Matrix Games Forums

Curious if this is something that is going to take a long while or might be pretty soon?

I think there are a few somewhat glaring issues that guys have raised, most notably the "suitcase nuke" insurrection imbalance, that it might be worth addressing as soon as you can. Now that there is a community of PBEMers, having a version with some of the biggest issues addressed might be a very good thing. Apart from the insurrection thing, the Wishlist seems to have a few other things that guys have mentioned.

Insurrection issue you mentioned.

Lended provinces don't add to waste but do add to mobilization limit. Should be one way or the other, not both positives. Two massive countries could loan each other their entire countries, reducing their waste to zero and still have lots of resources and high mob limits.

Obviously a house rule/general outrage could mitigate that but still seems like it should be addressed in a patch.

Manual says surrender VP points shouldn't be modified by casualties below 4000 but they are. Have seen people surrender and get off as cheaply as 600 VPs by grabbing some enemy cities real quick and then surrendering before they suffered any casualties in return.

I am pretty sure at this point Naval Academies upgrade, Barracks and Docks are not correctly increasing morale of newly produced ships, at least in PBEM.

This weird mysteriously vanishing empire point thing.

I put a bunch of stuff on the Wish list for Christmas.

[:D]

I think there are two or three other emergency issues for the next patch:

1. Add bonuses for fleets operating close to a friendly naval base. A "high" bonus if in the SAME sea zone as a friendly naval base. A smaller bonus if in a sea zone adjacent to such a port. The higher the docks rating, the better the bonus. The bonus gives ships operating in the zone:
-bonus in naval combat
-reduced losses if the naval unit retreats into a naval base in 33%-50% of cases
-bonuses relating to increasing the effectiveness of blockades.
Perhaps add a tech advance or two to naval advances which increases the range of this bonus and the effectiveness of it and give an advantage to Britain. In a similar fashion, privateers operating in/near regions with friendly naval bases should be more effective as well. In depth reading in naval operations of the 18th century as well as an interview with a published author/professor specializing in warfare of the period have convinced me that there is no alternative.

1b) To this should be added the ability to use ports/docks of allies (or by agreement/treaty)...but with 2/3 of the effectiveness of your own.

2. Increase the difficulty of amphibious operations. In the era of the "Napoleonic Wars", the LARGEST British sea landing of all time (the raid on Flushing in 1809 I believe--an attempt to knock out Napoleon's second largest ship building facilities/ports/docks just north of, and including Antwerp) included a 35,000 man assault force and used 650+ ships. It was a disaster and aborted without accomplishing any of their primary goals (for various reasons). Descents on controlled coasts in the face of opposition were difficult, and really only the British had begun to master this complicated administrative task. The history of the 18th century is filled with examples of small aborted landings and expeditionary efforts. Even then, I would say that 1/3 of all attempted landings on hostile shores should be aborted outright (possible reasons: the admiral doesn't like the conditions, there is a brief landing and a decision is made that staying is impossible). Additionally, there should be limits on the numbers of troops a fleet can carry around with it. I would say the game starts (1792) with a 10,000 man limit in place for this. Players gain amphibious operations experience as they land more and more troops through the game. Amphibious operations experience is ideally a separate class of experience entirely. With this, they can upgrade the number of men they can transport to a hostile shore. Or, there is a split rating... for instance 10k/20k. The first number is the number of men who can be landed without penalty, and the second number is the number who can be landed, but with a significant penalty when disembarking into enemy territory. Perhaps the French had their rating up to a 20k/40K for the 1798 invasion of Egypt. As it is, the amphibious assault in CoG:EE is overly effective and far too assured of success, a problem which is multiplied by the fact that one can transport as many troops as one would like. Advancements would include reducing the odds of an aborted mission, increasing the number of men carried, increasing the number of men which can be landed on hostile shores.

3. When transferring a protectorate to another power in a treaty (ceding a protectorate), it should REMAIN a protectorate after the transfer. I have recently concluded the transfer of protectorates in a PBEM and was saddened to see that a protectorate simply becomes part of the nation which it was transferred to. It is bad enough transferring protectorates (although the term "protectorate" can mean any one of a number of things), but a small country which decided to buddy up to a large country would probably have problems with simply being handed over to another country and incorporated into it wholesale!

4. Redo the finance/debt a bit. Interest rates should be dependent on a few things and it would be easy to assign a rate to each country which was based on historical values rather than use the current system. I just got done plowing through hundreds of pages of material on finance of the era, including the book, "The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State (1688-1783)" by Brewer. Although one could make the argument that "the number of wars" was one of the factors which impacted interest rates, it would be rather low on the list of factors. A nation's established credit institutions and capacity, as well as its form of government and credit history were much, much more important in determining this number in my opinion and based on the reading.

Balancing point 1 sounds like a nightmare. All of it sounds a little ambitious for a patch to be honest barbarossa.

Amphibious invasions were made significantly more difficult in the last patch BTW. You take losses based on the level of guns in the province and get random disruption as well.

I want to repeat what I said in another thread, vis a vis the realization that a diplomat can protect against insurrection if it is set to Capture/Expel ANYWHERE in friendly territory: this means that insurrections are not nearly as overpowered after all, and do not need to be nearly as nerfed.

Losing territory to insurrections when there are significant garrisons or mobile forces in the place seems questionable, and losing an entire 2+ province "nation" to insurrection *poof* in one turn also seems sketchy. But nerfing it like some people were saying seems extreme given that having a single diplo on Expel ANYWHERE at home is a reasonable protection. There are a couple threads with discussions on this so I'll leave it at that.

I think just the 40,000 ungarrisoned troops stopping insurrections and the multiprovince minors going unrest before insurrection would fix it without the need for introducing extra cost as was proposed back in the original discussion thread.

We are indeed working on a patch, and it will be a significant one, and it will still take at least another month or so before it can be released. I can't tell you if these issues are addressed, though, since I've been too busy working on -- no, I'll use the word "spearheading," since that sounds much cooler -- a new project, and haven't been involved in testing the patch.

I hereby authorize one (or more) of the beta-testers, without going into too much detail, to confirm or deny that these are already being worked on. Thanks!