Thoughts on Victory Points

[Bullethead]

Wars are scored in victory points and the difference in VPs between the 2 sides at the end of the war determines the terms of the peace.  Thus, the AI naturally attempts to acquire the most possible VPs while denying the player the opportunity to get as many.  This is great as an overall AI strategy, but it means that the AI's strategic decisions are driven by how the game awards VPs.  IOW, the AI will build and deploy ships, and accept battles or not, based on how it thinks it can get significantly more VPs per turn than the player.  Thus, to get a realistic AI strategy, VP awards must reflect reality.

At present, however, I don't think the VP awards are particularly realistic, so the AI doesn't follow a realistic strategy.  This doesn't mean the AI follows a "bad" strategy---quite the opposite.  The AI appears to be rules-lawyering the game, using the existing VP system to its advantage as best it can, so that is by definition a "good" strategy in the context of the game.  However, because the AI is chasing VP awards that don't reflect the real world, players attempting to use real-world strategies against the AI are often frustrated.  Players must thus learn to use similar unrealistic strategies themselves to succeed in the game.  This is fine if the object of RTW is just to provide abstract entertainment with only a veneer of reality.  But if the object of RTW is to provide "what-if" alternatives of the real world, then I think VP awards need to be adjusted.

There is, of course, the underlying question of whether VPs should exist at all.  Strategic games that last long enough to have multiple wars occur need some mechanism to bring wars to an end.  The traditional approach, used by RTW, is to have war VPs for that.  The problem with this method, however, is that VPs are artificial, abstract numbers, not the actual effects of war in terms of human suffering and economic disruption, or the threat thereof, which are the things that end wars in real life.  Thus, over time, game devs tried to set VP awards to reflect these actual effects, but that only works if those actual effects really happen in the game.  If they don't, then the VPs have no more basis in reality than if they were purely arbitrary.  In both cases, wars end due to imaginary, not real, economic ruin.  But once you have those actual effects in the game, the players and AI can measure them directly so you no longer need separate, abstract VPs at all, although you can derive a "war score" (pseudo-VP totals) from the actual effects to provide an "at a glance" gauge of how the war is going.  This is the more modern approach.  However, RTW appears to use a simple, old-school VP system with arbitrary awards for different things so about all we can hope for there is some tweaks.  Hopefully RTW2 will do something completely different.

Anyway, back to RTW, VP awards seem to come in 3 sizes:  small, medium, and large.  Small awards are 100 VP or less, for things like sinking merchants at 5 VP each.  Medium awards are several hundred VPs at a time and come from various sources:  blockades, accomplishing or denying mission objectives in certain small battles, doing light damage to a few big ships, or sinking a few small ships.  Large awards, from 1000 VP on up, seem only to come from combat:  sinking large ships or abstract army victories.  Given that RTW has arbitrary VPs and is a naval game, I'm not too concerned with weighting VPs heavily in terms of damage done to warships.  Where I do think some rebalancing is appropriate, however, is in the relative values of blockades and merchant sinkings.  I think this is important because the values of these various actions drives AI strategy.

The AI doesn't seem to have specific war aims, like acquiring or defending a particular piece of territory, which is what many real wars are about.  Instead, the AI seems concerned mostly with acquiring a steady diet of medium VP awards while denying the player the opportunity to get medium or large awards.  Thus, the AI's territorial ambitions are all targets of opportunity, not pre-war strategy.  The AI ignores small awards almost completely, both for itself and the player, unless one or both sides can sink the dozens of merchants per tun to bring that into the medium category.  At the same time, the AI largely avoids seeking large awards unless it has an overwhelming numerical advantage.  Otherwise, it often declines battles where the odds are close to even, perhaps in acknowledgement of the general AI tactical inferiority against humans.  This behavior often gives the player a small VP award, which the AI doesn't care about.  What the AI seemingly cares about is that by avoiding a more or less even battle, it denies the player the chance to get a big VP award, which it apparently thinks is more likely than getting a large VP award itself.  The result of the AI following this strategy, at least before it can spam submarines, is that even with a larger fleet, the AI usually doesn't want to fight.  It will mass to grab several turns of blockade VPs and then, when the player concentrates in the same area to break the blockade or seek a decisive battle, the AI will disperse around the world threatening invasions where possible.  The player disperses to deal with this, and the AI goes back to blockading him, repeat.  All the while, the AI might be losing lots of merchants, but they're all worth so little in VPs, and have no effect apparent effect on the AI's economy, unrest, or prestige, that this doesn't alter its strategy.  

The bottom line for the player is that neither of the 2 main competing real-world naval strategies in vogue at the turn of the 20th Century, the Mahanian decisive battle or the guerre de course, work against the AI.  The guerre de course doesn't generate enough VPs to matter and the AI avoids potentially decisive battles for fear of losing them.  It seems the successful player strategy has to be the same as the AI's, a cycle of blockade/invade/repeat, which seems only possible with a larger fleet to begin with.  The traditional recourse of the weaker navy, cruiser warfare, just flat doesn't work.  All this, IMHO, is a result of the relative VP values for blockades and merchants.

Commerce raiding is, at the bottom line, just another form of blockade.  It's stopping imports at their sources instead of their destination.  Its effect isn't so much in the relatively small number of merchants actually sunk, but in paralyzing the rest out of fear.  This forces the enemy to react by forming escorted convoys and/or assigning a disproportionately large force to hunt the raiders, both of which adversely affect the enemy's main fleet strength.  As such, commerce warfare should be at least as effective in terms of VP awards as blockading the enemy's home waters.  So there's a strong argument for increasing the VP value of individual merchants sunk.  But until the whole merchant mechanic gets overhauled to allow more direct player involvement with running a global convoy system, you can't really increase merchant values too much or that's all the game would become.  Still, I think merchants should be more valuable than they are now, to make guerre de course a viable strategy in terms of how many VPs it can generate.

I think the best place to make a VP change is in blockade.  I would significantly reduce the per-month VP award to near-insignificance, at least to start with.  I would make it so you had to maintain a blockade continuously for at least 1 year, maybe 2 (depending on the wealth of the victim), before you start getting many VPs for it.  In any case, for the 1st year or so, I would make blockade VPs about the same as what you can get from some small number of raiders.  Thus, navies that follow a guerre de course strategy with a higher number of cruisers than average pose a significant VP threat until their raiders are destroyed, and force the enemy to go to great effort to hunt the raiders.

With the "easy pickin's" blockade awards gone, and merchants still not being worth a lot unless pursued at the expense of the battlefleet, the blockade/invade cycle would be broken.  Then for navies that follow a more Mahanian doctrine, the main source of VPs would be in battle, so the AI would have to be more likely to accept fights on more even odds.  This would result in more battles, which I think would be more fun, and there'd be more opportunities for decisive victories.  And these fights would more likely be over bits of territory, which is what most wars are fought over.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

[rockmedic109]

I've recently played two games, USN and RN. As RN, I played the blockade war. Got into a number of fleet actions. The blockades worked, albeit with the moderate victories {6 points of possessions obtained or less}. Playing a commerce war as USN, I had few fleet actions and won a couple a total {government collapses, 10 points of possessions} victory. The sample size is quite low to make a general conclusion, though.

It seems to me that they both {blockade and commerce raiding} have similar effects in raising the unrest level. It seemed to me that the unrest level is key in the victories. It also seems that raiding caused a quicker increase in unrest.

Again, sample size precludes accurate assessment of the game design.....which is a good thing. If we know it all, it is easy to game the game and break the enjoyment. I like the idea of increasing rewards for blockade. As to what is a more accurate simulation, I'll leave that to people more learned than I. But I will note that as it is now, I can play the game without a serious investment of time in learning the game {no learning curve or cliff}.

[axe99]

Some interesting thoughts there Bullethead . That said (and I haven't played for a couple of patches, although I've got a right hankering to hit RtW again soon, and will before long - but if this is something that's relatively new then that's why I'm not seeing it) I still see plenty of fleet and decisive battles. Most of my wars involved at least one fleet broo-ha-ha, and generally a few more small engagements, and lots of cruiser actions. I generally avoid commerce warfare not because it's ineffective, but I enjoy designing warships and pitting them against other warships, so generally take a Mahanian approach, and usually have a lot of fun (although not always success doing this.

That said, if Fredrik wanted to go down that path, a bit more complexity in the VP system and how it managed things wouldn't be a bad thing, but I don't think the game needs it - it's more a bonus, and it'd be a cost-benefit analysis by Fredrik of what he thinks is best to spend his time on.

[JagdFlanker]

i'v been gaming the game the last few months by keeping my navy tiny but state of the art and refusing most battles except the smaller ones i know i can win and slowly hack up the enemy fleet to the point where i can blockade them.  giving away a few hundred VP for declining battles and getting blockaded is massively offset by when i do accept a battle and gain thousands of VPs for sinking the enemy's capital ships with my superior ships

if i keep ships for longer than 10 years they basically turn into free VPs for the enemy since if they go up against the enemy's newer ships they will likely get heavily damaged/sunk, and by playing a 'tight' game with only state of the art ships i'm (more or less) avoiding that problem

so like you mentioned all VP awards are insignificant compared to the VPs you get by sinking enemy capital ships.  blockade VPs are already almost nothing in comparison, so lowering blockade VPs isn't going to affect much


so maybe going the other way might be an option - have blockade VPs start at 100VP + 100VP per consecutive turn of successful blockade, or double the blockade VPs every turn to force enemy action.  don't make blockades automatic, have the player choose to either group up his fleet to enable fleet battles/etc, or spit up the fleet and blockade the enemy.  also possibly allow the enemy to try and break the blockade by choosing to engage your blockading fleet piecemeal or by escorting merchants through the blockade to restart the blockade from scratch next turn.  so if the enemy is grouped up you will have a lot more fleet battles happen, or if the enemy is blockading you there will be mostly smaller battles and skirmishes


anyways i didn't put much thought into this so i don't know if it's realistic or fully realized, but the intent is to give players options in how they would like to earn VPs, and it also may force more of a 'numbers game' where you need to have more ships in service to be able to properly blockade or break a blockade

[Bullethead]

Sept 17, 2016 13:58:32 GMT -6 oldpop2000 said:

As to the idea that against the AI, commerce raiding and blockading doesn’t work, it didn’t work in the real worlds after the start of the age of iron and steel. Everyone points to the blockade of Germany as successful blockade but fail to remember that it was the Germans failure to plan adequately that made the blockade effective. Commerce raiding by the Germans using submarines was highly effective, and almost brought England to its knees. I don’t know if it is possible to enhance the commerce raiding and blocking aspects of the game to make them more important. You might go too far and really throw it out of reality, if reality is what you are looking for you. You might make the game code so complex and large that it will be unable to run adequately on the average computer.

I beg to differ.  Cruiser warfare worked exceptionally well for both the Germans and the Brits in WW1.

The Germans, with only a handful of obsolete warships and a few AMCs, plus some pre-positioned colliers, had a very significant and hugely disproportionate effect on the Entente, far in excess of the few ships involved and the the actual damage they did.  The mere existence of the German cruisers paralyzed Brit shipping for some time in most of the oceans of the world, seriously delaying not just necessary imports but also vital troop convoys from Canada, India, Australia, and New Zealand until sufficient escort could be arranged.  The German cruisers were also the reason, IIRC, that the ANZAC troops ended up in the Middle East and thence Gallipoli instead of the Western Front as originally intended.  The existence of the cruisers also forced the Japanese to detach forces from their siege of Tsingtao, and the Brits to detach many cruisers and even some battlecruisers from the North Sea to hunt the raiders.  This effect continued for some time after all the Germans were dead, with the Brit cruisers not getting back home until early-mid 1915.  In the meantime, back in the main theaters, the High Seas Fleet thus had the best numerical odds, and the Grand Fleet the least scouting, either would ever see for the duration, and the German Army had significantly fewer Brit/Empire/Commonwealth troops to contend with.  All this came into instantaneous effect the moment the war started, too, unlike a conventional blockade that has to remain in continuous effect until the enemy consumes his pre-war stockpiles.

As for the Brits, their extremely effective blockade of Germany was maintained for the entire war by cruiser warfare.  Namely, the couple dozen AMCs of the 7th Cruiser Squadron patrolling the area between Scotland, Greenland, and Norway.  All this was done under traditional cruiser rules with merchants sent to Brit ports under prize crews to be judged by a prize court.  These AMCs stopped virtually all merchant traffic attempting to reach Germany.  THAT was the true blockade of Germany, an outstanding success for cruiser warfare.  Of course, the weak ships of 7CS could only maintain their blockade because to break it, the High Seas Fleet would have had to get the Grand Fleet out way first, and the Germans didn't have enough battleships for that.  It was that lack of big iron, rather than pre-war expectations of a close blockade, that doomed German naval ambitions.  But the important thing to note is that the true role of the Grand Fleet was simply to continue to exist.  By doing so, it protected the AMCs which were doing the real work of imposing the blockade.  Seeking out the High Seas Fleet for a decisive battle was not in its best interests, and ultimately the Brits realized this and largely quit trying, to avoid needless losses to mines and U-boats.  Thus, ironically enough, the Brits, advocates of decisive fleet actions since at least the Dutch Wars if not the Armada, changed their whole naval strategy to guerre de course during WW1.

And in case nobody's noticed, cruiser warfare is happening right now, this very day.  It's used against drug-smugglers and modern-day pirates, and piracy itself is just illegitimate cruiser warfare.  Despite all the modern technology on the side of the goodguys, the badguys are still conducting cruiser warfare with great success, and the same sorts of disproportionate effects that have always characterized such operations are still happening.  Cruiser warfare was far from dead in 1916, and it's still far from dead a century later in 2016.

Thus, even today, you don't need to resort to submarines to conduct the war on merchants.  Surface ships and boarding parties from small boats still work quite well.  It's the same old story as before---the ocean is a big place and the heavy hitters can't be everywhere at once.  And the goodguys of today usually don't have the code-breaking advantage the non-Germans enjoyed in both world wars.  Thus, in both wars, the best hope for the Germans was the submarine because, even if the enemy knew to look for it, it was better had not being seen.

So my point remains.  RTW IMHO gives way too many VPs way too soon for a conventional surface fleet blockade, even if it only lasts 1 turn, and doesn't give enough VPs early enough for cruiser warfare, given the disproportionate results inherent in the latter.  And this causes both the AI and the player to adopt strategies that bear no resemblance to the real naval strategies of the era portrayed in the game.  Now sure, you can say RTW is just a game, but it's a game about naval warfare, so it should handle naval warfare, at least on the strategic level, in a believable fashion.  The imbalance I perceive between the VP awards for instant, temporary blockades and the effects of cruiser warfare, which seem only to deal with the direct effects of sinkings, strains my suspension of disbelief to and beyond the breaking point.

[jwsmith26]

I appreciate the thought that you put into this, Bullethead, but I do disagree.



I have never had much difficulty getting the enemy fleet to engage regardless of whether I was blockading or blockaded and whether my fleet was stronger or weaker. The game is about designing ships and fighting ships and the current victory point system emphasizes that in spades. I believe that was entirely intentional and highly appropriate.

[oldpop2000]

Sept 17, 2016 21:51:31 GMT -6 jwsmith26 said:

I appreciate the thought that you put into this, Bullethead, but I do disagree.



I have never had much difficulty getting the enemy fleet to engage regardless of whether I was blockading or blockaded and whether my fleet was stronger or weaker. The game is about designing ships and fighting ships and the current victory point system emphasizes that in spades. I believe that was entirely intentional and highly appropriate.

Bully for You! As my old English friend would say.

[brucesim2003]

I've had whole games where the dreadnoughts never see any action because the AI won't come out and play.

[thatzenoguy]

Yeah, some thing here, I've had entire wars without a single ship being sunk by surface action (excluding suicidal raiders attacking my behemoth cruisers)...

I appreciate that sometimes you get a chance to run away to fight another day, but I think that when fleets are neck to neck around 100 times in a couple of years, at least ONE of these will result in someone firing a shot...

[director]

Particularly in later years, it seems the AI is reluctant to accept a large engagement. This might be realistic and reasonable - think of the naval strategies of Austria in WW1 and Italy in WW1 and 2 - but it does limit the number of times I get to command that grand, Jutland-style battle.

I don't think traditional cruiser warfare in WW1 or 2 earned the Germans as much as it cost them. A few months into WW1 all the major fleet elements of the German Navy were wrecked or sunk and no ship of CL size or larger remained on the oceans. The AMCs were a different story, but their contribution to cruiser warfare was less important in tonnage sunk and more in forcing Britain and Japan to divert naval resources to search for them. At least, that's my opinion. The cost of course was high: a half-dozen or so CLs and a pair of excellent CAs in WW1, and Bismarck, Scharnhorst and Graf Spee in WW2.

Some regions need to be fairly easy to control, like the North Sea and Baltic, and others, such as the European or American Atlantic ports, need to be much harder. A blockade of course does not depend on the relative force available to the two sides, but on both sides' willingness to fight. And that can be affected by force level, fuel availability and by the possible political consequences of defeat..

So declaring a blockade of an area should require one side to have a force larger than the other - perhaps a bit more than 10%, but that's not unreasonable and does make it easier to overturn the effects if you are the one blockaded. Both sides should ideally have to commit fuel reserves (I don't insist on that because some people won;t like the logistics angle, but it is realistic) and get their political superiors to sign off by offering up prestige points (and/or VPs) for the right to attempt battle.

So if you are blockaded you can hoard your fuel and prestige, take a slow VP loss and wait for the right moment, or wager fuel, VPs and prestige for the chance to confront the enemy.

[Bullethead]

Sept 18, 2016 9:20:07 GMT -6 director said:

I don't think traditional cruiser warfare in WW1 or 2 earned the Germans as much as it cost them.

In WW1, German cruiser warfare was a very good use of obsolete ships, not only giving them a job but giving them a hugely disproportionate effect. None of von Spee's ships except Karlsruhe were worth anything in the North Sea and the Brits wouldn't have lost any sleep over them if they'd stayed home. But by being abroad, they caused the Brits and, to some extent, the Japanese, considerable heartburn, which had significant repercussions in the main theater of operations on both land and sea. But the Kaiser didn't want his pretty ships getting shot up in what was expected to be a short land war, so he forbade the HSF from taking advantage of the opportunity von Spae's distraction present. And the German army spent 1915 concentrating on the Russians instead of the Western Front, so it didn't take advantage of the troop delays and diversions caused by the cruisers, either. Thus, the Germans missed their chance to capitalize on their pre-war cruiser warfare plans. This is definitely NOT the fault of the cruisers. They did rather more than was expected of them. It was a failure of German high command to stick with the plan, which is pretty much the story of Germany in WW1.

In WW2, German cruiser warfare was a complete waste of time, energy, blood, and treasure. Cruiser warfare as a national strategy only makes sense if you have a substantial but still weaker fleet in the decisive theater of home waters. Then enemy detachments from home to deal with the cruisers evens the odds for the main fleet. In WW2, the Germans had nothing at all resembling a fleet at home, so the whole thing was a waste. This is quite similar to the situation of the CSA, whose raiders virtually eliminated Union merchant shipping because the bulk of them sat out the war in port rather than risk being captured. But the CSA had no fleet at home and other nations kept bringing in imports to the Union, so the Confederate raiders had little or no effect on the outcome. The Germans in WW2 would have been better served to just build submarines instead of battleships.

Some regions need to be fairly easy to control, like the North Sea and Baltic, and others, such as the European or American Atlantic ports, need to be much harder. A blockade of course does not depend on the relative force available to the two sides, but on both sides' willingness to fight. And that can be affected by force level, fuel availability and by the possible political consequences of defeat.

I agree. The longer the coastline, the more ports there are and the further from any advanced base the blockading forces have to operate. Thus, sea zones covering the entire coast of a large continent should require much more force to blockade than geographic choke points like the exits from the Baltic, Mediterranean, and North Sea. In addition, to blockade a nation with multiple coasts, you should have to have sufficient forces in all its coastal zones to impose a blockade. The US should be virtually blockade-proof due to having 3 long coastal zones on opposite sides of a landmass that goes nearly from pole to pole.

[ccip]

In terms of blockade mechanics, other than the mentioned exploits (see ship design thread) and some issues like coastlines and map abstraction, I would say I don't have any huge issues with the way the game handles it. Blockade maintenance should remain the main way to conduct your wars - I think the enemy reluctance to fight your superior fleet is frustrating, but not unreasonable. What they should be able to do is run your blockade with raiders in a way that makes wars more interesting rather than a totally foregone conclusion when a blockade triggers. As far as frequency of battles, along with their types and compositions, and the AI willingness to accept them - honestly, having been playing RTW since day 1, I have to say that it seems Just Right (tm) and I would not mess with it. Grand fleet battles are frustratingly rare from a game perspective, but over a 25-year game they happen often enough to be well ahead of historical outcomes as it is. Unbalanced cruiser and convoy actions - likewise, not ideal in game mechanics, but are more or less in line with realism. I very much like RTW's strategically cautious AI and the fact that I often fight wars with nearly no fleet losses on either side personally makes me happy - it's a real breath of fresh air for me, compared to the more typical strategy game where everything is solved decisively through rapid attrition.

As far as cruisers/raiders, I have to enthusiastically agree with Bullethead - and I think it's here that the underlying VP issues are. If my "guesstimath" is correct, in order to match the effect of an average blockade right now, you would need to enter a war with a fleet of at 150-200 (!) cruisers/AMCs/submarines. And mind you, this doesn't mean getting more points than the enemy - that's ONLY to level the playing field. Counting those ships that fail to run blockade, run into supply issues, enemy intercepts or breakdowns etc., they would then generate the sort of VP score per turn that would match that of a blockade, and usually at a higher rate of ship losses. Now, the question is, if you're so rich that you can afford to maintain a fleet of 150-200 raiders, why are you under blockade in the first place??

That, I think, is the problem - right now, other than because it's fun and historical, there's not actually a good game mechanic motivation for the player to build and operate raiders, because although cheaper and quicker than fleet units on their own terms, they provide substantially less return (in terms of war VPs) than fleet units when it comes to blockade - and that's not mentioning how it works out in battle, because there, a beefy fleet-type unit has the potential generate far, far more war-winning VPs than a unit built for raiding for the same cost. Which, ironically, is the opposite of how commerce war is supposed to work (cheap raiders = far greater effect than expensive fleet units). The net result can actually be seen in most late-stage games, which tend to be dominated by fleets made up of fast battleships/well-armored BCs and fleet destroyers, with most ships in between gradually relegated to fodder, because typically they end up costing you way more than the VP returns they're likely to generate or prevent you from losing. The AI does, as Bullethead says, do a remarkably a good job of playing by the rules, but the rules are rather skewed towards an inevitably ultra-Mahanian grand fleet strategy. You can play in other ways, but if you want to win wars and prestige, ultimately you have to go down that one path. That's actually something I brought up in my review on Subsim a year ago. Granted, the AI does mercilessly well doing the same, but as a result wars are usually decided by raw numbers of blockade and fleet-combat-capable units before they start.

I think guerre de course needs to be a "second path" for the game - if not for winning it, then at least for giving a less "heavy" fleet a level playing field against a classic blockader. The place to start is to a) significantly increase points per merchant sunk by raiders; b) introduce point and prestige/unrest bonuses and penalties for raider operations in particular areas, even if they're not actively sinking ships (I'm not sure if some of three may already exist).

I think the game's current approach to blockade vs. raider points is based on raw economics. In that regard, it's not entirely incorrect - yes, an effective blockade does have the same effect as sinking several dozen merchants in a month. Economically. But from a political and military perspective, as some here have mentioned, effective raiders took up a disproportionate amount of public attention and generated an even more disproportionate enemy reaction, and - most importantly - were often seen as a measure of success of naval leadership (or failure, if the enemy had them operating with perceived impunity). And even while not sinking ships or engaging enemy cruisers, they have a serious effect, dictating changes to shipping routes, forcing convoys to be created, instigating search and rescue efforts, and just generally causing disorder, confusion and fear. And even if they weren't consistently doing that in historical practice, they certainly were in the minds of some naval theorists of the time. It's worth factoring this in.

Again, I don't think raiders should be brought up to the status of a war-winning weapon in the bigger scope of early 20th naval warfare, but they should be able to at least become an equalizer for a blockade. The player should also have more reason to worry about the enemy's - right now they're a mere nuisance compared to the risk of invasion fleets (which again are countered with brute fleet force rather than fast cheap units), where in fact it should be the reverse. AI raiders should rapidly sap the player's points, along with prestige and public order (which they already do, but in negligible ways compared to blockades), in order to force a reaction. Right now you can usually afford not to react, and are in fact better off not reacting and hedging your bets on concentrating all your strength in the battle fleet(s) and playing the blockade-fleet battle-invasion game.

Otherwise, I think the underlying issue that Bullethead is observing here is that the game, which plays out in a sort of in an imperial fantasy world that did, in fact, exist in the minds of many naval strategists at the turn of the century and spawned the real fleets and ships we know and love, which sadly never lived up to what their creators thought they could achieve in war. RTW gives us a world where they can fully live up to that potential. It correctly follows their thinking - which was overwhelmingly Mahanian. And in that regard, the game does a faithful job of recreating all the assumptions of that theory, plus showing some of its weaknesses (though mostly tactically rather than strategically). But you have to remember that wasn't the only school of thought in town - and I think the ideas of Jeune Ecole also should have an equal place, especially where they give a logical counterweight to the "heavy metal" of battle fleets. Guerre de course as a doctrine should be that "second path", if not to victory then at least to strategic parity.



And one more thought question, which I think only Fredrik would be able to answer:

Does research on doctrine have an impact on the effectiveness of blockades/raiders? On likelihood of intercepts/battles? On merchant prizes and prestige/unrest bonuses?
And if not, should it?

I was thinking that since we already have research on light forces doctrine and fleet doctrine, progress in that could also be reflected via VPs (and other success measures) gained from use of those forces. It would make sense, for example, that as a navy improves its fleet doctrine, it becomes more effective at maintaining blockade, lowers blockade requirements, and improves chances of actually engaging an enemy fleet. Likewise, it would make sense that light forces tactics should translate into better blockade runners and better raiders - along with, perhaps, a tendency for daring exploits that better capture public attention and frighten the enemy. If those kinds of effects are already included, that's great, but if not, that's something I'd give some thought to!

Anyway, that's my two cents on this subject...

[Fredrik W]

Sept 19, 2016 12:38:28 GMT -6 ccip said:

And one more thought question, which I think only Fredrik would be able to answer:

Does research on doctrine have an impact on the effectiveness of blockades/raiders? On likelihood of intercepts/battles? On merchant prizes and prestige/unrest bonuses?
And if not, should it?

I was thinking that since we already have research on light forces doctrine and fleet doctrine, progress in that could also be reflected via VPs (and other success measures) gained from use of those forces. It would make sense, for example, that as a navy improves its fleet doctrine, it becomes more effective at maintaining blockade, lowers blockade requirements, and improves chances of actually engaging an enemy fleet. Likewise, it would make sense that light forces tactics should translate into better blockade runners and better raiders - along with, perhaps, a tendency for daring exploits that better capture public attention and frighten the enemy. If those kinds of effects are already included, that's great, but if not, that's something I'd give some thought to!

At present, development of sigint influences intercepts and the frequency of catching the enemy with no option to decline the battle. Other than that, there is no effects of research on the areas you mention, but it is an interesting thought.

[Bullethead]

Sept 19, 2016 12:38:28 GMT -6 ccip said:

........As far as cruisers/raiders, I have to enthusiastically agree with Bullethead - and I think it's here that the underlying VP issues are. If my "guesstimath" is correct, in order to match the effect of an average blockade right now, you would need to enter a war with a fleet of at 150-200 (!) cruisers/AMCs/submarines. And mind you, this doesn't mean getting more points than the enemy - that's ONLY to level the playing field.......

I think guerre de course needs to be a "second path" for the game - if not for winning it, then at least for giving a less "heavy" fleet a level playing field against a classic blockader. The place to start is to a) significantly increase points per merchant sunk by raiders; b) introduce point and prestige/unrest bonuses and penalties for raider operations in particular areas, even if they're not actively sinking ships (I'm not sure if some of three may already exist)............

I'm 100% with you that a "2nd path" would be great, and also for implementing some sort of effects for raiders beyond just generating VPs.  Something needs to give raiders the sort of disproportional leverage they actually had in real life, so they can be a viable counter to blockade by forcing the enemy to react.  I guess the devil is in the details of how you'd implement these things.

I have 2 main reasons for not wanting to increase the raw VP value of merchants sunk.  First, merchants seem too abstract, with no national pool they disappear from, so valuable merchants could become a potential for exploits and abuse, and turn the game into being all about raiders instead of that being a 2nd path.  Second, the usual response of merchants when raiders were on the loose was to head for the nearest port and sit there until either the war was over or the navy could provide convoy escorts.  After all, businessmen stood to lose their livelihoods if something happened to the ships, and their insurance didn't cover acts of war.  Thus, the rate of merchant sinkings to raiders should go way down rather quickly, but the effect of the raiders still being there continues in the form of paralyzed shipping, essentially a blockade at the source rather than the destination.  So I'm thinking that making raiders more viable as a strategic option should focus on this quasi-blockade sort of effect instead of VPs from sinkings.

This still leaves the problem that right now, blockades give decent amounts of VPs right from the get-go, and VPs seem to affect how willing the politicians are to continuing a war and what terms they'll accept.  If raiders continue to generate low VPs per turn, then a very successful commerce war is still trumped by the VP value of a blockade.  This is why I suggest greatly reducing and/or delaying VP awards for blockades to be more on a par with what raiders are achieving with sinkings, while at the same time paying more attention to non-VP effects.  Then it would be a question of which side cracked first under a strain measured in more concrete, real-world terms than abstract VPs.

[director]

Has anyone built a navy by Jeune Ecole/Guerre de Course principles and tried it out against a significant enemy naval power?