1792 No frills PBEM

[Marshal Villars]

One thing is obvious, we cannot expect people to do things which are disadvantageous to them just to be the "nice guy".

We have to accept the fact that CoG:EE at the moment, encourages quick surrender in PBEM mode.

Below is a method which could be the cornerstone for a system we could use for eliminating quick surrenders in PBEM. Note this is only a model for one nation versus many. Additional models should be developed for multi national complex conflict. I AM NOT SUGGESTING THIS SYSTEM ACTUALLY BE USED! I am only laying it out there, since apparently Kingmaker wasn't happy with my rational decision--or Mus's. If we want to force people to be "dumb", then we can use a table like this and work around the problem. What is below is just a rough sketch of how such a rule could work. But it could work within the framework of PBEM because I am assuming everyone is efficient in math. I don't know how we could make 100% sure that someone did the calculations 100% correctly before surrender, but it is an idea, and it is better than expecting people to "hang in there and take their lumps" like nice guys should--especially after we make fun of them for not dealing with supply in a 100% effective manner (though I had issued warnings to people I thought were my allies that I was headed for Munich and it would over-extend me so I needed their cooperation and cover...only later to discover that on the very turn I said that Prussia was taking money under the table from Britain).

1.0 SURRENDER AND THREAT RATINGS: When ONE nation is at war with ONE OR MORE OTHER NATIONS, a player may not surrender to any one of them until he compares the threat ratings of the nations he is at war with with his own threat rating.

TABLE 1: THREAT RATIOS ALLOWING A PLAYER TO SURRENDER
If your morale is 500 to 599, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is 4 times what yours is.
If your morale is 400 to 499, your may not surrender unless the threat factor is 3 times what yours is.
If your morale is 300 to 399, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is 2 times what yours is.
If your morale is 200 to 299, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is at least 1.5 times what yours is.
If your morale is 100 to 199, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is at least 1.0 times what yours is.
If your morale is 0 to 99 or higher, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is at least 0.8 times what yours is.
If your morale is -100 to -1 or higher, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is at least 0.7 times what yours is.
If your morale is -200 to -101 or higher, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is at least 0.6 times what yours is.
If your morale is -300 to -201 or higher, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is at least 0.5 times what yours is.
If your morale is -400 to -301 or higher, you may not surrender unless the threat factor is at least 0.4 times what yours is.
If your morale is -500 to -401 or higher--GET THE FLOCK OUT OF DODGE!!! WHAT ARE YOU STILL FIGHTING FOR!?!!?!?!

1.1 DETERMINING THREAT RATINGS: To determine BASIC threat factors, a player determines the glory ranking of each nation involved by using the following table.

TABLE 2: BASIC THREAT VALUES FOR NATIONS
A nation ranked number 1 in glory has a threat factor of 12 points.
A nation ranked number 2 in glory has a threat factor of 11 points.
A nation ranked number 3 in glory has a threat factor of 10 points.
A nation ranked number 4 in glory has a threat factor of 9 points.
A nation ranked number 5 in glory has a threat factor of 8 points.
A nation ranked number 6 in glory has a threat factor of 7 points.
A nation ranked number 7 in glory has a threat factor of 6 points.
A nation ranked number 8 in glory has a threat factor of 5 points.

1.2 THREAT FACTOR MODIFICATION: Once the BASIC threat factor for a nation has been determined, he multiplies it by the following modifiers to determine its FINAL threat factor for use in comparisons to determine whether or not he can surrender. Note that ONLY a-h are used when evaluating the threat value for the player wishing to surrender. ALL possible modifiers (a-p) are used when evaluating the individual threat ratings of his enemies.

TABLE 3: THREAT FACTOR MODIFIERS:
a. The nation is Spain: x0.9
b. The nation is Russia: x.1.6
c. The nation is France: x1.5
d. The nation is Britain: x1.5
e. The nation is Turkey: x0.9
f. The nation is Sweden: x0.7
g. The nation is Prussia: x1.1
h. The nation is Austria: x1.2
i. The paths between your capitals can be traced through an uninterrupted line of provinces which belong to either you or him: x1.4
j. There is no neutral territory between your capitals: x1.2
k. The nation has 3x as much money on hand as you do: 1.2 (not cumulative with l or m)
l. The nation has at least 6x as much money on hand as you do: 1.3 (not cumulative with k or m)
m. The nation has at least 10x as much money on hand as you do: 1.4 (not cumulative with k or l)
n. The nation is at war with at least one other major nation: x0.7
o. The nation is at war with at least three other nations: x0.5
p. The nation is at war with at least four other nations: x0.3

Once the modified threat values are calculated for the player wishing to surrender and his enemies and each one of his enemies, the total of the modified enemy threat modifiers is calculated and compared with the modified threat rating for the player's own nation and the ratio is determined and compared to table 1.

An example: France (glory ranking of 2) is currently at war with Britain (glory ranking of 4). At the moment Britain has 7 times as much money "in the bank" as France does. France's threat ranking base value is 11. Since only the national value is applied to the player wishing to surrender (and thus doing the surrender calculation), the French modifier c, is 1.5, giving France a modified threat value of 16.5. With a glory ranking of 4, Britain's BASIC threat value is 9. Additional modifiers (this time going down the list from a to p, since it is NOT the player wishing to consider surrender): d (x1.5), l (x1.3). Multiplying 9x1.5x1.3, we get a British modified threat rating of 17.55. Comaring this to the French value of 16.5, we get a total of 1.064. Comparing this with table 1, we see that France would not be able to surrender to Britain unless France's current morale were to be at 199 or lower.

[Mus]

Regarding Quick surrenders, I would just make it so that VPs awarded were more stable, somewhere between the range of 4-6k, I would make it so these VPs would be "split" between the victors based on their contribution, to not reward gamey gangups so much, and I would split the Glory as well towards the same purpose. I would also give a Glory and National Morale penalty to the surrendering nation if they didn't at least make a show for their national honor. This would consist of some kind of casualty threshold that had to be suffered (IN BATTLE OR SIEGE, march attrition would not apply) by the surrendering power before surrender could be given without increased Glory and NM penalties. This would be adjusted by size of the country involved, similar to the current casualty threshold for getting full VPs.

[Mus]

Austrian T32 is done. I will turn it in in the morning unless I receive frantic messages that I need to do such and such.

[montesaurus]

Ru SW and TU are in for turn 32~!

[Mus]

merged.

[Mus]

ORIGINAL: Marshal Villars

However, I surrendered to you for PURELY one reason. To teach Prussia a lesson--namely that we don't like making plans for a year and then having the rug pulled out from under us with secret treaties. By showing Prussia I was willing to accept a British imposed peace over this single principle, I will have made my point rather strongly.

How did this kind of strong arm diplomacy and waging wars to teach neighbors "lessons" work out for Napoleon?

[:'(]

ORIGINAL: Marshal Villars

In fact, I would have recommended a house rule for these things and have recommended changes to Eric and Co., including the fact that if you felt strongly about it you should be able to go back to war to keep me from attacking Prussia now

What we need is the ability to lay out clauses inside the surrender document (enforced peace with X, respect neutrality of Y, etc.) that if violated immediately result in the canceling of the 18 month enforced peace and a CB for the offended victor.

Perhaps the VPs should even automatically allocated so that a certain amount of the VPs go towards these kinds of specific clauses, with only a fraction going toward the more traditional demands, give me money, territory, reduce military readiness, raise feudal level, yada yada yada.

[timurlain]

This is an ingame Diplomacy post:

Prussia is being accused for pulling a rug from under the French feet and that being the sole reason why the French will spend the rest of their game trying to Punish Prussia.

This is simply French trying to invent a cassus belli to start another losing war for them and their allies that do get involved.

I would like to refute such statement. I was being offered a lot by the French king, but his offers tend to offer lands he doesn't control or are owned by others. (no I have no idea what would Prussia do with Corsica). The wind blows, the sun shines and the French king promises. We all have heard those promises and some of them were kept. First of all, every monarch tends his garden first, I do not tend to trust others for my wellbeing standing in front of their neither I want that. Thus the French kings speeches seemed bit too good to be true. Sit back, relax, we'll do all for ya'. Than with overy offer the lands being offered got smaller as promises had to be given to other nations and also to supply the French greed. I really didn't feel right about this. No I didn't do any backstabbing, I simply didn't want to declare war on Britain.

The French bully than kind of got scared of messing with the big boys and surrendered with and an uneasy smile and thought to himself he can beat the little kid. Well, well. We'll see to that. It may or may not happen, but Prussia will not pull her breeches before the ford is still quite far away.

[timurlain]

This is a game rule post:

Funny that you can cross your enemy lands while you have surrendered to them. House rule anyone ? Or maybe wait until we've used that tactic succesfully and than a house rule ?

I am being bit sarcastic and not just to Marshal Villars / B2 as he does have some valid suggestions for the other game rules.
One thing though. The rules should be shorter and less complicated as a quote from Pascal said "I apologize this letter is long, but I didn't have time to write a short one." I understand the complexities, but we are players, not EU farmers trying to maximize their subsidies.

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Also:
1. Spain intends to abide by the PAVNPT, and as a result intends to make Malta a protectorate. However, Malta doesn't show up in the list of countries under Details on the Diplomacy screen, so I can't figure out how to do it. Any hints? Does it have something to do with the unrest in the province?

1st off Dave, it is of course your call if you wish to abide by B2s personal 'House rule', however as the original proposal was Vetoed by Mus, and was subsequently accepted as vetoed by B2, there is no compunction for you to do so. You may not have had a chance to read the concepts behind the game set out on the 1st page, but basically there are no 'House rules' unless it's to cover for a 'Bug' which is discovered in game play, see also

tm.asp?m=2139858&mpage=2&key=

Re Malta, as I understand it, Malta was/is a part of the Papacy (you still have the papacy flag superimposed over Spains) that you have purchased off the Protectorates owner Mus, so you can’t do what you want to do anyhow, other than going to War with Austria, capturing Rome (the capital of the protectorate) and ... err [&:] , Nope, to tell the truth I ain't too sure how you would go about it from there, but suffice to say it's gonna be a wee bit messy to accomplish. [:)]

2. I am at war "Spanish Revolt", and there are Spanish guerrilla units in a couple of provinces. Do I just move and attack them? I couldn't find anything about "revolts" in the manual. Again, thanks for any help.

Yer, just go and beat the hell out of them, but don’t go in under strength, from my experience they can sometimes be awkward (there’s a Regular Div in there as well) and they don’t necessarily just lie down and ask for forgiveness, also suggest you don’t pull any Militia garrisons in the area to help, ie use your army, they can move, and may just go to ground in an empty city, which would mean you then have to siege that city.

Your Ignorant Spanish Player,
King Charles

Please don’t think of yourself as “Ignorant” Dave, the rest of us have been playing for some time now and basically all you have to do is catch up, I can assure you that most of us would freely admit that even after some time playing we can still learn things about the game, so if in doubt about anything please just ask, either here on the MBs or via direct email, all the guys, I’m sure would be only too willing to help to the best of their ability.

All the Best
Peter

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Or maybe wait until we've used that tactic succesfully and than a house rule ?

Tom are you making some obleque reference here to the "T of Marseille" were protectorate provinces were ceded between france & Spain? [:-]

All the Best
Peter

[Marshal Villars]

Kingmaker is right. No one is compelled to adhere to the PAVNPT. No one. It is all voluntary, just like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (though we do feel all civilized nations work to adhere to it! [:D]).

I would have liked to suggest a house rule limiting amphibious invasions to under 40,000 troops. But I knew this would affect Kingmaker disproportionately and simply cannot bring myself to suggest/consider it even remotely seriously because of this. I don't care how "gamey" 100,000 man invasions are, if he wants to, he can do it. I walked into the game knowing about the amphib invasion issue, but the protectorate issues have kind of surprised me.

I can tell you all that I am the designer on an upcoming WCS project, and I can also tell you that I am using this PBEM game to work hard to discover where, exactly, the holes are at which need to be patched and improved on. Furious debate is good for this. I found the number of ideas presented yesterday on the matter of quick surrenders VERY useful. So, if anyone notices that there are any loopholes which they themselves are exploiting, please tell me so I have a chance of taking care of them. However, I also do not feel it is anyone's job to be "Mr. Nice Guy" and hang in there and not do things which vanilla allows. It is perhaps through their abuse that we will learn better ways of things which need to be implemented.

Oh my. These house rule issues are all so complex. Believe me I will work to make as many changes as we see necessary in this game in the project I am on. One thing is certain is that no one should be forced to play by them, but it appears that solutions like non-proliferation treaties are the best for a game which everyone agreed was to be played Vanilla.

One thing I do believe MUST be changed it the absolute 100% inability to declare war on someone before an 18 month enforced peace is up. I will recommend strongly to Eric, that there be no immutable enforced peace, but after the first turn of surrender, I think there should be a 400 glory point penalty on the first turn for returning to war, a 366 point glory penatly on the second turn, a 366 point glory penalty on the third turn and on until a 0 point glory penalty is reached. Perhaps violations of neutrality immediately drop this cost to zero. Instead of an indicator indicating how many months he had to wait until he could declare war, a player would be shown how many points a declaration of war will cost him at that point. This way players will be able to go to war again in emergencies (such as this one between France Britain and Prussia) and they themselves can decide when it is important enough. Any thoughts on this in here? Unfortunately, for this problem, there is absolutely no way to add "house rule".

One complication with agreeing to a "nation may not trespass on the land of another nation", is that of course I took the surrender option instead of fighting on to get Britain out of Germany because I knew I could. However, I would perhaps be open to an NPT at some point.

[montesaurus]

I don't think a "glory" point penalty would suffice, for some players. There are always those loose cannons who do not care whether they win or not, but how much illogical damage they can cause!
I like the enforced peace aspects of the game, but then there should be certain causes that would give a playar a "cassus belli". I prefer a system that enforces peace, with the exception that when someone violates your neutrality it would give you a cassus belli against that party.
I think that might be an easier change for the designer to incorporte also!

[Marshal Villars]

Non-Proliferation Treaty Alternatives for "gamey-ness"?

One thing that is very complicated is that no one knows where the borderline between "gamey" moves which will be heavily criticized and "legal moves" lies. As I have indicated, after intense reading on the subject of 17th, 18th, and 19th century naval warfare, it is clear that landing 70,000 troops in any amphibious invasion without planning in advance for two-four months is extremely gamey. But that won't keep Britain from doing it (and I don't expect him not to do it).

Who draws the line between "gamey" and "vanilla"? And since no one should be required to play anything other than vanilla, this means anything in the framework of the vanilla CoG:EE game is allowed, I suppose.

I believe the best solution to issues like this are "non-proliferation treaties" to be drawn up by anyone concerned about anything and then giving each player the OPTION of being a signatory. I know that Kingmaker wasn't pulling punches on my supply line just to be a nice guy to me![:D] And I don't expect him to pull any punches when he tries his first 1 month of planning 80,000 man amphibious invasion.

Again, what CAN be expected from everyone is that no one should feel like they need to pull a punch just to be a nice guy unless they have signed an NPT.

[Marshal Villars]

French T32 In

[Marshal Villars]

What I can promise everyone here is that you have a player in here (me) who is doing a WCS project which you will very likely enjoy (I can't say more about it just yet). So everything we say and do, every problem we have while playing this PBEM game which turns up new issues for debate, and every NPT proposed by someone has a very good chance of being taken damned seriously and things that happen here will probably have a greater impact on the game I am working on than anything anyone can do or post anywhere. So, let's have fun breaking this system until there is nothing left to do but pick up the pieces and ask..."What can we do better so that we are all even more addicted WCS games in a little over a year than we are now?!?!?!"

I am thrilled that I have the most dedicated CoG:EE fans in this game and only wish we could get a few more choice picks playing in here too. Like Anthropoid and Terje, just off the top of my head. However, that is what the AltHist-A PBEM game I will be starting when the next patch is released will be for.

[montesaurus]

Missing only PR and AU!

[DaveConn]

And I have the AUS turn directly.

[Mus]

Think there might be issues trying to form protectorates out of portions of minor countries, like with Malta.

Unfortunately the game doesn't currently allow you to assign a new "national identity" to a province, so you can't split off for example Kleves into it's own protectorate or make a protectorate out of the national territory of a major power, even if that territory is a protectorate in another scenario.

That is unfortunate. I would like to see greater functionality in this regard in future COG patches or sequels. Each province should have a "provincial identity" seperate from its national identity and a number of protectorates or minor/major nations that it is allowed to be assigned to. In certain situations territory of Austria might be actual Austrian national territory, but if demanded to be ceded could be assigned to Venetia or Italia as a protectorate instead of held as national territory by France.

[montesaurus]

Need only Prussia!

[Marshal Villars]

Mus, so you're saying in cases like Malta, the PAVNPT won't even work? I think I see why. Hmmmm... so if the Papal States disappear into bigger nations, who gets to form a "Papal States Protectorate"? The first player holding one of the provinces to declare a protectorate?