Day of Glory (MP megacampaign)

[oddman]

Couldn't have been the huge loans you took from Catalunya, could it?

They weren't exactly huge; only 60k, with a very, very generous interest of only 0.82% (yes, < 1%) per year. A reasonable loan, by all means.

[BlitzMartinDK]

Catalunyan economists of the Salamancan school suggest that thrift, free trade, a minimum of government intervention and not having armies massively above one's forcelimit are the way to healthy finances.

On the other hand, followers of the renowned economist Maynas Chilenos believe that stimulating growth by means of government intervention and not having armies massively above one's forcelimit is the way to a balanced budget and a prospering economy.

Lol...what do you do for a living, Oddman ?

[oddman]

ON CATALUNYAN POLITICS

In which we consider the technicalities of politics in the Catalunyan state.

The first thing to note is that the whole of the Catalunyan socio-political entity is technically a federation of states, also known as the Andalusian Federation. The country known as Catalunya is simply its largest constituent member. Other members include Foix, Ulm, Chimu, Chile, Spain, Guyenne and the Papal State. The Andalusian Federation is a relic of the old Emirate of Al-Andalus, from back when it was a monarchy. This federation, therefore, is not a democratic entity, nor do contemporary statesmen consider it a sovereign entity at all. All members have possess nominally equal seats on the Council of the Andalusian Federation, but the member state currently known as Catalunya, traditionally the seat of the supreme Andalusian sovereign back when it still had one, is the perpetual president of the Federation. The effect of this Federation, then, is to let its members dictate domestic policy independent of Catalunyan central planning, while Catalunya is effectively responsible for foreign policy. Given the intense conservatism that led to this construction in the first place, most constituents members tend to be atavistic hierarchical and aristocratic autocracies with reactonary social policies compared to the relatively progressive policies of the Catalunyan state. Curiously, this construction works out for the best for Catalunya, as the best and brightest of the constituent members traditionally seek their fortune through the Catalunyan educational system, ending up in the Catalunyan apparatus of state more often than not.
In the past, remote regions of the Catalunyan nation would petition for secession and for membership in the Andalusian Federation instead. Such requests were often granted, but lately the trend has been one of strengthening Catalunyan authority and even further decreased importance of the Andalusian Federation.

So while actually the top organ, the administrative apparatus of the Andalusian Federation is dwarfed by that of its major member, Catalunya, which effectively dictates its policy to the Federation as well. The development of this more modern national government is where the real answer to Catalunyan politics can be found.

Relative to other entities, Catalunya has a history of republicanism, if not necessarily one of true democracy. Back in the 14th century, the Andalusian monarch was chosen from the most worthy leader of one of its decentralized parts, thus ensuring capable leadership. Devolution in more absolute forms of monarchy is inevitable in such a case, and for considerable periods of time in the early Renaissance the Catalunyan state was a monarchy. Factionalism in important social strata such as academia, industry, trade and armed forces, however, conspired to impose a governmental structure that would be more capable to weigh their respective interests. They agreed to elect a worthy from their number once every four years, and under this construction the Catalunyan state has flourished, if not grown very much: the great wars of Catalunyan conquest have always been the work of despotic men. Great men, but autocrats. The great stability of Catalunya has come in the central bureaucracy that was gradually established between 1500 and 1520, then centered in Barcelona la Vella.

It was in 1660 that one man, Guillem Pons, decided to bring back the glory days of old conquering Catalunya, and to lay its old enemy, Malaya, to rest once and for all. He instituted a junta of old and declared himself Lord Protector of Catalunya and took the presidency of the Andalusian Federation personally. His personal vendetta with the Malayan nation proceeded disastrously, and he was quickly removed from the scene just before a peace was decided upon. The old Republic has been reinstated.

As mentioned, Catalunya is republican but not necessarily democrat. Simply put, this means that the government is elected, but not from a representative sample of the populace, and therefore not a true democracy. The government is composed by the different important factions in Catalunyan society - more about these factions in the next installment.

Lol...what do you do for a living, Oddman ?

I'm a jack of all trades and a master of nothing. Once possessed of ambitions in politics and prose, currently ambitions in science, but working in ICT consultancy.

[Gollevainen]

So : What happened this session?

Bavaria, Russia, and Persia felt they needed over 3,000,000 men to take down my 400 regiment army.

Well like've said allready, the war did not see any actuall combat aside some swift croatian underwear changing after the realpolitiks was made clear to it
And no, we didnt felt we needed 3000k (even one of the participants would have been enough to bring croatia to down) men to the task, but we all had dues to be claimed from croatia. Is it our sin that we also had big armies ...

What happened was that it was planned for Bavaria and Russia to attack Croatia and once croatia quite reclessly brougth most of his peace time army, all in one stack, mil-maint in 0 to the russian border, the opportunity presented itself so invitingly that they couldn't refuse it. If Jodokus would have been managed to snipe those regiments, it would have been almost bigger epic fail from yoshi than Blayne's notorius german trip in the last campaing

Russia however was in regency so it laid to Bavaria to do the actuall attack... and by that minute, bavaria informed that he also had regency. So while croatians became sucpicious and retreated with that stack, the opportunity was lost.
Persia in otherhand had CB and impressive infamy burning rate so we made deals that Persia woudl DOW the croatian vassals in Palestine (i had orginally planned to go on them seperatly during the russo-bavarian attack), take the Infamy against some nice monetary fee and all would be happy.

Naturally (as it always is in these games) there was some whining and the orginal 5+5+2 vassal ended up as 3+5 vassal + 1 vassal peace. But atleast this time we had our terms prepared before the war

[King of Men]

Catalunyan economists (...) not having armies massively above one's forcelimit are the way to healthy finances.

Political scientists of the New Byzantium school respond, "How many regiments do you need when the Russian army is coming across your border? Don't worry, the free market will take care of it."

[oddman]

Political scientists of the New Byzantium school respond, "How many regiments do you need when the Russian army is coming across your border? Don't worry, the free market will take care of it."

The Catalunyan academic establishment refuses to entertain this notion since having to change their assumption from the fleet keeping the country safe to actually needing an army would force them to re-do all their calculations. They also note that computers are expensive types, and needing an army of them would result in untenable finances.

A rogue professor, however, was found willing to offer the following comment: "Averroës he say: if army cannot come to forcelimit, forcelimit must go to army. Also, Russians many enemies have."

[Sid Meier]

Arms spending is stimulatory to the economy in nature, we have record growth across all sectors thanks to bulging demand for all sorts of product. Especially steel.

[FrozenWall]

Bengal Supreme Benevolent Command scoffs at silly Catalan money counters. Army does not exist to protect country, country exists to support army. Lazy Catalans fluff pillows instead of sharpening swords and siesta themselves into soft fat blobs when they could have been preparing for war to reinvigorate national spirit and weed out weaklings. Wise Qin mass army with foreign gold and make strong people with strong heart, take land from slothful money counters.

[King of Men]

A rogue professor, however, was found willing to offer the following comment: "Averroës he say: if army cannot come to forcelimit, forcelimit must go to army. Also, Russians many enemies have."

Your Averronian professor is missing two obvious points: First, many of the said enemies subscribe to the forcelimit theory of economics... which is how Russia and Croatia were able to dominate the battlefields of Europe for two generations, against coalitions that dwarfed them economically. Second, while I don't know about Qin, the subsidies given to the Khanate have indeed been spent largely on infrastructure to increase the forcelimit, rather than directly on weapons.

[Sid Meier]

Your Averronian professor is missing two obvious points: First, many of the said enemies subscribe to the forcelimit theory of economics... which is how Russia and Croatia were able to dominate the battlefields of Europe for two generations, against coalitions that dwarfed them economically. Second, while I don't know about Qin, the subsidies given to the Khanate have indeed been spent largely on infrastructure to increase the forcelimit, rather than directly on weapons.

I'm out of provinces I can build conscription centers in.

[Irsh Faq]

Your Averronian professor is missing two obvious points: First, many of the said enemies subscribe to the forcelimit theory of economics... which is how Russia and Croatia were able to dominate the battlefields of Europe for two generations, against coalitions that dwarfed them economically. Second, while I don't know about Qin, the subsidies given to the Khanate have indeed been spent largely on infrastructure to increase the forcelimit, rather than directly on weapons.

Actually, whilst Russia is currently at about its forcelimit, most of its neighbors are well over. Bavaria, for example, is fielding 1.5m out of a forcelimit of 1m, IIRC.

But yes. Forcelimits schmorcelimits. The Mwene of Kongo, currently supporting 900 regiments with a forcelimit in the 500s, fully agrees with his Mongol counterparts.

[King of Men]

Actually, whilst Russia is currently at about its forcelimit, most of its neighbors are well over. Bavaria, for example, is fielding 1.5m out of a forcelimit of 1m, IIRC.

Sure, in this year of grace 1686. I was referring to the situation around 1600, when Bavaria was lucky to have 700 regiments in the field at any given time, because Russia was invading him every five years and stackwiping his entire army. Although I admit that this wasn't exactly restraint due to ivory-tower economic theories from universities far removed from the battlefields of Europe.

[Gollevainen]

I thinks teh ruskies whiped bavarian armies completely only once.

[King of Men]

I may have exaggerated slightly for rhetorical effect, but the point remains that for a long period Bavaria had great difficulty building up even to its forcelimits, much less past them, because Russia was invading every five years and causing stackwipes and WE.

[Gollevainen]

wasent it more of lack of will than lack of capacity to build there? Well fivoin can tell us best

[von_Rundstedt]

I may have exaggerated slightly for rhetorical effect, but the point remains that for a long period Bavaria had great difficulty building up even to its forcelimits, much less past them, because Russia was invading every five years and causing stackwipes and WE.

No, Bavaria never had that problem. Long before I invaded Bavaria each turn, the recruitment of regiments was already done. Fivoin always reached his desired army size before I DOWed.

[King of Men]

That's not what he was telling his allies. But if it's so, that just reinforces my original point, that the Asian powers could not well rely on their allies to outnumber Russia, but needed to go well past their own forcelimits - economic theorising be damned! And of course that's even more true now, when Bavaria and Russia are no longer at odds.

[King of Men]

Having finished with Achilles's spirit-quest to become Dictator of Rome and repair the wrongs that were done in his youth, I feel like looking at some dry, unemotional statistics. In particular, how are the players using their magistrates; what fields do they prioritise?

There are two ways of looking at this. One is to consider all buildings, and count how many magistrates have been spent in each field. Another is to consider only the level-5 and level-6 buildings; since there can be only one level-5 building in a province, finding a level-5 is strong evidence of commitment to a given area. Provinces, after all, are perhaps the ultimate limited resource in the game; there will be another magistrate coming along, but gaining provinces is (now that everything is colonised) completely zero-sum.

So, let's start with a table summarising all the information we're looking at. The columns are the number of provinces, total magistrates spent, magistrates spent per province (which is an indicator of economic development; contrast densely-built-up Croatia with the howling wilderness of English North America), total basetax, magistrates per basetax, the percentage of provinces with a level-5 building, and, for each field, (government-army-navy-forts-production-trade) the magistrates-per-province used on that field, and the percentage of provinces with a level-5 building in that field.

TAG	Provs	Mags	M/P	Base	M/B	Max	Govt  GovtMax	Army  ArmyMax	Navy  NavyMax	Fort  FortMax	Prod  ProdMax	Trad  TradMax
CRO:	50	791	15.82	273	2.90	0.92	0.28	0.00	5.54	0.80	0.70	0.00	1.64	0.00	3.96	0.02	3.00	0.10	
ENG:	117	774	6.62	453	1.71	0.32	0.05	0.00	0.59	0.03	1.40	0.18	1.14	0.00	1.99	0.00	1.30	0.11	
USA:	80	830	10.38	255	3.25	0.59	1.50	0.19	1.51	0.07	1.29	0.06	1.51	0.00	2.11	0.11	1.95	0.15	
BAV:	118	1231	10.43	638	1.93	0.69	0.16	0.01	3.26	0.49	0.27	0.00	1.41	0.00	2.50	0.03	2.53	0.16	
CAT:	152	1071	7.05	650	1.65	0.48	0.32	0.05	1.18	0.13	1.30	0.14	1.14	0.00	1.50	0.00	1.41	0.16	
NOV:	106	1297	12.24	580	2.24	0.79	1.49	0.20	4.38	0.56	0.18	0.00	1.85	0.00	2.68	0.02	1.25	0.02	
TRP:	60	559	9.32	236	2.37	0.50	1.12	0.03	2.43	0.32	0.77	0.02	1.25	0.00	2.80	0.12	0.78	0.02	
PER:	59	697	11.81	334	2.09	0.68	1.54	0.00	4.20	0.66	0.47	0.00	1.85	0.00	2.47	0.02	1.00	0.00	
ETH:	98	1035	10.56	433	2.39	0.88	0.71	0.10	2.33	0.22	2.38	0.30	1.05	0.00	2.39	0.12	1.52	0.13	
KON:	76	1126	14.82	318	3.54	0.89	3.04	0.36	4.01	0.41	1.43	0.09	1.07	0.00	3.13	0.03	1.41	0.01	
KHA:	71	783	11.03	238	3.29	0.41	1.25	0.01	2.96	0.39	0.45	0.00	1.61	0.00	2.51	0.00	1.82	0.00	
KHM:	34	483	14.21	158	3.06	0.88	0.91	0.00	2.18	0.26	1.74	0.12	1.53	0.00	4.29	0.26	3.15	0.24	
QIN:	52	727	13.98	272	2.67	0.96	0.50	0.00	4.77	0.67	0.33	0.00	2.04	0.00	3.02	0.06	2.83	0.23	
PUN:	37	455	12.30	150	3.03	0.68	1.08	0.00	3.54	0.49	0.03	0.00	2.05	0.00	3.81	0.19	1.38	0.00	
MSA:	91	772	8.48	399	1.93	0.64	0.20	0.00	1.84	0.19	2.16	0.29	1.10	0.00	1.07	0.01	1.71	0.15

It may be worth recalling that when provinces change hands, the buildings disappear unless the conqueror has a core; so nations with land that has changed hands many times will have fewer total magistrates because of it. However, the dominant effect is probably integrated magistrate gain; thus we see Bavaria and Novgorod, with their many vassals, leading the total-magistrates count. But we can also note that never-invaded Ethiopia and Kongo, and Catalunya with its ocean-protected domain in America, are not far behind. Then there's a bit of a jump down to the middle-rank (by this measure, not necessarily overall) powers of about 700-800 magistrates: Croatia, England, USA, Khanate, Qin, Malaya, Persia. Finally there's a rag-tag and bob-tail of minors ranging from 400 to 600: Tripoli, Punjab, Khmer.

There seems to be a sweet spot for maximum province development somewhere around 50 provinces; larger nations can't build up all their provinces (at least not without concentrating exclusively on one area), smaller ones don't have the money (or so I conjecture). Thus we see Qin and Croatia, both around that size, with the highest full-development fractions.

Looking at tables is illuminating but sometimes strains the eyes, so I made some histograms. We can start by showing the total number of magistrates in this form:



Notice that within each bin, the nations in that bin are sorted so the highest flag has the most magistrates. Now we can more clearly see the division into a favoured group with more than a thousand magistrates, a middle rank about 750, and minors with four or five hundred. If we look instead at magistrates per province, however:



we see that Croatia, near the top of the middle ranks by the previous statistic, jumps to first place; Qin makes a similar evolution; and of the former top group, only Kongo retains its high position. Catalunya, formerly ranked fourth, drops to 14th! That said, it is of course a nice question which of these two indices is more important. Density is good, but quantity also has a quality all its own. Indeed, if we look at sheer number of provinces, Catalunya is in a class of its own:



which will, no doubt, spark cries of "Death to perfidious Spain!" Oddman is also king of the hill in terms of total basetax, although the difference is not quite so large:



Finally, in terms of magistrates per basetax, the distribution of nations is rather uniform, with no strong standout, although Kongo is at the top and, perhaps surprisingly, Catalunya at the bottom:



So far I've been considering totals and rankings; now let's have a look at how the nations use what they've got. A small magistrate number is nothing to be ashamed of, it's all in how you prioritise it!

Let us first consider how the nations have used their level-5 buildings; to build such a thing is, in effect, to commit that province to army, navy, government, or economy for the rest of the game. It is of course possible to lose a province and regain it, but I assume nobody builds a high-level building with such a thing in mind. Indeed, my own high-level buildings are well away from the border with Russia, although not everyone has such a luxury. At any rate; as a first cut consider the priorities of army (ie conscription centers), navy (naval bases), and non-military - stock exchange, customs house, cathedral. (Although I've been speaking of level-5 buildings, I list the level-6 ones as the priorities, since it would be pretty silly to build a level-5 and not go for the level-6.)



We see from the clustering along the left-hand edge that the continental nations are very heavily army-oriented, while ignoring their navies. They differ only in how much they feel able to divert from army to economy - ranging from the Khanate and Persia, completely focused on their armies, down to Tripoli which splits itself about evenly between army and other. The exceptions are more interesting. We see Malaya and, especially, England, being much more navy-focused (as one might expect); Ethiopia and Catalunya apparently not specialising at all; and the USA focusing very heavily on 'other'. Khmer, too, has apparently given up on competing militarily with its heavyweight neighbours, and is trying to maximise its non-military power.

Now, 'other' is rather an amorphous category, consisting of the sum of government, production, and trade. Let's combine army and navy and split government off from production and trade; then we find this:



Everyone hates the underpowered government buildings, except Novgorod, Kongo, and the US. I theorise that Kongo is trying to increase its literacy for Victoria by building lots of colleges; possibly the US is doing the same. I'm not sure about Novgorod.

Now let's throw out the military entirely and concentrate on the three non-military branches; we know that people hate government, but how do they prioritise between trade and production?



First a note: The Persian, Punjabi, and English focuses are quite misleading here. The Khanate, for example, has exactly one province with high-level buildings that are not military; I needed a college in my capital for some national decision or other. So my apparent complete focus on government is an artifact of having only one building that's not army! Similarly for Punjab and England. Otherwise we see that most people prefer trade, Tripoli is apparently focusing on production, and Ethiopia and the US are either unfocused or balanced - take your choice of adjective.

The Khanate having so few non-army buildings brings up another point; how committed are we to these strategies? Let's see how things divide between military, nonmilitary, and not committed - which can of course be used later for moving about in the other triangles.



We see Qin and Croatia pretty heavily committed to their respective strategies - they'll need to double in size to change what they're doing. At the other extreme, England has huge amounts of free land that can be used for anything, as does the Khanate - strategic options, yay! We see again that most people lean pretty strongly military. I wonder if anyone will be inspired by the pacific focus of the US to invade? Take the nice rich provinces from the decadently unmilitary people!

Finally, I repeat the three focus triangles using all buildings, instead of just high-level ones:







and find a cluster of army states and a cluster of 'navy' states who are actually not so much navy-focused in the sense that the others are army-focused, as balanced between army and navy. Ruling the waves is, apparently, not sufficient by itself. We also see even more strongly that everyone hates the government buildings, but Kongo hates them the least. In the low-level buildings we're more balanced between trade and production, perhaps due to the widespread perception that the low-level trade buildings are rather underpowered, so people only buy them as stepping stones to the high-level ones.

Word count 1400, and I thought this was going to be a not-much-writing, heavy-on-the-pictures AAR... Anyway, let me know if there's any other statistics you'd like to see in a similar format.

[Paxdax]

Interesting to find a mega-campaign like this, when I by chance read 'The Great Game' a good while back

[el_zilcho321]

I think there have been a few mega campaigns, all in succession and played by mostly the same people.