Post by hawkeye on Dec 13, 2020 6:13:02 GMT -6
Ok, here's the thing:
I am playing as Japan and enter into a war with Germany in 1902
After a successful surprise attack/invasion of Singapore (Germany grabbed it in 1901) and sinking a few German cruisers, France jumps in on Germany's side and all my gains are nullified.
I struggle dealing with the fleets of both countries, each of which is superior to my own, but manage to get ahead on VPs again, only to have Russia join them in late 1903 and all my gains are again nullified.
There are two issues with this.
1. Having a nation enter a war against you doesn't nullify everything you have achieved beforehand. If I manage to sink the entire Royal Navy, having Spain declare war on me doesn't magically re-surface all those battleships, cruisers and destroyers I sunk over the last years, those will still be on the bottom of the ocean.
2. Having 3rd nations enter a war without any influence of the player is just bad game design. In fact, pretty much anything that happens without the player having any influence upon is bad game-design.
Sure, you can argue that, as the head of the navy, the statements of Kaiser Wilhelm II, for example, are nothing you could influence, which would be correct from a historical accuracy point of view but that doesn't make it good game-design. In a game, the player is supposed to be the one making decisions and then to live with the consequences of those decisions. Randomness has it's place * , but these kind of game-changing things should never be completely out of the player's hands.
To make this totally clear, I'm not talking about those pop-up windows, where the player decides what to recommend or how to react to some crisis. If this leads to another country entering the war, that's fine. It was my decision that lead to this after all.
So, to my suggestion(s):
1. Modify each side's VPs according to a formula like: (New VP) = (Old VP) x ( 1 - (strength of new enemy / (strength of original enemy at start of war + strength of new enemy at time of joining)).
For example, if the player goes to war with the British and Britain has a naval strength of 400 and then, after a year or two France with a naval strength of 200 joins, at which point the player has 20,000 VPs, it would be like this:
New VPs = 20,000 x ( 1 - ( 200 / 600)) = 13,333
The new enemy has half the strength of the original enemy and thus makes up 1/3 of the total naval strength, so the VPs are lowered by 1/3.
If the new enemy has a fleet just as large as the original one, the VPs would be halved and so on.
2. Whenever tensions change randomly during war, have those random changes trigger an event instead, so the player can influence them.
Even if all options available rise tensions (to a varying degree), at least the player has the feeling that if it comes to war with a 2nd, 3rd, n-ed nation, it wasn't out of the blue with him just sitting there and taking it.
* For randomness to work, the player has to at least be able to influence the odds. To use a classic RPG as an example, I can train my character on the use of a weapon, put on better armor, try to outflank the enemy and all of this will influence the chance of a hit or evading being hit. The fact that, in the end, a roll of the die decides _if_ I actually hit is fine, since I have been able to influence the chance of a hit.
Complete randomness, on the other hand, is really, really bad in a game. Like, how would anyone feel if your GM rolled a die every 20 minuted during a session and if a natural 1 is rolled, your character just dies. Nothing you can do about it, nothing you can do to make that roll more difficult for the GM, if he rolls a 1, you're dead.
I'm sure there'd be a _ton_ of fun at the table. [/sarcasm]
I am playing as Japan and enter into a war with Germany in 1902
After a successful surprise attack/invasion of Singapore (Germany grabbed it in 1901) and sinking a few German cruisers, France jumps in on Germany's side and all my gains are nullified.
I struggle dealing with the fleets of both countries, each of which is superior to my own, but manage to get ahead on VPs again, only to have Russia join them in late 1903 and all my gains are again nullified.
There are two issues with this.
1. Having a nation enter a war against you doesn't nullify everything you have achieved beforehand. If I manage to sink the entire Royal Navy, having Spain declare war on me doesn't magically re-surface all those battleships, cruisers and destroyers I sunk over the last years, those will still be on the bottom of the ocean.
2. Having 3rd nations enter a war without any influence of the player is just bad game design. In fact, pretty much anything that happens without the player having any influence upon is bad game-design.
Sure, you can argue that, as the head of the navy, the statements of Kaiser Wilhelm II, for example, are nothing you could influence, which would be correct from a historical accuracy point of view but that doesn't make it good game-design. In a game, the player is supposed to be the one making decisions and then to live with the consequences of those decisions. Randomness has it's place * , but these kind of game-changing things should never be completely out of the player's hands.
To make this totally clear, I'm not talking about those pop-up windows, where the player decides what to recommend or how to react to some crisis. If this leads to another country entering the war, that's fine. It was my decision that lead to this after all.
So, to my suggestion(s):
1. Modify each side's VPs according to a formula like: (New VP) = (Old VP) x ( 1 - (strength of new enemy / (strength of original enemy at start of war + strength of new enemy at time of joining)).
For example, if the player goes to war with the British and Britain has a naval strength of 400 and then, after a year or two France with a naval strength of 200 joins, at which point the player has 20,000 VPs, it would be like this:
New VPs = 20,000 x ( 1 - ( 200 / 600)) = 13,333
The new enemy has half the strength of the original enemy and thus makes up 1/3 of the total naval strength, so the VPs are lowered by 1/3.
If the new enemy has a fleet just as large as the original one, the VPs would be halved and so on.
2. Whenever tensions change randomly during war, have those random changes trigger an event instead, so the player can influence them.
Even if all options available rise tensions (to a varying degree), at least the player has the feeling that if it comes to war with a 2nd, 3rd, n-ed nation, it wasn't out of the blue with him just sitting there and taking it.
* For randomness to work, the player has to at least be able to influence the odds. To use a classic RPG as an example, I can train my character on the use of a weapon, put on better armor, try to outflank the enemy and all of this will influence the chance of a hit or evading being hit. The fact that, in the end, a roll of the die decides _if_ I actually hit is fine, since I have been able to influence the chance of a hit.
Complete randomness, on the other hand, is really, really bad in a game. Like, how would anyone feel if your GM rolled a die every 20 minuted during a session and if a natural 1 is rolled, your character just dies. Nothing you can do about it, nothing you can do to make that roll more difficult for the GM, if he rolls a 1, you're dead.
I'm sure there'd be a _ton_ of fun at the table. [/sarcasm]
