Some Questions!

[Breakout]

I got some problems in my current game. Im playing with Sweden.

First, a few of my territorys auto build fleets even though all my advisors are turned off. I got about 20 fleets if not more in Antwerp now.

Second, sometimes my ships refuse to move even a square in a turn. Why?? Then all of a sudden they move more then one square in a turn.

Third, what is the best way to conquer a whole country?? At the moment i conquer the capital and grab 2 or 3 provinces, but is there a better way if i want to conquer a whole nation??

Got more questions cant remember them now though.

[Breakout]

One more thing, protectorates vs conquering provinces. Pros and Cons?

[Fänrik Stål]

ORIGINAL: Breakout

I got some problems in my current game. Im playing with Sweden.

First, a few of my territorys auto build fleets even though all my advisors are turned off. I got about 20 fleets if not more in Antwerp now.

Second, sometimes my ships refuse to move even a square in a turn. Why?? Then all of a sudden they move more then one square in a turn.

Third, what is the best way to conquer a whole country?? At the moment i conquer the capital and grab 2 or 3 provinces, but is there a better way if i want to conquer a whole nation??

Got more questions cant remember them now though.

I'm pretty much a newbie myself, but here we go...
If you check your economic advisor you'll see something called 'feudal dues', if you have those set above zero you'll get extra money from feudal taxes and also every year feudal levies (troops) without having to order them yourself. As of yet I haven't seen ships as a result of feudal levies, but as I said, I'm a newbie and for political reasons I've always lowered feudal dues as soon as possible anyway, as I've heard they are bad for production.
As for moving of ships, they are heavily dependant on weather. If there's rain or snow, they most likely won't go there. Was the movement arrow red the times your ships didn't move? If the arrow turns red, your ships (or troops) most likely will not move. Also, if their movement is interrupted by battles they won't move either.

Thirdly, I haven't tried it but there is, if you right-click on a country, an option called 'declare total war' in the diplomacy section. That might be what you're looking for.

Conquer vs. Protectorate... well, one pro for protectorates is that you get the production of the provinces without the provinces adding to the waste. I'm still struggling with the concept of waste, but basically, as far as I've understood, it means you actually get less than you think you produce, and apparently all extra owned provinces above a certain number adds to the waste percentage.

By the way, be sure to get the latest beta patch (version 1.2.18), it's a great improvement to the 1.1 version.

Hope I helped some and didn't get too many things wrong.[:)]

[malthaussen]

Note that protectorates produce units on their own, you may not control this. If Antwerp is a protectorate of Sweden, and not an owned province, this may be why you're getting a bunch of ships there.

This is why I prefer conquest to protection. With a conquered province, you control everything. You can build walls, guns, and infrastructure, and dictate what units are built. With a protectorate, all of this is beyond your control: it's just a big, juicy target waiting for some other empire to grab it. OTOH, if the protectorate produces units that are unique or better than your own, they're nice to have.

You don't have to capture a capital to force a surrender, just win a few battles, grab a province or two if you can, and wait for the enemy's morale to drop enough to surrender. A good strategy is to jump on somebody who's morale has already been badly damaged by other events, since it will only take a few setbacks for them to sue for peace. Keep in mind, too, that at the treaty table you do not have to have units in the provinces you demand -- the entire enemy country is up for grabs. Presumably (although I haven't played this far yet), if you reduce an enemy to only a few provinces, you could annexe all the remaining ones at the peace, which would elimate the player.

-- Mal

[Breakout]

It's not ships being built in antwerp its fleets.

Theres several fleets in the production que that i did not put there, its not a protectorate and its not yearly leavies so im still clueless as to why fleets are being produced.

Btw, how do i delete items in the production que and how do i delete units?

[Kevan]

This is a common situation. It would be nice if there was some check in the code for protectorate builds, to prevent them from building any new fleets, armies, or corps if there is an existing empty one on the map, or something similar. Either that or allow for them to be disbanded.

[TexHorns]

I have never had a protectorate build a container. I always have to build the container myself. I have conquered a province though and ended up with 4 or 5 units qued for production. It's asif the province had qued the units before I conquered them and the units stay in the que.

[Kevan]

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure that in all my games, unit production has not been interrupted by a province being conquered. The same goes with upgrades.

TexHorns, I'm completely amazed that you've never encountered the protectorate container unit production problem. Any time I have a protectorate with a port, especially in longer games, I end up with a handful of useless fleets. I've only encountered a real overabundance of corps/armies in longer games. I have a suspicion that certain protectorates are worse than others, but this could just be the way the odds have worked out in my games (my experience was that it was worse with protectorates that started with a fleet/army/corps at the beginning of the game).

[TexHorns]

I believe Batavia is the only protectorate I've ever had that had a fleet. And in that case I used the current fleet, but no other fleet units of any kind were ever built by the protectorate. I've never seen Poland build ships or fleets. Denmark has, but I've never protectorated (is that a word?) them. I play the 1792 scenario. I have two games running now that are into the 1805 in one and 1807 in another. Not one container unti ever built by a protecorate. Can't explain it, can only report it.

[Khornish]

Theres several fleets in the production que that i did not put there, its not a protectorate and its not yearly leavies so im still clueless as to why fleets are being produced.

I've posted about this before regarding a game I was playing as Russia.

Fleet containers _are_ able to be produced sometimes as a feudal levy and sometimes it just shows up in the queue and it can happen way too often. In the game I posted about, I had 9 fleet containers levied over the course of about 5 years, all by a home province.

These become a burden as they are really a waste. You have to maintain them after they are built and you can't get rid of them.