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Post by stevethecat on Jun 28, 2020 8:55:48 GMT -6
So it's 1940, I have just fought (what feels like) my 200th war against the US as Britain. While the many, many ones before it went fairly well, mostly due to lucking into some great 14/1 guns very early, the most recent one was a complete hammering. In a massive night action I destroyed 15 of the US's BB/BC fleet for the cost of 2 of my BCs. The few survivors were taken out in the following few months. The closest thing the US had left to capital ships were a pair of CAs and a seaplane carrier.
Fantastic right?
Nope, huge mistake.
It turns out that sweeping 20 battleships off the US's books has freed up the budget to replace them with 16" armed behemoths, a whole new fleet of them. While my victorious fleet was crippled by the massive post war budget drop. The cost of losing the war was becoming the defacto sea naval power while the winner still has the same 1920's ships I can't afford to replace. Something just doesn't seem quite fair there!
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Jack
New Member
Posts: 29
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Post by Jack on Jun 28, 2020 9:08:46 GMT -6
On the one hand I like alot of the mechanics as the AI stays better in the competition and a game where the player is always dominating from the beginning would be dull. On the other hand it would be great to have more reward fighting those wars and winning decisive fleet battles, the reward might be not on national/fleet level but more on the personal level like in a RPG.
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Post by rimbecano on Jun 28, 2020 9:55:24 GMT -6
Yeah, I've found that the post war budget drops get absolutely insane in the late game, to the point that I've abandoned multiple games in the mid 30s after winning a war ruined everything. Conventional wisdom on the forums has been that the huge budget drops are due to aircraft costs, but I ran the numbers last time it happened and ship construction and maintenance were still my biggest costs. A previous thread I've posted on the issue is here: nws-online.proboards.com/thread/4832/pain-point-rebalance-budget-late |
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Post by buttons on Jun 28, 2020 10:15:07 GMT -6
So it's 1940, I have just fought (what feels like) my 200th war against the US as Britain. While the many, many ones before it went fairly well, mostly due to lucking into some great 14/1 guns very early, the most recent one was a complete hammering. In a massive night action I destroyed 15 of the US's BB/BC fleet for the cost of 2 of my BCs. The few survivors were taken out in the following few months. The closest thing the US had left to capital ships were a pair of CAs and a seaplane carrier.
Fantastic right?
Nope, huge mistake.
It turns out that sweeping 20 battleships off the US's books has freed up the budget to replace them with 16" armed behemoths, a whole new fleet of them. While my victorious fleet was crippled by the massive post war budget drop. The cost of losing the war was becoming the defacto sea naval power while the winner still has the same 1920's ships I can't afford to replace. Something just doesn't seem quite fair there! The winner (or at least their government) becoming complacent has happened many times in history. That being said I would like to see the player having more input than just taking land after a treaty, like treaty points can be spent on various things including naval treaties, ship seizures, and reparations. For example a very minor naval arms limitation treaty worth 1 point might be "Cannot build ships with guns larger than 16" for 5 years" while spending all 10 points might cripple their navy with terms like "Max 15,000 tons, max 10" guns, halved naval budget for 10 years" Mechanically the easiest method of implementation may just be for the AI to generate specific terms based on points spent. So if you win a war with 10 VPs you might for example - Spend 4 VPs taking territory
- Spend 2 VPs taking ships (can take 2-8 ships depending on size of each fleet)
- Spend 2 VPs on naval treaty (fairly light treaty, more slightly nerfing battleship construction as opposed to crippling it)
- Spend 2 VPs on reparations (small economic boost, enemy suffers small economic loss)
As for increasing difficulty late game, could make AI countries more aggressive the more powerful and aggressive the player is. If you have the largest navy and high tensions with two powers other powers are likely to have tensions raised and attempt to pressure you towards demilitarizing. If you are extremely dominant, are at war, and are losing the war than other nations are liable to dog pile you to cripple the greatest threat to their peace and prosperity.
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Post by director on Jun 28, 2020 12:26:33 GMT -6
Trying to maintain naval superiority with outdated ships and constrained finances is, of course, exactly what happened to the UK after WW1. It was, however, the expense of building a very large army from scratch, a large air force from scratch, and maintaining a superior navy, which crippled her finances. One option would be to give players information on a 'national debt' which would increase steadily in wartime and have to be paid back from naval appropriations in peace. It could be increased for every invasion you call for, and perhaps the rate decreased if you wage a successful commerce-protection campaign. Another would be to give the victorious player the right to impose a naval limitation treaty, as buttons said, or to grant the winner the right to call a more general arms-control treaty that would affect his own fleet as well. stevethecat - I'd have been tempted to scrap as many ships as the US lost and build at least a core of new, modern ships. You do run the risk of getting into a war with someone else in the meantime... but if you are at war you aren't suffering that shortfall in naval appropriations anymore, either. Sooner or later the US will outbuild anyone else - that's just inevitable. You can only innovate better, use light forces better, and handle your ships better to keep beating them. Or who knows, maybe you'll have a chance to repair relations and fight someone else for a change. |
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Post by rimbecano on Jun 28, 2020 15:31:44 GMT -6
Sooner or later the US will outbuild anyone else - that's just inevitable. In my experience, it's a real challenge if the US is the player nation. By the time you get into the 30's, where you *should* be catching up, even a 3-month, curb stomp brushfire war takes 40% off your budget when it ends and you have to reserve or mothball every ship in your fleet not needed for foreign service and halt *all* construction, just to remain solvent. Trying to recover quickly usually just inflames tensions and brings on another war, which further wrecks your budget, and trying to keep tensions down drags out the budget crisis. The other nations also see budget drops after a war, but don't have to worry about keeping tensions down: AFAIK, tension events are purely determined by the RNG with no actual input from the AI, so if anything, when there's an event with a "tension+, budget-" choice and a "tension++, budget+" choice, and you take the less inflammatory option, the AI nations still tend to benefit in budget from the increased tension. Furthermore, Britain has the "budget increase to maintain predominance quirk", so they're guaranteed to at least keep up with you (if not outstrip you) if they at all can, and every war brings your budget down to where they can keep up. It's really demoralizing to see your budget climb well past theirs, end up in a war, and as soon as it ends find yourself clawing desperately just to maintain parity, and as soon as you find yourself in a position where you can comfortably maintain parity, and maybe pull ahead with a bit of effort, to suddenly find yourself in another war and know that you can't devote any budget to construction beyond finishing existing projects and replacing losses, because you'll need every dollar of wartime budget to cushion the peace. It's really demoralizing to go from a $100,000,000 nest egg to effectively bankrupt within five turns of the end of a war. The budget drops in the early game, and in RTW1, are annoying, even crippling, but that's fine, because it's a well-founded mechanic. The budget drops in late-game RTW2 are utterly devastating, and it ruins a game when you can never catch up to the UK because the small fry keep deciding to pick fights. |
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Post by buttons on Jun 28, 2020 17:20:37 GMT -6
Sooner or later the US will outbuild anyone else - that's just inevitable. In my experience, it's a real challenge if the US is the player nation. By the time you get into the 30's, where you *should* be catching up, even a 3-month, curb stomp brushfire war takes 40% off your budget when it ends and you have to reserve or mothball every ship in your fleet not needed for foreign service and halt *all* construction, just to remain solvent. Trying to recover quickly usually just inflames tensions and brings on another war, which further wrecks your budget, and trying to keep tensions down drags out the budget crisis. The other nations also see budget drops after a war, but don't have to worry about keeping tensions down: AFAIK, tension events are purely determined by the RNG with no actual input from the AI, so if anything, when there's an event with a "tension+, budget-" choice and a "tension++, budget+" choice, and you take the less inflammatory option, the AI nations still tend to benefit in budget from the increased tension. Furthermore, Britain has the "budget increase to maintain predominance quirk", so they're guaranteed to at least keep up with you (if not outstrip you) if they at all can, and every war brings your budget down to where they can keep up. It's really demoralizing to see your budget climb well past theirs, end up in a war, and as soon as it ends find yourself clawing desperately just to maintain parity, and as soon as you find yourself in a position where you can comfortably maintain parity, and maybe pull ahead with a bit of effort, to suddenly find yourself in another war and know that you can't devote any budget to construction beyond finishing existing projects and replacing losses, because you'll need every dollar of wartime budget to cushion the peace. It's really demoralizing to go from a $100,000,000 nest egg to effectively bankrupt within five turns of the end of a war. The budget drops in the early game, and in RTW1, are annoying, even crippling, but that's fine, because it's a well-founded mechanic. The budget drops in late-game RTW2 are utterly devastating, and it ruins a game when you can never catch up to the UK because the small fry keep deciding to pick fights. I mostly tend to play of the US (guess I mostly like to design ships) and find that I benefit most from either milking wars or making sure if they do have to end that they get lots of territory. Standard game objective is drive Britain and France from the Caribbean and Northeastern Canada. Also I aggressively scrap obselete capital ships only upgrading FCS and sometimes guns, never machinery unless I have a sentimental attachment or it is the mid 1940s and building a new battleship is more expense than it is worth when I can just make my 1938 BB faster with better AA. |
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Post by rimbecano on Jun 28, 2020 23:41:09 GMT -6
I mostly tend to play of the US (guess I mostly like to design ships) and find that I benefit most from either milking wars or making sure if they do have to end that they get lots of territory. Standard game objective is drive Britain and France from the Caribbean and Northeastern Canada. Also I aggressively scrap obselete capital ships only upgrading FCS and sometimes guns, never machinery unless I have a sentimental attachment... I don't mind savescumming, but savescumming constantly for decades of game time to keep your first war after 1930-ish from ever ending gets really grindy, and if you ever do let the war end, then most of the cash you milked from it while it was going on gets guzzled down within the first half year of postwar budget crisis. I pretty much never upgrade (main) guns on capital ships, and only upgrade machinery for carrier conversions. Unlike any other refit involving machinery upgrades, minimum-speed carrier conversions end up cheaper, at build time, than building a whole new vessel from scratch. The ship maintenance per aircraft carried is worse, but when you're in the kind of budget crunch that happens in the late game, you may not be able to afford a purpose built ship, as the immediate costs matter most while you're recovering from the peace treaty, while the maintenance costs are spread over both good and bad times. If not converted, capital ships spend a decade in front line service, then a decade as reserve/foreign station ships, then get scrapped. Even here I don't do machinery upgrades, because I'd prefer having both the 1938 BB and the 194x BB to just having a 194x BB upgraded from a 1938 BB. The 1938 BB *will* get an AA and FC upgrade, but anything more wastes money that could go to increasing total fleet size. |
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Post by buttons on Jun 29, 2020 9:29:38 GMT -6
I mostly tend to play of the US (guess I mostly like to design ships) and find that I benefit most from either milking wars or making sure if they do have to end that they get lots of territory. Standard game objective is drive Britain and France from the Caribbean and Northeastern Canada. Also I aggressively scrap obselete capital ships only upgrading FCS and sometimes guns, never machinery unless I have a sentimental attachment... I don't mind savescumming, but savescumming constantly for decades of game time to keep your first war after 1930-ish from ever ending gets really grindy, and if you ever do let the war end, then most of the cash you milked from it while it was going on gets guzzled down within the first half year of postwar budget crisis. I pretty much never upgrade (main) guns on capital ships, and only upgrade machinery for carrier conversions. Unlike any other refit involving machinery upgrades, minimum-speed carrier conversions end up cheaper, at build time, than building a whole new vessel from scratch. The ship maintenance per aircraft carried is worse, but when you're in the kind of budget crunch that happens in the late game, you may not be able to afford a purpose built ship, as the immediate costs matter most while you're recovering from the peace treaty, while the maintenance costs are spread over both good and bad times. If not converted, capital ships spend a decade in front line service, then a decade as reserve/foreign station ships, then get scrapped. I don't savescum to continue the wars, generally I just keep saying "a few more months and we can crush them completely" whenever the topic of a peace treaty comes up. Generally the AI refuses a treaty or if it accepts the terms are very good so I get a ton of territory, can scrap any obsolete escorts and cruisers, and mothball or scrap any capital ships a generation or more behind. I go down for maybe a year but the budget eventually recovers. Generally by 1940 I have so much money that I make stupid vanity projects just to spend it all (let me build a 70kt battleship with 16x16" guns), so peace is less a devastating loss of money and more a return to a reasonable budget where I don't host expensive parties on the government's bill just to use up my budget. However, yes early war victories are far more devastating, especially for minor powers like Italy where you might just get Dalmatia out of a major war victory and by the time your budget recovers you will have half the BB tonnage of any other power with ships 5-10 years older. |
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Post by fleet5 on Jun 30, 2020 7:33:28 GMT -6
What I do is after the wars where I have gained the strategic areas I want and an oil source, I no longer take any more land in peace deals and rather spend all the points for the reparations. I also mothball the sub hunter fleet and drastically reduce the amount of planes while having the rest in reserve.
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Post by dorn on Jul 1, 2020 11:45:28 GMT -6
Simulating economy is much more problematic, difficult than you describe. There are just too many things to consider.
Even if USA lost a war, it will have probably not dramatic effects you do not conquered USA by land. And even after that it is questionable as it would have some effect if USA economy will be completely transferred to war economy and have not enough reserve to recover. Practically at that time the probability of this is almost zero.
Some of them are that USA population was 2 times British Isles or France even at start of 19th century, innovation, enterprising, minimal colonial empire, resources and others which put USA into specific state to rapidly overcome European powers.
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