Reinforcement phase improvement

[Dancing Bear]

In another thread, the idea of improving reinforcement came up. I wanted to bring up an option that would help tackle this phase and does not involve merging turns. On the skipping menu, right beneath the skip reinforcement option, can we add a box, “delay cavalry reinforcement by one month” to be used when reinforcement is already selected to skip. The idea is to eliminate a lot of reinforcement phases where players are only adding one or two cavalry, by delaying the arrival of the cavalry until the next month when the infantry comes in.

If a player is not skipping reinforcement or has their skip canceled due to war, the cav comes in as normal; however, if they are skipping reinforcement, then they likely are not in a rush for their cavalry, and there is little harm in delaying the cav reinforcement by a turn. This would get rid of those annoying reinforcement months when all you do for several days is watch six other players add cavalry (which you can’t see anyways, so pretty dull as well).

I don’t think an option to delay reinforcements for a month would be that hard to program (but then I’m not a programmer).

[pzgndr]

Maybe allow delay of land unit reinforcements until next Economic Phase and then allow placement of delayed reinforcements only?  Some players at peace could then go for quite some time without playing a reinforcement phase.  Just a thought.

[Dancing Bear]

I thought about something like this too, but the problem is that players might hoard their reinforcements, placing them all at once when a war broke out, lauching a significant surprise attack/defense. The Cav reinforcement phase works well because a) there are a lot of cav reinforcment phases so there would be reasonable gains in terms of speed, while b) the number of cavalry that are placed is small and not going to lead to "surprise" attacks by hoarded units.


The eco phase will soon be simultaneous, so not really a problem.

[pzgndr]

the problem is that players might hoard their reinforcements

The idea would be to allow delayed reinforcement only until the next eco/reinforcement phase, when delayed reinforcements must be placed or lost. This would sort of combine the diplomacy, economic and reinforcement phases all together to help speed things along when not at war. Trick would be identifying delayed reinforcements as seperate and integrating a special reinforcement option into the combined dip/eco phase.

[Dancing Bear]

I'm open to the idea (perhaps we can open anither thread for it), but I think we might want to think in small steps. With sim dip/eco, reinforcement now stands out as the big dull, time waster phase.

An opton on the skip menu to delay cav reinforcement by a month, when rein is skipped, sounds like a small thing, but would likely cut out half the reinforcement phases after the first year of the game, which is not a trival benefit.

[Jimmer]

I like the idea. But, I would phrase it as "delay cavalry one month". I would also require it to be chosen during the econ phase in which the cav are purchased. Otherwise, this could be used to prevent the loss of the factors after a blunder leaves the army out of supply at the end of the first month of the quarter.
 
However, let's think about design decisions with this. Why would the designers have them show up in different months? The biggest reason I can think of is to force armies to STAY in supply (within one space of a depot) every month they are at war, assuming they want to keep the flow of troops coming.
 
This change would allow a power to not "have to" have supply during 4 of the months in a year (Feb, May, etc.) Especially for France, this opens up a LOT of strategic (and tactical) options that weren't available to him without it. Considering that Napoleon SHOULD have (while at war) a constant flow of troops into the main army, the rules as printed essentially "force" him to stay near his depots.
 
But, it is rather artificial.

[Dancing Bear]

What about it Marshall? It looks like a popular idea. It might even take a single line of code.

I imagine the existing skipping code goes something like this for reinforcement (please try not to laugh too hard at my obivous lack of understanding):
1) at end of previous players turn, check if current player has set skip reinforcement to yes. If so check for upcoming reinforcements and recent DOWs
2) If reinforcement are coming or a new DOW, then do not skip
3) If no reinforcements are coming and no new DOWs, then skip.

For the delay cav, you could add a line before steps 1 and 2:

1.5) If this month is Feb, May, July or Oct, and delay cav is set to yes, and there are some cav due this turn (but no other units from acquired minors), and player is not at war with another major power (to reduce the abuse Jimmer describes), then a) delete cav reinforcements for this month, and b) increase cav reinforcement for next month by the deleted amount.

The next step will see there are no reinforcments due, and skip as usual.

[Marshall Ellis]

Well, it sounds easy enough but I will need some time to investigate.

[Skanvak]

This change would allow a power to not "have to" have supply during 4 of the months in a year (Feb, May, etc.) Especially for France, this opens up a LOT of strategic (and tactical) options that weren't available to him without it. Considering that Napoleon SHOULD have (while at war) a constant flow of troops into the main army, the rules as printed essentially "force" him to stay near his depots.

I think that Jimmer objection is valid. I would put dancing bear suggestion of "delay cavalry" in a simplified game for PBEM option. I would not like to have it imposed on my games.

[Marshall Ellis]

Many ideas are valid but the time to add them all is just not there! Again, I will try to look at later on...

[Dancing Bear]

Ok Marshall, that would be appreciated. I think it would help, especially once sim dip/eco is reality, and reinforcement stands out as a long, relatively boring phase.

Skanvak, I was thinking of restricting this to only players not at war to avoid the abuse you discuss. Sure players at peace might think about abusing it, but it would be rare, and mostly ineffective, so not really a concern.

[Dancing Bear]

An alternative to the above option that is a delayed cav option controlled by inidividual players, is for the host to have the game option to increase all cavalry build times from 5 to 6 months for all players. This would clearly be easier to implement and basically eliminate the need for many reinforcement phases, allowing for more skipping. What do you guys think? If it is difficult to make this controllable by individual players, what about letting this be a host controlled option for the game.

[AresMars]

We are trying to make THIS game MORE like EIA right?

Part of the importance of the orginal game was PLANNING...this allows bad planners work arounds.....

This suggestion may be a potential time saver, but is NOT the way the game was designed - Jimmers comment in Post 6 above covers it well....

If it is considered to be added there needs to be a penalty - like a Maintenance charge -- something like $1 per 5 CAV factors delayed.....

Remember if the CAV factors are not put in a CORPS (which has a regular Quatermaster system), it would be expensive to have CAV and their mounts just sitting around and billeted somewhere....and they would HAVE to be fed....

Oh, if the MP has no money....bye bye CAV - Should have PLANNED ahead....

EIA Purist

[Mardonius]

Why not go with the common sense solution of making the cavalry take 6 months? This will not hurt game play or balance and will speed the game along considerably.

I heard no purists complain that cavalry costs only $12 in EiANW versus the $15 in the board game; therefore I would think it somewhat trite to complain about moving the 5 months to 6 months. I have played quite a few months of EIA and never would this have made a difference that I coudl nto have readily planned arouns.

[larrywrose]

Looking at it from a different point of view, how about the ability in any land phase to pre designate upcoming reinforcements. Just like giving orders to units, give the ability to designate and select a number for priority for incoming reinforcements. Say select the French VI Corps, select it for Cav reinforcement, and then select priority 1. Then designate the French VII corps as priority 2. You could also do this for Infantry and select Garrisons as the priority. Note that you can not spread out your units that way, you would need to actually do a reinforcement phase, but if you don't care this would allow a lot of skipping of the reinforcement phase.

Also in the Diplomatic Reactions page you need a switch to default to cancel all phase skipping for a DOW. I could see where a suprise attack by an "ally" could really have a one turn advantage if your leaders were off the board.

Just my two cents.

Thanks
Larry W. Rose

[Cunctator]

I'm expecting to be executed for what I will propose now and yes I know that this idea is not original nor well accepted by the holy guardians of Eia religion:
why Marshall don't introduce an option allowing to merge diplo and reinforcement phases?
The speed of pbem games would benefit greatly, with a minimum loss of Eia purism.
It is boring to wait for endless reinforcement phases where the maximum exciting activity is to distribute some milita factors among the armies.
Halt ! Don't shoot ! I said to introduce an option...AN OPTION...did you read me?
Greetings
C.

[Dancing Bear]

Larry, this is way too complicated.

ORIGINAL: larrywrose

Looking at it from a different point of view, how about the ability in any land phase to pre designate upcoming reinforcements. Just like giving orders to units, give the ability to designate and select a number for priority for incoming reinforcements. Say select the French VI Corps, select it for Cav reinforcement, and then select priority 1. Then designate the French VII corps as priority 2. You could also do this for Infantry and select Garrisons as the priority. Note that you can not spread out your units that way, you would need to actually do a reinforcement phase, but if you don't care this would allow a lot of skipping of the reinforcement phase.

Also in the Diplomatic Reactions page you need a switch to default to cancel all phase skipping for a DOW. I could see where a suprise attack by an "ally" could really have a one turn advantage if your leaders were off the board.

Just my two cents.

Thanks
Larry W. Rose

[Dancing Bear]

Mr. A. Mars,
In the old EIA, players whipped through reinforcement in a few minutes. It can take days to get through a reinforcement phase in some games. So what is more like EIA, a slow reinforcement phase with cav arriving after 5 months, or a fast phase, with 6 month cav builds.

Also, you'd still have to plan if all the cav arrived in 6 months. The penalty for the delay is valid if you consider flexible reinforcement, but not if we simply make it 6 months.

ORIGINAL: AresMars


We are trying to make THIS game MORE like EIA right?

Part of the importance of the orginal game was PLANNING...this allows bad planners work arounds.....

This suggestion may be a potential time saver, but is NOT the way the game was designed - Jimmers comment in Post 6 above covers it well....

If it is considered to be added there needs to be a penalty - like a Maintenance charge -- something like $1 per 5 CAV factors delayed.....

Remember if the CAV factors are not put in a CORPS (which has a regular Quatermaster system), it would be expensive to have CAV and their mounts just sitting around and billeted somewhere....and they would HAVE to be fed....

Oh, if the MP has no money....bye bye CAV - Should have PLANNED ahead....

EIA Purist

[Dancing Bear]

I used to be one of those purists that wanted 7 seperate reinforcements, but now I can't really see the point.

With sim/dip, the reinforcement phase is now the bane of this game. I'd be happy to merge it with a sim dip phase. The game would be very fast.

I mean what do we really get out that week of waiting for emails while following the strict old order? How hard can it be to make this a sim phase?

ORIGINAL: Cunctator

I'm expecting to be executed for what I will propose now and yes I know that this idea is not original nor well accepted by the holy guardians of Eia religion:
why Marshall don't introduce an option allowing to merge diplo and reinforcement phases?
The speed of pbem games would benefit greatly, with a minimum loss of Eia purism.
It is boring to wait for endless reinforcement phases where the maximum exciting activity is to distribute some milita factors among the armies.
Halt ! Don't shoot ! I said to introduce an option...AN OPTION...did you read me?
Greetings
C.

[Skanvak]

For PBEM only, I would support a merging of the reinforcement phase or at least made it simultaneous.
I expect the strict EiA rules to be implemented for hotseat and TCP/IP or LAN game. I insist on this point.