EiANW PBEM Game Completed

[Trax]

Our four player group has compleated EiANW with a French victory in December of 1812.
Finish order with percentage; France 101, Spain 89, G.B. 88, Turkey 83, Russia 60, Austria 51, Prussia 38.
Ai Spain and Turkey did nothing to deserve their fininshing positions!

In our game France won two unconditional peace treaties from both Austria and Prussia. GB won a
conditional peace from the Turks. Russia was invaded twice by France but was never defeated.
Our game had human players for France, GB, Austria and Russia. After about 1806 we found it preferable to let
the Austrian player also control Prussia.
We started our game about the first of February 2008 and finished mid January 2009. There was
about 5 game months of do-overs with the early problems in the game. Progress has been steady for quite
a while now. This adds up to about 1700 turns in 350 days an average of 5 player turns
per day. We did have several weeks of no play so the average of 5 turns is misleading. On a good
evening we often could get through two phases of a game month.
Our group is going to shuffle countries and start again.

[ndrose]

Nice going! I think that's the first non-ftf game of any form of EiA that I've heard of that actually finished. Gives one hope....

[obsidiandrag]

Did you use any of the skipping phases? (like for the Austrian/Prussian naval)



For the undeserving Spanish and Turkish - did the AI declare and actually attack anyone? (Turkey vs Russia or Austria - or Spain vs France or England)



Just some things I have been wondering with a game of multiple players vs AI..



Did you do any combined moves or try and cede - offer money to allies?



Dragon

[Trax]

We have been using the skip phase feature since it was offered. Mostly the Austrians and Prussians skipping Naval phases.
It speeds up play.

The Spanish did nothing but sit there and watch. The Turks attacked into Russia a bit then stopped.

GB financed Russia when Moscow was occupied for a while. GB also sent funds to Prussia and Austria. Austria sent funds to Russia and Prussia.

From time to time GB lent corps to Russia and lent Swedish corps to Russia. Russia also lent corps to GB. Sweden was ceded from Russia to Austria and then on to GB. Our game ended up France vs the rest of us with Spain sitting it out and Turkey prodding at the Russians.

I should have thanked Marshall in my first post. While we provided fodder for the bug mill he got us out of several jams with timely bug fixes.

[pzgndr]

Very impressive.  Bravo!
 
Would you say perhaps that the game is playable yet??  LOL  [;)]

[NeverMan]

Did the AI getting all those VP and PP for doing nothing interfere with the game at all? Did you find this annoying or troublesome in any way?

I have played many FTF games where the Germans were combined, of course, those were with classic EiA rules but still, did you guys like it? Did you feel it took away some of the dynamics of diplomacy and turn the game into a more us vs. them game?

[Trax]

A game that lasts for a year is more about the voyage than the destination. The vp given to the Ai players was not an issue with our players save for GB who was a bit miffed at placing behind the Spanish. After all, the GB navy was dominant in all oceans and GB money, corps and loaned minor corps were very active. GB had several vacations in Rome and Florence for the winter months.

[NeverMan]

And how did you feel about having a combined Germany?

[Trax]

We feel that the game needs a human to play Austria and Prussia. France can take too much advantage of an Ai running these countries. In the early versions of the game there was a lot of grief in the building and handling of Ai corps, we found it necessary to take over. This happened in our game after France had carved up most of Prussia. In our next game the Frenchman will face a tougher challange vs the German states.

[NeverMan]

Trax,

Actually I was just wondering how you felt about a human (the same human) running BOTH Au and Pr, making for a Germany so to speak?

Personally, while I played this way many times simply due to the lack of another player, etc, I found this (in the Orig EiA) put France at a little bit of a disadvantage (as opposed to if there were two players instead of one); HOWEVER, looking at the current EiANW I don't think that the disadvantage would be nearly as great since EiANW is unbalanced toward France already, IMO. What do you think?

[Jimmer]

We had a similar problem. Our solution was to have GB play Prussia, but play them as separate nations (i.e. stick to each nation's specific goals in history). That works quite well, and we used it several times.
 
We also tried Russia and Spain in a similar arrangement. The guy who played them did it quite well (they almost went to war with each other at one point). But, the agreement was that Russia couldn't just use Spain as cannon fodder against Turkey or France. Spain became an early French ally, while Russia went British. It was interesting, but would be easy to abuse. Unfortunately, we didn't finish that game, so we didn't see any of the longer-term issues that might have existed.
 
But, we really liked the GB/Prussia option.

[obsidiandrag]

Do you remember what level you had the AI on? Did either of the Spanish or Turkish AI's seek out the Ottoman (even though I already know the answer is probably no) but just wondering.. Did you see any AI MP's building up the minor free states (or even creating them for that matter?).

I have not seen this but am hoping with the way the AI (French) is looking to grab minors better, seems AI (Austria) wants Italy and AI(Prussia) goes for northern european that it will get there.. for now though all I see for Turkey is the Egypt then happy to sit (or uslessly declare on Russia), and for Spain they will take Morocco and declare on Algeria but only move one space in from Morocco and starve there for years...

How did they act in your game toward the minors as the versions got further along?

[Trax]

It would be better for France if Austria and Prussia were controlled by two people. The cooperation difficulties would be more fun to watch. We found that one player could take both nations, the idea was not to throw Prussia under the bus in favour of Austria etc.

We had the Ai set on hard. There was no OE effort from the Turks. France built and lost Poland twice, and built the CotR.
The Spanish sent a corps to north Africa early in the game using it's navy. The corps sat there and took forage losses until it dissapeared. The Ai Turks attacked into Russia and stopped. They were not able to get together an attack into Egypt.

As versions went along there was very little action with minors as France held most of them on the continent and GB held the ones that France couldn't reach. GB did take and lose most of Italy a couple of times.

[NeverMan]

When we did the Germans (Au and Pr as 1 player), we did that literally, meaning it was the Germans. The win total for that player was the combined win total of Au and Pr, so it would be very difficult to tank one for the other.

I believe that we also tried this once with Ru/Sp, but it didn't turn out nearly as well.