The MGC 4 AAR

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Prince Eugene
I think for the MGC5 there should be a considerably lower amount of rules since 1.06 compensates for a lot.

I agree.

I've done a recent cut today and got the list down to about 12 from 24.

Although it has yet to be seen if V1.06 really deals with the cash problem. I suspect not entirely, so something will be required to make games post 1700 playable.

This is what I am currently thinking. Its pretty difficult to argue with. Although you could probably cut out a few more depending on what sort of game you were looking for. I have also adopted Magic's suggested change to the country set up which was really good.

1) You may only convert to CRC once.
2) You must answer peace offers within one month
3) Manufactories may only be built at the end of a session. For each one you build you must have 1,000 D that can be deducted from the file as a tax. After 1700 this rule no longer applies.
4) Players are not allowed to force conversions of pagans through peace treaties in the ToT
6) You may only have 4 colonies in development at any one time
7) If at any time your BB goes over 35 then you must release vassals until it goes below 35. If the French revolution or American revolution happens then the max limit is increased to 45. You receive 3BB per province for exploiting inheritance events.
8) Playable countries cannot be attacked when not played, and when attacked by one a white peace must be gained.
9) All gold producing provinces in America are reduced by 1/2 in 1600.
10) If a country has inflation over 60% (Spain 80%) then the country is vassalised by the last country it went to war with or controls the most of its territory. Peace must be instant. Inflation is reduced to 10%, and 3 vassals are released and those vassalisations cancelled.
11) New starting countries gain one infra level and 2 military tech levels, but not above the leading country. Plus 8K

Countries

1)France
2)England
3)Spain
4)Ottoman Empire
5)Austria
6)Portugal (1492-1590), Russia (1590-1820)
7)Mameluks OR Venice** (1492- Emergence of Holland) - Holland (Emergence-1700)* - Any German state (1700-1820)
8)Poland OR Venice/Mameluks** (1492-1580), Sweden (1580- Emergence of New world power)

*Players choice to be Holland or any German state thereafter.
**If either Mameluks or Venice become unplayable then add Persia.

 

[PJL]

Well, seems like everyone has agreed to play on with MG4 with v1.06, whereas I personally would have liked to continued with v1.05. However, I will go along with what everyone else says.

BTW, all this talk of reducing armies, everyone has forgotten that fortresses have become weaker too, now that the defender can also have attrition losses (and I suspect fortresses may now be easier to attack too - they semed to fall quicker - but have only played a few minutes of v1.06 so far).

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by PJL
Well, seems like everyone has agreed to play on with MG4 with v1.06, whereas I personally would have liked to continued with v1.05. However, I will go along with what everyone else says.

BTW, all this talk of reducing armies, everyone has forgotten that fortresses have become weaker too, now that the defender can also have attrition losses (and I suspect fortresses may now be easier to attack too - they semed to fall quicker - but have only played a few minutes of v1.06 so far).

Surely its worth playing just for the improved stability?

The conduct of future wars is going to be facinating.

 

[Prince Eugene]

Originally posted by PJL
Well, seems like everyone has agreed to play on with MG4 with v1.06, whereas I personally would have liked to continued with v1.05. However, I will go along with what everyone else says.

BTW, all this talk of reducing armies, everyone has forgotten that fortresses have become weaker too, now that the defender can also have attrition losses (and I suspect fortresses may now be easier to attack too - they semed to fall quicker - but have only played a few minutes of v1.06 so far).

Assaulting fortresses and large infantry armies I have found to be a lot more common in 1.06.


Mowers, could you explain rule 10?

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Prince Eugene

Mowers, could you explain rule 10?

Sure,

There are 2 new rules in there. 10 and 11.

Rule 11 is designed to stop silly wars when people get irritated and see 'red'.

Rule 10 is there to allow for when all goes wrong and a country becomes 'unplayable'. The idea is to keep the country in the game but reduce it in power somewhat. I am trying to formalise what already exists. It needs some work.

 

[Prince Eugene]

Originally posted by Mowers

Rule 11 is designed to stop silly wars when people get irritated and see 'red'.

Ok, got it... so no fight-to-where-government-falls wars...

Originally posted by Mowers

Rule 10 is there to allow for when all goes wrong and a country becomes 'unplayable'. The idea is to keep the country in the game but reduce it in power somewhat. I am trying to formalise what already exists. It needs some work.

Maybe you could alter the part about releasing vassals?

 

[Waldzwerg]

Ok, played a bit around with our savegame.
A few observations:
Regarding Fortresses: It seems they are a _bit_ easier to take out. But i was only able to take only one mighty fortress out with my current overbloated army, and it did cost me about 200 k men. Who will able to afford to waste an army of this size on a single province in future 1.06 games?
Another point is the new alliance peace systems. It looks really promising and exciting (austria offered me 450 d and nigeria to sweden for example and spain a bunch of tp for sweden), but we should be aware that it is vulnerable to some really terrible, even evil exploits in mp (It could give the word backstabbing a complete new meaning).

 

[Waldzwerg]

Originally posted by Mowers
11) When a country is totally occupied, it must accept vassalisation as a single option.

This rule simply needs more explanation. As is stands now it is completely unclear to me.
Define for example 'totally occupied': Does it mean all it's provinces conquered? That would amount to 100% victory. The victor can demand what he wants, and it get automatically accepted by the Loser (by the computer to be more precise). Or does it mean all of his Motherland conquered? Quite hard to achieve if he has mighty fortresses all over the place. Or maybe a combination of conquered/covered/besieged?
'vassalisation as a single option': what's that supposed to mean? The Victor is not allowed to demand something different than a rather useless vassalisation of another player (can be broken almost immediately)? How about a lump sump of money? Or the demand that he must release (and break vassalage of course) vassal(s) to be named by the winner?

 

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by Waldzwerg
This rule simply needs more explanation. As is stands now it is completely unclear to me.
Define for example 'totally occupied': Does it mean all it's provinces conquered? That would amount to 100% victory. The victor can demand what he wants, and it get automatically accepted by the Loser (by the computer to be more precise). Or does it mean all of his Motherland conquered? Quite hard to achieve if he has mighty fortresses all over the place. Or maybe a combination of conquered/covered/besieged?
'vassalisation as a single option': what's that supposed to mean? The Victor is not allowed to demand something different than a rather useless vassalisation of another player (can be broken almost immediately)? How about a lump sump of money? Or the demand that he must release (and break vassalage of course) vassal(s) to be named by the winner?

I was thinking the same thing. Both rules 10 and 11 are open to misinterpretation and abuse by the loser as they currently stand.

I also think it's too soon to include a manufactory tax in the rules when there's no proof that one is needed under 1.06. Also the forbidden diplo-annexation of Holland/Portugal serves no purpose when you have the BB rule.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Waldzwerg
Ok, played a bit around with our savegame.
A few observations:
Regarding Fortresses: It seems they are a _bit_ easier to take out. But i was only able to take only one mighty fortress out with my current overbloated army, and it did cost me about 200 k men. Who will able to afford to waste an army of this size on a single province in future 1.06 games?

Who will be able to afford mighty fortresses except in a few key provinces? And for those, you might now have to besiege first to create a breach, which is surely desirable. You have seen the new price of building one, yes? And as for maximum fortresses. Don't even go there.

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Waldzwerg
Ok, played a bit around with our savegame.
A few observations:
Regarding Fortresses: It seems they are a _bit_ easier to take out. But i was only able to take only one mighty fortress out with my current overbloated army, and it did cost me about 200 k men. Who will able to afford to waste an army of this size on a single province in future 1.06 games?

Maybe for future games we should adopt the maximum L3 fortress level outside of Europe rule that I believe is used by some of the other longer running campaigns?

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Waldzwerg
This rule simply needs more explanation. As is stands now it is completely unclear to me.
Define for example 'totally occupied': Does it mean all it's provinces conquered? That would amount to 100% victory. The victor can demand what he wants, and it get automatically accepted by the Loser (by the computer to be more precise). Or does it mean all of his Motherland conquered? Quite hard to achieve if he has mighty fortresses all over the place. Or maybe a combination of conquered/covered/besieged?
'vassalisation as a single option': what's that supposed to mean? The Victor is not allowed to demand something different than a rather useless vassalisation of another player (can be broken almost immediately)? How about a lump sump of money? Or the demand that he must release (and break vassalage of course) vassal(s) to be named by the winner?

Its unclear because I am currently unsure. It doesnt seem to stand the test. The idea was to remove some of the sillier wars and get people to use the vassalisation option more often. However, I can see that it could be too difficult to implement effectively. I have removed it.

 

[Waldzwerg]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen
Who will be able to afford mighty fortresses except in a few key provinces? And for those, you might now have to besiege first to create a breach, which is surely desirable. You have seen the new price of building one, yes? And as for maximum fortresses. Don't even go there.

750 for a large, 1500 for mighty, 3000 for maximum. That's not very much. Rich countries like spain should easily afford mighty fortresses at this stage of the game,especially as they don't need that much money anymore to build a huge army against france. That could lead to the somewhat absurd situation that for example napoleon would probably need a few decades of sieging to conquer spain .

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Wyvern
I was thinking the same thing. Both rules 10 and 11 are open to misinterpretation and abuse by the loser as they currently stand.

I also think it's too soon to include a manufactory tax in the rules when there's no proof that one is needed under 1.06. Also the forbidden diplo-annexation of Holland/Portugal serves no purpose when you have the BB rule.

I think I agree about 10 & 11 as well having read what Waldzwerg had to say. However, if anyone can think of a good solution to implement what I am trying to do please post it.

I dont technically need a rule 10. But I do need a rule 11, there needs to be a formalisation for collapses in game. Otherwise it leads to arguements and uncertainity and that means that the host/organiser & group will have to make decisions that are always going to be unpopular with someone.

Ah, interesting on the Holland & Portugal bit, I had never thought of that . Removed.

As for manufactory tax, and possible inflation rule, I would say that there is nothing in V1.06 that effectively tackles the cash surplus that develops in the game. There are some increased costs but I dont see anything that is going to stop the real problems that we see in other games and previous MGC games.

I agree that the manufactory tax is a clumsy tool but its better than the inflation one (perhaps?). I am not convinced that the changes are quite effective enough and that similiar problems will emerge.

However, I can not be sure of this as I havent run a long term V1.06 game yet. I think it might be best to include it and then drop it if it becomes clear that its not working? Rather to exclude it only to run in to serious trouble later on in the game when its too late to change things.

Alternatively there might be a better solution. Anyway, this is why I am keen to play on MGC4 for sometime at least to see some of the effects that the changes are going to have.

 

[Mowers]

Wow, down to 10 rules and could possibly drop another couple more.

Could this be close to the holy grail of an effective and universal rule set? Could it be that my soul can finally rest *chuckle*

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Waldzwerg
750 for a large, 1500 for mighty, 3000 for maximum. That's not very much. Rich countries like spain should easily afford mighty fortresses at this stage of the game,especially as they don't need that much money anymore to build a huge army against france. That could lead to the somewhat absurd situation that for example napoleon would probably need a few decades of sieging to conquer spain .

Interesting.

Which is why I was thinking of an occupation ruling before but as pointed out it was unworkable in its current form.

But to get from Medium to mighty is 5250 Ducats. Thats no mean sum, and to repeat that just 5 times is helluver lot of money.

That would take a long time to get together, and people are going to have less cash now anyhow.

I am very curious as to the effect that these new maintainance rules are going to have as at the moment nothing seems certain.

 

[Waldzwerg]

Originally posted by Mowers


But to get from Medium to mighty is 5250 Ducats. Thats no mean sum, and to repeat that just 5 times is helluver lot of money.

That would be medium to maximum... to mighty it's 2250. According to eureader spain has a monthly income of 500 at the moment, and that's already more on the low end of that what have been usual due to your imposed restrains on spains income (man tax, inflation events, reduced gold income). So a few years of money minting would be enough to make all important (high vp) provinces almost impregnable.

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Waldzwerg
That would be medium to maximum... to mighty it's 2250. According to eureader spain has a monthly income of 500 at the moment, and that's already more on the low end of that what have been usual due to your imposed restrains on spains income (man tax, inflation events, reduced gold income). So a few years of money minting would be enough to make all important (high vp) provinces almost impregnable.

To be honest I dont know.

But we are soon going to find out

But I cant see myself playing without a Spanish gold reduction event. Clumsy it maybe but it does have the intended effect.

 

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by Mowers
Interesting.

Which is why I was thinking of an occupation ruling before but as pointed out it was unworkable in its current form.

But to get from Medium to mighty is 5250 Ducats. Thats no mean sum, and to repeat that just 5 times is helluver lot of money.

That would take a long time to get together, and people are going to have less cash now anyhow.

I am very curious as to the effect that these new maintainance rules are going to have as at the moment nothing seems certain.

One posibility (a likely one I think) is that those who are rich enough (think Spain) will maintain armies over the support limit eating up a chunk of any excess cash.

Also I wouldn't mind the level 3 fortress rule outside Europe but consider that it's probably unnecessary as who's going to invest that much money in fortifying lots of colonies? You'll most likely want to fortify key homeland areas first so hopefully dozens of mighty fortresses won't be a problem.

 

[Mowers]

Originally posted by Wyvern
One posibility (a likely one I think) is that those who are rich enough (think Spain) will maintain armies over the support limit eating up a chunk of any excess cash.

Also I wouldn't mind the level 3 fortress rule outside Europe but consider that it's probably unnecessary as who's going to invest that much money in fortifying lots of colonies? You'll most likely want to fortify key homeland areas first so hopefully dozens of mighty fortresses won't be a problem.

I agree, the increased costs will mean that there will be much harder decisions to make that that such a rule may be unnecessary.

I must say that I am very curious to find out, as long as it doesnt involve lots of pain....