Has A Heart of Darkness Done more harm than good?

Seelmeister said:

It works diferently, sure, but there is an element of concentration and prioritisation. As Sakura has usggested, a good strategy for the US could be to concentrate on grabbing those states that Britain is likely to compete in, and taking the southern state from Mexico at a later date.

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UK colonises the North-western most state before you can even compete as you don't have a border or naval base in range and have to colonise one of the two bordering states first, which obviously takes time. Dependent on the whim of the AI, UK may or may not compete in the others, seems to vary.

LarryLeica said:

UK colonises the North-western most state before you can even compete as you don't have a border or naval base in range and have to colonise one of the two bordering states first, which obviously takes time. Dependent on the whim of the AI, UK may or may not compete in the others, seems to vary.

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You have a border with British Columbia and Idaho at the start. You can colonize Washington and Oregon after taking Idaho. I've never seen the UK colonize Washington before taking British Columbia, although they are theoretically able to do so. Hence, competing in British Columbia means you have a good chance of getting Washington. Keep in mind the system gives you some leeway: you don't need to put points into BC immediately, because their levels won't go up while they're not competing. Send your expedition a day before they can create a protectorate, and the clock resets.

You can abuse this by withdrawing from a state in which you both have only level one expeditions. The other country won't be able to upgrade its level, and will have to wait for many more months until they can create a protectorate. In the meantime, you can spend your points elsewhere, so long as you expect to have another 80 points before you lose the region you withdrew from.

I think one of the problems with the AI all siding with one side during a colonial crisis is one of the two sides gets a "too many wargoals" penalty so they all side with the other one especially as it's so early no one has built up relationships yet. I've only ever seen colonial crisis over British Columbia so I don't know if it's just there or a wider colonial crisis problem. I've got the penalty when playing the UK and I've seen the US AI get it ever other time.

The DominusNovus guide to winning all uncolonized areas in question:
1) Send colonists to Idaho and BC.
2) Build as many frigates as you can (maybe even some naval bases, but they take a little too long to be useful for this strategy). You'll run a deficit, probably, but then again, you're probably going to go to war against Mexico anyway to make sure Texas doesn't get annexed.
3) NF Bureaucrats in Florida and Michigan; hopefully they can be turned into states before you go to war with Mexico.
4) Once you've got free CPs, send them into whatever state Mexico is going after (probably Colorado).
5) If you get into a war with Mexico (which you should), try to sink some of their ships to cripple their colonization efforts.
6) When you can colonize Idaho, do. Go after Washington next, don't let up on BC.
7) Keep up with Mexico's colonization efforts wherever they are. Your frigates should give you enough CP to keep up with them.
8) The moment Washington is colonized, withdraw from BC and pat yourself on the back. You now have enough CP to beat Mexico for any of the remaining uncolonized states, and their probably devastated by the recent war. Colonize at your leisure.

Bonus 9) Make sure to drive up Mexico's war exhaustion a bit during the war, and they'll be too messed up to build any fortifications/naval bases in the Mexican Cession territories, thus keeping the warscore of those areas low enough that you can take them all in one war when your truce breaks (and you get Manifest Destiny).

CFG9000 said:

It really isn't. Prussia, for example, would not give a solitary fabideedledoozy about Oregon.

HoD added a lot of great things, but until Paradox actually playtests them enough (which they clearly did not do pre-release) to make the AI something resembling sane, I've rolled back to AHD>

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Entirely irrelevant - You're still acting as though the US/UK Crisis was scripted. It isn't (At least not in the traditional sense). Using your skewed logic, nobody would care about most Crisis anywhere because of specific history. It wouldn't be a new system if every possible Crisis had to be pre-determined to the point of never coming out any different.

The crisis system is designed to make colonial disputes mature into a heated war scenario - neither party has to back down, but they also don't have to go to war either.

If you don't want to play the crisis system, then don't and stay with AHD - but don't fault the system over a single scenario (which is easy to win without going to war for either side)

Beagá said:

Pro-tip:

Don´t play version 1.0 of anything. Wait for patches.

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FTFY with my personal version - Not a single released game these days is bug free.

This actually gave me an interesting idea regarding ticking war score.

Maybe separate warscore sliders for specific objectives?
An 'overall' one and then one for specific wargoals;

that way, too, you'd be able to actually register the effects of your king of the hill holding alsace rather than just having it be a +6% somewhere;
you can view how close you are to hitting max which would effect the cost of requesting it in peace deals,
and increase the importance of holding wargoals with visual feedback.

Felicity said:

This actually gave me an interesting idea regarding ticking war score.

Maybe separate warscore sliders for specific objectives?
An 'overall' one and then one for specific wargoals;

that way, too, you'd be able to actually register the effects of your king of the hill holding alsace rather than just having it be a +6% somewhere;
you can view how close you are to hitting max which would effect the cost of requesting it in peace deals,
and increase the importance of holding wargoals with visual feedback.

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You can already see the progress towards the max by hovering your mouse over the war goal next to the slider.

Kimberly said:

You can already see the progress towards the max by hovering your mouse over the war goal next to the slider.

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I mean, in a more accessibly easier way, at a glance so to speak. Tooltips noninclusive.

I know pdox has issues with user friendliness but it'd be nice if wars could be more focused on the goal rather than an all out country occupation fest anytime you want to take a small colony. TWS is moving towards this but needs a bit more polish.

Kimberly said:

I've never seen the UK colonize Washington before taking British Columbia, although they are theoretically able to do so.

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They do it every single game for me, regardless of whether I'm playing the USA. They are also colonising everywhere else they can too. Using the colonial fix from the New Nations Mod doesn't change this behaviour although it does stop them from releasing Columbia at the start.

Illanair said:

Entirely irrelevant - You're still acting as though the US/UK Crisis was scripted. It isn't (At least not in the traditional sense). Using your skewed logic, nobody would care about most Crisis anywhere because of specific history. It wouldn't be a new system if every possible Crisis had to be pre-determined to the point of never coming out any different.

The crisis system is designed to make colonial disputes mature into a heated war scenario - neither party has to back down, but they also don't have to go to war either.

If you don't want to play the crisis system, then don't and stay with AHD - but don't fault the system over a single scenario (which is easy to win without going to war for either side)



FTFY with my personal version - Not a single released game these days is bug free.

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Considering that the entire community voiced concerns about GPs staying out of crises that don't logically concern them from the moment the system was unveiled in the dev diary, and Paradox said they were taking those concerns into account, it is not unreasonable to expect the system to make sense.

CFG9000 said:

It really isn't. Prussia, for example, would not give a solitary fadoodlledandy about Oregon.

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Well, I think the crisis system is an abstraction of a lot of behind the scenes diplomacy. If the US and Britain were having a major dispute over the Oregon territories and Britain and Prussia were allies, I could see them doing some sabre rattling in the diplomatic arena. No, they probably wouldn't send massive amounts of troops into Oregon. But they won't do that in the game either.

If you're playing the USA and you're worried about Prussia siding with the UK in a war against you in the 1840s you're probably overly paranoid. Just ignore them. What are they going to do? Send over a couple of cavalry brigades in their boat?

Prussia/Germany and their huge armies are scary if you share a land border with them. Otherwise not so much. Almost everyone hates them and is afraid to give them military access. I fought a ridiculous war against the UK and their Prussian ally over Denmark's colonies as Spain. It lasted for about ten years and at no point during the war did I ever see a Prussian.

They couldn't even manage to get troops from Prussia to Denmark. The chances of them launching anything like a successful invasion of the USA that early in the game are remote.

blaidd said:

Well, I think the crisis system is an abstraction of a lot of behind the scenes diplomacy. If the US and Britain were having a major dispute over the Oregon territories and Britain and Prussia were allies, I could see them doing some sabre rattling in the diplomatic arena. No, they probably wouldn't send massive amounts of troops into Oregon. But they won't do that in the game either.

If you're playing the USA and you're worried about Prussia siding with the UK in a war against you in the 1840s you're probably overly paranoid. Just ignore them. What are they going to do? Send over a couple of cavalry brigades in their boat?

Prussia/Germany and their huge armies are scary if you share a land border with them. Otherwise not so much. Almost everyone hates them and is afraid to give them military access. I fought a ridiculous war against the UK and their Prussian ally over Denmark's colonies as Spain. It lasted for about ten years and at no point during the war did I ever see a Prussian.

They couldn't even manage to get troops from Prussia to Denmark. The chances of them launching anything like a successful invasion of the USA that early in the game are remote.

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That does break the crisis system somewhat, though. If your best bet is not to care about far-away powers joining your opponent's side, because you can win the war anyway, then the whole diplomacy aspect is gone. You lose diplomatic bargaining power because there are more powers on the opposing side, even though you can win by force of arms, making a diplomatic solution impossible. Crises escalating into wars should be the exception rather than the rule.

Kimberly said:

That does break the crisis system somewhat, though. If your best bet is not to care about far-away powers joining your opponent's side, because you can win the war anyway, then the whole diplomacy aspect is gone. You lose diplomatic bargaining power because there are more powers on the opposing side, even though you can win by force of arms, making a diplomatic solution impossible. Crises escalating into wars should be the exception rather than the rule.

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Kinda how diplomacy works. Nations backing others in matters they don't care at all. If war breaks out, they do nothing. They however affect what way the diplomatic solution will go or whether or not crises escalate. In the game and in the real world.

Only few crises escalate to war stage. Most of them won't even get a single backer.

Edit: But yeah, first US/UK colonial crisis isn't all that good performance from the Crisis system. Luckily if either side is human it can be avoided most of the time.

You can get all four states, I had to restart at least 5 games in a row to get the strategy down right, but it's doable if you plan it right. Here's what you do.

1. Day 1. Cut your navy spending as much as you can, you need money. Raise taxes and tariffs and bleed your country for every penny.
2. Throw all of that money at building frigates, this will give you the colonial power you need to compete. Don't unpause until you've queued up as many frigates as you can, or at least an East Coast-full.
3. Send a colonist to British Colombia, Washington, and whichever state Mexico chooses (it will only do one at first)
4. By the time your frigates are built, you should be able to hold the British and Mexicans off until Washington finishes, at this point take Washington and dump BC.
5. Keep building frigates and use your size to overpower Mexico with CP, probably take Oregon about this time.

If you do this, the new colonial system works much better for the US than it was before, where you could never beat Mexico to Colorado. It takes a lot of practice, but with the right preparation you can hold the British off. In Africa I actually use the strategy of blocking key colonies with competition so I can prevent my rival getting through to larger areas while I colonize them. I've gotten massive territories as the Netherlands like this, I could barely maintain my colonies with CP. I think once you get used to the system you'll find it works better in every way than before, like I said it just takes practice.

LarryLeica said:

They do it every single game for me, regardless of whether I'm playing the USA. They are also colonising everywhere else they can too. Using the colonial fix from the New Nations Mod doesn't change this behaviour although it does stop them from releasing Columbia at the start.

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Well, if you're playing New Nations Mod, where they don't release Columbia, then thats why they're able to colonize Washington. If they release Columbia, then they have no ability to colonize Washington before getting the rest of BC. Which is ironic that it is the AI's tendency to act ahistorically that causes it to... act historically. It occurs to me now that perhaps the UK should not start with any provinces in BC state anymore.

DominusNovus said:

Well, if you're playing New Nations Mod, where they don't release Columbia, then thats why they're able to colonize Washington. If they release Columbia, then they have no ability to colonize Washington before getting the rest of BC. Which is ironic that it is the AI's tendency to act ahistorically that causes it to... act historically. It occurs to me now that perhaps the UK should not start with any provinces in BC state anymore.

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One can colonize through a dominion, sometimes the AI does exactly that.

EUnderhill said:

One can colonize through a dominion, sometimes the AI does exactly that.

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I've yet to ever see the UK colonize through British Columbia, though you are right that they can do that. Perhaps they AI feels that it needs the entirety of the state in question under its control (or its dominion's control) before it tries to expand outward?

@wildbillhdmax01

As for the British seizing "your" Oregon and Washington, well, historical contest aside, back then that was all mostly virgin land up for grabs. There was no clear, objective line between British Canada and the would-be American West. It wasn't territory the US was somehow entitled to. That was the rhetoric of American expansionists and their Manifest Destiny. As it stands, the game's biased enough to have said subjective principles grant the US cores on what ended up being their historical territory. But could've not been.

And about the other matter, I don't get why it's so hard to let go of Liberia. Not every war can or has to be won. I understand Minnesota is probably worth fighting for, but I'm guessing you didn't try to end the war by just ceding Liberia before the warscore got too stacked against you.

Sorry if I sound snarky. Yes, the game mechanics need some fine-tuning, seriously so in some places, but some reasonings just irked me.

EDIT: Forgot to add one thing...

I'm not really seeing a problem with the British AI acting like this. It's actually rather smart. The uncolonized areas of Canada are not in danger of being lost to another power, unlike Washington and Oregon. So it makes sense to try and grab those first: you've all the time in the world to colonize the northern wilderness later.

Releasing a dominion without all of its cores occupied is problematic since they won't necessarily be in the position to colonize the rest.

I've found that the way colonisation works now makes AI nations wanting to compete to the point of being entirely nonsenical. One can easily utilize this to further one's own goals. When I colonized Africa as Germany, I was a latecomer as I had no good naval technology and no high-level ports. So in 1870, I first had to justify war against one of the African countries, conquered part of them, and then started wildly colonizing. Not only did the AI get into squabbles with each other, ignoring the lands that were just there for the taking, but I could also strategically use it to keep them away from certain territory - I competed with the Ottomans and France over one territory just to keep them bound there.

Other than that, games aren't predictable. Just because in your game, the UK is shoving you around doesn't mean it has to happen every game. When I played the US, I instantly got the colony game right (build ships, colonize BC, oppose the Mexicans, use free points as they come along). Then I pissed off all the GPs with the "let's turn Cuba to a slave state" decision, and they ganged up on me in the crisis over BC, and the only result was them getting the territory, which isn't too terrible. The Brits, like everyone, hated me at this point and I barely had an army. But then, a lot of crises happened, and in every single one the UK were on the losing side, to the point of France getting to first place (and Russia occupying Greece). As the US, you have little reason to whine about the crisis system: the only GP that can keep their head out even further is Japan. If you were in continental Europe, you'd constantly have to pick sides or lose prestige, and it's much riskier. And in the end, if you want someone to stay off your back, just improve your relations with them. As the US, you usually will want good relations with the UK, which is basically the only Great Power with any real possibilities and motives to tear you a new one.