N4.5 Rules Question/Comment thread

[snip]

So, has anyone aside from Carth and myself actually read these? Is so, tell us what you think!

[Logi]

Commenting...
As one of the warmongers that started the land war in Asia, one of the main contributing reasons why I started it was that it was simply the only way to get ahead. If you calculate the gain from investing investing in infrastructure - I remember as taking 50-75 years before you got return equal to the value of the investment. And that was with China. Simply put, there was no incentive at all to invest in infrastructure beyond what was dictated by the constraints of the 50% military budget. Now of course this is not true in real life but in NVerse the only way to realistic expand was to make war and hope to win land. I would, like Valles, advocate that investment return made greater for N4.5.

What I'm confused about here is how the economy of the player states will expand, if it is a given they will clash violently, yet there will be no real expansion over land. I assume that implies that wars at primarily over the coastal areas yet there is no thought given to the expansion of the economy or how the economy rows via player self-investment. What incentive is there to go to war other than border conflicts or for that matter what incentive is there not to go to war and cause the N3 equivalent of a land war rather than invest?

Time bogging simulation doesn't have to be because of land wars. The land system in N3 was greatly simplified for the Chinese war - and so was the naval system. If we have too many ships, what would stop that from escalating to the point of the Chinese Civil War, in which case, made the whole point of designing a ship in springsharp pointless?

[Carthaginian]

I fail to see how 'conflict' and 'clash violently' are synonyms.
Like I have said- several nations had long-running cold wars in N3, which resulted in no shots fired but a lot of good roleplaying. That is what I mean by 'conflict'; nations will constantly be expanding and many times they will have conflicting interests... but how they choose to resolve these conflicts is up to them: diplomacy, small skirmishes, or full-scale war.

As to the the 'time bogging simulation' part- Snip and I have debated a bit the merits of scripting the less important battles, and only actually simming the truly important actions like major fleet battles and port assaults.
I guess this is as good a place as any to make that suggestion public and see how people feel about it.

[Valles]

More on this subject will be coming soon- WATCH THIS SPACE FOR DEVELOPMENTS.

So, to clarify, tile distances are drawn side-to-side? Corner-to-corner steps count as two, because of going through an intermediary square?

Either way, I note that the siting location I'd planned on, specified, and publicized based on the original zone criterion (upper right quarter of the map) falls outside of the new box, so.

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c386/valles_uf/CroatoaOriginalSiting.png

The discrepancies between the dictated cultural narrative and Croatoa's, I'm content to ignore. Croatoa's backstory has always called for iconoclasm in regards to settlement priorities, after all. Likewise, if I'm wrong in assuming that the previous version's sketchy rules dictating the number of possible settlements still apply, I'm perfectly happy to alter my number of placements.

In regards to the attempt to shift the originally chosen selection area out from under me...

I am aware of your position that all players should have an equal playing field in that they have equal access to the only permitted form of expansion. I am sure that you are also aware of my position that equal starting resources and balanced return-on-investment are more than adequate guarantees of 'fairness' and that attempting to dictate playstyle and in-character choices in the name of such is not only unnecessary but a game-destroying discourtesy.

Without doubting your sincerity in the view, I am also... unconvinced... of your thesis that your view is in any way general and wholly representative of the remainder of the player body in this respect.

Given my approval of and satisfaction with your work in most of the other aspects of developing the game rules, and our apparent inability to find common ground to compromise on, I'm hoping that everyone else intending to play here will 'weigh in' with their perspective on the matter and either provide a consensus for one or the other view or a third synthesis or alternative.

[Carthaginian]

You didn't post that map; it was sent to Rocky... not me.
You're therefore engaging in something of an untruth to say I 'moved the area out from under you.'
I didn't know where you were going to put your settlement, exactly.
Also, NO ONE will get free and unfettered access to one of the largest continents in the game. It will not happen for you, me, Snip, Jef, Nobody, Logi or anyone else that decides to play.

You're declaration of 'openly planning to indicate the rest of that continent as the 'Croatoan hinterland' AIN'T HAPPENING; NO, NOT NEVER. No one will be allowed to own a continent to themselves. That's the end of the discussion.

I'm sorry it came down to something like this.
I tried to be kind, to hint and to insinuate... but you continued to ignore me and proceed acting like there was nothing standing in the way of you proceeding with your plans unaltered. They are not compatible with the goals of the game as I see them, or that others have largely expressed. One player owning the largest landmass will give him an insane edge.

[Carthaginian]

The 'incentive to invest' will always be bigger than a land-grabbing war.
This was settled and made completely and utterly foolproof by making the armies so expensive to maintain... which winds up to be the ONLY reliable way to do so in a simulation that is completely about building and maintaining weapons of war. Naval power can cause no end of trouble, but if the army needed to invade and conquer is too expensive to maintain for a long period of time, all wars are guaranteed to be short and minor. This is often cited in Diane Duane's Star Trek novels as the only reason that Vulcan existed as a planet by the time that Earth men were fighting with sharp sticks.

The 'Vulcan Model of War' consisted of four phases: 1.) you set a clear, simple objective 2.) you rallied an army that agreed with you 3.) you achieved the objective (or failed to do so) and 4.) the army fell apart because there wasn't enough water to supply everyone for a long action.
I see something similar working on our world here. There are simply too many expenditures involved with massive overland movements and assaults. The hostile flora and fauna mean that you basically burn up ammunition as fast as you can resupply. The lack of developed infrastructure means that travel time is long. In the end, you simply can't afford to expand overland.

[Valles]

You didn't post that map; it was sent to Rocky... not me.
You're therefore engaging in something of an untruth to say I 'moved the area out from under you.'

I didn't know where you were going to put your settlement, exactly.
Also, NO ONE will get free and unfettered access to one of the largest continents in the game. It will not happen for you, me, Snip, Jef, Nobody, Logi or anyone else that decides to play.

You're declaration of 'openly planning to indicate the rest of that continent as the 'Croatoan hinterland' AIN'T HAPPENING; NO, NOT NEVER. No one will be allowed to own a continent to themselves. That's the end of the discussion.

I'm sorry it came down to something like this.
I tried to be kind, to hint and to insinuate... but you continued to ignore me and proceed acting like there was nothing standing in the way of you proceeding with your plans unaltered. They are not compatible with the goals of the game as I see them, or that others have largely expressed. One player owning the largest landmass will give him an insane edge.

Well, let's see. In the previous discussions, I talked about my plans for Croatoa here, here, and
here. My intended placements were discussed here and here. Since, at that stage, it was premature to start marking things out on a map that wasn't even finished, I don't see any way I could have been any more clear and explicit than I already was.

I have 'proceeded unaltered' because of the apparently vain hope that you weren't actually saying that the only way anyone is allowed to play is by building in one place, sailing someplace else, and fighting everybody along the way.

I have been working on a land-oriented power within the anticipated starting area but on a different landmass because doing it that way - and setting the precedent where there might be other such states - allows a setting where many people are in the position you describe, without forcing any given player to take part in the scrum.

I am aware of your thesis that these conflicts will be 'cold' wars. Given the differences in our N3 experiences, I don't believe it. Even if I did, while I'm willing to accept the risk that such tensions might arise naturally as part of the game, deliberately setting out to impose them on everybody seems even more likely to go places I'm flat-out not willing to follow. What I'm looking for is a starting point with enough 'ground' to work with that saturating it will let me keep up with those players running helter-skelter all over the world.

Not overwhelm them, as though I wanted to or could with the economic rules focus on industrial capacity as the generator of industrial capacity.

I chose the 'largest' continent because, being considerably smaller than Asia, it looked to my eyeball to represent a reasonable approximation of that fraction of the total landmass, and because it was large enough that the process could never be finished within the play period. If it's the size of the possible territory that you object to, I'm perfectly happy to move anywhere else that's roomy enough to provide the needed 'expansion' space.

The 'incentive to invest' will always be bigger than a land-grabbing war.
This was settled and made completely and utterly foolproof by making the armies so expensive to maintain... which winds up to be the ONLY reliable way to do so in a simulation that is completely about building and maintaining weapons of war. Naval power can cause no end of trouble, but if the army needed to invade and conquer is too expensive to maintain for a long period of time, all wars are guaranteed to be short and minor. This is often cited in Diane Duane's Star Trek novels as the only reason that Vulcan existed as a planet by the time that Earth men were fighting with sharp sticks.

The 'Vulcan Model of War' consisted of four phases: 1.) you set a clear, simple objective 2.) you rallied an army that agreed with you 3.) you achieved the objective (or failed to do so) and 4.) the army fell apart because there wasn't enough water to supply everyone for a long action.
I see something similar working on our world here. There are simply too many expenditures involved with massive overland movements and assaults. The hostile flora and fauna mean that you basically burn up ammunition as fast as you can resupply. The lack of developed infrastructure means that travel time is long. In the end, you simply can't afford to expand overland.

...I thought I would need to build an army because it was required to build things on territory previously occupied by native life. Now that I know that that is not the case, I no longer need any more of an army than is required for strict self defense, and have changed my plans accordingly. That means that the only one of us talking about invading other people as 'expansion' is you.

My entire idea, from the very start of this Barsoom project, has been to find land nobody else wanted and settle it. You're going 'YOU CAN'T DO THAT BECAUSE LAND WAR' when I'm talking about irrigation projects.

[Carthaginian]

Valles,

I'm not letting anyone settle an entire and unbroken continent. That is one of the premises of the game- everyone will have to have a fleet because everyone has overseas colonies. No one gets to build Fortress Europe and try not to have anything else to do with the world.

At this point, the only thing your argument boils down to is "I can't have what I want." I think that is untrue... I have made sure to allow as much to ensure people don't assault you the way that you were in N3. I even allowed YOU to write the terms of a treaty that would PREVENT YOUR HOME TERRITORIES FROM BEING INVADED! Of course, you took that provision out. >:(
http://www.navalism.org/index.php/topic,5789.msg75263.html#msg75263

If this is not sufficient to satisfy you, then we are at the point where the debate has become less a matter of 'there isn't enough assurance my home territory won't be invaded' than it has become 'I don't get to have exactly what I want when I want it and how I want it'... and that is neither a logical nor a respectable argument. Our experiences in N3 were different... yes. I made the most of mine; I enjoyed a very lopsided cold war with a nation a third again as strong as my own while having to replace one of the most poorly built cruiser fleets in the game. I was hemmed in, unable to fight a straight-up war, and thus resorted to a more indirect tack- securing alliances, using diplomatic pressures and not necessarially enjoying it the whole time.

If you do not want to 1.) fight an all-out war OR 2.) have less-than-lethal conflicts OR 3.) have a cold war... why are you here? Why do you want to have a nation at all if you're only going to rock back on your haunches and have minimal relations of any kind with the outside world? And why do you think that you're going to be allowed to suck up 1/5 of the entire world map to make the kind of superpower that you state gave you so much hell in the previous sim? NO ONE will be allowed to develop a superpower right out of the box. I'm sorry this conflicts with your desired style of play, but I think that all nations should start equal and I have done as much as I can to ensure that you will be as protected as possible... including letting you write that insurance.
If that is not enough, it needs to be decided whether you really want to play or not.

By the way- there is no such as 'land nobody wants.'
Everyone will want to expand, and all land is fair game for that expansion.

[snip]

Commenting...
As one of the warmongers that started the land war in Asia, one of the main contributing reasons why I started it was that it was simply the only way to get ahead. If you calculate the gain from investing investing in infrastructure - I remember as taking 50-75 years before you got return equal to the value of the investment. And that was with China. Simply put, there was no incentive at all to invest in infrastructure beyond what was dictated by the constraints of the 50% military budget. Now of course this is not true in real life but in NVerse the only way to realistic expand was to make war and hope to win land. I would, like Valles, advocate that investment return made greater for N4.5.

What I'm confused about here is how the economy of the player states will expand, if it is a given they will clash violently, yet there will be no real expansion over land. I assume that implies that wars at primarily over the coastal areas yet there is no thought given to the expansion of the economy or how the economy rows via player self-investment. What incentive is there to go to war other than border conflicts or for that matter what incentive is there not to go to war and cause the N3 equivalent of a land war rather than invest?

Time bogging simulation doesn't have to be because of land wars. The land system in N3 was greatly simplified for the Chinese war - and so was the naval system. If we have too many ships, what would stop that from escalating to the point of the Chinese Civil War, in which case, made the whole point of designing a ship in springsharp pointless?

To change the subject for a moment, I realized this never got answered in economic terms yesterday. Sections 1.2.D and 1.4 talk about producing IPP, aka Infrastructure Production Points. These points are used to created shipyards (note, a change to how IPP is spent on shipyards is coming) and new factories. There is nowhere within the rules about a minimum amount of land required on a per-factory basis. So expansion in a economic sense is not something that strictly requires more land, just investment in IPP. Carth may have some thoughts in regards to this in non-econ terms, so I will let him elaborate more if he wishes to.

[Carthaginian]

As Snip said, growth is no longer explicitly tied to land for these specific reasons. This will make it possible for nations who wish to stay small physically to becone powerfull economically without becoming greatly or overtly expansionist.

[Valles]

To change the subject for a moment, I realized this never got answered in economic terms yesterday. Sections 1.2.D and 1.4 talk about producing IPP, aka Infrastructure Production Points. These points are used to created shipyards (note, a change to how IPP is spent on shipyards is coming) and new factories. There is nowhere within the rules about a minimum amount of land required on a per-factory basis. So expansion in a economic sense is not something that strictly requires more land, just investment in IPP. Carth may have some thoughts in regards to this in non-econ terms, so I will let him elaborate more if he wishes to.

Given the lengths Carth has gone to to strawman my position, hearing my underlying concerns addressed in this manner is an unutterable relief. At the moment, by my count, we have about five possible players. Given the dictates about how much space each City should be allowed, are there any guildlines for how many 'Major Ports' we should aim for, or is that determined only by how we distribute the available production points?

[Carthaginian]

VALLES: I have stated that I am done withe the discussion of your empire. I have laid out how the nations will be set up, where they may be set up, and how to reserve their places. SNIP and I are working on the econ aspect and more work will be done on Sunday night when I get off work. He and I have made some miscalculations in the others intent, and it has laed to some of the numbers being too large. The ability to support larger fleets and armies we elected to keep... the ability to begin with continent-spanning empires we havw elwcted to cut.

[Valles]

Since Snip just saved us from the necessity, we are, indeed, done.

[Jefgte]

I hope to have no Superpower on the map at the begening of the game.
The max economical differences between states: 10%.

Add more free little islands on the map...


Jef

[Valles]

I agree; I've always expected, and agreed with the idea, that player nations should have economic parity at startup and functionally equivalent opportunities for expansion.

As to islands, I also agree that it'd be preferable to have a few more, but I think it might be better to do so by 'severing' any little isthmuses only one or two squares wide - separating the existing landmass rather than adding new ones.

For one thing, it'd probably be simpler for the mapmaker.