How do you play?

[Ralegh]

ORIGINAL: Tigleth Pilisar
1) I built a corps and ordered it to move two provinces away to where my armies were. Next turn it was gone! Figured out that if you build a corps, you better get someone in it fast or it is gone and you just wasted your build!!!

An empty corps will be automatically destroyed if it either (a) moves into an enemy province or (b) gets attacked by an enemy division.
In v1.1, corps obey reinforceto commands fromt he city, which can easily led to their death - in v1.2 they dont anymore, thank goodness.

2) I've kind of lost interest in the economics side of the game, as I've played. It seems more interesting to move the armies and fight. I think I'm missing out though. It just seems too time consuming to move through all the provinces and trial and error see where you might have more resources. Economically I do think it is important to "build for a goal".

One thing which would help is saving the frozen labour allocation sliders on each province. What I mean is that when you first review a province, you might determine that this province should not produce wood, or that it should produce textiles for example. When you right click, you freeze the production such that if you move other sliders it doesn't affect the one you set. However, if you change the province, the red square around the labour allocation you made moves to the next province!? Wierd. Why doesn't this lock stay associated with the original province? That way it would be easier to cycle through my provinces and see maybe the handful of provinces that I have not locked say agriculture and am willing to change it. Plus it is frusterating that when I decrease, say textiles, that labour piles into say iron which the province is pitiful at. If iron was locked out, that wouldn't happen - but I'd only want to lock it out once, not every time I clicked on the province.

That an interesting idea for a UI change - will bear it in mind.

3) I guess I think it is kind of strange that my population steals textiles. (In order to get morale and glory). What if I want to build a diplomat or something that takes lots of textiles? My population happily consumes to excess, but I want to build inventory.

This is a pain in v1.1 and gets a little better in v1.2. Learn to live with it.

4) I've found that I end up building up inventory of certain resources like iron or wood. I wish I could trade my inventory for things I need and not just production.

This is an idea that has come up before, but we are unable to find any historical references to real bulk trading, and so the designer (Eric) isn't convinced it should be added as a feature. Personally, I think you should be able to have a clause in a treaty for once off bulk transfers - that way you could "trade" access for a load of iron, for example. Its on my list of desired features for the third patch - we'll see what Eric decides when we get there. [The third patch will be quite feature rich.]

5) I'm unsure about the wool/cotton/textile connection. I think I read that wool and cotton is converted to textiles at a population x trade labour / 50 rate. What is trade labour? Does that mean your production of wool & cotton? Or how much is on the labour slider is your trade labour? Do you need an equal amount of wool and cotton, or are they the same thing? I think wool and cotton inventory was building up for me. How is that possible if it is supposed to be converted to textiles.

This is confusing in the game in v1.1 - we are trying to make what happens more obvious in v1.2.

Workers set to textiles are what it means by "trade labour" - go figure. Basically, everything is produced based on an intrinsic rate for the province, but textiles require that there are cotton and wool available, which get consumed from either this turns production or the stockpile by the creation of the textiles. Each worker trying to make textiles can work on 2 wool and 1 cotton simultaneously, so you are best off to have both in your stockpile.

In v1.1, too much of some resources is being produced, and too little consumed, so most players end up with huge stockpiles of wool (and some of cotton too). This is rebalenced in v1.2 to have the availabilty of the raw materials more of a constraint.

6) Privateers - not sure how to use them. Just sit them in the water somewhere there is a trade route? They can't attack merchants can they?

Yep - just plonk em somewhere, and they do their thing. They do siphon off some of the trade from merchants, although they dont actually initiate battle against them. (They even hurt your own merchants!)

7) Surrender. I haven't played a whole game but other nations have surrendered and had to give up stuff. Are they back in the game then? Fully operational except for the treaty terms? How are existing treaties with a country that surrendered affected?

When any country surrenders, it takes a glory hit, gets treaty conditions applied to it, and its NML changes (may go up if it was very negative). Existing treaties are unaffected.

[Azog]

Tigleth, as I am bored as hell at work, I will try to respond some of your question, out of some experiences.
1) Corps, Armys. Yes, be carefull. If you move them into the enemy, they dissapear. So just dont move them, and put first some division inside. It is the safest way.
2) Never give up. Just try it. It is funny. Look at your economy report, try to reduce waste, try to find compromises. You cant get all what you want, but if you try it hard, you may get what you need... (was it Rolling Stones, again?)
3) Population stealing textiles. I wouldnt look at it like stealing, I would rather look at it as a way of the game for avoiding maximizing everything, like in games as Warcraft, Comand and Conquer and so on. In the reality, now, year 2005, production in the countries are far away from perfection. Some countries are suppoused to build humvees with better armor, and they dont do so, and lots of money and amunition just disappear. Even russian soldiers sold weapons to the chechenian insurgents. 200 years ago must have been hell for an economist to track something down.
-4) and 5)... will rather let the profesionals answer...
6) Somewhere in Raleghs Guide is written where you can place the privateers... or where did I read it? Anyway, there are places where you can get more money than other. You can attack mercants, only if you are at war with the mercants nation. Just look for them.
7) Surrender. Sure they are back. You can also surrender and end winning the way. Sometimes, like with Autria in 1805 it is even a good option. As France in 1805 you just have to try to avoid that the Austrian surrender too soon. You want to absolutely destroy them. I think you should take a look at the official Manual, at the ending of the document, where the strategies are explained.

[Ralegh]

ORIGINAL: Tigleth Pilisar

Two other things struck me as a newbie:

Ha! You can't fool me! There are more than 2 items in the list below!

1) I expected to see a unit cost chart. You have one on page 28 of the manual but its missing reference to developments! So early on, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't build corps. Or to piece together how to build artillery, I have to read page 28, then read the page on factories then read the page on baracks.

I could say the manual sux, but since I reviewed it and didn't catch this issue, I won't. You are right. I;d actually like to see this information ingame.

2) I would have never guessed that the provincial "reinforce to" thing meant where new units you build go. (Obviously from my question). I never would have guessed that you could move them the turn before they were built.

3) I thought there would be a unit damage or atribute chart. I guess in the games I've played (whether it is a RTS computer game or an old board game like Squad Leader or Third Reich) it is pretty clear how effective a unit is at attacking and defending. I really have no idea what units do for damage. For example a rifle infantry gets +2 attack bonus compared to a regular infantry. +2 attack from what base? 10, 100, 1000? +2 has no meaning for me. Also, prior to an attack, many programs/games give an approximation of the damage they will cause or odds of success (Panzer General series did this and Strategic Command by Battlefront does this). I don't see any assessment of damage prior to making the order. This probably sounds funny to you because I would guess as you racked up tons of trial and error experience you would know this yourself. But, if you don't have a ton of time for trial and error, you can't make very informed detailed combat decisions.

The probability of doing damage is 100%. The amount of damage done is based on complex calculations based on a historical damage analysis, affected by a myriad of different issues (weather, morale, formation, terrain, etc etc etc). The historical analysis results in a probability curve of the likelihood of different amounts of damage being done...

The +2 stuff is for quick combat, which is a simplified battle resolution system. Although it isn't at all true, think of +2 as on a 1-10 scale: that will give you the best feel for it.

4) The "best resources" indicators make the game very confusing. I asked before about what a 1 or 8 or 16 meant for the province's production rating. It turns out that it is kind of meaningless to a user, but is more of a programming number. Obviously the bigger the better, but numbers are specific. Just say bigger, or lots or something rather than 16. What is really confusing though is I think on some screens the computer aggregates these production ability numbers and on others it aggregates actual production. I haven't audited it but usually notice that the resource additions/changes on the Trade screen seem different than the Development screen. I don't know what is included in what. And is food inventory at the bottom of the screen?

1) The economic reports are extremely confusing in v1.1 - some are before waste and some after, some are last months actuals and others predictions for this month - I can't reconcile em, and I don't know of anyone who can. Please save yourself some frustration. Eric has promised (a) to make the reports more comparable in v1.2 and (b) to publish an economy whitepaper with v1.2.
2) The "best resources" rating is a crock. It is a simple assessment of that province, omitting agriculture and labour, without any absolute meaning at all. Use my numbers, which are a 'crack' of the underpinning game files. FWIW, my 'conversion' of those numbers into ratings appears at the bottom of my Consol Province List, and shows that:

food, 10+ is outstanding
timber, wool, spice and luxeries 3 or more is outstanding
for the rest (wine, horses, iron, cotton, luxeries), 2 or more is outstanding.

Then I apply some aggregate conditions:
food+wine+horses 10+ is good
wool+cotton+textiles 3+ is good
spice+luxeries 3+ is good

These are the basis for the cell colouring I use in the CPL.

[Naomi]

ORIGINAL: Tigleth Pilisar

5) I'm unsure about the wool/cotton/textile connection. I think I read that wool and cotton is converted to textiles at a population x trade labour / 50 rate. What is trade labour? Does that mean your production of wool & cotton? Or how much is on the labour slider is your trade labour? Do you need an equal amount of wool and cotton, or are they the same thing? I think wool and cotton inventory was building up for me. How is that possible if it is supposed to be converted to textiles.

I would like to add my findings in this regard. In some provinces, only wool and cotton are produced. It may be because some of such provinces are strong just in agriculture rather than in manufacturing. In most others, textiles as well as cotton and/or wool can be churned. However, it seems that there is no such link between these two kinds of provinces that raw materials from one can be used in another's factories to produce textiles. It then led me to trade as much cotton and wool in those provinces cursed with the scarcity of factories as I could afford the time and patience in setting trade routes, in belief that they would otherwise just remain unused (but I was not sure if a serious effort in expanding factories would turn such provinces to employing those raw materials in making textiles). It may serve as among explanations why it is always the case that so much cotton and wool can easily pile up high in warehouses.

[tristandracul]

7) Surrender. I haven't played a whole game but other nations have surrendered and had to give up stuff. Are they back in the game then? Fully operational except for the treaty terms? How are existing treaties with a country that surrendered affected?

That's one of the features I like most in the game, that it's not the usual all or nothing approach of simply throwing armies at each other. It brings some realpolitik into play, as in history great powers seldom annihilated each other totally, especially not in the 18th and 19th century.

[Naomi]

This realpolitik operated finely at the expense of less assertive minors.

[Azog]

By the way, Naomi, have played Hearts of Iron only some few minutes, by a friend who bough it. Complex it seemed, and quite interesting, also with features like generals disobeying orders, or being simply stupid. But I cannot give you a better description, sorry.

[Naomi]

Ask your friend to drop by and share his experience. (^o^)v

[tristandracul]

This realpolitik operated finely at the expense of less assertive minors.

Didn't say that I favour realpolitik, but - as the name implies - it's reality...

Regarding Hearts of Iron or EU - played them both for a while. They have some interesting option when you look at the details (for example the arithmetics put into combat resolvement), but I'm no fan of RTS-style at all. I liked the buildup and the diplomacy, although the latter is not as complex or realistic as in CoG. The AI seems to be less sophisticated too.
Ok, you can pause anytime you want and give your orders. But when you have simultanious battles going on, you don't know where to look first. IMHO they're ok in grand strategy, but lack the control that real turn-based games give.

[soeren01]

I never really played EU, did not have the time to get familiar with the game. HOI otherwise is rather simple to undestand as it concentrates mostly on combat and not on diplomacy. For me it is a good game to relax where you don not need to think to much and it is fun to play.
I don't see HOI as RTS but rather as a game with 1 hour turns.

[Gresbeck]

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

ORIGINAL: Gresbeck

Think of it this way: a unit set to forage will always forage. A unit set to pay for supply will do so if it can (if it is next to or on a depot), but will forage if it doesn't have a depot nearby

Does that mean that a unit set to forage will never pay for supply and will suffer losses even if it is next to a depot and cannot successfully forage?

In v1.2, yes.

In 1.10, units near or at depots will always receive supply regardless of their forage/supply orders. However, setting units to "forage" will (seem to) facilitate their movement on the strategic map.

seemed odd to me

but a troop set to depot supply will try and pull from a depot, if not there, then will try to forage

a troop set to forage, will forage, or stay hungry

Thanks, but I agree with Hard Sarge that the rule seems in any case rather odd. If a unit set to forage can also be supplied, I see no reason to set any unit to supply (through foraging I can spare money and get the units anyway supplied in case of unseccessfull forage). If a unit set to forage cannot be supplied, it makes sense to set it to supply, but why shouldn't a unit be able to forage and supply? Does that simulate that a unit organized to forage cannot be prepared to receive supply? Couldn't in real life a unit forage and ask for supply?