Corsican Usurper - AAR/ messages

[BoerWar]

I'll steal Murat's setup post just because I like it.

Game name:
Corsican Usurper

Host:
Boerwar

Clients:
Murat
ADM Nelson (updated)
Suvarov928
Dodgydave
John Neal
Beastman013

Options in play:
Winter Land Movement +
Guard Commit +
Allow PBEM Host +
Allow Option Changes during the game + (updated)
Third Party battle resolution + (updated)
PBEM passwords +
Econ Manip +
GB/FR War +
Leader Cas +
Priv -
PBEM Quick -

House Rules:
24-hour turn-around time (updated)

Results from Major Power Bid and Selection Procedure:

[BoerWar]

Now that we've worked through some of the setup pain I'll add a few starting pics. Enjoy!

Spain and France are at war with GB. It appears a major naval battle is brewing.

[BoerWar]

An early French attack on Prussia? Time will tell.

[BoerWar]

Russia forces mass near East Prussia. Sweden or a Prussian stab in the back?

[BoerWar]

Finally it looks like Turkey has his eye on Egypt. No great suprise with GB busy elsewhere.

[John Neal]

ORIGINAL: BoerWar

Finally it looks like Turkey has his eye on Egypt. No great suprise with GB busy elsewhere....

If Allah wishes it.

سليم ثالث

[John Neal]

Russia turns down British alliance request & remains non-aligned!

(trying to get political influence in north africa!)

[:-]

edited to add: Prussian & Austrians Allied with British

[pakron]

Keep up the good work on the screen shots, etc! It's interesting to follow along.

[ess1]

Thanks for AAR.

[BoerWar]

Well, I was hoping to have the results of a major naval battle to post unfortunately a bug currently prevents Major Powers from attacking stacks of fleets from more than one other Major power with whom they are at war (the moderators report that the bug will be addressed in the first patch). The following house rule is going to be used by our group until the patch comes out so that we can move forward without making BR indefensible.

Our house rule will be as follows:

- All Major powers who are not at war with each other may not stack their navies in the same sea area (first come first served).
- For the purposes of this house rule a Major (Naval) power is a Major power that possesses more than 10 HS or more than 20 ships total (not including transports); e.i. 6 HS and 15 LS would constitute a Major (Naval) power.
- Major powers who are at war with more than one other Major (Naval) power may never stack or attack with more than 50% of the total number of ships of a given type it has available; i.e. BR has 76 HS and 57 LS so no more than 38 HS and 28 LS should be in a stack.

In the meantime, the BR fleet has redeployed into defensive positions with this rule in mind (picture attached).

Note: since both FR and SP are at war with only one other Major (naval) power, BR, they may stack and attack with their entire fleet (they just can’t stack and attack together).

[Murat]

I'll just post my objections to this proposed house rule.
If major powers are not at war with each other they should be able to go into any sea zone they want to. Just because you are sitting in the Channel does not mean I cannot enter it, or sit in it, if we are not at war.

This is a limited bug and only applies to attacking against stacked allied fleets. It does not affect your interception which with Nelson are 33% successful in each adjacent zone a fleet passes through and 67% effective for the zone your fleet is in. I only agreed to your offer of splitting if we would split up with the caveat that you do not have 2 stacks next to each other on intercept and that in no case do you have a stack with more than half your fleet on intercept.

I never agreed to split my fleet in the face of RU/TU and especially not in the case of a BR/?. Half the British fleet is still larger than any single fleet on the board.

[BoerWar]

OK, we’ll take some of our email exchange to the forum. Maybe other have some good ideas.

First, there is no requirement for the countries to be allied for the bug to occur I’ve had it come up in practice games where SP and FR weren’t allied.

In my opinion without some sort of house rule prohibiting stacking BR is far less defensible. The army is pathetic so if anyone gets ashore BR is forced to surrender. The rest of the countries (except maybe SP aren’t as dependent on their navy).

Here’s why I think the bug is far more nefarious than you seem to think. Let’s say RU and TU move their fleets off the coast of SP next turn. In the next turn TU and RU declare war on SP. At that point the RU/TU coalition has a landing point that is invulnerable because the bug would prevent SP from attacking it. The best SP could hope for is to stack its fleet nearby and hope to catch the invasion forces by interception. Of course a smart RU/TU coalition will prevent this by sprinkling combined stacks all over the area. The same sort of scenario can be used against BR. Let’s say FR and SP set their fleets up in the channel with an invasion fleet on the coast. [edit: ok, just tested it and SP can’t set up in channel (hattip Murat). Nevertheless, the cloak of neutrality can be used to similar effect.] SP DOW’s BR during the diplo phase. Now BR can’t attack the channel stack. He can park his fleet there with Nelson, but that still leaves a 33% chance that BR gets invaded without a naval battle of any sort when the invasion fleet sails. Of course, with the combined SP/FR fleets in the channel even if the interception occurs victory is likely, but not guaranteed.

And here’s why I think the house rule at least provides comparable results. In your example of RU/TU at war with only FR, under the house rule the worst case is a RU fleet of 28 HS and 7 LS could meet a FR fleet of 20 HS and 11 LS (35 vs 31, roughly one to one with no LS or HS ratio penalty). Were there no bug, under this scenario the worse case would be a combined TU/RU fleet with 40 HS and 23 LS against 39 HS and 22 LS (63 vs 61, again roughly one to one with no LS or HS ratio penalty). While RU gains a slight advantage under the proposed house rule TU has a disadvantage because FR can still throw 20 HS and 11 LS at his 12 HS and 16LS which can’t benefit from stacking attacking with the Russians.

I see your point about stacking while not at war. We could ease the restriction against stacking if you aren’t at war, but then we would have to say if you are stacked with someone you can’t declare war against a common enemy until you aren’t stacked anymore.

It isn’t perfect, but until they come out with the patch it is better than doing nothing.

[Suvorov928]

I am going to get back to an AAR. Here is the Austrian setup along with the minors declared on.

Note: I put a red arrow to show where I should have started these Corps. If I had placed them in Karlstadt, I could have reched the capital of Dalmatia in one turn, even in winter. Now I will have to move south and enter the area to avoid a lapse in war, and attempt to capture the capital the following turn. Very poor planning on my part.

Learn from my mistakes.

[Murat]

Well you would have had to force march and then because you were forced to forage you could not have assaulted the city so your current situation will keep you on the same timetable.

[bresh]

Just deploying a depot in Karlstadt would fix some ?
 
Cant IX corps go through the clear 3-forage ?
Or planned to forage ?
 
Regards
Bresh

[Suvorov928]

Because of Wnter movement, I do not have enough movement points to enter the mountain area containing their home capital.  Had I started in Karlstadt, I could have made the one area move.

[BoerWar]

Unfortunately, after further discussion we weren’t able to come up with a house rule that everyone could agree on. Our thoughts now are to try a restart with 3rd party combat system enabled to see if that will let us fight out the naval battle offline. If that doesn’t work I think we’ll be waiting to the 1st patch.

We’ll start posting again once we find a way to get through this.

[Suvorov928]

Yea, sucks.  I was just about to pull out my game winning move too.[:'(]

[Murat]

ORIGINAL: Suvorov928
Because of Wnter movement, I do not have enough movement points to enter the mountain area containing their home capital.  Had I started in Karlstadt, I could have made the one area move.

Yes but the move requires 4 MPs 2 for mountain *2 for winter so it would have required a force march. Not real promising =\

[Murat]

ORIGINAL: BoerWar

Unfortunately, after further discussion we weren’t able to come up with a house rule that everyone could agree on. Our thoughts now are to try a restart with 3rd party combat system enabled to see if that will let us fight out the naval battle offline. If that doesn’t work I think we’ll be waiting to the 1st patch.

We’ll start posting again once we find a way to get through this.

Well the 3d party option just seemed to solve the problem without having to use a complicated house rule.