Annual turns

[Walter]

Well, you haven't said which costs will be definitive yet. Also, if you are going to apply a limit to the size of the armed forces based on the population like with the previous Navalism versions (5-7% of the population) equalizing populations should still be necessary.

[KWorld]

Ah, right, OK.  Currently planning on using the capped IC development costs that do not care about your population.


As far as limits on numbers of troops go, I'm hoping that the maintenance costs will keep that within reasonable boundaries.  In any event, I wouldn't set the limit as low as 5-7%, it's probably closer to 10-20% (the USSR drafted 34.6 million men for WWII, out of a 1940 population of around 170 million).

[Darman]

My preference is for not swapping territories within Europe pre-start.  If you want to join the Netherlands and Belgium into a United Provinces-type nation, then fine.  I appreciate the work you did putting that together Logi, I just firmly believe that we should not do that.  It adds too much complication. 

[Walter]

As far as limits on numbers of troops go, I'm hoping that the maintenance costs will keep that within reasonable boundaries.  In any event, I wouldn't set the limit as low as 5-7%, it's probably closer to 10-20% (the USSR drafted 34.6 million men for WWII, out of a 1940 population of around 170 million).

The 5-7% limit was not really a boundary beyond which a player could not go. You could go beyond it but it would have had an effect on your economy which would be determined by the moderator (if I remember those things correctly). So the 10-20% was still possible, but the player would have noticed the effects of that. Even if you are going to bump up that percentage, you'd still need equal populations for an equal start.

I appreciate the work you did putting that together Logi, I just firmly believe that we should not do that.  It adds too much complication.

I don't see how it add too much complication. It adds some, but too much? I don't know about that.

[Darman]

I appreciate the work you did putting that together Logi, I just firmly believe that we should not do that.  It adds too much complication.

I don't see how it add too much complication. It adds some, but too much? I don't know about that.

It adds more than I'm willing to deal with.  I'm just getting impatient with this whole waiting thing.   I know that some of you want a "real" sim, using the historical German empire, British Empire, French Empire, etc etc.  That history has already played itself out.  Could it have turned out differently?  Certainly.  Do I want to repeat it all over and over and over again?  Well, everyone lost interest in the last sim.  Lets try something a little different this time where everyone has equal resources at start.  If anyone wants to join us after we start then they get a second-line nation or any remaining first-line nations. 

[KWorld]

OK, putting my mod hat on:

While I respect the effort Logi put into trying to balance the historical populations by moving the boundaries around, I doubt it's necessary to balance our relative situations.  It also opens up more historical cans of worms about what happened, when, why, etc.


Mod Ruling:

First-line nations shall have a population in 1870 between 30 and 40 million, except for Russia which shall have a population of 80 million.  If your country's historical population falls in this range, use it.  If it is outside this range, adjust it appropriately.

[Logi]

While I respect the effort Logi put into trying to balance the historical populations by moving the boundaries around, I doubt it's necessary to balance our relative situations.  It also opens up more historical cans of worms about what happened, when, why, etc.

It's the result of the stringent constraints. If we allowed slightly different population sizes (not differing too greatly), we can have the changes limited to the following:

Netherlands keeps the DEI.
Italy gets Tirol and Slovenia.

The Italy situation then is plausible. The rest is as is. I would suppose the colonial ambitions of Japan and the Netherlands would balance each other, supposing you have a player for both.

There is no need for the Dutch to also have South Africa and Ceylon. That really gives the Dutch an edge in the colonization "game".

[KWorld]

On the Dutch situation: yes, the DEI, Ceylon, and Cape Colony give the Dutch a head start on everyone else in the colonization game.  However, there's a reason for this: colonies (especially ones where there's an imported elite ruling over a much larger indigneous work force) are prone to revolt if they feel that they're being abused.  If the Dutch over-industrialize those colonies, the Dutch run the risk of them revolting (because to industrialize, you have to educate the workers, etc).  Population-wise, yes, the DEI are very populous at this period, but they're mostly exploited indigneous natives, so shouldn't be counted as "Dutch".

Make sense?

[Logi]

I haven't read much literature on the subject so I can't be certain in the statement I'm about to make but...

From what I have read, the Dutch did not exploit their colonies nearly as much as other Western powers and their education in their colonial territories were often of a much higher quality than it's contemporaries. Their national movements were much weaker than and ran in a different vein than it's contemporaries as well.

The DEI, for example, had a very early but small and weak nationalist movement which was mostly anti-Chinese rather than independence oriented. Of course, it was anti-Chinese because of the position of the Chinese immigrants as the merchants of Indonesia whom became quite wealthy due to trade. From my understanding, the DEI independence issue really only became serious after the Japanese occupation during WW2.

Prior to that the Dutch recognized the Indonesians as European by law, and Indonesians served in the Dutch government. Out of all the colonies, it would appear the DEI considered itself the most like it's colonizer. A few articles I have perused in the past suggested that the majority of the Indonesians in the period more strongly identified as Dutch than as their native Asian ancestry.



The alternative would be to follow my previous suggestion of a Greater Netherlands retaining territory from it's Burgundy period with correspondingly large immigrant to the provinces. On a naive glance, it does not seem to be exceedingly implausible given that the Low Lands were very wealthy and tolerant in general. The exodus from England and France to their colonies due to religious oppression could have well found home in the Netherlands, as they almost did historically.

The attachment of the County of Artois, Picardy, and the other minor states could have simply be inherited by Archduke Maximilian of Austria when Mary of Burgundy married him instead of falling to the French crown as it did historically. From then on, the history could have continued as historically.

About 0.5% of the Indonesian population was European in the 1800-1900 period so, roughly 164,000 Europeans immigrated to the DEI. If we were to abstract to a situation with no DEI ceteris paribus, we could suppose the Dutch homeland would contain that many more citizens.

For a situation where the Dutch have no colonies at all, we can extrapolate from the number of Dutch in the Netherlands/Belgium region today and the number with such ancestry abroad. Today the number of dutch is 16.5 million in the Netherlands and 6.2 million in Belgium. The number of dutch in the USA, Germany, Canada, Australia, and South Africa today is 5 mil, 5 mil, 0.9 mil, 0.27 mil, and 0.16 mil respectively. So compared to the Dutch in Europe, half that population not including the DEI is abroad. We can say then if the Dutch had no colonies at all ceteris paribus would have a increased population on the order of 5 mil more.

In this manner of calculation, Greater Netherlands would have a total population of 18,832. Give an arbitrary fudge factor of 5% and we can have the high estimate for this alternative history scenario to be a population in the vicinity of 20,000. With immigrants from other countries to the Netherlands, we can make up the score without impacting other nations too much. If the Western Offshoots, excluding the USA, all immigrated to the Netherlands instead of abroad, then the Netherlands would have a population of roughly 30,000 which is good enough.

It adds more than I'm willing to deal with.  I'm just getting impatient with this whole waiting thing.   I know that some of you want a "real" sim, using the historical German empire, British Empire, French Empire, etc etc.  That history has already played itself out.  Could it have turned out differently?  Certainly.  Do I want to repeat it all over and over and over again?  Well, everyone lost interest in the last sim.  Lets try something a little different this time where everyone has equal resources at start.  If anyone wants to join us after we start then they get a second-line nation or any remaining first-line nations.

Not to sound rude, but there are quite a few forums floating on the internet for that sort of thing. In fact, I know a half dozen of the top of my head. In short, there is no need really to turn Navalism into that sort of thing.

[KWorld]

It adds more than I'm willing to deal with.  I'm just getting impatient with this whole waiting thing.   I know that some of you want a "real" sim, using the historical German empire, British Empire, French Empire, etc etc.  That history has already played itself out.  Could it have turned out differently?  Certainly.  Do I want to repeat it all over and over and over again?  Well, everyone lost interest in the last sim.  Lets try something a little different this time where everyone has equal resources at start.  If anyone wants to join us after we start then they get a second-line nation or any remaining first-line nations.

Not to sound rude, but there are quite a few forums floating on the internet for that sort of thing. In fact, I know a half dozen of the top of my head. In short, there is no need really to turn Navalism into that sort of thing.

Logi,

     Unless you can find 2 other active members of the group to back you on this one, the subject is CLOSED.  The group's decision months ago was towards a balanced start, which by definition means a-historical.  Enough already.

[Logi]

Unless you can find 2 other active members of the group to back you on this one, the subject is CLOSED.  The group's decision months ago was towards a balanced start, which by definition means a-historical.  Enough already.

As far as I can tell there's only 4 active members here: me, you, Darman, and Walter. Your demand doesn't seem practical and for that matter I have not seen
the group's decision month ago [...] towards a balanced start" that you so tout. What discussion of an equal start there was has been by members who aren't even active anymore.

To be quite honest here, four is not a group and neither is three, since I have elected not to play.

Since you have elected to adopt a quite confrontational tone about this: Ahistorical is not the same as fantasy land, which is the state of affairs currently.

[Jefgte]

...Since you have elected to adopt a quite confrontational tone about this: Ahistorical is not the same as fantasy land, which is the state of affairs currently.

We must take a decision and hold it. Make adjustments are always possible. But, do not throw it all on the floor if you want to start.

Jef

[Darman]

On the Dutch situation: yes, the DEI, Ceylon, and Cape Colony give the Dutch a head start on everyone else in the colonization game.  However, there's a reason for this: colonies (especially ones where there's an imported elite ruling over a much larger indigneous work force) are prone to revolt if they feel that they're being abused.  If the Dutch over-industrialize those colonies, the Dutch run the risk of them revolting (because to industrialize, you have to educate the workers, etc).  Population-wise, yes, the DEI are very populous at this period, but they're mostly exploited indigneous natives, so shouldn't be counted as "Dutch".

Make sense?

It also places the Dutch at a disadvantage because they need to defend their far-flung colonies.