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Mar 7, 2001
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I've noticed in a few different games that Helvetia seems to play a very key role in the power politics of western Europe. As Austria, grabbing (or allying with) Helvetia means that France and Spain have to hobble through the province to get to you (Tyrol does the same thing, but is less useful if you have expanded into N Italy). Watching all their useless cavalry fall down mountain ravines as my artillery-heavy defending army beats back 3x their number is pretty fun. :) As England, allying with Helvetia means that whenever France or Spain declare war on you, the Swiss armies don't do much, but the enemy AI makes a beeline straight for the province and sticks about 90K troops there to besiege it while you burn Paris or the northern coast of Spain to the ground. Again, they lug a bunch of cavalry with them, so attrition usually takes its toll, giving me time to force a peace elsewhere.

So, to sum up, make nice to the Swiss. :)
 
The AI has some serious problems that come out as you play more and more. One of them is that he doesn't understand the meaning of the words attrition and capital. The computer doesn't care to lose tens of thousand of men in a siege because he thinks he needs 150,000 rather than 30,000 men. He also doesn't seem to understand that if he loses his capital, it doesn't matter if he takes some minor province, he's going to lose the war. These are things that need tweaking.

As for Helvetia, good god! Something has to be in the code of the game, because there is no reason that every nation in the game should want to own the Swiss mountains. It is almost impossible to lose a war when you own Helvetia against a nation that borders it, because they waste every army they raise trying to take it. Please fix this! Spain and France shouldn't decide their wars in the Alps!
 
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In my campaigns, there are but two great, unannexable powers...whatever nation I'm playing, and the Swiss.

Just wouldn't be right if someone were to monopolize the chocolate and really nice watches.
 
Spain annexed it in one of my games too. It rebelled later and took the neighboring Spanish province, three nearby French provinces, four Austrian provinces, all of venice, and all of Savoy. This was largely due to an alliance with Poland, England, Lorraine, Baravia, and a couple other nations though.
 
I find too that usually Helvetia gets annexed by France (usually) or sometimes Spain. Once I saw them annexed by Lorraine, which lasted for a few decades until France annexed Lorraine. Then again, the AI does seem to like attacking Helvetia, but it seems to me like they usually are successful.
 
Originally posted by sean9898
I had a game where Helvetia changed hands 7 times. I wouldn't even estimate the death toll of fighting there.

I'll second this. The Swiss appear to be the French highway to Italy for some reason. I've seen French armies of 80k enter the Alpes. When i played Austria, I sent as much aid as I could to Helvetica- without actually allying with them-so they'd always be able to afford to have an army to fight the French.
 
Personally I think Switzerland is extreemly important in access to the rest Europe. Just look at whcih provinces can be reached from it and how difficult it would be to take another route from A to B in that area without going through that province.
 
Huszics,

Is Switzerland historically that important though? It would seem to me that the rough terrain renders its central location of little value. The game models this, through the high attrition of the mountains and the low supply value. The AI doesn't seem to understand this, and thus France and Spain are hardly serious threats to Austria and usually each other (and probably vice versa, though I can't confirm this). France and Spain seem content to fight their wars out in Helvetia when one of them owns it and they both can get access to it. Why wouldn't they fight more on the direct front?
 
Sorry, I wasn't clear in my post about if I think it's historically correct. I don't belive it is, was just commenting the strategical importance of the province as the game is currently designed (which can be traced back to how the BG looked too).
 
Do you think this problem would be mostly solved if the AI could be tweaked to take attrition into account? If the AI understands the lack of supply in Helvetia, it might then not regard its central location as necessitating constant campaigning to take it.

I am sure Hartmann has a much better list of tweaks, but my own personal list is the AI should research, only declare wars when it has a reasonable chance of winning, and should have some understanding of the supply + attrition rules.

I hope Paradox will spare a little time from badboy tweaks to take a look at those aspects (which are far more important than some number we players can easily edit if we disagree with. Its a lot more work to make the AI research than it is to lower or raise badboys.)