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Post by aeson on Sept 9, 2022 17:43:15 GMT -6
>The events you describe are inline with being head of navy No, they are not. They are events in which it can be expected that the head of the navy has input which would influence a final decision by the top of the political/monarchical apparatus. But in RTW2 the player has full control over those decisions. Maybe you're thinking of some other events than I am, but most or all of the events of this kind that I can think of are worded in such a way as to imply that you're being consulted - you aren't making the decision, you're giving the navy's recommendation.
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Post by macroeconomics on Sept 9, 2022 19:55:43 GMT -6
When these events occur, your recommendation IS the decision.
Now, one possibility would be to introduce some random variance into the resolution of these events. For example, when there are X choices, each has the same percentage chance of being selected (100/x). But when the player recommends one selection, the probability of that selection increases by percentage equal to Prestige/100. Now that would be interesting. And representative of being the head of the navy.
Needless to say, that would also dramatically increase the difficulty of the game. A serious adjustment of the frequency and tenor of the random events would be necessary to maintain game balance.
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Post by beagle on Sept 9, 2022 20:31:59 GMT -6
As someone once said, "that depends on what the definition of IS is." I admit it certainly seems that way, but I know nothing of programming so I don't know how the AI interprets and acts on implementing the results of these decisions. I would have thought only Fredrik knew. Oh well, goes to show how much I knew. I know it doesn't sound like it, but I do like your recommendation, though.
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Post by flessar on Sept 9, 2022 22:58:10 GMT -6
Perhaps introduce a mechanism where you spend your influence on decisions to ensure they are picked, otherwise its randomish?
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Post by TheOtherPoster on Sept 12, 2022 5:28:43 GMT -6
I think that mantra of “head of the navy” is a bit confusing and inaccurate. For instance, playing naval battles is a very important part in RTW, but the head of the navy is not supposed to fight them, rather he’s comfortably sitting at his desk in the Admiralty (and maybe drinking some port if in 1900; nowadays they probably drink still water) Also, another very important part in the game is designing the ships. The Head of the navy may set up the requirements, but he does not design the ships. That was done in the RN by the Director of Naval Construction. Fisher had become First Sea Lord in 1904 (i.e. the Head of the Navy) but Dreadnought was designed by the DNC, Philip Watts. To me, “Head of the navy” is just a short way to say that the RTW player does not take political decisions like declaring war and the like) although it does have some influence on many of them. And that's good enough for me.
As macroeconomics said above, our specific tasks as players are just part of RTW's balancing act to make the game more interesting and enjoyable. If we all are here is because at NWS they have done a very good job at that. What remains now is that "fine tuning" which we all hope, our suggestions are and, that for sure RTW3 will be. Something that I think could be improved is that when at war, in spite of being on charge of all things naval, there’s very little we can do besides fighting the random battles AI throws at us, until the politicians reach a peace settlement or the enemy (or us) collapses. If we play the weaker nation, I think this is perfectly fine because we should really be fighting a defensive war. When, on the other hand, we are fighting against a weaker power we may do a bit more, maybe even invade some possessions. But that will depend very much on who we are and who we are fighting, as we need to have bases ourselves nearby the possession we want to invade. As a whole, this set up is OK with me. We could think that we are still fighting limited wars where nobody is really planning anything other than getting a few more colonies or better economic conditions after the war. (By the way, it would be nice if after winning a war we are presented with a clear choice of either grabbing some colonies from the enemy or improving the conditions of our commerce with them, thus increasing our economy. I know this is what happens now, but the window in the game is only about the possessions. It’s not clear) Anyway, after 20 turns playing random battles it may become a bit frustrating. That’s why I suggested to improve the strategic/operational level, that I think would make the game more enjoyable. For example I've mentioned to give some strategic possessions a bigger economic value, both in peace and war, because they are at key locations to facilitate (and impede) international commerce. For example, Panama and Suez Canal, Falkland Islands, Singapore, Gibraltar, Southern Africa. Also, there should be pre-set possessions that would affect commerce only when at war, depending of the enemy. For example, if we own Ireland and we are fighting the British Empire, that must have a far much important effect on their commerce than, for example, if we own Samoa. Likewise, if we own Norway and are fighting Germany or Russia, that should also reduce their commerce in the war. Also new possessions would be welcome, like Balearic and Canary islands and Azores, for example. Also, we could find a way to make large range and extreme range ships more interesting, maybe making them able to cover long distances faster or making them able to invade small possessions far off the invading range of the rest of the navy. Other small things can be done to make the war livelier too. I’ve suggested somewhere else to make the battle messages more varied. Like “Possible French troops convoy from North Africa” if fighting the French, or “Protect oil transports coming from Borneo” when playing Japan, or “High Command has ordered an immediate bombardment of an enemy factory/intelligence gathering base/steel plant…" (coastal bombardment) or “Our raider “name here” has been intercepted by the enemy in The North Atlantic”, or “Our patrolling forces in the Mediterranean have encountered enemy forces (cruiser action)”, or “After receiving intelligence that the enemy battle fleet is at sea, our fleet has been sent to intercept it. Do you want to fight the battle?” Just some ideas
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Post by OmnipotentVoid on Sept 12, 2022 8:37:37 GMT -6
Whether or not allowing the player to significantly change the GDP of a country (player country or not) depends on what kind of game you think RtW is. If RtW is a naval warfare/geopolitics sim (akin to HoI, just focused only on naval warfare), then allowing the player to drastically change the GDP makes sense. RtW is not a that kind of game, though. It's a naval history simulator. (At least from my perspective.) The game focuses mainly (in my mind) on creating fleets/battles that are historically believable, while giving the player agency over the specifics of what actually happens. The game ignores/simplifies away everything that doesn't fit into that, like the fact most wars are predominantly land wars or that the quality of a gun comes down to a lot more than a grade on a 5 point scale. The same thing can be said for GDP. If GDP for one nation changes to wildly from historical levels, then fleet size and composition become ahistorical. This currently happens in Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnoughts, where staying at peace for 20 years at the beginning boosts your GDP to ridiculous levels. This changes fleet characteristics drastically, because it becomes optimal to wait for large technological advances and then build massive classes of identical ships (e.g. 20 battleships) at a time, rather than the classes of 2-5 every couple of years and refits for old ships to keep them technologically relevant. Of course, the ability to design and order ships isn't historical either for a head of the navy and does lead to some rather ahistorical fleets on the player side at times. It does, however, grant the player a large part of the agency that they have in the game. This far outweighs the ahistorical impact of these abilities. The ability to significantly change GDP doesn't give the player any agency though. The implementation of GDP in RtW is rudimentary, being represented by a single number that can go up or down. If the ability to change it was implemented in any sensible way (i.e. so that GDP still functions as GDP) then it is always in the players interest to raise it over the long term because of its compounding nature. This means that any choice around it wouldn't be a real choice, because the only time you would choose not to increase GDP, is when doing so would cause you to lose enough resources in the short term, that you are at risk of losing. So it doesn't really bring much to the game to counter balance the negative ahistorical impact it brings to the game. That being said, it would be nice to have more events to influence GDP and its growth in minor ways. Things like an event to boost your own GDP, but it will also boost the GDP of a rival nation, or ship building will take longer for a few years would add a lot of spice to the game. It would also be good wars impact GDP in some way, as this would give more nuance to the choices around the decisions around going to war or not and give more room for the player to change the GDP without it causing balance problems. This might need a more in depth simulation of economy, though, so may be a lot of work for moderate amount of gain. (The new events would still be excellent, even if their effects were limited!)
Additionally, the ability to add custom events to the game would be a could fix all solution to this, because events that significantly change GDP could simply be added by those who want them (or events that harm the player periodically for those who want a harder game).
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Post by dorn on Sept 12, 2022 10:23:48 GMT -6
Welcome to the forum!
You understand it quite correctly. Any choice which in 99.9 % is the only one, is not a choice at all and not a reason to be in any game.
And that RTW is around a navy, another things as politics etc. is just a backround.
Player will always an advantage to increase a budget, so there needs to be something bad about it. Game simulates this by naval budget being percentage of GPD but this percentage (coeficeint) change through times. This is something that player can influence through events. But as naval head, it is not GPD, it is part of government budget spent on naval affairs.
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Post by JagdFlanker on Sept 12, 2022 13:43:19 GMT -6
something that could be a path to a way of influencing decision making is to have greater prestige penalties for decisions that are more political in nature, like budget
this would make prestige more like money, and you have to be smart with how you use it
getting prestige is earning favor - you win battles/war and then you earn "favor money" to spend when there’s budget decisions or whatever else
i never put much more thought into it than that basic idea, though
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Post by buttons on Oct 24, 2022 6:22:57 GMT -6
I don’t think players should have that much effect outside of peace terms (colonies/reparations). While players should be able to invest in say the merchant marine that should be mostly for protection against submarine warfare (can take more losses before running out of convoys) and its impact on the economy would be likely minimal. Furthermore I believe that players having meaningful impacts on the economy would be extremely difficult to impossible to balance. Can you frontload so by 1930 France could have the largest economy in the world at the cost of being below Italy until the mid 1920s? Any minor effects likewise (investment of 50% of an overblown budget increases GDP growth by 1% per year) are so small that they aren’t worth implementing.
Put simply yes players should be able to effect GDP but it should be through demanding reparations instead of some minor Pacific islands or annexing Egypt instead of some islands in the Carribean.
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Post by wlbjork on Oct 24, 2022 23:40:35 GMT -6
something that could be a path to a way of influencing decision making is to have greater prestige penalties for decisions that are more political in nature, like budget this would make prestige more like money, and you have to be smart with how you use it getting prestige is earning favor - you win battles/war and then you earn "favor money" to spend when there’s budget decisions or whatever else i never put much more thought into it than that basic idea, though Could be a couple of ways to have prestige be more useful: Firstly, it counts as a specialist supply of currency with players spending as they see fit. Alternately, there could be a RNG, with the chance of your option being selected being proportional to your prestige score.
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