What is your worst peace offer?

[tmp]

The worst offer I got was from Austria-Hungary -- after we beat them into submission I got a prompt to select their possessions... of which they had none. Oops.

No option to get any ships from them in lack of land they'd give up, either.

[ddg]

If you don't take any colonies, you get a bonus to base national resources (i.e. industrial capacity) instead, representing indemnities and the like. It's actually a bigger economic boost than equivalent points in colonies, so you trade off between money and strategic position.

[tmp]

That game ended with A-H having 100 mil larger budget than my Italy, despite them losing the only war technically had, while my nation won all but one of theirs. I have to wonder just how big that supposed bonus is, and what my budget would then look like without it.

[ddg]

The budget formula is something like (R+C)*B, where

• R is national resources,
• C is colonial resources, and
• B is a budget multiplier.

This means that two nations with identical economic strengths (i.e. R+C) can have wildly different budgets if one of them is willing to concentrate more of its economy on the navy (represented by a higher B). Especially when tensions are high, the final budget figure is not a reliable measure of a nation's total economy.

Each colony has a value. For example, Ireland's value is 10 and Libya's is 1. Working from memory, colonies add 25,000 resources per point of value, so Ireland gives you 250,000 resources and Libya only 25,000. C, your colonial resources, is just the sum of all the resources you get from all your colonies.

National resources R are set at game start by your choice of nation and budget setting (i.e. game or historical). As I recall, the national resources will be exactly half of whatever the start screen says your budget will be. National resources also grow naturally over time (I believe through a combination of percentage increases and fixed increases, although that isn't really important at this juncture) as well as through events. In particular, the event in which you get to decide between focusing investment on the navy, building railroads, or social programs can grant a huge increase to national resources—but you have to choose the railroads to do so. I believe the AI nations usually choose the railroad, so if you didn't, that would put you somewhat behind the curve. I also suspect that Italy's Corruption trait reduces natural growth.

When you win a war and get to choose from the loser's colonies, any points left over turn into 50,000 national resources each. Since colonies' points are the same as their value, this means leftover points are worth twice as much to your economy and, ultimately, your budget. Furthermore, since only national resources (not colonial resources) compound over time, the leftover points have even greater long-term economic value.

The final variable in my formula*, the budget multiplier B, is what changes when events grant "budget+." It can be reduced to straight integer multiples, usually ranging between 10 and 20. If your multiplier increases from 10 to 11, you'll see your final budget rise by 10%; if it falls from 20 to 19, you'll see your final budget fall by 5%. The budget multiplier means that your naval budget reflects both your nation's overall economic strength and its commitment to naval spending, so your lower budget could easily reflect a stronger economy but a more dovish government.


*I suspect the actual formula in the game code has a few more, but that they don't change during the course of a game and thus can be safely ignored here. One important one is a fleet size multiplier that is set at game start.

[zardoz]

Maybe, this was a bug:

After a very dramatic war with Italy against Austria-Hungary over a period of 3 years and reaching unrest-level 9 in one month, after finally breaking the AH-Blockade with some help of Italian subs (sunk one B) and the US as Allied (also sunk one B), after very difficult battles against numericial superior AH fleets with a mutinity-shaken Italian navy, I was able to blockade AH and eventually the AH regime collapsed.

I was offererd

NOTHING

No ship, no province .... really nothing.

?

[director]

Austria-Hungary begins the game with no colonies, so unless they grab one somewhere they will have nothing for you to seize.
Not sure what determines if you get a warship or not.

But take heart - for every point of colonial property you don't (or can't) take you do get cash and (I think) extra budget.