IGC and the Chinese megastack

[unmerged(1792)]

Playing the latest IGC, I used the config tool to select China as the only playable country. When the game started, I beheld a 604,000 man Chinese army sitting in ONE province (forget name, the one east of the capital). I was able to split the massive stack and spread the troops out before attrition took a deadly toll.

Question: Is China supposed to start with a 604k army or is this a bug? If not a bug, perhaps the config files can be altered to spread the army out before scenario starts?

 

[unmerged(1457)]

Yes, that would make China a little harder too. I think the AI just keeps the army there and it withers to 100K or so. I suppose someone could test this with the columbus cheat... Aden has the same problem.

 

[BiB]

And Japan, Russia even, ... Not to mention the states building armies over and over in provinces that can't support them ...

 

[Dark Knight]

I think a better way to make China harder to conquer would be to increase its fortifications, instead of giving it an enormous army.

 

[Hartmann]

To spread the Chinese (and Japanese) armies is an item on my personal to-do-list since the beginning of the IGC. But there were always more pressing things. I think I will address this issue for the next version.

Hartmann

 

[Viking]

The south asian and east asian nations are seen by myself and probably most players as 'easilly annexable provinces' that since they have a different religion dont have a big BB effect.

There are two possible solutions.

1) Make them all natives. This means that the first COT appearing in buru, ceram or jakarta does not get 1500o of chinese trade. Make them all hostile so if you want to take any chinese province you are going to have to struggle a long long long time and spend a lot of money and a lot of troops before getting anything. This makes the TPs in Nagasaki and Canton possible for The Netherlands and Portugese.

2) Give them big buff forts and really really really cheap troops. (plus good generals for when the europeans arrive to conquer). Level 4 forts D;D;D;C;C;C construction costs for units will make china, japan and the SEAsians dangerous to the europeans. The europeans will have to consider diplomacy as opposed to just marching a mediocre conquistador with som inf, cav and cannon and take all their provinces.

3) Nationalism, this is my favourite and most elegant solution. This is probably NOT possible for the IGC. Have increased nationalism for non europeans. So instead of 3,2,1 over 30 years as it is in europe have 12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 over 120 years. You bet your right patootie that nobody is going to bother with china then. Just imagine provinces larger than flanders revolting once per year with 100,000 troops with your technology??

 

[unmerged(372)]

Yes, but all those solutions would just turn the game on its head. It would be unrealistic. China was not an aboriginal megafortress (whatever that would look like).