liked better about Victoria were the more accurate province borders. It was possible to give my country a historical national shape. Bit i could be much worse I have seen screenshots from Cossacks2 and Imperial Glory campaign maps [:@])

[Malagant]

Maybe it's also possible to introduce feudal level as a goal: one goal for all nations should be giving France a higher feudal level modelling the return of the Bourbons. On the other hand revolutionary France should want to give other nations a lower feudal evel.
Such goals should rank higher on the agenda than getting provinces additional to your national core provinces

I really like that idea!

[malcolm_mccallum]

Maybe the feudalism can use something already there: Nationalism.

Give a bit more of a trade-off for high and low nationalism and maybe tweak it so that autocratic nations can't afford to let their nationalism get too high.

[kerguelen]

Give a bit more of a trade-off for high and low nationalism and maybe tweak it so that autocratic nations can't afford to let their nationalism get too high.

Sounds really good. Would model the situation of Austria pretty.

[kerguelen]

...well.

[Jabba]

If we forbade naval invasions, wouldn't people complain that they couldn't invade Egypt as France?

There were several significant naval invasions or planned naval invasions in the Napoleonic Wars. E.g.

British/Russian expedition to Holland 1799
British invasion of French-occupied Portugal 1808
British expedition to Walcheren (attack on Antwerp) 1809

And what about the two years the Grande Armee spent encamped at Boulougne (1803-1805) waiting to invade England!

[malcolm_mccallum]

ORIGINAL: Jabba

If we forbade naval invasions, wouldn't people complain that they couldn't invade Egypt as France?

There were several significant naval invasions or planned naval invasions in the Napoleonic Wars. E.g.

British/Russian expedition to Holland 1799
British invasion of French-occupied Portugal 1808
British expedition to Walcheren (attack on Antwerp) 1809

And what about the two years the Grande Armee spent encamped at Boulougne (1803-1805) waiting to invade England!

Yes, these were examples that needed to be considered when I came out with a sweeping 'no naval invasion' suggestion.

1799 the Dutch were allied to the British. Valid under my proposed system.
1808 landing in Portugal needs some tweaking and interpretation. Though Portugal was occupied it had not surrendered and so effectively it was still available for naval landings by its ally Britain. Valid under my proposed system but would need careful interpretation of game mechanics.
1809 Walcheren is a trickier one but in some senses it shows, much like the French invasion plans for Britain, why they wouldn't be missed by removing them. It was a fiasco on every level and suggests that naval invasions into unfriendly territory couldn't hope to succeed even with naval superiority.

WWII gave us a very different perception of what could be done by naval invasion.

[kerguelen]

Yes, these were examples that needed to be considered when I came out with a sweeping 'no naval invasion' suggestion.

Maybe again a certain level of total docks (or average level of docks/province) as precondition to be able to launch a naval invasion would be a solution.

[Jabba]

Dutch were allied to France in 1799.

If the game is to resemble history, then naval invasion of enemy territory has to be an option, however difficult. If there is no incentive to camp a French army at Bologne for two years then you are simply not talking about the Napoleonic Wars we know and love! I agree it should be discouraged, e.g. through realistic supply restrictions.

France maintained fairly large forces to defend its coasts from British attack. Check out these fascinating maps of military deployments throughout the wars:

www.dean.usma.edu/history/web03/ atlases/napoleon/napoleon%20war%20index.htm - 29k

[malcolm_mccallum]

Its not so much the docks that are needed, as many of these 'naval invasions' were done on desolate shores rather than in ports (I believe).

The larger concern is the time factor. Every horse has to be coaxed onto a small boat and ferried ashore. Every soldier has to be ferried ashore in rowboats, 10 at a time or so. Blocks and tackles are being used to offload artillery and supplies. Troops are seasick and have been kept in cramped quarters for weeks on end with all the diseases and afflictions inherent in that.

You simply cannot disembark in the face of any serious threat, especially with the knowledge that you could not get afloat again if things went amiss. The local population has to be friendly or neutral to you.

It took Wellington 10 days to disembark his 14000 men in Portugal and even then they had lost half their guns and a third of his one regiment of cavalry in the process. That was with him being supplied and assisted by the locals.

[Reiryc]

It was a fiasco on every level and suggests that naval invasions into unfriendly territory couldn't hope to succeed even with naval superiority.

Wouldn't the landing of troops in long island in 1776 constitute a naval invasion?

Account:
Following the withdrawal of the British army from Boston on 17th March 1776, Washington in the expectation that Howe would attack New York which was held for the Congress marched much of his army south to that city. In fact the British had sailed north to Halifax in Nova Scotia. It was not until the summer of 1776 that Howe launched his attack on New York.

The British fleet reached the entrance to the Hudson River on 29th June 1776 and Howe landed on Staten Island on 3rd July. The Congress declared independence the next day.

Reinforcements began to arrive from Britain and Major General Clinton arrived from his abortive foray to Charleston, South Carolina.

http://www.britishbattles.com/long-island.htm



In 1776 the American army in and near New-York amounted to 17,225 men. These were mostly new troops, and were divided in many small and unconnected posts, some of which were fifteen miles removed from others. The British force before New-York was increasing by frequent successive arrivals from Halifax, South-Carolina, Florida, the West-Indies and Europe. But so many unforeseen delays had taken place, that the month of August was far advanced, before they were in a condition to open the campaign.

http://www.virtualology.com/virtualwarm ... SLAND.COM/

My point here isn't that the revolutionary battles = the napoleonic battles but rather that it is plausibile to land successfully and conduct warfare in hostile territory as demonstrated some 20 years previously.

I think naval invasions should be possible, but they should be more costly to do than they are now in the game.