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I love this game as I'm an old Empire and Arms board game player, so these are serious questions and please do take this as to much crapping.


Playing/Experimenting; as Britain - With patch - 1792 start - 23 year scenerio in about my 3rd year now and 3/4 though 2nd reading of manual. 3rd start of game - as my "duh!" factor is overcome.


Peace: Austria and Pussia forced peace on France in 1794 - OK fine - however - France and Britain are now also at peace. No notice was given to Britain and I was not given any "victory bonuses" such as territory, money etc. or even a chance to say no to France surrendering to me.

Question is this a bug or am I missing something? [&:]

Suggestion to programmers on patch; IMHO Surrenders and Declarations of War are MAJOR events and as such should not be allowed to happen as incidents that can be "not noticed". In this current game France surrendered to me and Russia declared on me with no notice to me being given.
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Protectorates. Poland asked me to be their protector and seeing as how my troops were idle I said yes only to find a huge Russian army in their territory and a sprinkling of Cossack infantry all over Poland.

Question on Cossacks; What effect do they have? Do they? Block supply? , hinder resource collection?
And how in the heck are you supposed to catch them and drive em off. They seem to merrily coexist with my troops in the area with no battle being fought after 4 turns!!!!


Suggestion to programmers on patch re: protectorates. IMHO Allow a player to see though "fog of war" as to the minor nations situation, if a minor nations asks for you protection. The game locks the screen until you answer yes/no and if the nation is at a distance to your dips or troops you do not have any information on which to make a correct decision.
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Depots

Manual says supply depots are "free with only upkeep cost (page 24)
Chart (page 28) says depots cost $50 and 10 horses

Which is correct?

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Upkeep

Can anyone list ways to reduce cost on fleets, diplomats etc.
Can you "fire" a diplomat to save money?

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Readiness

IMHO I'd love to see a option to have separate "readiness" sliders for naval and land forces.

As Britain one wants to have a 100% navy but the troops at home can do without.

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Feudal Slider: As Britain I changed this to "0" the effect (moral loss - merchant income increase) takes place over at least 6 months. Is this the same for tax increases, as it seems do do nothing to my income for the first few turns?

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Detailed Combat: Manual says units start at edge of generated map unless there is no free space available and that all other units are place close to another previously placed unit.
All of my units are always place in the map center and subject to attck almost immediately from enemy forces. Never has any unit my force been placed on a map edge.

Bug or incorrect manual?

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Skirmishers Manual says 50% change to become shaken or disordered when deploying or recalling!!!!! . deploy and recall - 2 times 50% chance is 100% chance

Comment: IMHO This is a huge non historical penalty on French, British line units that had specialized "light" companies as a normal part of their line battalions. Austrian units also I believe had light companies. IMHO There is no justifacation for this penality

Historically Skirmishers - harrass the enemy, protect your units flanks . shield the mother unit allowing to do formation changes and can hide in woods and rough terrain and never historicaly lowered the mother units moral. Not that I ever read anyway. Far from it!

Or am I missing something?

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Enough... I hear the bugles calling me to action.


Charge

Peace - Normally you do get notification. You are right, it is annoying when it happens without you noticing. SOmetimes your alliances pull you into wars, and it would be good if they were still announced.

I have never seen peace break-out without getting a surrender (and the relevant opportunity to take stuff from them in the negotiations)


Protectorates - Is sometimes tricky to figure out whether to take them, and you can assume they are under some duress. Best situation is you take them, issue a warning and all the aggressors back off. Otherwise it is into defence mode. Poland is still worth it anyway imho.

Cossacks - RTFM on the fact that they are very likely to destroy supply depots when they fight a battle in a territory (even if they lose). Enemy troops will also prevent units graduating from military college. They will try and avoid contact, so you need to keep an army there and try and initiate contact.

Depots - Interesting. I will check in game.

Upkeep - I cant find a way to fire diplomats. Fleets can reduce readiness (along with army). Dont know if they cost less in home ports?

Readiness - A problem fairly unique to Britain.

Feudal Slider - yes, change takes time. Feudal settings especially so. Care in setting it to 0 rather than 12, you won't get any colonial militia.

Detailed combat setup - incorrect manual, but it would be nice to get a squidge more room.

Skirmishers - It seems harsh to have positive actions disordering the whole formation. I'm also not happy with troops going shaken when I try to reform them.

Cheers,

Hunter

There may be a manual typo re the cost of depots: I'll have MrZ check to see if the revised manual we are putting together has the corrected value.

We made a deliberate design decision not to have disband for diplomats -- the decision whether or not to build them becomes more "interesting", in my opinion, when they can't be disbanded.

There are, indeed, some things that can cause war and peace that don't trigger the popup message. I'll look and see if I can tie this message to more of these events -- I agree it's annoying when these events happen without a proper announcement.

Re skirmishers: this is why we have light infantry units, which France and Britain can build more easily than other nations. Light infantry have no chance of disorder when entering/exiting skirmish mode and deploy/recall skirmishers much more quickly (and operate better when in skirmish mode). Austrians had something called "Light Infantry" but the term was used in a different sense than the French used it (which is the sense we use it in COG.) As far as I know there is no rule that deployed skirmishers lower the unit's morale. Also, the 50% chance to disorder while deploying skirmishers and 50% chance to disorder while recalling are probabilistically independent events, so the probabilities don't add to 100%.

Ericbabe: As far as I know there is no rule that deployed skirmishers lower the unit's morale.

I probably read this wrong Eric. Page 37 manual - Skirmishers . . {In general . . .unit inflicts}

This must refer to damage the unit WITH skimishers inflicts.



[:o]

As per Dipomats can't be fired or removed. Some of mine are going to be spending a lot of time in depots in the more remote corners of my country.

Yes, skirmishers do less physical damage than normal but do greater morale damage than normal....(to the enemy!)

Ah! Great to know. I will buy some more light troops immediately

In regard to cossacks or other irregular units: The way I deal with them is to assign an army to attack and surround all adjacent provinces with some time of unit. I have noticed that units will not retreat into an adjacent province that is occupied with military units. It takes an army with several units in it to be bring the irregular's to battle. Doing it this way prevents the irregualr from moving from province to province disrupting your production.

I don't understand not using your diplomats. There is always either an offensive or defensive task a diplomat can be doing.

Alway's take Poland as a protectorate. In fact I'm not sure that I would turn any of them down. As England it gets you on the continent. Poland produces many units.

I use light infantry as skirmishers and do not detach them from my regular units.

I like the detailed combat system and have seen some really neat things done by the AI. I agree though about the initial deployment. I would like to see more space between forces, more room for manuever and less useless cavalry charges by the AI.

Hi, did you declare war on France? They start 1792 scenario at peaace with you. They start 1796 scenario at war.