Thx for taking over shortly on such short notice. And for bringing OE out of this war.
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Thx for taking over shortly on such short notice. And for bringing OE out of this war.
Just remember how long that war went on guys. It had been raging what something like 10 years at the end of the previous weeks session when I ran the OE and at that point the OE could hold off Russia as I think Stein proved. War exhaustion at that point was +10 for OE, +9 for Poland and +8 for Russia - yes OE and Poland did most of the fighting during that period
. The fact that the war was allowed to continue for nigh on another 10 years resulted in the effect we all saw.OE giving Astrakhan at the end was the right choice at that point, but it really shouldn't have been allowed to go on that long.
Then WORK! That is, after all, what you are being paid for, presumably
Well, we did have that rule about not engaging in trench warfare, and we were told that POL+RUS would vigorously ensure that that was not the case at the end of last session (after the first eight years of war, as the war started when the Ottomans attacked Georgia in 1642 and Poland and Russia rushed to the defence). So all of us were eagerly awaiting the Polish and Russian offensive....
Nevertheless, the following seven years would be hard to categorize as anything but trench warfare, with Poland getting a breathing space by making separate peace (by mistake, it was revealed - Poland preferred the stabhits) after being mauled by the Ottomans and later reentering the war.
Meanwhile, the Russian player continued to make demands on Astrakhan (despite not having taken it), and when finally the Ottoman player suggested that if the Russian player could take that damn province and hold it for six months, he could have it, us onlookers heard no positive reply from Russia (we did hear Russia's complaint that it was a difficult province to take, though).... [This, of course, should have been agreed years earlier]
So the Ottoman player quit in a fit of pique (seen before
, and never acceptable no matter the provocation), and the Russian player actually invaded and got Astrakhan handed over after about 16 years of warfare, having broken the Ottoman Empire by war exhaustion, pure and simple.So, yes, I do blame POL and RUS for this long destructive war. For nearly a decade, despite not being ahead in the war, they kept making demands on the Ottomans in order to end it, while letting war exhaustion do their job contrary to both the spirit of the game (as I understood it, though I may possibly have been mistaken), and the rules. And even as I will freely admit that it has certainly improved Austria-Italia's position in the world that the east has suffered so much, I still find that war profoundly silly, and demanding provinces in peace treaties that you do not control contrary to the spirit of Machiavelli.
On the positive side it gave me peace to keep funding Brandenburg and sending ever more missionaries to Africa:
Jesuit Commandos In Action
They could hold Russia off with ease - in 1650, after eight years of war.
After 16 years of war, damn right, they could not. The Ottomans lost the war because of war exhaustion. The only reason that Damocles was right was exactly because this became a war of war exhaustion and trench warfare, something that should never have happened, if I understood BiB's first post in this thread right.
EDIT: To quote BiB from just before yesterday's session
Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen
Then WORK! That is, after all, what you are being paid for, presumably
I would if I had anything to do, wahtsoever, but there is no work at the moment....
Today I have spent the entire day surfing this forum since I came in at about 8.00, except 10 minutes of sorting mails, 10 minutes, of coffe break, and 20 minutes lunch....
and with this forum being less than active it has not been the most interesting day of my life...
Allthough I lack the linguistical skills the rest of you have, adn the ability to bring facts to a discussion like the Professor...
I agree with Peter, here.
Russia and Poland was only able to beat back he ottoman invaders. They could not push into the OE itself. Poland was beaten and left the war, only to reenter when we was down again.
The war should have ended during the first year of yesterdays session. It should have been a wp becasue no participant had the strength to win the war.
But the result was, (yet again) violation of the games spirit. because of some players stubborness.
Originally posted by Slargos
Infantry losses:
POL/RUS: 300
TUR: 500
Cavalry losses:
POL/RUS: 70
TUR: 140
I think the numbers pretty much speak for themselves, and I'm sure in the future of this timeline, some rockband will create a ballad about "The Hussar"
Note also that POL/RUS lost twice the number of soldiers to attrit compared to TUR. Meaning of course we spent more time on the offensive than him.
Turkish economy: Shot to crap producing all the troops Wyvern and Stein sent to their deaths, despite being fuelled by western powers. (Traitors
Polish/Russian economies: Hurt but fairly fine.
The OE players turned this into total war... yet the blame falls on poor POL/RUS... no one claimed life was fair, I suppose.
One thing can be revealed now: while I studied those morale figures, I realised OE was for the whole war (till 1650) at 50% land maintenance.
Hopefully Stein was warned about that. I admit I forgot to tell him
Originally posted by TheArchduke
And plz Smirfy tell us how you explore without waypoints!
Some discoveries really hurt!
Like mine that trade embargoes issued during the war seem to be cancelled after the war
Alternatively, and knowing the geography of the east, it could be taken as meaning that armies on the plains of Poland and Russia take less monthly attrition than armies in the mountains of Hungary and Armenia.... Seems like a more likely explanation, reallyOriginally posted by Slargos
Note also that POL/RUS lost twice the number of soldiers to attrit compared to TUR. Meaning of course we spent more time on the offensive than him.
Originally posted by Barnius
One thing can be revealed now: while I studied those morale figures, I realised OE was for the whole war (till 1650) at 50% land maintenance.
Hopefully Stein was warned about that. I admit I forgot to tell him
Yep, this is sadly true (dies from embarassment
). I don't remember setting it back to 50% maintenance just before we finished the previous week though I guess it's marginally possible I did, so I expect my 7 or 8 years of war against Russia and Poland was unfortunately, most probably conducted at 50% maintenance - oops!
Originally posted by Wyvern
Yep, this is sadly true (dies from embarassment
Wonder how the war would have looked with ottoman maintenance at 100%...
What do you all mean by the concept of "trench warfare"?
For me that means digging yourself down into a trench (a la WW1) and avoid pitched battles and thus reduce the number of dead soldiers. In EU terms perhaps just doing nothing or almost nothing would be a good comparison.
The figures presented by Barnius suggests that according to this definition the Eastern war was anything but a trench war. There was a tremendous amount of casualties. Perhaps they all did occur at a very late stage and the first say 5 years not much happened? Not that I can deduce that from what I read but perhaps still true.
Peter writes:
"For nearly a decade, despite not being ahead in the war, they kept making demands on the Ottomans in order to end it, while letting war exhaustion do their job contrary to both the spirit of the game (as I understood it, though I may possibly have been mistaken), and the rules."
IRL, if you were attacked by another nation and the war score (talking EU language) at a certain moment was around 0% the attacked nation would surely be viewed upon by its neighbours to be righteous if they claimed some kind of compensation for the economical etc loss this war caused them. CB has something to do with this also. The worse CB the aggressor had, the more this claim would be acceptable to the general opinion. Thus, if you truly RP I believe defenders might have been in their right of not accepting a WP just because the war score were around 0%. What the compensation should be one could argue about. Perhaps a whole province is too much.
But of course, I do not know about your rules (as a matter of fact one wonders if the players themselves know them) and perhaps RUS+POL did break a clear rule. If that was the case I believe that rule may be contrary to the RP aspect of the game,
IRL, wars could drag on for many many years during this era. Much because the impact on the normal life of the normal citizen was not always that large. E.g., the impact on the Spanish/Swedish normal peasent/burger from the 30 years war was not that huge (conscriptions and taxes but not much more). For the normal "German" it was of course quite different.
For me that means digging yourself down into a trench (a la WW1) and avoid pitched battles and thus reduce the number of dead soldiers. In EU terms perhaps just doing nothing or almost nothing would be a good comparison.
The figures presented by Barnius suggests that according to this definition the Eastern war was anything but a trench war. There was a tremendous amount of casualties. Perhaps they all did occur at a very late stage and the first say 5 years not much happened? Not that I can deduce that from what I read but perhaps still true.
Peter writes:
"For nearly a decade, despite not being ahead in the war, they kept making demands on the Ottomans in order to end it, while letting war exhaustion do their job contrary to both the spirit of the game (as I understood it, though I may possibly have been mistaken), and the rules."
IRL, if you were attacked by another nation and the war score (talking EU language) at a certain moment was around 0% the attacked nation would surely be viewed upon by its neighbours to be righteous if they claimed some kind of compensation for the economical etc loss this war caused them. CB has something to do with this also. The worse CB the aggressor had, the more this claim would be acceptable to the general opinion. Thus, if you truly RP I believe defenders might have been in their right of not accepting a WP just because the war score were around 0%. What the compensation should be one could argue about. Perhaps a whole province is too much.
But of course, I do not know about your rules (as a matter of fact one wonders if the players themselves know them
) and perhaps RUS+POL did break a clear rule. If that was the case I believe that rule may be contrary to the RP aspect of the game,IRL, wars could drag on for many many years during this era. Much because the impact on the normal life of the normal citizen was not always that large. E.g., the impact on the Spanish/Swedish normal peasent/burger from the 30 years war was not that huge (conscriptions and taxes but not much more). For the normal "German" it was of course quite different.
Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen
Alternatively, and knowing the geography of the east, it could be taken as meaning that armies on the plains of Poland and Russia take less monthly attrition than armies in the mountains of Hungary and Armenia.... Seems like a more likely explanation, really
Obfuscation your honor!!
Trench warfare REDUCING the number of casualties? My God - how different interpretations we have. When I think of trench warfare, I think of two enemies facing each other over disputed ground. Occasionally, one enemy will storm the other, attempting to take his position, taking enormous casualties. Sometimes he will succeed, sometimes not, but even if he succeeds, he will likely be pushed out when the enemy marshals forces to retake the position, falling back to his own trenches, restoring the status quo....
In other words, huge casualties, but the front lines remain fundamentally the same.
That is exactly what we have been seing in the eastern war.
Maintainance was at 100%, don't worry
OE losses were so high because most of the fighting took place on the plains of Russia and Poland (strange that, isn't it?), both Poland and Russia had decent leaders and OE was max defensive. Since OE was also able to recruit more troops this by itself hardly indicates that Poland and Russia won, doesn't it?
I left you because I disagreed with the way this game was conduced, plain and simple. The situtaion wasn't THAT much worse than in 1650 afterall since there was still pleanty of manpower reserves (I never deplented the mp pool, but since we was already maxed ...) and rr was actually better since I had raised stab somewhat. The army was a bit decimated since Russia had been successful on the last offensive but that could have been corrected with a few months of defensive play and building up, mp reserves and all that. The main difference was that Popland was suddenly we free
OE losses were so high because most of the fighting took place on the plains of Russia and Poland (strange that, isn't it?), both Poland and Russia had decent leaders and OE was max defensive. Since OE was also able to recruit more troops this by itself hardly indicates that Poland and Russia won, doesn't it?
I left you because I disagreed with the way this game was conduced, plain and simple. The situtaion wasn't THAT much worse than in 1650 afterall since there was still pleanty of manpower reserves (I never deplented the mp pool, but since we was already maxed ...) and rr was actually better since I had raised stab somewhat. The army was a bit decimated since Russia had been successful on the last offensive but that could have been corrected with a few months of defensive play and building up, mp reserves and all that. The main difference was that Popland was suddenly we free
Thanks for explaining Peter. Now I understand what you mean.
BTW, the reason trench warfare occurred during WW1 was because attacking thru open ground would have been too deadly mainly because of the invention of the machine gun. The reason to dig into trenchies therefore indeed was to keep the casualties down. And I suppose the Western front in WW1 is the grand example of trench warfare. Had the war on that front been conducted in a more normal fashion (with pitched battles a la Napoleon or the American civil war) the numbers of causalties would have much much larger. The fact is that the high number of casualties in this war (Western front) was due to the large armies, not to the trench character. And to the fact that when the generals sat there with their world record sized armies they tried to do something after all which ended in these mostly catastrophic (in terms of the number of dead) offensives like that of the battle of Somme in 1916.
Nice explanation to the concept of trench warfare in WWI, but it has exactly what to do with our game?
Originally posted by TheArchduke
And plz Smirfy tell us how you explore without waypoints!
Admittedly it was tiresome
, but I knew how much pleasure my fellow MP'ers would get from the admission.The beauty with EUII is you discover something new with the game every time you play
Technically thats not correct.
Trench warfare came about because of an inability to exploit tactical success at an operational level, not because of machine guns. This was conclusively proved in the Spring Offensive of 1918. Machine guns had nothing to do with trench warfare ( In the ACW, where there were no automatic weapons but there was trench warfare). Tanks were not the reason for the end of trench warfare (the Iran-Iraq war proves that)
There were large number of pitched battles. The large number of casulties were not primarily to do with the size of the
armies but rather the economic, social, technological and cultural development conditions that existed.
regards
Mr picky-picky (the 2nd)
Originally posted by kurtbrian
Nice explanation to the concept of trench warfare in WWI, but it has exactly what to do with our game?
Because the Dutch have secret planes for machineguns