Ralegh Guides

[Ralegh]

[contributed by jchastain] For any who missed this burried in another thread, I played around with waste a bit and here is how it seems to work...

First, waste is a result of total production ONLY. It is not impacted by number of provinces, level of feudalism, or anything else.

Next, waste does not seem to impact labor, food or (strangely) wool. (Wool is especially strange since cotton does experience waste - bug?).

There is a threshold level of production for each remaining item below where waste is created. For most items it is 10. For Iron and Cotton, it is 20. So, there is no waste at all on the first 10 of everything produced and the first 20 of iron or cotton produced.

For any production above that threshhold, waste is set at 50% for everything EXCEPT textiles - they experience waste at 90%. So, if you produce 24 horses, the first 10 are below the threshold. The next 14 experience 50% waste so you lose 7 of them to waste.

For any production above 3x the threshold, you lose 90% waste. So any production above 30 for most items and any production above 60 for Iron and Cotton experiences extreme (90%) waste. So, if you produce 40 horses, the first 10 experience no waste, the next 20 experience 50% waste so you lose 10 of them, and the remaining 10 produce 90% waste so you lose 9 more for a total waste of 19. (Textiles waste 90% all the time so the step up doesn't impact them).

[Ralegh]

Some notes from Alaric_31, whose research gives some indicative numbers of how the economy changes with different difficulty and power settings. (Power also impacts starting forces.)

[Using France in 1805 - standard scenario]

Minimum Difficulty (Easiest) and Maximum Power (+3) give a tax income of 1289$
Mimimum Difficulty (Easiest) and Lowest Power (-3) give a tax income of 407$

Maximum Difficulty (Bonaparte) and Lowest Power (-3) give a Tax income of 297$ Maximum Difficulty (Bonaparte) and Maximum Power (+3) give a tax income of 959$

It affect to resource productions as well, but this settings by the designers give a great variety of difficulty levels, very good thing, i think. People that go to bankrupt can try tweaking this settings for a more easy play.

[Ralegh]

On another thread, Naomi said:

A funny thing to add. I had ordered a corps to pillage in an enemy's city before I accepted this enemy's surrender. The corps was sent home to pillage a couple of developments of my land. :p

ericbabe responded with a wonderful tip:

Once the troops get the lust of pillaging in their veins it's hard to cool them down! I wanted to allow pillaging of home territory (for a few reasons) but maybe something can be done to turn off the pillaging order whenever units get shunted home after a war.

This is similar to the results Austria sometimes gets when France surrenders and all the Austrian troops are moved to the closest Austrian province... Tyrolia... and have to forage there because the player didn't know he'd need a depot there. When France gets close to surrendering, I've taken to building a precautionary depot in the Tyrol just in case...

[ggallagher]

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

On another thread, Naomi said:

A funny thing to add. I had ordered a corps to pillage in an enemy's city before I accepted this enemy's surrender. The corps was sent home to pillage a couple of developments of my land. :p

Just think of it as intensive R&R/home leave

[jchastain]

The Ralegh guides are wonderful, but sometimes I conquered a province and was left wondering what the numbers there were like. Other times I faced a surrender and wondered which province would be a good choice for what I needed. Anyway, I took the entire Province datafile and loaded it into Excel and made myself a little cheat sheet. I just thought I'd share it here in case anyone else was interested in the same thing.

When you load, it asks if you want to enable or disable the macros. They are only used for the sort buttons so the security conscience can disable them and all you lose is the lazy sort (you can obviously still sort things yourself - sometimes it is nice to see what produces the most money or luxueries, etc). But I built them all myself so I can tell you they are definitely safe.

I originally had a page for the 1792 scenario and another for the 1805 scenario (the two that I tend to play) but I soon noticed they were exactly the same so I trimmed it down to just the one. I also originally had it printing on one page in two columns with the page landscape, but the print was so small that I finally went back and just made it two pages.

Thanks to Ralegh for pointing me to the correct file.

ZIP file renamed to a TXT for uploading. Just rename it back to ZIP to open it.

[Ralegh]

FAQ: What provinces are good at producing COULD change from one scenario to the next (there are seperate files controlling this in COG), but in fact does not - well, I have checked 1792 and 1796 against 1805, and those 3 are all the same.

[I suspect that the levels of farms and barracks etc change significantly - I am talking about the ratings for wool or iron.]

[jchastain]

It does make a certain degree of sense that the inherent capabilities of the province didn't change over a 30 year period - just the development to take advantage of those attributes. So I wasn't surprised when the numbers didn't change. I just found it interesting as the presence of multiple files suggested that they might.

[Ralegh]

ORIGINAL: jchastain

It does make a certain degree of sense that the inherent capabilities of the province didn't change over a 30 year period - just the development to take advantage of those attributes. So I wasn't surprised when the numbers didn't change. I just found it interesting as the presence of multiple files suggested that they might.

I think it is designed this way to make it easier to reuse the engine for other wars (us (un)civil war?)

[Naomi]

ORIGINAL: jchastain

The Ralegh guides are wonderful, but sometimes I conquered a province and was left wondering what the numbers there were like. Other times I faced a surrender and wondered which province would be a good choice for what I needed. Anyway, I took the entire Province datafile and loaded it into Excel and made myself a little cheat sheet. I just thought I'd share it here in case anyone else was interested in the same thing.

When you load, it asks if you want to enable or disable the macros. They are only used for the sort buttons so the security conscience can disable them and all you lose is the lazy sort (you can obviously still sort things yourself - sometimes it is nice to see what produces the most money or luxueries, etc). But I built them all myself so I can tell you they are definitely safe.

I originally had a page for the 1792 scenario and another for the 1805 scenario (the two that I tend to play) but I soon noticed they were exactly the same so I trimmed it down to just the one. I also originally had it printing on one page in two columns with the page landscape, but the print was so small that I finally went back and just made it two pages.

Thanks to Ralegh for pointing me to the correct file.

ZIP file renamed to a TXT for uploading. Just rename it back to ZIP to open it.

It would be just fine, though I habitually base my decisions first on the strategic position (how important it is for me to launch my upcoming invasion, how convenient to act as the supply source, and how defendable), secondly on the military resources (in the form of barracks and factories), and least of all on the economic details. Which, at least, saves me the trouble of full comparisons.

[Ralegh]

Actually, when you create a unit, its initial morale is based on: (a) nationality (b) level of barracks where it is built (c) unit type [lower for militia and irreg, higher for guards and lancers]. So: - sometimes you should turn a conquered into a protectorate - if it creates troops with a much higher morale... - improving barracks will help quite a lot.

To improve the morale of a division after it is built:

1. Make them have some room in the division for high quality reinforcements. As they refill the division, they will raise its morale.

2. In theory, transferring in men from a higher morale unit should raise morale to, but IMHO that feature doesn't work. [Divisions seem to keep their morale when you manually transfer men. You can 'refill' an elite Infantry divisiion from militia and its morale is unharmed! This is an exploit/bug.]

3. You can get a higher morale going into battle by achieving Empire status - that 0.5 increase is a big help.

4. In battle, rally frequently to recover morale (preferably with a leader, since they enhance the rate of morale recovery) - there are advanced that amplify this.

[Ralegh]

jchastain did a great Province Guide - consolidating the info for all the provinces.
After using it for a while I made a few changes, just to support my play
- I added the city names and sorted by them, since that is the order things come up in the development screens
- I highlighted impressive scores to let me see at a glance what I wanted to use the city for
- I marked cities who are pretty worthless (candidates for trade)
- I added a column identifying all countries who have a political goal for that province [this last column is 1805 specific]

Its available at CLICK HERE in cause anyone else would like a look.

[jchastain]

Very nice job on the Cheat Sheet Ralegh (as always). Thanks.

[Ralegh]

[Cross post from another thread]

The manual is confusing on this - partly because it seems to give us extra information we don't get for other goods, and partly because it just ain't clear.

Each province has independant values for the production of wool, cotton and textiles. Wool values are 0, 1 or 2 (except for Flanders which is a 4). Cotton is much scarcer, mainly being produced in North Africa (some 1s and 2s, and a 6 and 8 in Egypt). Textile capability is well spread, with half the provinces a 1 and half a 2 - everyone can produce Textiles - (plus Picardy as a 3).

The more labour you allocate to "textiles", the more of each of these is produced. Labour allocated to other areas does not help at all. Provinces that do not put any people to work on textiles do not produce textiles.

Note that the total population of the province has a very large effect on textile production (as opposed to some others where it is a smaller effect).

Note that if the textiles for a province says +6, the national stock may have gone up +12. I dunno why.

Wool and cotton are affected by FARMS; Textiles are affected by FACTORIES.

Some provinces produce textiles, but do not produce much if any wool or cotton (for example, Krakow and Normandy are both 0 0 2 provinces). If lots of people work on textiles in these provinces, they will be drawing down on the national stockpile of these products to produce the textiles. This is more likely to happen in provinces with lots of factories and few farms.

In general, the game produces many more wool and cotton than countries can convert, and we end up with all players having large surpluses. The AI is willing to trade for the stuff anyway (darned if I know why), so trade off lots of wool for stuff you actually need.

I had a theory that if you had lots of wool and lots of cotton, people would be more productive of textiles, giving some impetus to the 2 being seperate things in the game. I have not been able to prove this to my satisfaction, however - and accordingly, I currently think that these are completely interchangable within the game system, and can be thought of as one resource.


Finally:
- textiles suffer more from waste than anything else - the 90% loss rate cuts in much earlier. That means you need to work harder to get 'em. [I often do lots of manually trading to collect extra textiles.]
- textiles have a special barrier - textiles produced that would put your stockpile over 100 are consumed by the population for no benefit to you. If your textiles gets over about 80 spend em [unless you are saving up for something that costs 100] - better to have the build order sitting in a queue than to lose textiles to the darn populace!

[EarlPembroke]

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

jchastain did a great Province Guide - consolidating the info for all the provinces.
After using it for a while I made a few changes, just to support my play
- I added the city names and sorted by them, since that is the order things come up in the development screens
- I highlighted impressive scores to let me see at a glance what I wanted to use the city for
- I marked cities who are pretty worthless (candidates for trade)
- I added a column identifying all countries who have a political goal for that province [this last column is 1805 specific]

Its available at CLICK HERE in cause anyone else would like a look.

This is fabulous. One question, though. Galicia, with Lemberg as city, appears twice with different values, and both with glorification by Spain. Which one is with the city of Corunna?

EDIT: OK, I think it must be the second one because the first has specialties in luxuries and wool as the one in Poland (Lemberg) does.

[Ralegh]

Well caught sir. I only found this a couple of days ago myself, while doing up some goals lists for 1792 (they are a little different). I''' get a fixed and amplified version up - on the weekend maybe.

[Ralegh]

In COG 1.1 there are a few province wierdness (well, they seem wierd to me) [note: under the hood anything that can have troops of its own is called a player, and any territory on the map is called a province - a player that can have a human is called a nation]

a) There are two multiprovince players who are named after a subordinate province - Batavia (of Batavian army fame) is actually capitaled in Friedland, and Morocco is capitaled in Oran. To conquer or liberate etc go for the regional capital, not the province that just happens to have the same name as the player.

b) Several players have a different name to their province (besides the ones referred to above) -
-- Tripoli becomes Tripolitania
-- Venetia becomes Veneto
-- Zealand becomes Denmark
-- Lower Egypt becomes Egypt
-- Krakow becomes Poland in 1792 (and Krakow the rest of the time)
-- Pest becomes Hungary
-- Banka becomes Algeria
-- Damascus becomes Syria
In these cases, the player name and the province name can be thought of as interchangable.

c) Berg and Sicily, while they can be players in their own right, start as subordinate provinces of other players. That can mean that ceding or liberating the larger player will detach them. Similarly, Poland in 1792 starts with half a down subordinate players: you can seperate 'em.

We are using this info to help figure out whats wrong with multiprovince players, and what the expected behaviour should be.

[Ralegh]

[someone asked for this on a thread somewhere, so here it is]

First, a table, then I will discuss it, and finish with some tips.

[Ralegh]

Who Needs to Ratify
Sometimes the object of a treaty clause must ratify the treaty too - for example, if France makes a treaty with Austria for Austria to give a province to Britain, then Britain gets a chance to ratify or decline the treaty. Note that their desicion would apply to the treaty as a whole, not just the clause relating to them.

On the other hand, if France requried Austria to give Britain money (with any of the payments clauses), Britain doesnot get a chance to decline.

Date Funnies
Most clauses have a start date, which is when they commence. Typically that date is a few months in the future, since it will take 2 months for the other side to get the treaty and ratify it, and then implement in the following turn. You can specify dates, which could be useful - for example:
- I just won a war, so I am going to get 12 months of enforced peace. So I will schedule some more enforced peace to start 12 months out
- To make sure the other guy has the cash to give me, I might make them pay me 750 (or some other number) each year for the next 5 (however many) years

Sharing depots lasts for the duration of the treaty - so if everything else happens immediately, you get 1 month. Put in a nice long clause into such a treaty (like promising to respect the neutrality of some place ont he other side of the world).

Valuation
When you make a treaty as a result of surrender, the valuation process is obvious: you can watch the available VPs go down with each clause and see the impact of changing clauses. The same actually happens "under the hood" in treaty negotiations with the AI. A human player doesn't have to get anything back in a treaty - but the AI needs to get at least as much as they give.

With the AI, it will assess the value of the things the treaty gives it, as opposed to the cost of the things the treaty would cost it. There are a number of other factors that impact the valuation - your current relations with the AI matter (both alliance and relationship). In more complex assessments, the AI might not be willing to declare war on a particular nation no matter what you offer [it is cheaper if they hate the nation in question].

Dishonouring a Treaty
If you make a treaty provision for an action that cannot be legally carried out when the time for it to happen comes, then the other side will be forced to dishonour the treaty. For example, if you promised to cede province x, but it had already been ceded to another player [often happens during surrenders to multiple powers]. Or you promised money, and dont have any. Or my personal favorite - you promised to decalre war, but when the time came you were prohibited from doing so (either because of mandatory peace, because you are allied, or because you are war with someone who the proposed enemy is also at war with, as 3 examples).

Every turn that you break a clause, you suffer a glory penalty. Note that this may require you to lose glory every month (trading despite an embargo for example, or failing to pay reparations), or might just be a one-off hit (failing to cede a province).

You can also choose to break a treaty by going to the treaties screen and pressing the cancel treaty button. This might actually be cheaper in glory than suffering repeated penalities for a clause you cannot satisfy.

Treaties with Enemies
In COG 1.1, if you propose a treaty to someone you are at war with, it is automatically cancelled, regardless fo contents - they don't even read the mail. In COG 1.2 (in beta as I write this) we are hoping they will read a treaty as long as it contains a peace proposal...

Secret Treaties
The manual says that breaking a secret treaty costs less than breaking a public treaty - but why would I care?
Against the AI, I don't think you would care (while I may be wrong, I have always assumed the AI knew about all treaties). I don't think the AI offers to make any treaties secret (although it will accept such offers from you).
Against humans, a secret treaty means they wont be able to see it. Rumours may leak, but...

So:
(A) Against AI, always keep a watch on the treaties screen - you may see other countries doing deals to attack you!
(B) Against humans, consider whether there might be benefit in the others not knowing the precise details of the deal...

Final Comments
The AI's evaluation of your friendliness will go up a small amount every month that you are honouring a treaty with them. If you care what AI nations think of you, try to always have a treaty going with them.

The AI will value a non agression pact even more - sometimes when I can't get the AI to agree to a treaty where they promise not to attack me, I will give them a treaty where I promise not to attack them... They sometimes value it enough to leave me alone!

You can abuse the dishonour penalties to cripple a player's glory. Humans should be alert to the potential for this. I think it is an abuse (especially where a bankrupt country loses lots of glory because it cant make payments) - we'll see if it gets changed.

Comments/questions/etc?

[Hard Sarge]

Thank you sir

knew that would get you to give us some info

[Ralegh]

In order to be able to declare war, you must:
a) not be allied (note you can break an alliance)
b) not be under mandatory peace
c) not be under peace via a treaty (note you can cancel a treaty)
d) not be at war with any country your proposed new enemy is also at war with.

It's probably this last one you have fallen afoul of - here is an example: if France is at war with Spain, and Turkey is at war with Spain, then Turkey cannot declare war on France. If Turkey made a cease fire with Spain, then they would be allowed to declare war on France.

After you have declared war on a country, you also won't see declare war on the menu anymore, even though the rest of the menu seems relevent to being at peace, not to being at war: thats because the war doesn't take effect until orders are implemented.