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unmerged(11496)

Defender/Avenger
Oct 31, 2002
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I have seen many a map discussion thread get pretty heated over whether or not PTI is justified in a given mountainous area due to the existence of passes here and there and such-and-such a province really should be able to touch so-and-so province and so on or that, while inhospitable, movement was possible through a given area.

In that light, what do you all think of this:

Where mountain passes exist, let them be represented by a small province (think the size of one of the Dutch or other lowland provinces on vanilla EU2 map) bridging the PTI of a given area.

A mountain pass province would have:

The province would be mountain (of course).

Maybe even add the "river" attribute to it's borders, which I believe affects movement and combat?

Perhaps give it a level three or four fortress to start with...do fortresses give defenders in a province a combat bonus, or is it strictly seige-related?

0 tax base, 0 manpower and the least valuable trade good conceivable to the region.

Perhaps tag it so as to make it exempt from random events which would increase its taxes or manpower, or script regular (every 50 or 100 years ought to do it) events which give a -2 to both taxes and manpower, just to be sure the provinces stay "worthless" aside from their strategic location.

EDIT: maybe also start them out as 0 pop unclaimed provinces with maximum inhospitality?


Is there any worth to this idea, or am I just wacked-out on sugar and caffine? :wacko:
 
I think your idea is slightly daffy, though I've considered parts of it myself.

Captain America said:
Perhaps give it a level three or four fortress to start with...do fortresses give defenders in a province a combat bonus, or is it strictly seige-related?

This would be a terrible mistake. If someone owned the province it would become nearly unconquerable. Then the country itself would become basically undefeatable, leading to endless wars.
 
I'm not sure what problem would be being addressed by introducing a tiny poor province in where the pass was. Simply create a link between provinces where there is a pass, and leave PTI between them where there is not. Is the point simply to slow movement down? To increase attrition?

As Cagliostro says, fortresses in such a province would be a mistake. They only affect sieges.
 
Cagliostro said:
I think your idea is slightly daffy, though I've considered parts of it myself.

Just trying to get the creative juices flowing :)

Anyway, "slightly daffy" I can deal with - "just plain stupid" would have been insulting, so well played :D
 
How about a straight between the provinces? (if one can have one without actually having any ocean).
Would work better than a province imho (gives the defender on the other side of the pass a large defence bonus without creating a wierd pass province...)
Then again aren't mountain passes a bit too near the tactical level to be simulated in a game of grand strategy?
 
doktarr said:
Is the point simply to slow movement down? To increase attrition?

Both, as well as making the pass province a transit corridor which has to be dealt with separatley from the provinces which border it.

Imagine two rooms separated by a short hallway with doors on either end. Securing the hallway doesn't grant you the room beyond, it just puts you in posession of the bottleneck between the two. Same with a mountain pass.

doktarr said:
As Cagliostro says, fortresses in such a province would be a mistake. They only affect sieges.

Then yeah, ixnay on the ortress-fay...
 
Trin Tragula said:
How about a straight between the provinces? (if one can have one without actually having any ocean).
Would work better than a province imho (gives the defender on the other side of the pass a large defence bonus without creating a wierd pass province...)

That would be much better than a simple land link, I agree - good thinking!

Trin Tragula said:
Then again aren't mountain passes a bit too near the tactical level to be simulated in a game of grand strategy?

Ordinarily, I would agree. In this case, the idea hit me when I was seeing some of the arguments regarding redrawing the map and placing PTI where impassible mountain ranges are, cutting provinces off from one another completely, with the counter-arguments that there were mountain passes here and there so to cut certain provinces off from one another completely was inaccurate.

The same could also apply to caravan trails through supposedly tractless desert, I guess.
 
We can't add staits, afaik. Or did anything change there in one of the recent miracles?
 
Captain America said:
Maybe even add the "river" attribute to it's borders, which I believe affects movement and combat?

0 tax base, 0 manpower and the least valuable trade good conceivable to the region.

You can fiddle with the move speed of the province directly, without putting a river in. Also, I think you can have provinces which produce no goods at all, making them virtually worthless economically. Given that we can't make straits, I don't think this is a bad idea at all. The only worry would be making sure that no-one could possibly build a fort on it.
 
Incompetent said:
The only worry would be making sure that no-one could possibly build a fort on it.

Its possible to make a province which cant be built in. Place a settler in the province before the game begin and set its finish date to 1820 and it will be permanently uninhabitable. :)
 
Incompetent said:
You can fiddle with the move speed of the province directly, without putting a river in. Also, I think you can have provinces which produce no goods at all, making them virtually worthless economically. Given that we can't make straits, I don't think this is a bad idea at all. The only worry would be making sure that no-one could possibly build a fort on it.

The problem with movement-speeds is that you won't get the desired attrition-effect. Say that your army is in prov. A and the pass is prov. B.
A is reasonably rich and B is dirt poor and you want a longer time to move through the pass. You can change the SizeModifier-value in privince.csv for province B, but that will change the time it takes to move TO the province, not FROM it. This means that, although it will take more time which in itself is a good thing, your armies won't suffer since the extra time they spend moving is spent in a province with a high supportvalue.

Sven_vegas said:
Its possible to make a province which cant be built in. Place a settler in the province before the game begin and set its finish date to 1820 and it will be permanently uninhabitable. :)

That could be done, but it'll be terribly ugly... :rolleyes:
Moreover, the settler must belong to a country and if that country is annexed the settler will disappear...right?
 
Sven_vegas said:
Its possible to make a province which cant be built in. Place a settler in the province before the game begin and set its finish date to 1820 and it will be permanently uninhabitable. :)

Or just give it a tax-value of zero. Besides, strategic mountain-passes were often well-fortified in real life, weren't they?
 
anti_strunt said:
Or just give it a tax-value of zero. Besides, strategic mountain-passes were often well-fortified in real life, weren't they?

From my original post:

Captain America said:
0 tax base, 0 manpower and the least valuable trade good conceivable to the region.

Perhaps tag it so as to make it exempt from random events which would increase its taxes or manpower, or script regular (every 50 or 100 years ought to do it) events which give a -2 to both taxes and manpower, just to be sure the provinces stay "worthless" aside from their strategic location.

Glad to see some discussion on this, don't know if it will amount to anything, though :)
 
Hallsten said:
That could be done, but it'll be terribly ugly... :rolleyes:
Moreover, the settler must belong to a country and if that country is annexed the settler will disappear...right?

Not if you can remove the settler animation for the mtn pass...as for the country, there's already a PTI tag, IIRC, why not have the settler belong to PTI? :p
 
Captain America said:
Not if you can remove the settler animation for the mtn pass...as for the country, there's already a PTI tag, IIRC, why not have the settler belong to PTI? :p

Or you could simply change the province's settler-anim. coordinates to be somewhere deep in the Sahara or whereever, and no-one will ever be the wiser. :p
 
Captain America said:
Not if you can remove the settler animation for the mtn pass...as for the country, there's already a PTI tag, IIRC, why not have the settler belong to PTI? :p

Yes, that's true...

anti_strunt said:
Or you could simply change the province's settler-anim. coordinates to be somewhere deep in the Sahara or whereever, and no-one will ever be the wiser. :p

...and so is that, but I'd know it's there and it'd drive me insane...INSANE I TELLS YOU... :rolleyes: ;)

Personally I think that 0 tax 0 manpower is the way to go.
We could make it extra fun by giving all adjacent nations a CB-shield on the pass... :D
 
Why do we even haveto represent such places by adding a new province instead of extending 2 provinces in the area to meet somewhere in the pass. This solves every problem but the movement one, which could be done by an invisable river.
 
Jinnai said:
Why do we even haveto represent such places by adding a new province instead of extending 2 provinces in the area to meet somewhere in the pass. This solves every problem but the movement one, which could be done by an invisable river.

Which is certainly the simplest idea; I'm looking at other ideas to see if something heretofor unconsidered but worthwhile shakes out.

That being said, while an invisible river is good, an invisible strait would be even better, if they ever become moddable!

EDIT: I forgot to mention the additional movement and attrition of a desolate mountain pass province...
 
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