Some interesting questions from a new player

[garrisonchisholm]

Aug 19, 2017 10:20:29 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

Welcome to the Forums! I am dashing our the door, but I will hazard my rum ration for the day that by the time I log back in late tonight you will have been amazed by the quantity and quality of your replies.

It is an amazing game, with a fun and attentive development team.

As I thought.  :}

One of the Best things about this game is that virtually any strategy can be made to win.  A policy that would make one player gasp in horror another player could use successfully for dozens of games.  The game lends you such an amazingly creative & free hand.

[generalvikus]

Thank you everybody for your responses - it's all been very helpful, and the clarification on Armoured / Protected Cruisers especially. Thanks also especially to oaktree for recommending David Brown's books - I'll take a look at those.

[cv10]

Aug 19, 2017 22:26:31 GMT -6 generalvikus said:

Thank you everybody for your responses - it's all been very helpful, and the clarification on Armoured / Protected Cruisers especially. Thanks also especially to oaktree for recommending David Brown's books - I'll take a look at those.

I'd also throw in Dreadnought and Castles of Steel, as both discuss the Naval Strategy behind this era extensively. Castles of Steel was used as a source of information for this game IIRC.

[generalvikus]

Aug 19, 2017 22:41:58 GMT -6 cv10 said:

Aug 19, 2017 22:26:31 GMT -6 generalvikus said:

Thank you everybody for your responses - it's all been very helpful, and the clarification on Armoured / Protected Cruisers especially. Thanks also especially to oaktree for recommending David Brown's books - I'll take a look at those.

I'd also throw in Dreadnought and Castles of Steel, as both discuss the Naval Strategy behind this era extensively. Castles of Steel was used as a source of information for this game IIRC.

I've already read Dreadnought, and enjoyed it very much - might revisit it, since I haven't read it in a very long time. I'll take a look at Castles of Steel as well, thanks!

[generalvikus]

Thanks again to everybody who's responded so far. I have a couple more questions:

1. What value do colonial possessions have? Do they increase income, prestige score, and any other figures? In my first game (playing as the US) I easily defeated Germany, and ended up in a peace deal with a war score of 8 - but having taken all their Pacific possessions in an earlier war, I could only go on my real life knowledge, which led me to conclude that their African possessions were completely worthless to me, and not worth defending - so I walked away with nothing!

2. Related to the earlier point about protected / armoured cruisers: we've established that the 'belt' on protected cruisers is the sloped part of the armour, and the 'deck' is the flat part. If so, where is the belt extended / deck extended armour located? Same question for the 'sloped armour' configuration - which part corresponds to the 'slope' of the armour and which is the 'flat' part, considering that the belt armour is simply represented by the belt?

[ddg]

Quoting myself from a long-past thread to explain the game economy:

Feb 12, 2016 20:07:13 GMT -6 ddg said:

The budget formula is something like (R+C)*B, where

• R is national resources,
• C is colonial resources, and
• B is a budget multiplier.

This means that two nations with identical economic strengths (i.e. R+C) can have wildly different budgets if one of them is willing to concentrate more of its economy on the navy (represented by a higher B). Especially when tensions are high, the final budget figure is not a reliable measure of a nation's total economy.

Each colony has a value. For example, Ireland's value is 10 and Libya's is 1. Working from memory, colonies add 25,000 resources per point of value, so Ireland gives you 250,000 resources and Libya only 25,000. C, your colonial resources, is just the sum of all the resources you get from all your colonies.

National resources R are set at game start by your choice of nation and budget setting (i.e. game or historical). As I recall, the national resources will be exactly half of whatever the start screen says your budget will be. National resources also grow naturally over time (I believe through a combination of percentage increases and fixed increases, although that isn't really important at this juncture) as well as through events. In particular, the event in which you get to decide between focusing investment on the navy, building railroads, or social programs can grant a huge increase to national resources—but you have to choose the railroads to do so. I believe the AI nations usually choose the railroad, so if you didn't, that would put you somewhat behind the curve. I also suspect that Italy's Corruption trait reduces natural growth.

When you win a war and get to choose from the loser's colonies, any points left over turn into 50,000 national resources each. Since colonies' points are the same as their value, this means leftover points are worth twice as much to your economy and, ultimately, your budget. Furthermore, since only national resources (not colonial resources) compound over time, the leftover points have even greater long-term economic value.

The final variable in my formula*, the budget multiplier B, is what changes when events grant "budget+." It can be reduced to straight integer multiples, usually ranging between 10 and 20. If your multiplier increases from 10 to 11, you'll see your final budget rise by 10%; if it falls from 20 to 19, you'll see your final budget fall by 5%. The budget multiplier means that your naval budget reflects both your nation's overall economic strength and its commitment to naval spending, so your lower budget could easily reflect a stronger economy but a more dovish government.

*I suspect the actual formula in the game code has a few more, but that they don't change during the course of a game and thus can be safely ignored here. One important one is a fleet size multiplier that is set at game start.

A colony's economic value is proportional to its point value (seen in the victory screen or when selecting the colony). Beyond income, colonies provide only fleet basing. If anything in that post is unclear, ask and I'll try to explain it. You can check the original thread for the context.

[bcoopactual]

For the sloping deck configuration, the deck field and deck extended fields represent both the flat and the sloping part of the deck. The deck value is the protection over the magazines and engine room and the deck extended is explained below with belt extended.

The belt and deck extended fields represent the vertical and horizontal armored areas on the bow and stern outside of the citadel (roughly the areas forward of the 'A' turret and aft of the 'Y' turret). For all-or-nothing armor schemes, which you can research later in the game, both would have a value of zero.  Actually I should add to get the benefit of the all-or-nothing scheme once you have researched the tech, BE and DE both have to be zero and you have to select the "flat deck on top of belt" armor scheme.  You will see a bold type AoN next to the armor scheme picture in the design screen telling you the AoN benefit is active for that ship.  

I only have my phone at the moment so making links is hard but if you search the forum for an "armour detail poll" you'll find a thread that asked how much detail we wanted to see for armor in RTW2. On the 3rd page of that thread is a nice illustration that @galagagalaxion made that shows what the different armor fields represent in the ship designer.

Here is the diagram galagagalaxian  made  up:




ddg provided an excellent explanation of the economics of colonies.  I want to emphasize the importance of having overseas bases though, especially as the United States or Japan.  As the US, taking a territory in Northeast Asia gives you a bridgehead to fight Japan on their home ground.  If you can take Finland or one of the other 10 point European territories it gives you a base to operate against the big European nations.  Alternatively, if you ever get the chance to ally with a European nation I highly recommend taking it and making nice with that ally (i.e. turning Intel down to low or zero for your ally).  Most territories need to be expanded to be fully useful as a base of operations for a large fleet. Each territory has a base capacity value.  I would recommend getting the total for any ocean area you want to have unlimited ops in to at least 125 but no need to go above 200.  


Having a base of operations in the enemy's home area lets you take the battle to him and not have to worry about losing ships that get damaged in battle to internment or scuttling. 

[JagdFlanker]

if nobody's mentioned it yet the links at the bottom of ddg and bcoopactual's posts have some great RtW info as well

[cv10]

Does the Fleet capacity a base provides double when it is expanded? I've noticed that once you build up even a small base a few times, the fleet capacity it provides shoots up pretty fast. Playing as the UK, I was able to get my Fleet Capacity in Northeast Asia up pretty high by continuously expanding all the bases for 5 years.

[aeson]

Does the Fleet capacity a base provides double when it is expanded? I've noticed that once you build up even a small base a few times, the fleet capacity it provides shoots up pretty fast. Playing as the UK, I was able to get my Fleet Capacity in Northeast Asia up pretty high by continuously expanding all the bases for 5 years.

Once you get to high base capacity (over something between 100 and 250) in a possession, it seems to be closer to 50 base capacity per upgrade. With lower base capacities, I don't know that it quite doubles each time, but yes, it does improve pretty quickly. The magnitude of the increase in base capacity might be something like min(existing base capacity, 50), or it might be a bit more complicated.

[director]

If you don't have copies of Janes, or Brasseys, or some naval resource book from the 1900 era, then I recommend you look online.
The ship designers of the period were actually pretty smart, and it helps to look at the specs of actual ships from the period.

[generalvikus]

Aug 23, 2017 16:23:17 GMT -6 director said:

If you don't have copies of Janes, or Brasseys, or some naval resource book from the 1900 era, then I recommend you look online.
The ship designers of the period were actually pretty smart, and it helps to look at the specs of actual ships from the period.

I use wikipedia for that purpose - I assume that wikipedia uses Jane's. 

[director]

The really great thing about a naval annual is that you get to see year after year of construction, nation after nation of fleets, all in easy page-flipping range.