Slitherine

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Maybe it's also possible to introduce feudal level as a goal: one goal for all nations should be giving France a higher feudal level modelling the return of the Bourbons. On the other hand revolutionary France should want to give other nations a lower feudal evel.
Such goals should rank higher on the agenda than getting provinces additional to your national core provinces

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Give a bit more of a trade-off for high and low nationalism and maybe tweak it so that autocratic nations can't afford to let their nationalism get too high.

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If we forbade naval invasions, wouldn't people complain that they couldn't invade Egypt as France?

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ORIGINAL: Jabba

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If we forbade naval invasions, wouldn't people complain that they couldn't invade Egypt as France?

There were several significant naval invasions or planned naval invasions in the Napoleonic Wars. E.g.

British/Russian expedition to Holland 1799
British invasion of French-occupied Portugal 1808
British expedition to Walcheren (attack on Antwerp) 1809

And what about the two years the Grande Armee spent encamped at Boulougne (1803-1805) waiting to invade England!

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Yes, these were examples that needed to be considered when I came out with a sweeping 'no naval invasion' suggestion.

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It was a fiasco on every level and suggests that naval invasions into unfriendly territory couldn't hope to succeed even with naval superiority.

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Its not so much the docks that are needed, as many of these 'naval invasions' were done on desolate shores rather than in ports (I believe).

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ORIGINAL: malcolm_mccallum

Ok, naval invasions need to be an option but somehow the attempt has to be greatly discouraged by the game.

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ORIGINAL: David Fisher

I always hate those threads where someone kicks them off and is never heard from again... So as the original poster I'll just quickly put in my tuppence worth. From the little I've played, and from what I've heard here, I think I'll be putting CoG to one side for a while, but will definitely be keeping an eye on it to see in what direction it develops. From this and from my experience with HoI2 I've come to the conclusion that I basically want history-like outcomes in my games -- as someone said, not rigidly historical, but plausible.

For some reason this kind of "plausibility" seems a lot easier to achieve in tactical games. We know more or less how weapons systems should function - what the range and penetration of a shell should be - roughly how different formations work should work, and so on. We can tell when situations become "gamey" or unreal and can come up with solutions to fix them. We know eg that in WW2 tanks can't operate with impunity in built-up areas without infantry -- if we see that in a game we immediately know there's a problem and it's fairly trivial to come up with a mechanism to fix it. It's a lot harder at the strategic level and I would imagine harder still at the *grand* strategic level of CoG. We kind of feel in a Napoleonic game Spain and Russia shouldn't really be at each other's throats, but not so easy to come up with non-arbitrary mechanisms to prevent it. In general it seems that movement is just too unconstrained so that the AI kind of sees the whole world as its oyster... and off the Russians go to conquer Spain!

Anyway, good luck with the game, it's interesting and ambitious and I look forward to seeing how it develops.

cheers

David Fisher

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ORIGINAL: malcolm_mccallum

Maybe the whole naval invasion problem wold be solved when they fix depots.

If you have to forage after landing until you can capture a port that would make them alot more tricky.

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ORIGINAL: Malagant

I agree that naval invasion is far too easy right now.

As a possible solution within the game engine we currently have, could we make it so that troops on board ship HAVE to forage, and the forage value for sea hexes is zero, and perhaps increase the lethality of exceeding the forage value in sea zones.

While you would still be able to build depots in sea zone, it's only purpose would be to be part of the chain from the 'homeland' up to the beachhead.

This would make transport by sea and landing extremely costly in troops as they die from all kinds of horrible shipboard diseases and drownings and all those wonderful things.

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ORIGINAL: ericbabe

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you? That, for you, is a more reasonable explanation for the wildly ahistorical results than suggesting that the underlying game mechanics are simply making for a very poor sim?

What are some very good campaign level historical sims on the market today?

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ORIGINAL: Ralegh

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ORIGINAL: Malagant

I agree that naval invasion is far too easy right now.

As a possible solution within the game engine we currently have, could we make it so that troops on board ship HAVE to forage, and the forage value for sea hexes is zero, and perhaps increase the lethality of exceeding the forage value in sea zones.

While you would still be able to build depots in sea zone, it's only purpose would be to be part of the chain from the 'homeland' up to the beachhead.

This would make transport by sea and landing extremely costly in troops as they die from all kinds of horrible shipboard diseases and drownings and all those wonderful things.

You say that the problem is naval invasion, and then propose a solution that harms naval transport. I think naval transport is hard enough already: providing supply for units being transported requires complete control of the seas, and without it the troops take amazing losses (much worse than foraging in a Russian winter!).

Naval invasion is already "difficult" - in another thread, players say that as France they wouldn't launch an invasion of Britain even if they controlled the seas because there is nowhere to retreat to if you lose the land battle, and troops captured in Britain are probably out for the rest of the game.

If I was to make one tweak it might be to say that divisions should have to make an extra forage check in the turn of navally invading (ie. if being supplied you pay for supply AND they take forage losses; if not being supplied they take 2 lots of forage losses). This would reflect the losses from disembarking.

IMHO what is too easy now is actually depot supply. Sea supply should only "link" to a depot on land at a port area when you control the port, so you should be able to be fed from the sea zone until you take the port, and only then build a depot there to extend further inland. That creates an incentive to take the port province as a beachhead...

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Very interesting points, but there’s something I miss.
Could someone explain what do supply depots in open sea areas represent? Are they invisible supply vessels? If so, is it realistic to imagine (in 19th century) a way to supply troops in open sea? Wouldn’t it be more realistic to imagine a supply chain overseas could supply only troops located in friendly / allied / conquered provinces with a port? Is it so absurd to think that a unit disembarking should be treated as an unsupplied unit, or at least as a strongly undersupplied unit? What’s wrong with a strong penalization for disembarking units, even if it would be comparable with the penalty for foraging in Russian winter? We’re talking about units loaded on vessels that have been travelling 30 days. Could troops embark more food than they could stock in Russian winter? What’s wrong with the total destruction of units that lose a battle after disembarking? That’s exactly what would happen in real life.