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Sorry John. After I have compiled the requests no one can change his request. See post 1 of this thread. Numerous players in this campaign have suffered from this in the past.
Daniel A said:
All MT systems make you want to go to war more often. Moving on to more relevant issues...
Really? I recall a lot of the players being unhappy with the "welfare" aspect of the MT system a while back when we had a general discussion about it. I'm not going to bother making much fuss about that- as long as we all realize that we're playing this "Test of Skill" with handicaps
. That would be a nice improvement. The system itself is ok- my post that you quoted was mostly just a vent of frustraction, but its stupid that it hasn't been improved upon anymore so far. There are some major flaws in it still. I was disappointed that two ideas for helping this haven't been capitalized on- dividing losses by your starting MP rather than ending MP, so as not to penalize expansion, and also/or multiplying years played by powerpoints instead of MP(because MP really doesn't reflect your war capabilities nearly as much). The 2nd one in particular would solve a pretty major problem with the MT and possibly eliminate the need for making MT year dependent. The reason scores have been out of wack so far is that MP is just not a good indicator to use. In the beginning it has almost nothing to do with how much power you can project, and as time goes on, income still plays a greater role in that(especially for naval losses). PP might not be that great- but perhaps a combination of MP and income would be just right, emphasising income more at the beginning and then shifting towards an even balance between income and MP(similar to my idea in the PP discussion thread).
If you use my solution, or somehow come up with an equally brilliant idea to fix that major problem, my faith in your MT will be restored
. Well, I've said my beef with how this MT system, but since you ask:
An MT system is a way to give out leaders in a way that the random factor is marginalized as much as possible. In a good MT system, the kind of leaders you get will be dependent on the actions you take in game, not whether God favors you or not.
It also serves as a way to promote wars by rewarding good leaders as a compensation for the ravages of war.
I think we agree on both points. Where we've disagreed is whether skillful player actions, or unskillful player actions should be the determinant of whether you get good leaders or not.
AAR Portugal 1624-1640
The war had been going the other way for a while. We had lost control of Italy, and the Moldavian alliance made it as far as Rosella on the Alpine front, but things were about to change. I got two good generals, a 566 and a 466. Though they were really no better than most enemy generals, this was a huge reversal because the last session, my leaders all died random deaths, so I'd been fighting at a leader disadvantage...
A lot of stuff happened. I don't think I'll go through it all, but basicly, 1st stage, Brabant was suffering and couldn't maintain a proper force to defend itself, and its allies kept attritioning because of lack of supply. We outmaneuvered Naples, Saxony, Moldavia and Albania in France for a while, and then were able to make a major offensive into Brabant that gave our alliance a lot of ws on them, while I also took Brabant's colonial cot and some other colonies, giving enough ws to stabhit them.
They accidentally accepted one of the stabhits, but really they would've had to accept sooner or later, or risk a gov collapse(their capital was either captured or about to be captured by scotland right before they accepted).
2nd stage- The alliance couldn't operate effectively in France anymore, because nobody could get any supply there. Albania and Moldavia tried a few invasions but they lost big every time to Portuguese or Scottish forces. Moldavia took my SA possessions, then lost them, and took them again. It didn't really matter though because we were focusing on Naples now.
I began shipping 40k armies continually to Italy, and liberated my part of Italy, while Scotland began an offensive from the north. We were slowly making progress.
3rd stage- Livonia entered the war vs Moldavia. Moldavia could no longer focus on the Italian front, so Naples only had Saxony and Albania to rely on for support. I don't think Saxony did near as much as it could have, and am thankful for that. Albania sent a lot of troops but they lost a lot to attrition with Naples fighting me in middle Italy, and lost a lot of major battles too. It wasn't long before Scotland and Portugal broke through the resitance. Right before I was about to force peace Naples, we reached a general peace with the unholy alliance, getting concessions from all parties, but particularly Moldavia. Livonia got a handsome quintuple of provs, Scotland got 3 cots(or was ankan just a gold prov?), and I got 5kD, 3 provs from Naples, a euro prov from Brabant and a cot from Brabant.
After the war, the economy quickly recovered, though it will take ages to get rid of the massive inflation gained during the war.
rewards: both deflation
MT:
2.25 + 1 + (20 * 774.8) / (255 * 16) *.5 = 5.149 = 4.5
EDIT: gimme 4 generals
The war had been going the other way for a while. We had lost control of Italy, and the Moldavian alliance made it as far as Rosella on the Alpine front, but things were about to change. I got two good generals, a 566 and a 466. Though they were really no better than most enemy generals, this was a huge reversal because the last session, my leaders all died random deaths, so I'd been fighting at a leader disadvantage...
A lot of stuff happened. I don't think I'll go through it all, but basicly, 1st stage, Brabant was suffering and couldn't maintain a proper force to defend itself, and its allies kept attritioning because of lack of supply. We outmaneuvered Naples, Saxony, Moldavia and Albania in France for a while, and then were able to make a major offensive into Brabant that gave our alliance a lot of ws on them, while I also took Brabant's colonial cot and some other colonies, giving enough ws to stabhit them.
They accidentally accepted one of the stabhits, but really they would've had to accept sooner or later, or risk a gov collapse(their capital was either captured or about to be captured by scotland right before they accepted).
2nd stage- The alliance couldn't operate effectively in France anymore, because nobody could get any supply there. Albania and Moldavia tried a few invasions but they lost big every time to Portuguese or Scottish forces. Moldavia took my SA possessions, then lost them, and took them again. It didn't really matter though because we were focusing on Naples now.
I began shipping 40k armies continually to Italy, and liberated my part of Italy, while Scotland began an offensive from the north. We were slowly making progress.
3rd stage- Livonia entered the war vs Moldavia. Moldavia could no longer focus on the Italian front, so Naples only had Saxony and Albania to rely on for support. I don't think Saxony did near as much as it could have, and am thankful for that. Albania sent a lot of troops but they lost a lot to attrition with Naples fighting me in middle Italy, and lost a lot of major battles too. It wasn't long before Scotland and Portugal broke through the resitance. Right before I was about to force peace Naples, we reached a general peace with the unholy alliance, getting concessions from all parties, but particularly Moldavia. Livonia got a handsome quintuple of provs, Scotland got 3 cots(or was ankan just a gold prov?), and I got 5kD, 3 provs from Naples, a euro prov from Brabant and a cot from Brabant.
After the war, the economy quickly recovered, though it will take ages to get rid of the massive inflation gained during the war.
rewards: both deflation
MT:
2.25 + 1 + (20 * 774.8) / (255 * 16) *.5 = 5.149 = 4.5
EDIT: gimme 4 generals
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King John said:
No they do not. Imagine e.g. a system were the MT gained is reverse to your losses in men. Moving on to more relevant issues…
King John said:Really? I recall a lot of the players being unhappy with the "welfare" aspect of the MT system a while back when we had a general discussion about it. I'm not going to bother making much fuss about that- as long as we all realize that we're playing this "Test of Skill" with handicaps
This response by you is made to this statement by me:
Daniel A said:
As you can see what I claim is that they did not agree with you that we should give an extra reward for those skilled in war. I did not claim they were opposed to the welfare aspect ( I guess you mean welfare = reward for performing badly). Now you respond “Really, I recall a lot of the players being unhappy with the "welfare aspect…”. As I have not made any claims about that this comment of yours strikes into thin air.
King John said:
The value used is chosen for its accuracy in describing the potential of the nation during the round. It has nothing to do with rewarding or penalising, it merely tries to be truthful. Stating that the end value is wrong and the starting value is right is thus just plain wrong, just as it is the other way around. If one should try to be fair I guess the value chosen should be an average value of starting/ending MP. Because this will best portray the MP capacity of the nation during the round. However that is a little impractical and sometimes the increase/decrease in MP come close to the start/end in which case neither the average value is truthful.
Another important fact is that I cannot fathom why you focus on this thing. It is no big thing, ending MP is not that much different from starting MP, with the exception of early rounds (round 1 especially).
Another interesting thing is that you again talk in terms of “successful play”. Now you want to avoid something you characterise as “penalising” skilful play, i.e. expansion. It appears you have a fixation with this. This game is filled with such penalties for skilful plays. Did you not know that? Those facets does not make this game worse, not in general anyway. Just because this is a game of skill does not mean that we shall be unlimited in our praise and rewards to the skilful. The two main ideas of the campaign are to avoid randomness in the game and to create much equality from start. We have not fettered ourselves by claiming that from then on (i.e. from the start of the campaign) we must not in any way decrease the scope for skill and definitely not that we from then on shall reward skill even more than the game automatically rewards it.
So, in conclusion, sure we could change the end value to an average value. This seems reasonable and according to the underlying logic, i.e. that the value chosen should be a true representation of the MP potential during the session. So speak up all: do you want to use the average rather than the end value? Or some other value that better represents this reality?
King John said:, and also/or multiplying years played by powerpoints instead of MP(because MP really doesn't reflect your war capabilities nearly as much). The 2nd one in particular would solve a pretty major problem with the MT and possibly eliminate the need for making MT year dependent. The reason scores have been out of wack so far is that MP is just not a good indicator to use. In the beginning it has almost nothing to do with how much power you can project, and as time goes on, income still plays a greater role in that(especially for naval losses). PP might not be that great- but perhaps a combination of MP and income would be just right, emphasising income more at the beginning and then shifting towards an even balance between income and MP(similar to my idea in the PP discussion thread).
If you use my solution, or somehow come up with an equally brilliant idea to fix that major problem, my faith in your MT will be restored
Well, this suggestion clearly have advantages, as had mine about being year dependent. However I have not yet seen a finalised proposal and I have trouble coming up with one myself. There is difficult balance here.
I would like to try and give a more complete description than the one I gave in my previous post.
During round 1 when you are small MP is everything, you easily use several times your MP pool.
In the next-coming rounds money gets more and more important and MP less, you simply cannot afford to use all the extra MP you gain the first few rounds.
This is perhaps true until somewhere during the late 16th century (at least for rich or medium rich nations, perhaps not for small ones). Then with trade flourishing you begin to have much more money, you can better and better afford your MP and this will go on until the 1730s when we get CCs.
CCs are interesting, they “suddenly” greatly expand your MP pool so using all your MP will relatively speaking become much more difficult but still money is plenty.
The next and final change is that as the 18th century gets older and older the real big nations begin to have another problem: the limit to how much men you have time to create. You simply cannot master clicking as much as you would, your MP pool is too big, you cannot use it all. This should also be taken into consideration. IIRC this typically occurs when your MP pool starts get far beyond half a million of men - it has some to do with the degre of MP rich provinces where you can build a lot of men in one go.
All in all we can see a quite complex picture. Any suggestions are welcome. I agree we should try and do something about it.
The simplest way is probably to hardcode the years in some way and then let income (not power points I think) have an impact. However income is dependent on such things as revolt risk. Should it be income not adjusted for revolt risk? And what if hyou do not control all your provinces but your opponent or rebs does? Should we be forced to go into the save and make even more edits than today? I have no final answers, merely suggestions.
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I want a MT system that stimulates war, that is the main thing to me. I also do not want it to give extra rewards to them that are skilful in war (as they will automatically get rewards from wars anyhow) and I have no problem with the fact that the loser in the war gets a little assistance by the MT system, thus making the game more fun from him. It is no joy losing wars, you know it, while it is great to win them, you know that as well. Now this is my basic philosophy. I have asked you what yours is and this is what you respond:
King John said:
Your 3rd point is an exaggeration. It is not so that “unskilful actions” are determinant, they have a little impact as I wrote, but not determinant. Determinant factors are such as
- if you go to war at all or if you prefer peaceful play only fighting rebs and/or an occasional war against a much weaker AI
- if you really dedicate yourself to the war or if you lie relatively low
Take for instance this last round. I had 4 in MT at start and will prolly end up close to 4.5 , say 4.4. Now had I played really more skilfully I might have held down my losses some 20% or so and thus perhaps ended up at 4.3 or even 4.2 although I doubt it. But had I instead peaced at the start of the round and then stayed peaceful my MT would have dropped below 3. Now that is a determinant factor: a drop of 1 instead of an increase of 0.4-0.4, i.e. a difference of around 1.5, while you are discussing a difference of 0.1 to 0.2.
And this means that the MT system we use creates a real incentive to fight human to human wars and that is, as I have repeatedly stated, the main idea with our MT system. What the main idea with a MT system is for you I do not know, you do not specify it, you merely enumerate three different aims without prioritising between them.
As you can see my view is a logical consequence of my basic principles, is yours?
AAR MOLDAVIA 1624-1640
This session saw the end of one of the longest wars I have been part of. Indeed, for the most part of the three last sessions I have been in war with POR and SCO. One war two sessions ago and then the last one the two last sessions. Each time ending with defeat. While it was no surprise I lost in the first one, where I was left alone by the sub in Albania after Naples were force peaced, the defeat in this war was a surprise. So why did we lose?
Looking back at the start position the previous session we had some advantages and some disadvantages.
+ we were 5 and they were 2. MP warfare depends a lot of multitasking (it was John who said this once and this for sure true) and we had 10 eyes compared to 4 and 5 mouses compared to two
+ we had higher income and higher MP
- they had better morale and better leaders because of higher MT
- John is more skilled in war than anyone else of us
- we mostly fought on their soil, meaning more attrition losses for us
- our war aims and joint tactics were not clear
Well, at the end of that session we had positive war scores and our MT improved more than theirs and also we would now have a complete embargoing policy meaning our income compared to their was even better than before. So how come we lost?
1. First I was unable to make us come together about a common strategy. I never got clear responses: yes we do like this or we do like that, what I got was merely opinions about drawbacks with different strategies.
2. Then Gamlasemlan misclicked and separate peaced, leaving us at 4 vs 2
3. Then Livonian Order attacked me meaning I could not anymore send men to the central European area
4. I also believe that not all of us committed themselves to the war effort as much as I had hoped – I would like to stress though that Albania this session for the first time really did that, this was much appreciated. Had they done as much the previous session this war would perhaps have had another outcome.
5. Our opponents invested more money in the war, relative their potential, than we did, we can see this when we inspect their inflation numbers. Perhaps they bought mercs much more than we did and thus eliminated their MP defiency?
6. Perhaps we also lacked enough coordination
To end with something positive for the good guys we can conclude that at the start of the next session almost all of us will be at par with the MT of the evil guys.
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This heavy warfare the last 3 sessions have been murdering for the economy of Moldavia. We are now backward in tech compared to several nations, it was not that long ago we were number one IIRC. And inflation was close to 30% towards the end, ouch, but then we got lucky, very lucky, and got a deflation event. Indeed it was the best moment of the entire session when I saw John messaging:
name = "February 25, 1639 : We have lost control over Munsee to Iroquois."
name = "King John (Portugal) :bah, daniel just got a deflation;p"
It is small things like this that make EU MP really worth playing, even when you lose
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EDITS
3 GENERALS, ONE ADMIRAL
MT
1 + 4/2 + ((549*20)/205*15))/2
1 + 2 + (10980/3075)/2
3 + 3.57/2
3 + 1.785
4.785
4.5
2% deflation
This session saw the end of one of the longest wars I have been part of. Indeed, for the most part of the three last sessions I have been in war with POR and SCO. One war two sessions ago and then the last one the two last sessions. Each time ending with defeat. While it was no surprise I lost in the first one, where I was left alone by the sub in Albania after Naples were force peaced, the defeat in this war was a surprise. So why did we lose?
Looking back at the start position the previous session we had some advantages and some disadvantages.
+ we were 5 and they were 2. MP warfare depends a lot of multitasking (it was John who said this once and this for sure true) and we had 10 eyes compared to 4 and 5 mouses compared to two
+ we had higher income and higher MP
- they had better morale and better leaders because of higher MT
- John is more skilled in war than anyone else of us
- we mostly fought on their soil, meaning more attrition losses for us
- our war aims and joint tactics were not clear
Well, at the end of that session we had positive war scores and our MT improved more than theirs and also we would now have a complete embargoing policy meaning our income compared to their was even better than before. So how come we lost?
1. First I was unable to make us come together about a common strategy. I never got clear responses: yes we do like this or we do like that, what I got was merely opinions about drawbacks with different strategies.
2. Then Gamlasemlan misclicked and separate peaced, leaving us at 4 vs 2
3. Then Livonian Order attacked me meaning I could not anymore send men to the central European area
4. I also believe that not all of us committed themselves to the war effort as much as I had hoped – I would like to stress though that Albania this session for the first time really did that, this was much appreciated. Had they done as much the previous session this war would perhaps have had another outcome.
5. Our opponents invested more money in the war, relative their potential, than we did, we can see this when we inspect their inflation numbers. Perhaps they bought mercs much more than we did and thus eliminated their MP defiency?
6. Perhaps we also lacked enough coordination
To end with something positive for the good guys we can conclude that at the start of the next session almost all of us will be at par with the MT of the evil guys.
--------------
This heavy warfare the last 3 sessions have been murdering for the economy of Moldavia. We are now backward in tech compared to several nations, it was not that long ago we were number one IIRC. And inflation was close to 30% towards the end, ouch, but then we got lucky, very lucky, and got a deflation event.
Indeed it was the best moment of the entire session when I saw John messaging: name = "February 25, 1639 : We have lost control over Munsee to Iroquois."
name = "King John (Portugal) :bah, daniel just got a deflation;p"
It is small things like this that make EU MP really worth playing, even when you lose
------------
EDITS
3 GENERALS, ONE ADMIRAL
MT
1 + 4/2 + ((549*20)/205*15))/2
1 + 2 + (10980/3075)/2
3 + 3.57/2
3 + 1.785
4.785
4.5
2% deflation
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Daniel A said:
Id like to add one thing to this.
+In the first session SCO and POR had one leader overall while you had plenty more
He would have been forced out within a few months had he not misclicked, otherwise his government would have collapsed so it was good that he got out of the war.
The Skåne Regent, who followed the war every now and then (while eating his popcorns), can only agree. Everyone seemed to be everywhere. Armies marching to France and then to Italy and back. One nation going on a "solo- offensive". Etc. But one should not forget that it is damn hard to co-ordinate that many people.Daniel A said:
Another thing that mattered was that (especially) Scotland and Portugal could use their fleets to move their armies around.
Absolut said:Id like to add one thing to this.
+In the first session SCO and POR had one leader overall while you had plenty more
Nope, we all got an equal amount of leaders. However, they may have died with different speed. Your alliance seemed to be much more eager to announce "the bac luck" when your leaders died randomly. It is a common trait for those who put skill in war as the prime object of the game, they want everyone to know the "true reason" why they are not warring as good as some may expect from them. I for one never say anything about such things. Information is an asset, I do not waste assets to keep up my appearence.
Absolut said:
Well if this is true then we definitely coordinated less well. Before the sesson started I made clear to all in our big alliance that I would focus on South America, to assist semlan and Alistus in that area. Thus it fell on Aladar to focus on helping Lyko and on Alistus to support Brabant with me getting into the central European arena now and then.
But did you really control that much of gamlasemlan's provinces? The occasions when I throw a glance in that direction I never saw any such situation and meanwhile I did my part of the work by liberating Mexican provinces.
cobjor said:
and snatching East Asian COTs Cobjor, do not forget that, was it one or perhaps even two
Nah, only one. Didnt have enough troops to get the Chinese one.Daniel A said:and snatching East Asian COTs Cobjor, do not forget that, was it one or perhaps even two
cobjor said:Nah, only one. Didnt have enough troops to get the Chinese one.
Aha, then Skåne snatched the other one the previous session when the rest of us, apart from the Livonian order, where in war as well.
Indeed. IIRC, there is now only one "free" COT left, a chinese one. The race is on!Daniel A said:
Daniel A said:Nope, we all got an equal amount of leaders. However, they may have died with different speed. Your alliance seemed to be much more eager to announce "the bac luck" when your leaders died randomly. It is a common trait for those who put skill in war as the prime object of the game, they want everyone to know the "true reason" why they are not warring as good as some may expect from them. I for one never say anything about such things. Information is an asset, I do not waste assets to keep up my appearence.
So youre saying that your leaders died randomly as well and that you had approximately the same amount of leaders as we did, namely one?
I made some amphibious assaults on northern Brabant and in the last attack I was about to assault his capital with 100.000 men and a 5-5-6-1 leader. I would have taken it and before that I took Flanders. So yes, I controlled some of his provinces. Dont forget Paris as well, where some 50.000 Moldavian men were sieging.
AAR Albania 1624 - 1640
Long had the king of Albania been at war and now he increased his warefforts. More than a 100.000 soldiers were drafted and sent straight to the plains of France, where they sieged several provinses.
The war was going well and we had great hopes for the outcome. We had a decent income and plenty of troops to recruit, but our generals were not all that great. But our allies had great generals, so our strenght would be the sheer numbers of troops we could send into battle. The main problem was that the war was far away and travel took a few soldiers. Support in Naples wasn't high at the time.
I the meantime our small force in Italy kept looting the provinses so eventhou the war was costly, we did gain some extra income.
Several years and many many troops later our efforts seemed to have been in vain. Portugeuse troops started landing in both Italy and Albania, so we had to retreat our troops from Italy to protect the homeland. By now the war seemed lost, but still it continued. In the end Scotland took our goldprovinse in Akan and Portugal demanded 5.000d. A hard blow for us as this represents 1½ years of minting.
To increase our income we are currently at war the pagans in Congo, which hopefully will gain us a better foothold in Africa. On the positive side of the session, is that our BB is now at a acceptable level and hence our stab is getting cheaper.
Economically the session was a bit of a dissaster, +4,2% inflation, gold income lost, a mere 12,5% increase in income. We did gain a single level in trade but we had almost reached that the session before.
Leaders for next session: 3 general and 1 conquistador.
MT: Definition: military unit = 1000 infantry or 1000 cavalry or 10 guns or 1 war ship or 5 galleys. Only integer values for each category, truncate decimals.
Next session's MT = 1 + 1,75 + ½ * (10120) / (2340) = 4,91 ~ 4,5
ARR-reward: deflation
On time cookie: deflation
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AAR Naples 1624-1640
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Losing the war
Well we had the uper hand almost 3/4 of the war we fought for over 30 years. it was just when brabant peaced Portugal and Livonia attacked Moldavia that we were going to lose. Before that we were on the offensive and brabant was just about to be freed. I had 4 provinces in italy and 4 provinces in france under my own control at one point of the war and with +85 in WS by my self. but after those two events we started to lose and get disorganized. my economy was in crumbles long before our enemies roamed our lands. We had max RR in all provinces and Malta and Corsica defected to other countries or claimed independence. In a short sentence. Naples was screwed. the only way out of this was a lost cuz we had no way to repel the invaders. We lost 3 provinces to Portugal in Italy and 1 CoT in africa. Our expansion in Africa is now lost and Naples will never be big again. This war was a disaster for Naples and i don't think we'll never get as big as we once were, cuz after this we'll probably be eaten alive slowly, one pieace at the time.
All we can do for now is to rebuild our country and start working on my inflation. governers is being built in our lands witch is not much. The napolian king doesn't see a future of his bloodline, and predicts that it would probably end sooner or later.
The death of my leaders under the war.
1st - Died of old age
2:nd- died of in a kamikazi charge(actually he was faster then the other leader) ;D
3:rd - don't really know. sent him albania to have as a reserve and was lost in the mtns there.
4th - died by being hit by a wagon (random death)
but hey still got 1 left and that's Lyko..
i think...Mt calculation
1+(4,5*0.5)+.5*((190*20)/(84,2*19))
3,25+0.5*(3800/1263)
3,25+0.5*(3)
3,25+1,5=4,75
and that will be 4.5
Leaders- 3 generals and 1 conquistador.
Reward Deflation ;P
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1 + (0.5 * 2.5) + 0.5 * ((275 * 20) / (203 * 15))
1 + 1.25 + 0.5 * ( 5500 / 3045 )
1 + 1.25 + 0.5 * 1.80
1+ 1.25 + 0.9
= 3.05
3 Generals and an Admiral please.
On time reward: deflation please...
1 + 1.25 + 0.5 * ( 5500 / 3045 )
1 + 1.25 + 0.5 * 1.80
1+ 1.25 + 0.9
= 3.05
3 Generals and an Admiral please.
On time reward: deflation please...