Gross English Navies

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@ FFZ: I picked up Dreadnought. Awesome beginning! Thanks for that suggestion. I think I'm gonna like this one

I was very impressed with it when i first got it, its one of those books that is hard to put down once you start reading.

And reading it should be required for any Vicky player, its like a bible for this game.

 

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This imagery of the naval glory at Portsmouth for Victoria's diamond jubilee is quite remarkable! I love good historical writers who can portray the texture and quality of an era. Thanks FFZ! Been a while since I had a real page turner.

ADDIT: as far as the game: I guess I'm spoiled by Matrix Games War in the Pacific. From what little I know about the strategic dimensions of naval warfare, that game does an admirable job of representing it for the 1940s. War Plan Orange, built from the same engine did a good job for the 1920s.

But, in those games, all the military production is effectively hard coded for the U.S. (both in WPO), and all it really simulates is the military theatre; nothing about politics, historical events, infrastructure, industry, etc.

It would be so awesome if Vicky 2 could go just a little bit toward the better naval game design in a game like WiTP, which now is updated to 'Admiral's Edition.'

Glad to help.

About Matrix games, they are a different type of game, they are made to make the players follow the historical patterns of the event covered.

Paradox is more about giving you what a nation has 'at start' and letting you go on from there.

 

[WankoStankins]

I wish britain built ships like that in my germany games, I completely destroyed their navy in the Great War of 1893

 

[Justinian7]

The UK AI often builds fleets of several hundred dreadnoughts in my games.

 

[Akaki]

VIP allows only the 1836 scenario to be played. Be sure to play on a slow speed, though. I seem to have missed the event that enables the ship hull factory and had to live with a dreadnought-less Swiss empire.

Hey, wait, say wha? What about that missed event? After which invention hull factory shoul be enabled? Are there more events like this that can be missed?

 

[Anthropoid]

I did get the hull factory enabled after about 1865 or thereabouts. Cannot remember what the invention was.

 

[Anthropoid]

I did intend the title of this thread to have a certain element of irony / double-meaning to it, but now that I'm reading the book FFZ recommended (awesome book BTW! thanks a mllion for that suggestion!) I'm bemused at just how ironic it is.

It is fascinating how Massie portrays these characters, the royalty, and ministers involved in this decades long historical evolution of antagonism and tension between Britain and Germany. He is a master of telling a story without coming right out and telling anything, but instead describing the salient dimensions of the behavior, words, etc. of the characters, and allowing the reader to formulate a model on their own. Wonderful book!

This model I'm formulating, Victoria and her daughters (if not at least Empress Vicky) as: overbearing, self-important, manipulative, discouraging mothers/rulers, and the influence that these mothers had on European history is a remarkable 'discovery.'

My own work deals with parental bonding and its influence on lifetime risk, e.g, increased alcoholism among Caribbean villager men whose mothers are remembered as being more controlling!

 

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They certainly were detrimental in many ways.

The great european powers all had a mantle of arrogance, the British for a long time felt it was their 'right' to stop any ship of any country and take sailors or cargo if it was deemed to help their empire or might hurt it.

The feeling of entitlement caused many of the problems and wars that would come in the 20th century when they began fighting against themselves in earnest.

There was also a change in society, the Victorians believed in science and that man could over come any obsticle by the appliance or reason and thought with a touch of paternalism and racism (IE white man's burden type of thing).

After the great war, all they believed in was turned to ashes amoung the graves of the millions of men killed to no real purpose.

The 20th century in many was a regression in man's history, a giant reaction to the mistakes of the 19th.