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po8crg -> RE: Tell us where to go after EiA...??? (12/13/2004 5:12:48 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis
Elaborate, if you would, on the following game types (Start date, turn length, number of players and the major nations):
Roman Game
American Revolution
American Civil War
Franco-Prussian
World Conquering (i.e. Advanced Risk)
Here are some suggestions:
Roman. Not sure you could make this work; Roman era combat is different. You'd have to restrict corps to one movement point without a leader, and prohibit reinforcement just to get close. If you pick a period of around 220BC, you might get something interesting - MPs would be Rome, Carthage, Macedonia, Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt, with the Greek city-states as minors, Spain as a conquered minor without a Free State ability, Numidia as a Carthaginian Free State. I'd just blank out the barbarian areas (like the northern half of Gaul, Germany, etc) to make powers concentrate on Mediterranean dominance. Fleets are probably non-translatable.
The Seleucids would have some kind of access to elephants from (ultimately) India. I'm trying to remember how much Parthia had conquered by this stage, but adding them as a seventh power stretches things too far East, and they don't have anything to do but attack Seleucia (unlike the real world). Perhaps an UMP models them best.
American Revolution: Won't work. Two player, unless you incorporate France and the Caribbean theatre - and if you do, then EiA's naval system will be creaking at the seams. Colonial-scale wars with small army and naval detachments works OK if you just scale everything down, but there were proper fleets involved as well as small naval squadrons.
American Civil War: Won't work. Two player, and EiA needs its political/diplomatic system. Also the military model is all wrong, given the huge advantage to the defense.
Franco-Prussian: Well, a two-player scenario might work, but you really want a CG covering the 1854-1878 period. MPs are the same as 1805-1815, except for swapping Spain for Piedmont/Italy. A four-player Germany/France/Austria/Italy CG (covering 1859-1871) exists, and I wrote a draft expansion to seven with Turkey, GB and Russia added in. Army sizes are different, but probably not well-enough used to really change things - apart from fiddling with the chit chart, of course. Long defensive lines, used well, is characteristic of very few battles, unlike the ACW in the same period. You need some better revolt rules, to completely debilitate Russia when the Poles revolt.
Other periods the system will work with:
French Revolutionary wars, 1792-1802. Take your pick of the many good CGs covering this period, including EiH.
War of the Austrian Succession 1739-1748 and Seven Years' War 1756-1763. Usual seven majors, possibly plus Poland and Sweden, though I think those two (and Spain in the 7YW) are better as UMPs, since they were very passive and you need to stop them trying too much. Plus, they're too fragile to be fun to play.
The War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1714) is possible - for that matter, so is the Nine Years' War (1689-1697). The Great North War (1700-1721) gives you an option for an eleven-player game: England (with Scotland as a Free State, I guess), France, two Spains, Austria, Prussia, Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Turkey. Sieges are harder in this period; so are blockades, and also smaller armies can more easily hide in (fortified) cities.
Go any earlier and armies are too small for the EiA Corps system to work - what you have is just an army, which pretty much stays concentrated about a leader; also the depot supply system is new in the late seventeenth century. If you look at the devastation of the Thirty Years' War, everything is run by forage supply and they wreck the areas they forage in.
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