How hard would it be for an AAR to explore the linkage between economic sinews and military muscle?
Not exceedingly hard, that is why, I told everyone to read the AAR on Venice I wrote in the forum some days back. It's in the AAR forum and is detailed. Just make sure that you show all the threads from 10+ days plus else it won't show up.
repeatedly kicked from pillar to po
Indeed. This is because whilst they have large sea forces, they had a distinct numerical disadvantage against me. Their ally Russia, whilst commanding large forces was unable to break my skillful resistance in Novgorod and eventually this led to the occupation of their country by the end of the AAR. However, this was not an easy process, I don't need to tell you
Presumably this is because they started with an advantage in naval tech and are able to retain sufficient economic clout to
I don't know if they started with an advantage in naval tech. Maybe so. Either that or they basically maxed out research in their naval field and left the other tech fields behind. Perhaps the a.i thought that the joining of Hansa / Teutonic lands (+ alliance with Russia) would be enough.
Scottish AAR sees *enormous* English armies being built in the latter part of the game
I was a bit surprised over the size of the English armies in that AAR. Somewhere in order of over 200,000. I don't know how historically accurate that is, but this is a game after all. I'm sure the English could have mustered massive forces in times of great crisis. The Poles mustered well over 600,000 men (mostly peasants) during the Swedish / Russian / Prussian / Transylvanian invasion(s) of Poland in 1655-1660. Most of the Polish army went to support the Swedish King / whilst the magnates fought about in Lithuania.
Again illustrations of how failing powers can
'bounce back' (and the price they pay in order to do so) would be good. IMO of course.
One way to 'bounce back' is to ask for loans from the bank. These obviously have to be paid off within a given time frame. If they are not, the country goes bankrupt, and moral of your armies goes way, way down. If those occurs whilst a war is still being fought, then the country is as good as occupied.
Is there a replay feature that would be useful here?
No replay features, though there is a screen showing the 'history' of your campaign. However that has still not been implemented.
It was Clausewitz
I knew it was one of the two!
Sapura