Hi countmc,
Thank you again for all your feedback. They are very much appreciated and have helped me address some unforseen errors.
I thought the naval aspect of the game was challenging. The way you set up the scenario I basically had to follow through on the strategy Napoleon tried of combining his fleet in the Med, with the Spanish, with his Brest squadron. Unfortunately, he got caught by the Brits and Nelson off the coast of Spain and was defeated. In the game after the Med squadron of the Brits was destroyed there basically was a large British fleet concentration around England (the home fleet) and that was it. If there was a way to keep a somewhat strong squadron around Gibraltar that would add to the difficulty of achieving naval supremacy.
Of all the designs elements, controlling the AI naval units in Civilization is by far the most difficult and unpredictable. I’ve encountered many occasions in testing this scenario where British naval units would just sail by French ships without attacking.
I actually have various British naval squadrons pop up both in the Mediterranean and Baltic seas during the scenario. The problem is once they are deployed, there is almost no way to predict their overall behavior or control their actions.
A human English player would jump on every opportunity to sink French vessels; thereby making France’s bid for maritime supremacy difficult in the extreme. Unfortunately, there are very few tricks in the designer’s bag to make the AI naval units adopt a sure fire aggressive stance.
If I am remembering the disparity in the naval kills it was because I was able to get my combine fleet into Brest, defeat large number of British ships that were off of Bristol, and then that next turn a large number of British ships sortied out to attack my fleet. My three deckers were battered but able to hold on and defeat another large number of British ships. Essentially I achieved a naval supremacy by fighting three naval battles against the Brits, one destroying their Med fleet off the coast of Naples, and then fighting two battles destroying fleets off the coast of Bristol.
For certain, being able to gather the French naval forces into a large task force to attack the British navy is a good strategy. As you indicated, I ensured the French vessels are located in very different location during the opening set up, and have tried to place British naval task forces and insert move to command for said navy to try and prevent the French navy from gathering. Alas, as I indicated above, once the game begins there is simply no way to guarantee how the British navy will react.
It appears, as such, that my only option is to increase the number of vessels the French need to kill to achieve maritime supremacy.
I also think a couple, somewhat more radical changes could happen that would be interesting. Have an event or city that needs to be captured for the French to receive some of the Spanish fleet.
One possibility is to have the British holding Spanish port early on with major fortifications and if the French take it they could receive some ships of line? Just some general musings, but a big part of the lead up to the Battle of Trafalgar was the maneuvering of the French to combine their fleet with the Spanish fleet to give them numerical superiority over the qualitatively better British fleet. Putting a stronger British naval presence around Gibraltar to prevent French fleet coming together would definitely make the game harder, but to balance that out I would come up with a way for the French to potentially receive Spanish ships.
Though an interesting idea, this would kind of conflict with my whole Portuguese intervention event, since to be able to attack these British held cities would require France to enter Spain itself.
Another idea would be to create a reason/objective for the French to get re-engaged in Egypt. Historically, Napoleon thought of using Egypt as a base to march to India to defeat the British, even after his initial invasion and failure. I understand that would be a major re-write of the game, but would be very interesting. To create almost a financial incentive for the French to invest in the conquest of Egypt. It would also force far more naval action in the med and keep the British being more heavily invested in that theater.
I thought about trying to include some kind of Egypt event but in the end decided against it for 2 reasons 1) because Napoleon had already attempt this in 1798 and it was ultimately a failure and therefore it was unlikely that he would attempt it again and 2) even though as you state below this was to an extent a global war, I needed to limit it to the European theater for the very obvious reason that the size of the map limited the scope of the conflict.
Historically, the French actually conquered the island of Corfu to keep a Russian squadron out of the Adriatic. It would be interesting if you could do the same thing in the game. I don't know if you could maybe use a teleport set up like you have in Denmark. Maybe until the French take Corfu the Russian have Frigates created on a regular basis in the Adriatic that are doing shore bombardments or until Corfu is conquered you have the Brits doing landing parties on the Italian coast.
This is an interesting idea as well, though I would be concerned that players might complain, not necessarily unjustly, that they were losing too many land units to these shore bombardment activities, as was the case for the northern French coastal cities.
Part of the design could be trying to get the French to leave their protected bases. I kept my fleet in port until strong enough and chose the time and place of my fight against the Brits. If there was a reason to move a fleet to Ireland to cause trouble for the Brits? Historically, Napoleon was constantly trying to slip fleets out of the blockade to cause trouble for the Brits in peripheral theaters. I know this is hard to create using only a Europe map when truly, in many ways, the Napoleonic wars were global conflicts with major actions in North America, Latin America (if you include the Spanish colonies wars of independence), conflict in India, the fighting in Egypt, and the general British policy of taking all of the open Dutch colonies once the French took the Netherlands. It is hard to show that global aspect of conflict, but you could maybe code a reason and way for the French to invade Egypt or Ireland.
As mentioned previously, trying to represent the global conflict was simply beyond the scope or ability of this scenario to tackle. Like for Egypt, I did consider trying to implement an Ireland based event but again it seemed, at the time like it would have been a mere sideshow with no real value.
I know that puts you in a bind with the objective of taking the English objective cities, but you could go down the path of tradition and say the only way for the French to land troops in England is through channel barges that are only created once Naval supremacy is achieved.
I actually started out with the idea of using barges but in the end decided against it as it still would have made it too simple for France to invade England. As you may recall, Napoleon had assembled an army of 200,000 men at Boulogne, which was less than 20 miles across from the enemy coast, but was reluctant to proceed with the invasion until the necessary conditions were met, hence my idea to implement the Maritime Supremacy concept.
One last recommendation, that I still stand by, is to give the French the ability to have Saxon troops when that conquer Dresden, with the caveat of if/when the Russian/Austrians/Prussians 'liberate' certain cities the Saxon units are disbanded and new ones rise to join the Coalition. It would be a way to show how the Saxons switching sides during the Battle of Nations (Leipzig) was a major factor in the French defeat in that pivotal battle.
There already is a similar type of event that occurs starting in 1813 if France fails to hold on to certain central European cities. For the event to trigger really depends on how well, or poorly, your are doing at the time.
Overall, this and the Vietnam scenario and the Russian Revolution scenario are the three that have the greatest replay value to me...
Were you referring to my
Vietnam scenario?
I enjoy this one greatly, it is super challenging and the Spanish Ulcer really makes it hard. Under these new events I have not made it far enough to take on Russia, but my assumption is that is nearly impossible.
I’m pleased to hear players keep referring to the Spanish campaign as the ulcer or some similar synonym, as it means it was properly crafted.
The Russian campaign has always given me my share of headaches, though McMonkey seems to have developed a winning strategy when he played the scenario.
Hope this helps. None of my thoughts are meant in anyway as a criticism to your creation of this scenario, which I am hugely enjoying.
I always appreciate players’ feedback and very often take them into account in my revised versions. In this particular case, you’ve offered a lot of interesting ideas, though some of which would require a substantial effort to implement and test.
In the same vein, players shouldn’t be offended if I don’t implement all of their recommendations, as there can be a variety of reasons why I might have chosen not to do so.
As I may have already indicated to John Petroski, I started working on this project probably a little over two years ago and it’s been a long road, in which I’ve invested many many hours, and overall I’m happy with the results. I’m not entirely closing the door on revisiting some of the proposed changes but for certain not in the near future. For the time being, I would like to move on to a new project and challenges.
For the short term, I will limit myself to releasing version 1.2 of the scenario in a day or so, based on your invaluable feedback related to the Franco-Spanish alliance and war of 5th Coalition bugs.
