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Post by generalvikus on Jan 31, 2019 0:45:44 GMT -6
Despite the intensity of the earlier dreadnought race and the re-armament period leading up to the second war, naval construction during the two world wars - and particularly, or at least most obviously, during the Second - was of an entirely different magnitude than peacetime construction. By comparison, the approximate doubling of budgets that I tend to notice during wartime in RTW 1 seems to be a relatively mild change of pace. I am interested to know whether the representation of economic mobilisation in RTW 2 will be any different from its predecessor, since whereas RTW felt as though it was primarily focused on the arms race at the beginning of the Twentieth century - RTW 2 covers the period of naval history in which the impact of economic mobilisation for war was most strongly felt.
I have argued before, in the 'Government Types, Alliances, and Tensions' thread that a more or less accurate abstraction of history will provide an ultimately better gameplay experience than a less accurate and simplified abstraction, as it would add new layers of strategy to the experience. I feel the same way about this issue. If the game budgets are made to accurately model the effects of wartime mobilisation, players will experience a stark contrast between the slow, incremental pace of peacetime competition on one hand, and the frantic rush of wartime on the other.
Naturally, any advocacy of an accurate representation of wartime mobilisation must address the elephant in the room: game balance. Accurately representing the vast differential in wartime production capacity which was evidenced during the Second World War will be even less conducive to game balance than an accurate representation of the discrepancy in peacetime budgets. One of the noteworthy facts about the Second World War is that Japanese naval production did not significantly increase at all during the first years after Pearl Harbour, while the increases in American production were being measured in the hundreds or thousands of percent.
I do not think that such an imbalance is undesirable; I do not think that historical strategy games should be balanced, especially in a game such as this, in which the player can choose both his means and his ends. If the player wishes to take on the full might of Western productive capacity as Japan, he should experience the historical challenge which was inherent in this endeavour; he will therefore be compelled to address the same questions that faced Japanese planners in history: how can the war be won quickly before we are overwhelmed? How can we use the years of peacetime, when we enjoy comparable productive strength to the enemy, to maximise our chances of achieving this? If our opening gambit fails, can we avoid losing everything?
Inexperienced players, of course, would be ill advised to undertake such a daunting task as playing the Japan in a historical Pacific War - but for the very experienced players, I think they will find nothing more satisfying than to approach a real, historical challenge in all its daunting scope and scale. Such gluttony for punishment has, I think, been amply evidenced by the popularity of community mods which offer the player a very weak starting position and challenge him to beat the odds: Spain, the Netherlands, China, and so on.
And, after all, for those players who want to use it, we already have the choice between 'historical' and 'game' budgets in the original game.
As I understand it, budget in RTW is a function of 'national resources.' So, really, all of this boils down to two simple questions: firstly, will national resources be an accurate representation of historical industrial power? And secondly, will the percentage of national resources available in wartime be accurately modelled?
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Post by noshurviverse on Jan 31, 2019 1:00:37 GMT -6
This video shows a time-lapse of Japanese and American naval construction over the war and I feel is well worth a watch. It really shows off what Yamamoto was warning about, that unless the US fleet was destroyed entirely from the get-go, Japan was doomed to lose.
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Post by dorn on Jan 31, 2019 2:21:29 GMT -6
Despite the intensity of the earlier dreadnought race and the re-armament period leading up to the second war, naval construction during the two world wars - and particularly, or at least most obviously, during the Second - was of an entirely different magnitude than peacetime construction. By comparison, the approximate doubling of budgets that I tend to notice during wartime in RTW 1 seems to be a relatively mild change of pace. I am interested to know whether the representation of economic mobilisation in RTW 2 will be any different from its predecessor, since whereas RTW felt as though it was primarily focused on the arms race at the beginning of the Twentieth century - RTW 2 covers the period of naval history in which the impact of economic mobilisation for war was most strongly felt. I have argued before, in the 'Government Types, Alliances, and Tensions' thread that a more or less accurate abstraction of history will provide an ultimately better gameplay experience than a less accurate and simplified abstraction, as it would add new layers of strategy to the experience. I feel the same way about this issue. If the game budgets are made to accurately model the effects of wartime mobilisation, players will experience a stark contrast between the slow, incremental pace of peacetime competition on one hand, and the frantic rush of wartime on the other. Naturally, any advocacy of an accurate representation of wartime mobilisation must address the elephant in the room: game balance. Accurately representing the vast differential in wartime production capacity which was evidenced during the Second World War will be even less conducive to game balance than an accurate representation of the discrepancy in peacetime budgets. One of the noteworthy facts about the Second World War is that Japanese naval production did not significantly increase at all during the first years after Pearl Harbour, while the increases in American production were being measured in the hundreds or thousands of percent. I do not think that such an imbalance is undesirable; I do not think that historical strategy games should be balanced, especially in a game such as this, in which the player can choose both his means and his ends. If the player wishes to take on the full might of Western productive capacity as Japan, he should experience the historical challenge which was inherent in this endeavour; he will therefore be compelled to address the same questions that faced Japanese planners in history: how can the war be won quickly before we are overwhelmed? How can we use the years of peacetime, when we enjoy comparable productive strength to the enemy, to maximise our chances of achieving this? If our opening gambit fails, can we avoid losing everything? Inexperienced players, of course, would be ill advised to undertake such a daunting task as playing the Japan in a historical Pacific War - but for the very experienced players, I think they will find nothing more satisfying than to approach a real, historical challenge in all its daunting scope and scale. Such gluttony for punishment has, I think, been amply evidenced by the popularity of community mods which offer the player a very weak starting position and challenge him to beat the odds: Spain, the Netherlands, China, and so on. And, after all, for those players who want to use it, we already have the choice between 'historical' and 'game' budgets in the original game. As I understand it, budget in RTW is a function of 'national resources.' So, really, all of this boils down to two simple questions: firstly, will national resources be an accurate representation of historical industrial power? And secondly, will the percentage of national resources available in wartime be accurately modelled? Issue is that you compare RTW with real history in every category. However RTW simulates more wars type Russian-Japanese. And in this case there were not total economic mobilization. RTW does not simulate world wars in any matter. It would be much more complicated, it simulate naval arms race and do (in good way) a lot of simplifications.
There are other strategic games simulating global world wars and they have a lot of flaws as they have issue to similate main strategic issues of such war. RTW does not try to do it (we are lucky) and offers something different - different types of conflict similar to Russian-Japanese war and simulates environment around it quite well. RTW2 is going to 1950 technology however the types of conflicts remain in same scope.
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Post by generalvikus on Jan 31, 2019 4:03:51 GMT -6
Issue is that you compare RTW with real history in every category. However RTW simulates more wars type Russian-Japanese. And in this case there were not total economic mobilization. RTW does not simulate world wars in any matter. It would be much more complicated, it simulate naval arms race and do (in good way) a lot of simplifications.
There are other strategic games simulating global world wars and they have a lot of flaws as they have issue to similate main strategic issues of such war. RTW does not try to do it (we are lucky) and offers something different - different types of conflict similar to Russian-Japanese war and simulates environment around it quite well. RTW2 is going to 1950 technology however the types of conflicts remain in same scope.
I agree that, so far, Rule the Waves has been most apt at simulating that kind of conflict - and, more broadly, the spirit of conflict and diplomacy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; chauvinist tensions flaring over matters of national prestige, limited wars to resolve them, ending with an exchange of colonies and reparations payments. And, for the original game, this was more or less appropriate; even though its timeframe encompasses the beginning of the age of total war, more than half of the game has gone by at that point. You might say, therefore, that the game is reasonably representative of the time period in which it is set. However, for the time period of 1900 - 1950, I do not think that it would be so appropriate for limited war to be the exclusive focus of the game. Taken as a whole, that period of time was the one age more than any other in which total war dominated political and military history. A game set in this time period which does not attempt to portray total war would not feel as appropriate for its time period as the original game did for its time period. But leaving aside the question of whether the game should aim to represent total war, why do you say that it can't? My proposal is simple, as articulated in my first post: national resources should be historical accurate - ideally measures of industrial strength rather than total economic size - and the percentage of those resources allocated to the nation in peace and in war should also be accurate. Beyond that, there is very little within the scope of this series of games that would need to be done. The tactical combat does not need to be changed; the process of designing and ordering ships does not need to be changed, except perhaps for more accelerated construction in wartime, which seems simple enough to me. Perhaps later in the game, wars should be more likely to continue until one side or the other collapses in total defeat, and the flavour text for events in the later years should probably be different from the early years, but this does not seem to be absolutely necessary to me. If it is true that a video game cannot capture the full complexity of a World War with all its nuances, then I don't see why this specific game should find it difficult to portray total war at sea any better than it portrays limited war at sea. So, what specifically would be much more complicated about a world war in this game?
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Post by sleventyfive on Feb 1, 2019 15:45:40 GMT -6
Issue is that you compare RTW with real history in every category. However RTW simulates more wars type Russian-Japanese. And in this case there were not total economic mobilization. RTW does not simulate world wars in any matter. It would be much more complicated, it simulate naval arms race and do (in good way) a lot of simplifications.
There are other strategic games simulating global world wars and they have a lot of flaws as they have issue to similate main strategic issues of such war. RTW does not try to do it (we are lucky) and offers something different - different types of conflict similar to Russian-Japanese war and simulates environment around it quite well. RTW2 is going to 1950 technology however the types of conflicts remain in same scope.
I agree that, so far, Rule the Waves has been most apt at simulating that kind of conflict - and, more broadly, the spirit of conflict and diplomacy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; chauvinist tensions flaring over matters of national prestige, limited wars to resolve them, ending with an exchange of colonies and reparations payments. And, for the original game, this was more or less appropriate; even though its timeframe encompasses the beginning of the age of total war, more than half of the game has gone by at that point. You might say, therefore, that the game is reasonably representative of the time period in which it is set. However, for the time period of 1900 - 1950, I do not think that it would be so appropriate for limited war to be the exclusive focus of the game. Taken as a whole, that period of time was the one age more than any other in which total war dominated political and military history. A game set in this time period which does not attempt to portray total war would not feel as appropriate for its time period as the original game did for its time period. But leaving aside the question of whether the game should aim to represent total war, why do you say that it can't? My proposal is simple, as articulated in my first post: national resources should be historical accurate - ideally measures of industrial strength rather than total economic size - and the percentage of those resources allocated to the nation in peace and in war should also be accurate. Beyond that, there is very little within the scope of this series of games that would need to be done. The tactical combat does not need to be changed; the process of designing and ordering ships does not need to be changed, except perhaps for more accelerated construction in wartime, which seems simple enough to me. Perhaps later in the game, wars should be more likely to continue until one side or the other collapses in total defeat, and the flavour text for events in the later years should probably be different from the early years, but this does not seem to be absolutely necessary to me. If it is true that a video game cannot capture the full complexity of a World War with all its nuances, then I don't see why this specific game should find it difficult to portray total war at sea any better than it portrays limited war at sea. So, what specifically would be much more complicated about a world war in this game? I would argue that you can already increase your production to some extent. When at war your budget increases, and you can rush construction or whatever it's called. How does one measure 'historically accurate' national resources and their changes over half a century? How do you account for ATL-OTL differences? Does Britain losing a war to Japan in 1910 change either countries resources by 1940? Would a country like Germany turn any significant resources to the navy if they were fighting Russia? Would it be different if they were fighting Japan? While the US clearly had an advantage in industrial capacity in the 1940s I think it has to be acknowledged that Japan had already been fighting in China for close to 10 years and pouring resources into that, while Germany had pretty much settled on a Guerre de Course with a few fast capital ships and many submarines. Neither could have beaten the US in one for one shipbuilding, but how would you account for differing decisions by the player/in the game? As for the idea of total war, The question then becomes how do you measure a total defeat of a country? Germany's navy was decimated during WW2 but that didn't stop them from holding out until Berlin was taken. So if you were fighting a Germano-Russian war would you have to wait for the armies to duke it out while you sit on blockade duty/try to scrape together enough budget to build a destroyer? (depending on how the war went up till then?)
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Post by generalvikus on Feb 1, 2019 16:07:00 GMT -6
I would argue that you can already increase your production to some extent. When at war your budget increases, and you can rush construction or whatever it's called. How does one measure 'historically accurate' national resources and their changes over half a century? How do you account for ATL-OTL differences? Does Britain losing a war to Japan in 1910 change either countries resources by 1940? Would a country like Germany turn any significant resources to the navy if they were fighting Russia? Would it be different if they were fighting Japan? While the US clearly had an advantage in industrial capacity in the 1940s I think it has to be acknowledged that Japan had already been fighting in China for close to 10 years and pouring resources into that, while Germany had pretty much settled on a Guerre de Course with a few fast capital ships and many submarines. Neither could have beaten the US in one for one shipbuilding, but how would you account for differing decisions by the player/in the game? As for the idea of total war, The question then becomes how do you measure a total defeat of a country? Germany's navy was decimated during WW2 but that didn't stop them from holding out until Berlin was taken. So if you were fighting a Germano-Russian war would you have to wait for the armies to duke it out while you sit on blockade duty/try to scrape together enough budget to build a destroyer? (depending on how the war went up till then?) 1. Yes, I have acknowledged that in RTW your budget does increase during wartime, and yes, you can accelerate construction either during wartime or peacetime. However, my argument was that the approximate doubling of the budget that you tend to see in RTW during wartime does not do justice to the escalating scale of conflict in the period of 1900 - 1950. 2. I've already heard that a system for organic economic development over time - that is, the change in the national resources statistic over time - is being implemented. The only thing I suggest in this regard is that the national resource figures for each nation at the game's start dates are accurate. I don't think there is any need to account for anything other than the correct starting figure and whatever mechanics for economic development are already planned. As in the original game, the change of resources which would come about as a result of victory or defeat in war should be represented by the exchange of colonies on one hand and reparations on the other. The diversion of resources to the army is also modelled in the original game, and I don't see any reason to change the way that is handled. 3. Again, I don't think there's any need to account for anything other than, firstly, the accurate starting national resource statistics, and secondly, a reasonable model for economic development over time, coupled with the game's existing mechanisms for calculating budget fluctuations according to tensions. If you mean to ask, 'how would you account for the possibility that certain nations might have devoted more or less resources to their navies than they did historically' then my answer is that I don't see any reason to change the fundamental way this is already handled. 4. I don't consider it vital that there should be some representation of the shift from 'limited war' to 'total war' over time, but, considering the proper scope of the game, I think this could be achieved easily by reducing the probability after a certain date, perhaps by increments, that the 'peace' event will fire, making it more likely that a war will end with the collapse of one side or the other rather than a compromise. This should, perhaps, be especially true for countries of differing ideologies. As I have laid out in another thread, I also feel it's appropriate for the probability of wars between nations to be affected by similarities and differences in ideology.
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Post by dorn on Feb 1, 2019 16:33:46 GMT -6
I would argue that you can already increase your production to some extent. When at war your budget increases, and you can rush construction or whatever it's called. How does one measure 'historically accurate' national resources and their changes over half a century? How do you account for ATL-OTL differences? Does Britain losing a war to Japan in 1910 change either countries resources by 1940? Would a country like Germany turn any significant resources to the navy if they were fighting Russia? Would it be different if they were fighting Japan? While the US clearly had an advantage in industrial capacity in the 1940s I think it has to be acknowledged that Japan had already been fighting in China for close to 10 years and pouring resources into that, while Germany had pretty much settled on a Guerre de Course with a few fast capital ships and many submarines. Neither could have beaten the US in one for one shipbuilding, but how would you account for differing decisions by the player/in the game? As for the idea of total war, The question then becomes how do you measure a total defeat of a country? Germany's navy was decimated during WW2 but that didn't stop them from holding out until Berlin was taken. So if you were fighting a Germano-Russian war would you have to wait for the armies to duke it out while you sit on blockade duty/try to scrape together enough budget to build a destroyer? (depending on how the war went up till then?) 1. Yes, I have acknowledged that in RTW your budget does increase during wartime, and yes, you can accelerate construction either during wartime or peacetime. However, my argument was that the approximate doubling of the budget that you tend to see in RTW during wartime does not do justice to the escalating scale of conflict in the period of 1900 - 1950. 2. I've already heard that a system for organic economic development over time - that is, the change in the national resources statistic over time - is being implemented. The only thing I suggest in this regard is that the national resource figures for each nation at the game's start dates are accurate. I don't think there is any need to account for anything other than the correct starting figure and whatever mechanics for economic development are already planned. As in the original game, the change of resources which would come about as a result of victory or defeat in war should be represented by the exchange of colonies on one hand and reparations on the other. The diversion of resources to the army is also modelled in the original game, and I don't see any reason to change the way that is handled. 3. Again, I don't think there's any need to account for anything other than, firstly, the accurate starting national resource statistics, and secondly, a reasonable model for economic development over time, coupled with the game's existing mechanisms for calculating budget fluctuations according to tensions. If you mean to ask, 'how would you account for the possibility that certain nations might have devoted more or less resources to their navies than they did historically' then my answer is that I don't see any reason to change the fundamental way this is already handled. 4. I don't consider it vital that there should be some representation of the shift from 'limited war' to 'total war' over time, but, considering the proper scope of the game, I think this could be achieved easily by reducing the probability after a certain date, perhaps by increments, that the 'peace' event will fire, making it more likely that a war will end with the collapse of one side or the other rather than a compromise. This should, perhaps, be especially true for countries of differing ideologies. As I have laid out in another thread, I also feel it's appropriate for the probability of wars between nations to be affected by similarities and differences in ideology. It is more complicated as RTW does not simulater total mobilization.
According to P.Kennedy (Rise and Fall of the Great powers) total amament production in war was (1940,1941,1943): UK 3.5 6.5 11 USSR 5.0 8.5 13.9 USA 1.5 4.5 37.5 Germany 6.0 6.0 13.8 Japan 1.0 2.0 4.5 Italy 0.75 1.0 -
National income of powers (billion dollars) and percentage on defense in 1937 (third number as defense budget is calculated):
USA 68 1.5% 1 British empire 22 5.7% 1.25 France 10 9.1% 0.9 Germany 17 23.5% 4 Italy 6 14.5% 0.9 USSR 19 26.4% 5 Japan 4 28.2% 1.1
You can think about it. In case RTW2 allows total mobilization of all nations than Japan and Italy has no chance at all and USA cannot be beaten. I do not know how NWS team will do it in RTW2 but using economic power of nations would do boring superpower of USA and unplayable nations of Italy and Japan.
If you look at RTW than during war all budgets goes up but if some nations are not war they will not go to total mobilization. So I think that the probably way to do it is forget about WW2 and just do 1925-50 in same way as RTW1 even if history was different. RTW2 is about alternatives in way of local conflicts, this could be simulated quite well, global war cannot in way RTW is designed. To be frankly I think RTW1 would be much closer to history than RTW2 as the conflicts has changed at the end of RTW1 time period.
Look at history resources of RTW, UK has 2 times more than USA however a world wide commitment and especially Germany and USA grew much faster closing the gap. In real history USA has large advantage and gap was increasing.
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Post by archelaos on Feb 2, 2019 4:03:49 GMT -6
WW2 is a problem for many reasons:
1. Blitzkrieg - rapid operations of enemy forces quickly changing frontlines and as result, changing available national resources. Though the effect is not that much different to, say, franco-prussian war of 1870, but current RTW model work much better when front is stagnant or fighting happens on non crucial theatres. In fact, if there is land border between belligerents fleet action will decide the war ONLY if land combat can't do it due to comparable power of opposing forces as land warfare has potential to give much faster conclusions.
2. Economic power wins total wars. That's why USA will win any war in this timeframe (as was already mentioned) if it has time to convert economic power to military production, as USA will outproduce any opponent and have enough manpower to utilise all those weapons. In fact, a simple comparison of NRs should be enough to tell who will win a war, the bigger difference, the easier it would be.
3. Total mobilisation murders economy. UK is said to burn 25% of national resources to fight ww2 even though enemy never put feet on their homeland while Germany fuelled war economy looting defeated countries (and in the end still lost much more NRs) as they would bankrupt itself in early 40s had war not happened. In RTW countries do not loose national resources fighting war which is ok for limited conflict, but completely wrong for ww2 style conflict.
That said, I'd like some total war mechanics implemented but they would need massive balancing to feel right while still allowing player interaction to change outcome.
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Post by generalvikus on Feb 2, 2019 11:06:22 GMT -6
dorn archelaos First of all, dorn , I'm glad that you bought up Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, because it figures into a lot of my thinking on these matters. However, I submit that, as useful as his figures of 'national income' are, it is his abstract approximations of 'total industrial potential' that are most interesting and most relevant for our discussions; it was, after all, not GNI but industrial potential that separated Britain from China in the Industrial Revolution. I want to start by addressing your related argument: "Look at history resources of RTW, UK has 2 times more than USA however a world wide commitment and especially Germany and USA grew much faster closing the gap. In real history USA has large advantage and gap was increasing." It is indeed true that, in a game with very large fleets and historical resources, the UK starts out with a base figure of 20,000,000 and an additional 5,794,000 from colonies, compared to the USA's 13,000,000 and 1,143,000. The total balance is 25,794,000 to 14,143,000; the USA starts with 54% of the UK's resources as well as 54% of its budget. In reality, the USA at this time had, as you say, approximately twice the UK's 'industrial potential', which I think is the best equivalent for RTW's concept of 'national resources' - and yet it also had a budget that was considerably smaller relative to the UK's than it is in game. So, you would be quite right to argue that, if we were to do nothing else except give the USA quadruple its resources and adjust everyone else’s according to their historical position vis a vis Britain, the game would be thrown out of balance. However, it would also resemble history even less than it does now, and I think that is a very important point. As we all know, in RTW currently the relationship between national resources and budget is not fixed. If the ratio becomes too high, unrest is the result. This mechanic, with some modest expansion, can be used to get a more historically accurate, and, not coincidentally, relatively balanced result. My proposal, as I have said, is twofold: nations should not only be started off with their historical resources, but also their historical budgets. Resources should then be left to grow according to whatever equations are already being implemented, and budgets left to fluctuate as they normally do. The key is that each nation should have a unique 'base' budget figure which the normal mechanisms of unrest, tensions and budget cuts will keep them from straying too far above. I believe I have read that there is already a mechanic to ensure that Britain will not allow itself to be outspent; which suggests not only that the potential for the navy's 'slice of the pie' to differ from country to country already exists, but also that it is dynamic. As was the case historically, those nations with both the need and the will to punch above their weight should be able to do so. Needless to say, one of the countries which for most of the first half of the century spent a very small portion of its available resources on its navy was the United States, and so it should be in game. Before I continue along this line, I want to address the points made by archelaos , as they figure into what I have to say next: 1. You are quite right in arguing that, in reality, a land war between two bordering powers will tend to be more decisive than the naval struggle between them. I do not think that this fact is necessarily incompatible with Rule the Waves 2; in this series, we have only limited control over just one part of the wider war. Since the player can, at best, somewhat control when to go to war, but not when and how to make peace, there is room for the assumption that the ultimate outcome of wars depends not just on the player's actions but also on other things - chiefly the land war - going on in the background, as any player who knows the frustration of sweeping the enemy fleet from the seas and yet only receiving marginal gains in the peace deal can attest to. I do not think that anything more than that is desirable or necessary. Now, the question of the conquest of territory affecting the resources available to either side is an interesting one, and far from a clear cut issue. In short, while territory changing hands certainly had a great impact on the course of the war, it did not do so in quite the ways one might expect. To greatly oversimplify a very complex matter, it seems that, for reasons that are debatable and not fully understood, it is not easy to make conquest pay. If you look at the total value of the armaments produced by Germany in 1941, the most striking feature is that it is identical to the total value of armaments production in 1940, despite the conquest of Western Europe. The production of key individual pieces of equipment, such as tanks or aircraft, tells a similar story. The main reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, world industry in the 1940s was extremely concentrated. From my memory of Kennedy's figures (I actually have the book and will be happy to provide them if anyone would like), pre-war Germany accounted for 14% of world industrial production, Britain had 10%, France 4% (making the struggle very evenly balanced in industrial terms at the outset) and the countries which were not great powers accounted for about 10%. You will note, therefore, that if Germany had conquered France and the entire rest of the world excluding the Great Powers in 1940, it would have doubled its industrial potential. The second reason is that the industry of occupied territories was not easy to exploit; again, to vastly over-simplify, it seems that even late in the war when Germany was exploiting its occupied territories much more systematically and ruthlessly than it did earlier on, and even if those territories worst afflicted, the Germans never extracted more than about 50% of the local industrial potential for the war effort. For more on this topic, I recommend the book Does Conquest Pay?: The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies by Peter Liberman . I believe Military History Visualised has also recently made a video on the topic, and from the title I assume it refers to this book, though I have yet to watch it. The impact of the extraction of raw resources from occupied territories - most critically and most relevant to us, oil - was more profound. For now, of course, the game deals with oil as a binary question - do you have it or not - but I think it could do a lot worse than to expand on this in the future by assigning roughly accurate oil production figures, updated perhaps every 5 years, to various strategic possessions, and giving the player the opportunity to address this crucial element of naval strategy. 2. I will address this in more detail when I return to my main argument, but, in short - I reject such crude determinism. Certainly, economic power - specifically industrial power, as I have said - is one factor in determining the outcome of total wars; and if you want to argue that it is the single most important factor, you'd be preaching to the choir. But there are other factors involved: manpower, technology, morale, the quality of one's personnel, strategy and leadership, and, of course, the outcome of individual battles, which are contingent on a thousand little variables on any given day. Given the vast preponderance of economic might eventually arrayed against the Axis powers, the question how did they last so long and come so close? seems as pertinent as any other, and that question cannot be answered by economic determinism. 3. Again, I would argue that it is not so simple. What, then, will you say of the USA's experience of total mobilisation? What about the USSR, large parts of which were utterly ruined by the war, which nonetheless experienced its 'second industrial revolution' at the same time? But if you want to argue that there ought to be the possibility of some post - war consequences of mobilisation other than the obvious austerity, then I certainly don't disagree. As usual, I don't see why this would be very hard to implement; as usual, I don't see it is absolutely necessary either. Now, I want to address what I think is the main thrust of both of your arguments: in short, the belief that a more historical balance of resources will make the larger powers - particularly the USA - too powerful, and the smaller powers like Italy and Japan too weak. Firstly, I would like to argue that the outcome of the Second World War, like everything in history, was not inevitable. You might certainly say that it was more likely that the Allies would win, but it was by no means assured; regardless, even if the outcome had been inevitable, it was certainly not so one-sided as to make it a dull or uninteresting affair. If the scope of this game were vastly greater, allowing it to represent the entirety of the war in all its complexity, with all its ups and downs, then I don't think you could seriously argue that it would feel boring to play as either the Allies or the Axis powers because one side was too strong and the other was too weak. My argument is that this game does not need to represent the war in all its complexity in order to benefit from an accurate portrayal of the initial conditions, from which the player can make whatever he will. The Second World War, like all great contests, was not a one-sided affair, because the combined advantages and disadvantages of the Allied powers were to some extent balanced out by the combined advantages and disadvantages of the Axis powers. Among the Axis advantages were: a superior utilisation of their available resources in the pre-war period, the more effective usage of new tactics and technologies in the early stages, and, of course, to some extent, the favour of fortune for the bold. All of this can and should be represented in the game. As I have said elsewhere, I would very much like to see the game culminate in grand, multi-party ideological struggles, but, for the sake of simplicity and, in all likelihood, relevancy to the game we are most likely to get, let us focus on the contest between just two countries: Japan and the United States. I think the arguments that both of you have made can be applied as follows: according to my system, playing the United states will be worse because it will be too easy, and playing Japan will be worse because it will be too hard, or perhaps impossible. I would like to contest every part of that statement. First of all, let us look at the balance of advantages and disadvantages between these two countries. In history, while Japan did not have the economic resources to compete with the United States on equal terms, it was nevertheless able to compete with the United States on unequal terms. In the pre-war period, The Washington Naval Treaty gave Japan a much greater position vis a vis the United States than unrestricted competition would have allowed. Even then, domestic political considerations in the United States were such that for a long time it did not even build up to its treaty limits, further improving the relative position of Japan. While economically weaker, Japan could devote a greater percentage of its resources to the navy than the United States could devote to its navy. Then, when war came, Japan was able to not only get even with the United States, but tip the balance of forces in its favour with the Pearl Harbour attack. All of these factors can and should be present in the game; indeed, it is certain that many of them already will be. Japan entered the war in the Pacific with a strategy that was appropriate for its means and ends: win early decisive victories, and then hold on until a compromise peace can be made. This brings me on to my second point: 'victory' and 'defeat' are not binary concepts. Rather, in real life and in this game, there is a spectrum ranging from total defeat with total losses to total victory with no losses; in practice, the results must always be somewhere in between. It would be quite possible with the mechanics already implemented in the original game for a Japanese player to pursue the historical strategy: inflict heavy losses, then secure a favourable compromise peace. Additions in the new game such as the ability to plan invasions will further enhance his ability to execute the historical strategy. The Japanese player in a historical situation does have a chance to achieve his aims, if his aims are realistic and his strategy is appropriate. In a war against the United States, he will face a race against time, struggling to seize as much as possible and then hold on to it while inflicting disproportionate losses on the enemy. No doubt it will be difficult, but, as I have said, the popularity of such modded nations as the Netherlands and China seem to indicate to me that there is a strong appetite for such challenges. I think it goes without saying that most people will find the Pacific War to be a far more compelling and exciting means of providing the challenge they desire. And if they don't want to put themselves up against steep odds, then they can always play as America instead! So let us consider the American player. Let's say that, as in real life, he's caught off-guard - in game terms, by an event that pressures him into war. He's not as prepared as he'd like to be, because the budget has never been quite what it needed to be until now - moreover, Japan has had the opportunities to cheat the naval treaty he signed in good faith. He then suffers the usual Japanese surprise attack which, as in history, puts him on the back foot. If he wants total victory, he'll have to do his best to hold on as best he can, and then claw back what he has lost. As opposed to the Japanese player, he wants to drag the war out, because he knows that the longer it goes on, the stronger he'll be - but he can't afford to take any more losses than he needs to along the way, lest the VP conditions and unrest force him to the negotiating table. Beyond that, even if we exclude every constraint placed upon the player by the game; what are his goals? The answer is that, like the Japanese player, he is in a sandbox, and can choose whatever goals he likes. Even if he doesn't strictly need to minimise his losses and win the war as quickly as possible, there is no reason why he can't choose to do so. At the very least, perhaps he has a favourite ship that he wants to keep alive at all costs. Early in the war, he can enjoy the thrill of being outgunned and holding back the tide; and, once that tide turns, who's to say he can't also enjoy learning to perfect 'the proper application of overwhelming force?' I know that I've had plenty of enjoyment already in the original game fighting the battles whose outcomes were never going to determine the fate of the war or the playthrough itself. Again, considering a hypothetical game that plays out along historical lines: it probably would not have changed the ultimate outcome of the war if Malta had been captured by the German and Italian forces, but would that necessarily mean that fighting to get the convoys through to the island would not be enjoyable? Nor was it likely that the ultimate decision of the Pacific war would have been different if the Battle of Midway had gone badly for the Americans, but would that fact necessarily rob that battle of its tension and excitement? That's what I love about historical sandbox simulations - players can set their own goals and devise their own strategies to achieve them, and derive enjoyment from facing real historical challenges in whatever way they see fit. But let's say that you're just not that kind of player - you just want to fight hard and win, and you don't care how long it takes, or how much is lost, and you don't have any favourite ship that needs to be preserved at all costs, and, frankly, you want a challenge to be challenging, and it doesn't matter either way if it's historical. Well, if that's the case, then perhaps a historical USA game isn't the game for you. On the other hand - you could do a lot worse than to sign up for the Imperial Japanese Navy.
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AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
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Post by AiryW on Feb 2, 2019 15:31:49 GMT -6
ideally measures of industrial strength rather than total economic size - and the percentage of those resources allocated to the nation in peace and in war should also be accurate. Industrial output is related to war material capacity but it's a very imprecise relationship. Look at these tables from Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Compare the tiny Japanese industry to it's military. Look at how at the turn of the century the French were heavily outspending the Germans on ships with half the manufacturing and despite not skimping on the army. Consider Russia from 1900 to WWI. At the start of the century their navy and armies were large and pretty modern. Over the next decade and a half they would only fall behind a little in terms of industrial output but they would fall behind immensely in military output and military modernity. Edit: oh hey, I didn't realize you guys were already discussing Kennedy when I wrote this reply. Funny coincidence. The Second World War, like all great contests, was not a one-sided affair, because the combined advantages and disadvantages of the Allied powers were to some extent balanced out by the combined advantages and disadvantages of the Axis powers. Among the Axis advantages were: a superior utilisation of their available resources in the pre-war period, the more effective usage of new tactics and technologies in the early stages, and, of course, to some extent, the favour of fortune for the bold. All of this can and should be represented in the game. German interwar planning was atrociously mismanaged. They almost had an ammo shortage by the end of the short duration Polish campaign and they were less motorized then the French despite the french mobilizing a larger share of their population. Nor did they perform particularly well at the tactical level. They inflicted grievous losses upon opponents who were outmatched, second rate divisions fighting first rate, but were evenly matched when they went against comparable forces. When Germany would have it's own second rate divisions face enemy first rate forces later in the war, the results were just as lopsided. The German invasion of France should be understood as a long shot gamble that happened to pan out. Manstein was the inventor of the plan and he wrote that he thought it would probably fail! He just thought that Germany's situation was such that an all or nothing gamble was the only thing that could possibly work. If success wasn't rapid then all the desperate measures would bite them in the ass. The reason why the fall of France was so shocking was because it wasn't likely. To represent something like this in game would to have the game have a small chance of randomly rolling a spontaneous victory or defeat every month. I think that would be a very frustrating mechanic.
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Post by generalvikus on Feb 2, 2019 19:22:03 GMT -6
AiryWI think you'll find from my previous posts that we are in agreement on the relationship between industrial power and military power; the rate at which those resources can be exploited is highly dependent on whether or not a nation has the necessary means and the will, and only in wartime does the correlation become truly apparent. And I don't think it's a coincidence at all that we're all talking about Kennedy - The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is, after all, the definitive source on these matters. As for the Battle of France - I'll certainly not dispute that the German plan was a gamble, but it was a calculated one, and I think that if you examine the causes of German victory and French defeat you can identify important underlying factors other than chance. Most obviously, the ability of the German army to devise the plan, the fact that Hitler adopted it and not the more popular inferior plans, and the inability of the French to anticipate or effectively counter it, demonstrates at the very least the superiority of German leadership and strategy over Allied leadership and strategy at this time in the war. As for implementation in game; again, I don't see why this should be considered an obstacle. We already have events for army offensives which can affect the VP situation by random dice roll, and we already have a peace deal system in which the navy can only partially influence the timing and severity of the peace conditions. Why would this game need more than that?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 2, 2019 19:50:44 GMT -6
I just wanted to make a comment or maybe two about Japan, mobilization and the Pacific War.
The Japanese decision to start a war with the US always seems to completely mystify people. Didn’t they recognize the odds against them? Was their only plan to have a quick strike, take the South Pacific then sit back and parry our thrusts until we got tired? Apparently, people say, they did not look at the economic numbers or look at our history. It seems irrational to most people and it did to me, until a long time ago, I began to study Japanese history and their geography to understand a little about their mindset. The Japanese were more than aware of our overwhelming industrial might. They bought 80% of their oil from us, so they were aware of their weaknesses. This is why they went south, to get oil and other important raw materials. It is this reason, that they went into China since the late 19th century. To get at the Korean and Manchurian natural resources. They even had to buy rice from China.
The root cause for the Japanese decision to go to war in 1941 was simple. It was, in their mindset, their only alternative. They were facing economic privation due to their aggression in East Asia. This was the root cause of the Pacific War. The road to Pearl Harbor was built on mutual cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Both sides miscalculated badly. Whole books have been written about this, so there is no need for me to try to compete with those scholarly works. I couldn’t if I tried.
The Japanese by 1941 felt that war with the US was inevitable, and we did to, that’s why the Navy developed War Plan Orange in the early part of the century. The decision rested on many simple facts. That time was running out and working against them. They knew that we were coming out of the depression and were beginning to develop a two-ocean navy. But more to the point, they believed that they were racially and spiritually superior to the Americans, whom they believed were creature-comfort people divided by factionalism along with racial and class strife. All they had to do is read our newspapers and listen to our radios to get that opinion.
Now if we widen our view of the world prior to 1939, we find that no one in Europe was prepared for a war although they could see the rumblings of it. The German's got their iron ore from Sweden via the Baltic originally, then eventually Narvik. Their oil came from Romania. Despite the reputation of an army of tanks that could sweep across Europe and Russia, their supplies were delivered by horses and wagons from day one. They were not really that well prepared either and were going to rely on their victories over their neighbors to gain the economic strength they need.
For the Italians, well forget it, they were never economically prepared for war.
The Russian's were preparing but their preparations were not completed when Barbarossa began. This is a another long story.
For the French, they had economic issues and political issues about their possible mobilization and put all their faith in a long line of fortifications, so much for that idea.
Great Britain still had not recovered from the First World War, and certainly did not want another one. Their only hope was the US.
The only nation that had any real chance in this issue mobilization was the US. Were we mobilized? Not quite. Yes we had the two ocean navy bill and were beginning to built towards it but were not there yet. However, at Pearl Harbor, a total of around 188 US aircraft were destroyed. Based on our production at that time, that was fifteen days worth. We may not have been fully mobilized but that isn't bad, I don't think.
It has been my opinion over the years, and possibly I am wrong, that no one was ready for the war and most nations never are. You just won with what you brung as the saying goes.
Now, as to RTW2, it is not going to be possible to duplicate history or even provide the choices that nations had before WW2 to allow the players to take “the path not taken”. This is an interesting discussion well worth continuing and I will be reading as much as my time permits.
Thanks
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Post by generalvikus on Feb 2, 2019 20:37:27 GMT -6
oldpop2000 I certainly agree that depicting either wartime or peacetime in all their complexity is not necessary, desirable, or possible for this game. On the other hand, what do you think of the specific suggestion that the resources of nations, and their ability to utilise those resources, should be modelled accurately in the game?
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 2, 2019 20:58:07 GMT -6
oldpop2000 I certainly agree that depicting either wartime or peacetime in all their complexity is not necessary, desirable, or possible for this game. On the other hand, what do you think of the specific suggestion that the resources of nations, and their ability to utilise those resources, should be modelled accurately in the game? Accurately modelling economic resources of nations is a monumental task although it might be interesting. I think if you could at least determine the four most important resources and then give each nation a rating on those resources from say one to ten, this might be doable. The choices might have to change as technology changed so this would complicate the job. The four choices I would want to use would be oil, iron ore, grains and rubber. Copper could be an addition since it is vital in wiring. There are others like nickel for steel, manganese. These are just suggestions. In the food area, you would have to know what were the primary food types that this nation used like rice for Japan, potatoes for Germany etc. It would take a little work, but it might be interesting.
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Post by generalvikus on Feb 2, 2019 21:05:25 GMT -6
Accurately modelling economic resources of nations is a monumental task although it might be interesting. I think if you could at least determine the four most important resources and then give each nation a rating on those resources from say one to ten, this might be doable. The choices might have to change as technology changed so this would complicate the job. The four choices I would want to use would be oil, iron ore, grains and rubber. Copper could be an addition since it is vital in wiring. There are others like nickel for steel, manganese. These are just suggestions. In the food area, you would have to know what were the primary food types that this nation used like rice for Japan, potatoes for Germany etc. It would take a little work, but it might be interesting. I ought to clarify - by 'resources' in this case I was only referring to the figure of 'national resources' which is present in the game to represent total industrial output, and by 'ability to utilise those resources' I meant their budget. However, if we were to look at the potential to go beyond these monetary figures alone, I think that the next step would be to add oil resources to the map, updated, say, every five years, and have the player manage his fuel production and consumption, since that is far and away the most significant part of the total economic equation for the purposes of the game, next to total industrial output.
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