IGC 2.2c - Game Balance vs History

[Derek Pullem]

I love the England changes in IGC 2.2c with the irish rebels and no national provinces in Scotland but..... I wish I could turn them off like the time of troubles for Russia.

I normally keep ToT on if I'm playing Russia or off if I'm playing another country - the AI can't handle the revolts well and almost invariably loses at least two of the conquered minors. Once I saw Novgorod, Kazan, Astrakhan, Sibr and the Uzbeks reappear at the same time!

In a similar vein when I don't play England I normally give them Anglia as a CoT to help them out against the mighty Scots! (sarcasm intended) Giving them the Irish rebels and the extra revolts in Scotland as an AI country makes England puny again.

Any chance of an "Hostil Irish and Scots" option in IGC 2.3. Even better add a really serious English Civil war (the current one is too feeble)and American Revolution option as well!

Don't ask for much do I??!!

 

[Doomdark]

Weeelll, if I were to make everyone happy, all new IGC features would be optional. However, you suggestions have been noted.

 

[unmerged(1302)]

Actually, a better idea (BiB's if I am not mistaken) is to make everything optional for AI. BTW, in revolts.txt can we remove all extra provinces from Novgorod?

 

[State Machine]

Options, options, options...

I agree that there is probably demand for a million options, and it is very difficult to do them all. Certainly, a reengineered version of IGCConfig could probably help there. I am certain that is a lot of work.

I, too, would like some English options as Derek mentions:
- the "play as England" option that has the rebelling Irish and the Royalists.
- the "England can live" option that gives it a chance to survive Scotland and others, at least early in the campaign.

BTW, I have a theory about why England, in particular, has such a hard time. Scotland is no more fierce than the minor neighbors that everyone else has. Like all ai countries, during war, England goes off to besiege some attractive province. For England, though, the attractive provinces are never in Scotland, they are oversees someplace. It now has no army in England, and its fleet is gone too, and weakend by attrition, to boot. Majors often lose provinces at the beginning of a war. Later they take them back. England is not in a position to take them back, so Scotland can continue to take provinces and force a peace.

 

[unmerged(4007)]

State,

Makes sense to me. Add the fact that this lost province is usually The Marches, which is fairly rich, and recovering for the AI is even harder.

 

[Mohe]

Another reason I think for the AI's terrible performance as England is that unlike a player state it has no ability to use it's fleets, the few times I played england I never had trouble keeping French armies off my sacred soil, but I have only seen one game where England was devoid of foreign occupation and in that case Ireland belonged to Crimea! and I was playing a very nasty expansionistic Bavaria that was otherwise occupying the French.

 

[State Machine]

Yeah, the ai likes to find "picket" sea zones and stay there until they attrit away. I imagine England's fleets hang out someplace useless while the EU cruise ship industry makes England a number one destination for holidays.

I know there has been a million threads on how to play England, and I think there are probably two very sucessful tactics for the beginning of the game (basically military or diplo annex of Scotland, with some French varients). I play differently - I like to play "historically". As such Scotland must live for quite a while. Scotland is very simple to handle. All you need is an army large enough to inflect damage on the invading Scots. Hit them in the Marchs with enough force, and their army will be too damaged to siege. Their economy is too poor to rebuild. Either wait for a white peace, or if you have the troops, take Lothian and force a peace. Not much to it. If Scotland stabs you in the back when you are overextended in other wars, then you will have to take your provinces back.

 

[unmerged(4633)]

The easiest way ot neuter scotland and protect England would be to increase Englands intial funds, so they can retake lands lost in the inevitable early french bum rush, and cut down Scotlands intial army, which since their poor will force them to be defensive.

 

[BiB]

I haven't seen England lose lands to continental powers sicne a few patches. They always lose Calais and they still dunno how to handle Scotland (though it's better) but French, Spanish or god forbid Turkish British provinces I haven't seen in a very long while.

 

[Josephus I]

Originally posted by BiB
I haven't seen England lose lands to continental powers sicne a few patches. They always lose Calais and they still dunno how to handle Scotland (though it's better) but French, Spanish or god forbid Turkish British provinces I haven't seen in a very long while.

I'm playing with all the latest EU and IGC patches and in my last game England got viciously raped. I think the French had a couple provinces and so did Spain. At one time England only had Anglia on the mainland, but they seemed to recover a bit, especially after France was the Badboy De jour and everyone started nibbling away at it.

 

[unmerged(255)]

England was doin great in most of my latest games--until I downloaded IGC 2.2c that is... Last night, by 1725, England only held onto Anglia, a reformed Ireland, a few cities & trading posts in North America. With the exception of Wessex (taken first by France and then Sweden) the entire island was Scottish. At one point Britanny owned Cornwall, which was really neat since Bretons of France are from that area But in any case, as it is now, the English AI is back to its pathetic roots...

tuna

 

[unmerged(410)]

I know it has been said many times, but it bears repetition : the IGC is a great piece of work. I can but admire it.

 

[unmerged(4633)]

England does fine once the colonial era sets in. They are consistantly a strong Colonial power and really pull ahead of Scotland then, historical.

However, leading UP TO the colonial era, England all to often is creamed in one manner or another by a Scottish alliance with another major (Portugal and France seem to be popular partners)

How do we stop this? Reduce Englands aggressiveness so theyll avoid Scotland until their established, reduce Scotlands aggressiveness, hamstring Scotlands army early on, are the 3 best choices I feel.

Ultimately, England should not be the premium power in 1792. England wasnt THE world empire until the 1800's, especially after the Napoleanic wars and their final domination over all of India, so I dont expect them to kick any major powers ass.

And I dont mind seeing Scotland kick the tar out of England on occasion, it could have happened, just like my seeing Turkey conquer all of Poland and push into Northern Germany or seeing Kleves unite Germany could have happened.

I do think we see it with to much regularity though.

 

[unmerged(4273)]

Originally posted by GNGSpam
Ultimately, England should not be the premium power in 1792. England wasnt THE world empire until the 1800's, especially after the Napoleanic wars and their final domination over all of India, so I dont expect them to kick any major powers ass.

I do think we see it with to much regularity though.

Hmmmm... Who else was a major power at that time? The French? Yeah, 'cept that revolution thing... Spaniards, Portugeuse? naw. Their days as premier powers were the 1500s. The Ottomans? They had also slipped off of their peak, (I think they were already 'the sick man of Europe' by 1792?)...

The Austrians don't count... you can't be a "World Power" as far as I'm concerned unless you at least had a presence outside of Europe. Which the Austro-Hungarian empire didn't really. Russia? Poland? Sweden? No, no, and no.

Honestly, I don't think any nation could be said to seriously challenge England's status as the most powerful nation of the day. This does not mean that a coalition of the other European nations wouldn't have had a fair chance of whupping up on the English (depending, of course, upon the venue as well), though.

 

[unmerged(4007)]

Helium,

I agree. I see lots of people post "England wasn't even that powerful in 1792." But I never see an alternative nation for being more powerful posted. (Except Spain, but they were in reality barely hanging on to 2nd rate power status.)

he loos of the American colonies was a serious blow. But in reality, what other colonial power could've withstood the loss of their richest colonies, and STILL been a major colonial player spanning the globe.

Yes they got even more powerful in the 19th century. But that only points out the fact that they were so powerful that they could absorb this loss. It also points out that the reason why the designers stopped when they did. In reality, at this point, the Mercantile value of the Empire was so huge that it could bankroll major wars that the other powers were bankrupted trying to fight. The game would almost have to have tilted permamently in their favor somehow.

 

[unmerged(4273)]

Originally posted by shawng1
Helium,

he loos of the American colonies was a serious blow. But in reality, what other colonial power could've withstood the loss of their richest colonies, and STILL been a major colonial player spanning the globe.

Yes they got even more powerful in the 19th century. But that only points out the fact that they were so powerful that they could absorb this loss. It also points out that the reason why the designers stopped when they did. In reality, at this point, the Mercantile value of the Empire was so huge that it could bankroll major wars that the other powers were bankrupted trying to fight. The game would almost have to have tilted permamently in their favor somehow.

Definitely! I think that a lot of Americans view the loss of the 13 Colonies as a strikingly *huge* blow to the British Empire and completely forget that while they lost their foothold in the United States, from that point on they still managed to go on in the future to:

A. Dominate the Caribbean
B. Dominate Canada
C. Establish relatively large colonies in Central & S. America
D. Take over most of Africa, including the German possessions following WWI and S. Africa from the Boers
E. Establish tons of Pacific colonies/trading posts and taking possession of Australia.
F. Dominate India
G. Crush China every time they get uptight about the Brits dealing them opium for huge profits...

After the loss of the American colonies, the Brit's were still *bloody* strong. I think the Spanish were definitely their closest competitors, but their economy had collapsed, they could not defend their empire from internal and external threats, and they would have, IMHO, been harshly subdued by the British in any war that did not involve most of Britain's trading partners in Europe simply by virtue of economic disparity...

In fact... the Brit's had already snatched Gibraltar from the Spaniards by 1713, foreshadowing their new dominance.

 

[amcl]

GNGSpam asks -
How do we stop this? Reduce Englands aggressiveness so theyll avoid Scotland until their established, reduce Scotlands aggressiveness, hamstring Scotlands army early on, are the 3 best choices I feel.

Good questions.

I'd say that the problems is that the Scots have too many unrealistic and unmerited advantages in the game (and nobody should accuse me of bias because I'm Scots myself).

(1) Overrated and/or imaginary leaders.
James IV lost the only big battle he fought, getting himself killed and his army annihilated in the process. Not a recommendation really (even though other generals with similar track records are equally overrated).
(Hamilton of) Arran was useless as a general, as an admiral and as a ruler.
Malcolm is, so far as I can see, imaginary.
I cannot think of any Ruthven with a successful military track record, so I'd guess he's imaginary too.
OTOH, one could argue that some leaders are missing (Barton, Wood, Moray, Morton) but they wouldn't have the same sort of impact as the errors above.

So - downgrade James IV and Arran, delete Malcolm and Ruthven.

(2) Scotland was a political basket case for most of the C16th.
(a) James V rules from 1514 in the game with no troubles, but in reality there were two regencies and two civil wars - albeit fairly small ones - between 1514 and 1528. Regent #1 was the diplomatically capable Duke of Albany, regent #2 was the grasping, incompetent and hated Earl of Angus.
(b) Mary QoS was utterly incompetent as a monarch. She didn't last a decade on the throne, not the several decades the game allows. (Hamilton of) Arran, not much good as I said above, was regent from the death of James V until replaced in a fairly bloodless coup by Mary's mother, Mary of Guise. A somewhat bloodier coup (or civil war) later replaced Mary of Guise with Mary QoS's half-brother the Earl of Moray just before the Queen's return in the 1560s.
(c) After Mary's overthrow, things went from bad to worse. James VI was an infant so regencies abounded. Regent #1 was the able Moray, assassinated after a short while. Then the Earl of Lennox, also assassinated. Regent #3 only lasted six months or so, but did manage to die in his bed. Then Regent #4, the very unpleasant Earl of Morton, who ruled with the proverbial iron hand until the King removed him. Morton was guillotined shortly thereafter.

None of this - and it's only the selected highlights of Scotland's political malaise - appears to be represented in the game.

Anyway that's two big reasons why Scotland is far more powerful in EU than it was in history.

Add in the underrating of Edward VI as a ruler, the fact that England has fewer generals than ought to be the case (forex Protector Somerset comprehensively oughtfought Arran in the Rough Wooing), the ahistorical conversion to Reformed in England and we're well on the way to explaining why England gets screwed.

Cheers,

Angus