Expansion & Conquest

[Korpen]

Also to clear up the plan is that there will be 4 MOD nations (P3D, CTWATERMAN, GUINNESS and MIKETR) that will be stronger than the players.  In effect part of the MOD nations function is to prevent people from blitzing the weaker nations at the get go.

Just a thought on blitzing: I do think it would be a very good idea to put rules in place that makes it very hard to gain economically from conquest, at least in the short/medium run. Rules to that effect could hopefully remove the incentives for war of pure expansionism and put focus on wars for limited objectives, as was the case of almost all 19th century wars.

I think such a system would work better then a "policemen" system.

[miketr]

In general terms I agree that in civilized lands we want limited wars of limited means.

There are different ways to handle this.

1) Hard rule, nations can only absorb X number of provinces

2) Some type of financial cost to absorb the provinces

Also I want things to be clearly different when dealing with colonies and with civilized lands.  We want lots of colonial expansion.

Michael

[Logi]

I think of the two options, financial cost would be better.

[snip]

I agree, the second option sounds better as it then becomes the choice of the player as opposed to a hard cap

[Valles]

You can penalize local aggression however you like, and try to artificially buff overseas colonies to whatever degree you please, and I'll still ignore them. The rules are not relevant to those decisions.

[snip]

You can penalize local aggression however you like, and try to artificially buff overseas colonies to whatever degree you please, and I'll still ignore them. The rules are not relevant to those decisions.

So no colonies for you? dang! *scraps ideas about war over Hawaii*

[Korpen]

In general terms I agree that in civilized lands we want limited wars of limited means.

There are different ways to handle this.

1) Hard rule, nations can only absorb X number of provinces

2) Some type of financial cost to absorb the provinces

Also I want things to be clearly different when dealing with colonies and with civilized lands.  We want lots of colonial expansion.

Michael

No hard cap, that is too static and adds very little to the game.

I think financial costs are the best way, and I would argue for more then one possible impact, and different severity depending on the nature of the expansion.
Some examples of how I think:

Only annexed territory adds to the economy; territory that is only occupied add nothing to the economy (what taxes and tariffs the occupying power can collect would be assumed to be eaten up by the occupation bureaucracy).
To annex a territory there must be a treaty with the power who owned the territory prior to hostilities.
Annexed territory should need time to integrate into the economy, only producing any income after a year or two, and needing much more time to come back to full potential. If the territory was peacefully (as in "without a war and by mutual agreement") annexed this disruption would be much smaller. However, I think the pace of incorporation should be linear (say at 3€ per year or what the scale would be), so the poorer the annexed territory, the faster it will be integrated.
If the annexed territory was significant (say 5% or more of the pre war economy) it would lead to retarding of the growth of the state as a whole as recourses would got to assimilating the new territory rather investing in existing territory (and the richer the new territory, the larger the effect would be). This would hardly affect colonial territory, as that would not be rich enough.

If there are in-game reasons for some or all of these conditions to not apply, that is fine by me on a case-by-case basis. It could also be indirect gains such as access to strategic chokepoints or new resources (which for some reason was not available on the world market) that could give financial gains from the start.
The objective with such rules for me would be to discourage wars for direct economic reason by removing most direct financial reasons for war, instead encouraging wars for more limited political or strategic reasons.

What does others think?

[Valles]

So, I'd need to expand early if I wanted my payoff within the time period of play?

*shrug*

I was going to do that anyway.

[Korpen]

So, I'd need to expand early if I wanted my payoff within the time period of play?

*shrug*

I was going to do that anyway.

Or in small increments were each step in easier to chew. Take too big a bite and I think it should be a risk of getting it stuck in the throat and choking on it. ;)

EDIT:
That to say that it should not be possible to expand and gain from expansion; only that the gains for military expansions should on average be the same as not expanding and spending the same resources at home. Basically a case of expanding and growing sideways, or not expanding territorially and growing on height.

This not taking the possibility of war reparations into account.

[Nobody]

Only annexed territory adds to the economy; territory that is only occupied add nothing to the economy (what taxes and tariffs the occupying power can collect would be assumed to be eaten up by the occupation bureaucracy).
To annex a territory there must be a treaty with the power who owned the territory prior to hostilities.
Annexed territory should need time to integrate into the economy, only producing any income after a year or two, and needing much more time to come back to full potential. If the territory was peacefully (as in "without a war and by mutual agreement") annexed this disruption would be much smaller. However, I think the pace of incorporation should be linear (say at 3€ per year or what the scale would be), so the poorer the annexed territory, the faster it will be integrated.
If the annexed territory was significant (say 5% or more of the pre war economy) it would lead to retarding of the growth of the state as a whole as recourses would got to assimilating the new territory rather investing in existing territory (and the richer the new territory, the larger the effect would be). This would hardly affect colonial territory, as that would not be rich enough.

This sounds good, however why should anyone agree on giving up occupied territory? If we make it your way we need some kind of penalty for that as well.
- e.g. if part your territory is occupied your population might become unsatisfied by you inability to claim it back
- or you might be forced to pay ever increasing sums to the "Résistance" to prevent successful annexation of a province.

[Korpen]

Only annexed territory adds to the economy; territory that is only occupied add nothing to the economy (what taxes and tariffs the occupying power can collect would be assumed to be eaten up by the occupation bureaucracy).
To annex a territory there must be a treaty with the power who owned the territory prior to hostilities.
Annexed territory should need time to integrate into the economy, only producing any income after a year or two, and needing much more time to come back to full potential. If the territory was peacefully (as in "without a war and by mutual agreement") annexed this disruption would be much smaller. However, I think the pace of incorporation should be linear (say at 3€ per year or what the scale would be), so the poorer the annexed territory, the faster it will be integrated.
If the annexed territory was significant (say 5% or more of the pre war economy) it would lead to retarding of the growth of the state as a whole as recourses would got to assimilating the new territory rather investing in existing territory (and the richer the new territory, the larger the effect would be). This would hardly affect colonial territory, as that would not be rich enough.

This sounds good, however why should anyone agree on giving up occupied territory? If we make it your way we need some kind of penalty for that as well.
- e.g. if part your territory is occupied your population might become unsatisfied by you inability to claim it back
- or you might be forced to pay ever increasing sums to the "Résistance" to prevent successful annexation of a province.

First of all because you do not receive any income from territory occupied by the enemy, so the more territory the enemy occupies, the less resources you have to fight back with.
An effect of this is that it makes sense to cede some territory either if you get back more territory that is occupied (if the enemy holds ten of your provinces it might be worth to let 1-2 go to get the rest back), or if the loss is not worth the effort to re-take it (at least not at the moment).

[miketr]

People would agree on giving up on occupied territory for the normal reasons, you LOST the war and trying to fight to the finish odds are means a worse deal down the road.

OK if we go with a cost for annexation it would be in two parts.

1) The money cost is based upon the income of the province to be taken and your own economy.  Mods provide a number to be paid.

2) If you eat too many civilized provinces you are going to end up with all sorts of nationalities issues.  IE expect mods to start throwing events for you to deal with.  See trouble A-H, Russia, Germany, etc had in Europe with minorities inside of their borders.

Michael

[TexanCowboy]

Totally off topic here, but I still believe Austria wouldn't have had all of those problems if it had gone with the "Triple Kingdom" proposal...../off topix

[miketr]

Here is the ethnic makeup of what was A-H.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd_1911/shepherd-c-168.jpg

They had issues, not saying it would be impossible just that it would be HARD.

Michael