RE: PP loss / gain question.

RE: PP loss / gain question. (Full Version)

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Jimmer -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/25/2008 7:41:11 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: NeverMan Jimmer, I agree it's up to interpretation and that the rulebook reads like a vague legal document. I'm just saying that if you do it that way it doesn't make any common sense. Common sense is the key. Why should one side of the battle lose 9 PPs when the other side gains 3? Why would you interpret the rules to discourage combined movement and help the French, they already have everything else. The total PP lost and gained should be equal for both sides, IMO. That is what makes the most sense to me. I really hope it's not implemented any other way. Actually, it may make a more sense to lose more. Imagine if Wellington had lost to Napoleon, having had gross numerical superiority. Prussia, Russia, and GB would have all really been stung politically, even though each committed relatively little to the operation. On the other hand, one barely ever hears about Russia being with Austria in the debacles at Ulm or Austerlitz (I forget which), even though they lost nearly all of their army. So, this historical incident seems to indicate that your analysis is correct. It's certainly not worth arguing over, 20 years after the game went out of print.

Jimmer -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/25/2008 7:43:41 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: NeverMan quote: ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis Hey guys: I am working on broadening the loane unit function so that most everything (Guerillas, leaders, fleets, cossacks, insurrection) can be loaned. My question is that when two MPs are on the same side of a battle, what should the PP gain/loss rule be? EiH states that all MPs on the losing side would EACH lose the total pp BUT on the winning side, only the MP with the battle's commander would gain the pp??? Is this addressed in std EiA? Marshall, I think EiH really got it wrong here, this simply doesn't make any sense. Why should the army with the most corps, or the corps with the only leader get the PP? There could be circumstances that don't add up there. Once again these rules discourage combined movement and help the French (since the french aren't usually using combined movement most of the time) while it hurts the "coalition" (aka Pr, Au, possibly Ru, Gb, etc, etc..). Maybe we read the rules understood them and thought they were stupid so we did it our way, it's been so long I don't remember, but I know I don't like the EiH way or the other way. I agree with NeverMan on this one. All powers that took part should all gain or lose when the day is done.

Marshall Ellis -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/25/2008 11:08:31 PM)
So, what I am hearing is that ALL MP nations gain / lose the same. What about ONLY having non-corps focrs in the battle only i.e. Freikorps / Cossack?

NeverMan -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/26/2008 12:45:51 AM)
You are not hearing that from me, but Jimmer and bresh seem to think that's best. As far as non-corps: they don't count.

ecn1 -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/26/2008 4:59:15 AM)
Marshall, just to clarify, they all shoudnt lose the same according to the original EiA rules. Winners/Losers should gain/lose PP in proportion to how many corps they have in the battle, as per the original boardgame rules. Dont let others railroad you to change the rules from the original boardgame. If need be, ask ADG, they should know what the rules are meant to be and are intended to reflect. erik

Grognot -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/26/2008 5:44:25 AM)
...and which rules were simply written as-is due to the fundamental limitations of a pencil-and-paper boardgame. Like the avoidance of fractional PP, or the lack of ability to detach Turkish feudal infantry (hideous bookkeeping would have been required to prevent abuse -- tracking total living factors associated with a feudal corps, not just those presently in it... but bookkeeping is actually one thing that machines are good at), or the ability to ship a corps of any size on a fleet of any size (enforcement of factor-to-ship limits requiring an omniscient referee, after all), or so forth. There's other silliness, like it's possible to have a siege battle in which neither the attacker nor defender will suffer any damage because the forces involved are too small to kill a single factor even on a 6... Allowing minor corps to detach factors outside their own nation is already a significant deviation -- it's an optional rule in the AH game. Of course, allowing minor corps to receive reinforcements without tracing supply back to own territory is a -major- deviation. Divying up 1 or 2 PP between a coalition four nations without allowing fractional PP is either going to give some nations no PP (due to rounding down), or give an overly generous total (due to rounding up) -- errors being more significant, proportionally, for smaller battles). Done incautiously, this suggests obvious abuses. But better divide it then award all to all, which rewards even sillier abuses.

bresh -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/26/2008 9:57:31 AM)
PP gain/loss should always be rounded up. Like i said 0.01 is 1. Like EIA rules state. EIA: 7.5.2.10.1.3 Political Points For Winning/Losing Field Combats: The victor now gains political points and the loser loses them, recorded on the POLITICAL STATUS DISPLAY on the Status Card). Half a political point is gained or lost for each corps of the defeated side (rounding fractions up) used during any round of that combat (this includes corps in outflanking forces that never arrive, but not reinforcing corps that do not arrive) up to a maximum of "+ 3" political points. For this purpose a single corps which begins or reinforces a battle with more than 20 factors in it is treated as 2 corps. Cossaks/Freikorps/Gurilla does not count as corps for pp value in battles. Regards Bresh

Grognot -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/26/2008 10:03:44 AM)
Do you have a better reason to avoid fractional PP other than "it's the rules"? Bearing in mind that the board game rules were written to abide by what's convenient for a board game without computer assistance, where tracking fractional PP would have been inconvenient? And that it's not entirely clear why there should be equal political benefit for each member to fighting tiny stacks and medium stacks, once the coalition's large? Oh well. I hope you never reinforce minors without a supply chain to their own nations. After all, those are the rules, too.

bresh -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/26/2008 11:01:37 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Grognot Do you have a better reason to avoid fractional PP other than "it's the rules"? Bearing in mind that the board game rules were written to abide by what's convenient for a board game without computer assistance, where tracking fractional PP would have been inconvenient? And that it's not entirely clear why there should be equal political benefit for each member to fighting tiny stacks and medium stacks, once the coalition's large? Oh well. I hope you never reinforce minors without a supply chain to their own nations. After all, those are the rules, too. This is supposed to be EIA Grognot ? The VP-win conditions pr nation is based on EIA rules. I wanna play EIA, not your houserules :) Well if you wanna change the ways pps are achieved, different from the boardgame which are part of the total Vps each nation needs to achieve. Then you will need to change expected VP-conditions for all MPs. You will have to make up your own pp victory conditions cause they will lack alot. Only nation like France or GB might then be able to achieve their expected Vp-win conditions. Regards Bresh

ecn1 -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/26/2008 10:31:17 PM)
I totally agree with Bresh, I dont want to play an adhoc version of EiA that is out of balance because someone likes experimenting The board game rules are designed to have balanced play, etc and have withstood the test of time in most cases now, there are alot of deviations in the Matrix EiA pbem version, some because out of programming necessity, but on balance the deviations have made the game poorer, not better in my opinion and have thrown it out of balance in some ways, though I know Marshall is working to address them the best he can, and this thread is evidence of this effort BUT we should not now start adding more rule deviations because of whims and fancy and further throwing the game out of balance!!!! erik

Grognot -> Get over it. (4/27/2008 1:28:08 AM)
You're already playing an ad-hoc blend between EiA, EiH, and Matrix/Outflank Games rules -- very mutated naval rules, greatly empowered minor factors, corps on loan instead of combined movement, kingdoms either mandatory or not permissible, tweaked OOBs... of which some are deliberate choices not driven by programming limitations. If you want a faithful reproduction, replete with approximations and loopholes, there's always Cyberboard. Play as you like. The rest of us can point to areas where faithfulness to the literal rules can be bad -- for instance, the ability to use free states in completely unrealistic ways, even in asymmetrical situations where you can use them in your wars without lifting a finger to help them. This can lead to silliness like suicide runs with fleets (and scuttling, once that becomes an option), just to hand the victor a pyrhhic victory. Yippee. Perhaps these should be turned over to an AI unless first conquered, or the patron supports with a DOW... but hey, that'd change the rules, and some would suggest that we can't have that, even though the game already does elsewhere. Some of the issues are fundamental and even now don't admit to ready solution (notably, the forced retreat of non-combatants from a multinat stat in certain cases), but other issues are merely artifacts of using 1d6, pencils, paper and board.

NeverMan -> RE: Get over it. (4/27/2008 2:57:00 AM)
Grognot, You are right. Matrix made a HUGE mistake by going with EiH in most situations, it was obviuos that these decisions were by people who had not played the game that much. BUT, a lot of the things that you say are "wrong" with the original EiA rules can be corrected simply by not playing with a bunch of jackasses, that is, play with people who have the "spirit of the game" in mind. These players will not do unrealistic suicide runs with minors fleets, etc. If Matrix wanted a Napoleonic Wargame that was not EiA they should have not called it Empires In Arms, since that confuses the people that actually really enjoyed Empires In Arms. Personally, I wish Matrix had given us a faithful reproduction of EiA, but at the end of the day, I really appreciate their effort in trying.

Jimmer -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/27/2008 3:09:17 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: NeverMan You are not hearing that from me, but Jimmer and bresh seem to think that's best. As far as non-corps: they don't count. Agreed. And, I want to point out that I've softened my position a bit. The rules are pretty clear, but there were examples at the end of the main rules, and those examples may have superceded the phrasing of the rules (that happened a LOT with AH games). So, I think it is still an open question. Neverman, did you quote from a paper copy of the rulebook, or from something off the Internet?

NeverMan -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/27/2008 4:02:46 AM)
My "interpretation" of the rules is how we understood the rule to read. By "we" I mean the group of guys I used to play EiA with. Actually, I used to play A LONG time ago and that was the way I learned how to play the game from the guys that taught me, but it's also the way I understood the rules to read. I will try to find some examples/rules of this though online and will get back to you.

ecn1 -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/27/2008 4:31:42 AM)
quote: My "interpretation" of the rules is how we understood the rule to read. By "we" I mean the group of guys I used to play EiA with. Actually, I used to play A LONG time ago and that was the way I learned how to play the game from the guys that taught me, but it's also the way I understood the rules to read. I will try to find some examples/rules of this though online and will get back to you. I have played EiA the boardgame since the mid-1980s with a ton of different gaming groups over the years, and I totally agree with Nevermind in his "interpretation" - I am frankly surprised that there is any other. ESPECIALLY - if you read the back cover of the original EiA paper rules that list all the ways to lose and gain pp, it says that maximum loss/gain is +/-3 pp PER SIDE- not per player.... erik

pzgndr -> RE: PP loss / gain question. (4/27/2008 4:59:25 AM)
quote: it says that maximum loss/gain is +/-3 pp PER SIDE- not per player.... This makes sense to me. A battle is a battle, and PP loss/gain should be the same for single or combined armies. It shouldn't be that hard to implement proportional gains/losses among sides, based on what the final PP are for a battle and how many corps are involved. Question may be whether to implement fractional PPs or not. That shouldn't be a big deal either.

bresh -> RE: Get over it. (4/27/2008 11:57:39 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Grognot You're already playing an ad-hoc blend between EiA, EiH, and Matrix/Outflank Games rules -- very mutated naval rules, greatly empowered minor factors, corps on loan instead of combined movement, kingdoms either mandatory or not permissible, tweaked OOBs... of which some are deliberate choices not driven by programming limitations. If you want a faithful reproduction, replete with approximations and loopholes, there's always Cyberboard. Play as you like. The rest of us can point to areas where faithfulness to the literal rules can be bad -- for instance, the ability to use free states in completely unrealistic ways, even in asymmetrical situations where you can use them in your wars without lifting a finger to help them. This can lead to silliness like suicide runs with fleets (and scuttling, once that becomes an option), just to hand the victor a pyrhhic victory. Yippee. Perhaps these should be turned over to an AI unless first conquered, or the patron supports with a DOW... but hey, that'd change the rules, and some would suggest that we can't have that, even though the game already does elsewhere. Some of the issues are fundamental and even now don't admit to ready solution (notably, the forced retreat of non-combatants from a multinat stat in certain cases), but other issues are merely artifacts of using 1d6, pencils, paper and board. Its fun you presume that the rest of you is the majority. I think atleast 50% of the players want this to be as close as possible to EIA, and not make up new rules. I do not think its hard to code, than scutling a minors fleet in a pbm game, which is at war with a MP, could be forbidden to to be scuttled. In pbm games you can easy implement houserules regarding minors. After all i seen and heard alot of different views. So all you have to do, is find a group of players who have the same view as yourself. Regards Bresh

KenClark -> RE: Get over it. (4/28/2008 5:29:11 PM)
It is critically important that the allies be able to minimize losses and maximize gains in combats. I posted a lengthy post, including some math, on this back in January. I attach it below. quote: Hello all. I have been playing EiA for at least 15 years, with at least three significantly different gaming groups who all had slightly different rules interpretations. I understand that lots of people have different opinions and I respect them. In this case, however, there is a critical game balance problem as the computer game is now played. The game balance problem is caused the lack of combined movement and shared political point gains/losses. The 'loan corps' feature is an attempt to correct what appears to be a problem with the difficulty in programming combined movement. In every EiA game I have ever played, the goal as the 'at-start' alliance against France (Au/Pr always, usually with Russia, sometimes with Turkey) is to defeat France before it becomes an unstoppable monster. The reason this coalition always occurs is because France's counter density and leadership is much higher than the Allies'. An ideal full six-stack French army under Napoleon would be the Guard, the Artillery and Corps I-IV. This stack has a numerical strength of 20 Guard, 12 Artillery, 13 Cav or so and 90 Inf (there may be some error here), totall strength 135 or so. Morale is about 4.2 The Allies' best combined six-stack under Charles would be 2 Prussian, 2 Austrian and 2 Russian corps, containing the I-II corps of each nation. This has a strength of about 81 Infantry, 10 Guard and 10 Cavalry, totalling 101 factors. Nappy gets a +1 Charles gets a 0. Morale about 3.3 The Austrian best six-stack would have about 75I 5 Guard and 7 Cav, total 87 Factors) under Charles. Nappy gets a +1 Charles gets a 0. Morale about 3.2 The Prussian best six-stack has about 7 Guard, 75 I and 18 Cav (?) total 100 factors under Blucher. Nappy gets a +1 Blucher gets a 0. Morale about 3.4 Given the corps density, leadership and morale advantage, you would say that a 6-corps stack gives the French a 0.9 to 1.0 morale advantage, a 35% numbers advantage and a +1 die roll advantage. In fact, the French can pretty much get numerical parity and a 1.0 morale advantage using only 4 corps. The French advantage of the +2 Guard, 1.0 morale and +1 die roll means that the French will win about 30% more battles on average than the Allies, and means that they will lose about half as many battles (with a much higher number of ties). What does this mean politically? On average, France will win 4 points for Nappy battles, whereas an allied stack will win 3. Given the 30% morale/leadership advantage this really turns out to be about 4.3 verus 2.7 for victories when normalized. Losing, France would lose 5 points 20% of the time whereas the Allies will lose 3 points 50% of the time. Again normalized this works out to be -1 to -1.5. So given equal stack corp numbers France on averave will gain 3.3 PP versus the Allies 1.2 when average losses are subtracted from average gains. Clearly this works out to France's advantage. In the board game, on average, the Allies tactic for getting over this aparant advantage was twofold: Corps numbers and Splitting Forces. If a 3-country team attacks france they have about twice to 2.5 times the actual numbers of corps, which means that defending minor countries is difficult for France. This is a bit outside the scope of this thread. The Splitting Forces method takes advantage of the fact that under the EiA rules a defender only lost political points based on the number of its corps in the battle, instead of the total number of corps in the battle. As per the ideal stack above, if the Allies were to win the battle they would each get 3pp wheras if they lost they would only lose 1 pp each. Given the normalized math above, this brings down the differential by a factor of about 2.0 as the losses now cost 1/3 and the victories stay the same. You will see that the math then works out to a net difference of 3.3 to 3.2 France to Allies (roughly). Now of course it's somewhat difficult to get the ideal 6-stack with 2 corps each. You would want to optimize your superstack by stacking 12 corps with Charles and 10 corps with Blucher/Kutuzov. This would still give France a +1 and the other countries a +0 for tactical rating but then gives the Allies a chance to get cav superiority which could bring the odds of getting a +1/+1 situation much higher. This also allows the corps number superiority to become more important as the French have to superstack themselves to avoid getting killed off by numbers alone. So the rough math in this post is meant to show that if you want combat to be balanced for the "allies", against the numerical and morale advantage that France has, you should employ some form of victory-point splitting mechanism. Otherwise France will always win barring extremely bad luck. This is especially the case as France can split its movement between the Allies (due to the no-combined movement issues) and thus catch them before they can combine. The loaning corps solution is a pretty good one, but it has to be combined with the splitting-VP option or else it's meaningless. Ken Similar logic applies to fighting GB at sea. There are many ways to implement this feature, given that loaning corps is very powerful in some ways (e.g. you can fight someone else's country without being at war with them by loaning your corps to a belligerent, even when in an enforced peace). My opinion is that keeping the old EiA method is best for balance: Land: 1- If a nation's corps are commited in a battle in which their stack loses, a nation loses PP equal to 0.5 of their corps, rounded up, commited to the battle (including the usual double effect for 20+ factor corps and leaders like Nappy and Nelson) 2 - If a nation's corps are commited in a battle in which their stack wins, a nation gains PP equal to 0.5 of the enemy's corps, rounded up commited to the battle (including the usual double effect for 20+ factor corps and leaders like Nappy and Nelson) In either case, maximum gains/losses equal to 3 except for bonuses/maluses for leaders (Nappy & Nelson). Sea: Same as Land but with fleets equal to 1 each. Not sure if light fleets should be 0.5 or not. Ken

Ashtar -> RE: Get over it. (4/28/2008 6:30:13 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis So, what I am hearing is that ALL MP nations gain / lose the same. What about ONLY having non-corps focrs in the battle only i.e. Freikorps / Cossack? No, EIA rules state that all nations present with at least one corp/fleet GAIN the same, while they LOSE 1/2 pp per corp/fleet they had in the battle (actually is one pp per fleet but we all agree it should be tuned down to 1/2 due to naval changes. Non corps do not count against pp's. Concerning the rest of the discussion, I am forced to agree that experimenting with deviations from original well tested rules could have seriously flawed effects, so lets keep it faithful to EIA

Grognot -> RE: Get over it. (4/28/2008 7:24:12 PM)
Well, you might as well start complaining about the overly generous reinforcement rules, for instance -- it's entirely legal to drop a full Russian stack on a depot in a minor or conquered province without having a single supply chain that leads to Russia. Or how the victory conditions rules were changed to make exile trivial -- it used to be that ALL victors had to pick it, and agree on the same leader... and so forth. I don't see anybody here pointing out how you can't force the loaning of a corps. And in that case, you'd better not complain when people pull tricks from the 'gamey' thread, or exploit other rules loopholes. And one might note that if 'balance' is affected, VP bidding can fix that, to a degree -- what it CAN'T fix is the ease silly exploits. VP bidding can only make those exploits mandatory to be competitive. One gets the impression that some dogmatists would complain if FOW were added to Panzer!, complaining that experimentation could be worse than a system which allows omniscience to all tank commanders. Or if people were arguing to preserve the errors found in 1.0 releases... or that the Sun still revolves around the Earth.

Thresh -> RE: Get over it. (4/28/2008 7:58:42 PM)
Marshall, I think it would be best if the gamwarded PP on the number of corps each side has in a battle. Thus, in a battle where 6 French Corp with Napoleon take on 4 Austrian, 2 Prussian and 2 Russian Corps, if France wins they would get 4 PP (3 for the Corps and 1 for Napoleon), Austria would lose 2, Prussia and Russia would lose one. One of the benefits, IMO, on fighting with an ally is that you share in the success or failure. If I am Prussia, and Austria needs my help fighting france, and Charles is the best commander we are going to use, I want to be able to share in the spolid of victory, and that means getting PP for my contribution. It also means taking the risks as well, which means losing PP. Thresh

Ashtar -> RE: Get over it. (4/29/2008 12:59:25 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Grognot One gets the impression that some dogmatists would complain if FOW were added to Panzer!, complaining that experimentation could be worse than a system which allows omniscience to all tank commanders. Or if people were arguing to preserve the errors found in 1.0 releases... or that the Sun still revolves around the Earth. I am not at all a dogmatist, and originally I even proposed proportional (to corps) gain for winners. However, it seems people on the forum is divided on the subject and no general consensus can be reached. In this situation, yes, I think it is wiser to stick to the original rules, being EIA one of the most played, tested and successful grand strategy game.

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