PBEM - Bonaparte IV

[McMonkey]

I thought it made sense to start a new thread to discuss this proposed multiplayer game.

If France is the protagonist & is expected to fight virtually every other nation, then what kind of troop ratio should we go for. 4:1 seems a little high, but if France is going to have to take on a grand alliance then that might make sense. What are your thoughts on this?

I guess one option would be to have France start off smaller & then gain units via city capture events, so Bonaparte's forces grow according to his success on the Battlefield.

 

[Patine]

I thought it made sense to start a new thread to discuss this proposed multiplayer game.

If France is the protagonist & is expected to fight virtually every other nation, then what kind of troop ratio should we go for. 4:1 seems a little high, but if France is going to have to take on a grand alliance then that might make sense. What are your thoughts on this?

I guess one option would be to have France start off smaller & then gain units via city capture events, so Bonaparte's forces grow according to his success on the Battlefield.

I don't want to make a commitment just yet, given how RL has dogged me into a delay of posting a small-scale player in Imperialism by one two three days each turn of late, but I MAY be convinced to be roped in if my obligations lighten and a slot just won't be otherwise filled, I am curious about the start of the scenario - does it start with Napoleon's coup on the Directory (or even his coronation as Emperor of the French), or does it go back to Dopplekaiser Joseph's ultimatum to the National Convention over the well-being of the French Royal Family (most notably, his sister)?

 

[Northerner]

Sign me up!

Afraid I have no input in how the scenario might be balanced. We shouldn’t be afraid to accept that the first attempt at a playthrough might be a quick beta testing rush - and perhaps try and plan a day where players can sit by the computer and await their turn! Although that might be an impossible task.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I'll play.

My limited understanding of the Napoleonic wars was that Napoleon would inflict a defeat on one of his enemies and then they would sue for peace to avoid being conquered entirely. Napoleon would accept in order to put resources into other campaigns. This can happen fairly naturally if every civ has its own objective.

On the other hand, if the game is "Europe Versus Napoleon," then France must be really strong to fight the rest of the world, or we need some sophisticated house rules and events to prevent Austria or Prussia from fighting to the end to delay France long enough for England and Russia to build up strength.

 

[Buck2005]

If you take me, I can play. ) However, it's unlikely that I will be able to help in the creation of the scenario, since my knowledge in TOTPP is close to zero ... The only thing I can do is draw maps.

In the game I can take myself some very backward state, like the Ottoman Turkey ...)

 

[McMonkey]

Well it looks like we have a full compliment of players. It may take a week or two to get the scenario ready, but I'll try my best to get it done as soon as possible. I have quite a few reference books on the subject & John Ellis's original was a well balanced scenario, but I think France needs to be beefed up to make things more interesting. All other nations should be fairly balanced, with Britain's emphasis on the Navy.

Buck,
Of course you are welcome. The Ottomans are Barbarian, but Sweden & Spain are both player controlled.

 

[techumseh]

If you want France against Europe, you may as well make it a single player scenario. There was considerable diplomacy in this period and though France had the largest and best army it was never really strong enough to simultaneously take on every other power single handed, or to completely conquer and permanently occupy the major powers. I suggest leaving military strengths at historical levels and let diplomacy take its course.

 

[McMonkey]

That's a fair argument Tech. For the first attempt we can leave it at the same levels as John Ellis' original and see how things turn out. I'll take a look over the coming days.

I do think eliminating trade will prove to be a good move though. Approaching it like Harvey Keitel's character in the Duellists is the way to go (a great film by Ridley Scott if anyone has not seen it!)

 

[Buck2005]

Well it looks like we have a full compliment of players. It may take a week or two to get the scenario ready, but I'll try my best to get it done as soon as possible. I have quite a few reference books on the subject & John Ellis's original was a well balanced scenario, but I think France needs to be beefed up to make things more interesting. All other nations should be fairly balanced, with Britain's emphasis on the Navy.

Buck,
Of course you are welcome. The Ottomans are Barbarian, but Sweden & Spain are both player controlled.

It seems to me not very historic to make "Ottoman Turkey" barbarians. In any case, for economic and military potential, they were not much inferior during the Napoleonic wars to other peripheral nations like Russia or Spain.

I would "cut" from the game "Sweden" (as an insignificant secondary power). And its territory was transferred for example to Great Britain. Rationale:
1). In many scenarios, Portugal is part of the UK. This does not bother anyone ...)
2). Real historical Sweden during this period did not conduct an active independent policy. She usually joined the coalitions that the United Kingdom organized.
3). Finally, why the UK, and not another country? Because in 1809 there was a Russo-Swedish war because of Finland. And, surprisingly, at the same time, there was a Russo-British war (which had a formal character, as the fulfillment of the conditions of the Treaty of Tilsit).

In sum, for these reasons, you can easily "sacrifice" Sweden. And create a normal full participant "Turkey". )

 

[McMonkey]

Ideally I would like to include both Sweden and the Ottoman Empire, but we're limited to seven Civs. You make a convincing argument. However, Sweden was quite active during the Napoleonic wars even though it was peripheral.

One solution could be to combine Spain & the Ottoman Empire into one playable nation, but with the understanding that they have to be played as if they are separate (EG No joint Spanish-Ottoman attacks to take Malta or Sicily). They are geographically separated so this might work. It would also give Austria and Russia something to think about.

Another option would be to combine Prussia and Sweden.

None of these are ideal, but however you slice the pie, one nation will need to be combined or assigned to the Barbarians. I'll give this some more thought. Please keep the feedback coming!

 

[Buck2005]

In general, I do not claim the "right to vote" in the creation of this scenario, given my little knowledge of creating scenario. ) As you do, you will do so. Therefore, please consider this only as advice and ideas, without an appeal for their execution ...)

Yes, I agree with you. Prussia + Sweden are too close geographically to each other. And the potential war between Sweden-Prussia and Russia would be very strange ...

The combination of Spain and Turkey seems to me more rational. These are two backward countries. However, Turkey is interesting to me because in this historical period it ruled Selim III. This ruler reminds me of the Russian Emperor Peter I. Both these rulers made significant reforms in the Westernization and modernization of their countries.

In this game (as I understand it) only human players are planned, without AI. This means that it gives a very great opportunity for modeling, if we use artificial rules that commit to observe everything. For example (if you still make Sweden part of the UK) you can prohibit the main British fleet from entering the Baltic to the east of Copenhagen. "Swedish-British" cities will have the right to build only strictly defined units. They will be forbidden to build, for example, the British "super-battleships." Or something in this spirit ...)

 

[techumseh]

The Ottomans were peripheral to the Napoleonic wars. Spain was an important actor, first as an ally of France (with a large fleet, until Trafalgar), then as an important theatre of war where its guerrillas were essential to the victory of Wellington. Sweden was a small, but active participant in the Napoleonic wars - it had a small but not insignificant fleet, fought a war with Russia over Finland, and was an active participant in the Leipzig campaign. IMHO, Ellis got it right the first time.

I'm away for much of the summer, but if I can find a way to transfer the scenario to my laptop mid-game, I would be willing to play Spain - without the Turks.

 

[McMonkey]

All opinions are welcome. We all see things from a slightly different point of view & I'm often convinced to change my mind by a well thought out argument.

Some basic house rules might be the best way to do this. I think one of the beauties of multiplayer games is that you can introduce house rules that would take masses of events programming for the AI to obey. One advantage of ToTPP is the labels which can be added to the map, so if there was a line the Royal Navy was not permitted to cross then it could be physically marked on the map.

 

[Grishnach]

Hi folks!
Just one quick thought/comment from the side lines regarding the barbarians: If this is a ToTPP scenario you could always use lua to enable the barbarians as a playable tribe - thats just the setting of one byte (still has some drawbacks regarding research/tech tree etc)

 

[McMonkey]

That would be interesting & would allow the Ottomans to be playable. Technological research is not a major feature of this scenario. How would we go about making this happen?

 

[Grishnach]

Well, one would have to check how it interacts with the multiplayer engine, but essentially all thats nescessary is that the first player on his turn opens up the lua console and types

civ.game.humanPlayers = 0x01 | 0x02 | 0x04 | 0x08 | 0x10 | 0x20 | 0x40 | 0x80

- that enables all tribes as playable according to @Catfish 's fantastic safe game format page. Barbarians would skip the first turn (or more correctly, AI would always control them on turn 1), but then it should be good to go

And probably you would want to enable the AI parameter settings patch in ToTPP - normally barbarian cities stop all production once 16 barbarian attack units are present on the continent (and the city has a defender) - TNO made that editable though

(if one or more of the tribes should remain AI controlled the corresponding element can be removed in the bitwise-or chain above, btw, the first part 0x01 is barbians, 0x02 the "white tribe" slot etc)

 

[McMonkey]

Thanks. It will be interesting to see if this works with hotseat mode.

 

[Grishnach]

Hotseat mode should, I guess, be no problem at all. But please test it and tell me if I'm right

 

[voltar]

There the Bonaparte II ToT version which seems functional also.

And IIRC tech did matter for buildings in the long game.

 

[McMonkey]

I'm also happy to play Bonaparte II if people want to get on with a game right away. We can always start IV when it's ready.

Technology is a factor, but not as much as in other scenarios. The development of new unit types is pretty limited as far as I remember.