Snowball effect

[Iñaki Harrizabalagatar]

Hi
In many strategic games, the more provinces a player conquer the more resources he get, in a snowball effect,however historically that was rarely the case, as E. Wallerstein explained, empires are relatively inefficient extracting excedents from their conquered territories, on the contrary the benefits are regularly exceded by administration and military costs of maintainig the conquests, so that empires end up overstretching themselves is CoG taking that path? It would be agood counterbalance in solo games, and as the objective of players is glory, and no conquer the world by itself, I imagine it could be done reasonably

[jnier]

ORIGINAL: Iñaki Harrizabalagatar

Hi
In many strategic games, the more provinces a player conquer the more resources he get, in a snowball effect,however historically that was rarely the case, as E. Wallerstein explained, empires are relatively inefficient extracting excedents from their conquered territories, on the contrary the benefits are regularly exceded by administration and military costs of maintainig the conquests, so that empires end up overstretching themselves is CoG taking that path? It would be agood counterbalance in solo games, and as the objective of players is glory, and no conquer the world by itself, I imagine it could be done reasonably

As a general rule, I would agree with you, many large empire collapse under their own due to the inefficiency that comes with a massive empire. And in many games, players get too many benefits from conquered territories. OTOH, Nappy was able to get LOTS of fairly high quality soldiers from his conquered territories and sattelites. So in some ways I think that Napoleon was the expception to the rule. The Poles, Germans, and Italians troops all fought fairly well for him (esp. Poles), because many saw HIM as the liberator, not the allies.

And, in the end, the French empire collapsed because Napoleon (stupidly) refused to back away from unreasonable, meglomaniacal demands, which ensured enless war that no country could sustain. For example, if he would have given up on the Continental System in 1811, when it was clear it wasn't working and was tremendously unpopular, there may have been no Russian Campaign. Or if he would have cut a deal with the Austrians prior to their entry into the 1813 campaign or made concessions to the allies prior to the 1814 campaign, he may have survived. Some shrewd political maneavering could have saved him.

I guess what I'm saying is that the constant war, brought on by poor political decisions is what did Nappy in, not the French Empire becoming too large and collapsing under its own weight. And he was able to extract a large number of high quality troops from his conquered territories.

[sol_invictus]

inaki, I agree, most if not all games make the acquisition of new territory the be all and end all of your objectives, with controlling this newfound land an afterthought. I'm guessing it is easier to program giving a conqueror more tax revenue and population than factoring in popular discontent and civil resistance. I hope CG models the difficulty of administering newly conquered territory.

jnier, I also agree, Napoleon was an exception, to a point. He was seen early as a liberator from the ossified and feudal ancien regimes that had their boot on the throat of a stiring nationalism in Germany and Italy. Napoleon capitalized on this to good effect. However, this formula didn't work so well in Spain. As I'm sure you are aware, it wasn't called the Spanish Ulcer for nothing. Napoleon just never knew when to stop. Like many great military minds who are also empire builders, he was a poor diplomat who couldn't compromise. The gods rarely give all their blessings to any one person. I have confidence that CG will get the balance right.

[ericbabe]

This is, indeed, one of the issues we are looking at in our testing -- whether to apply some sort of diseconomy of scale to large empires. We really don't have such a rule in place currently -- though our economic caps somewhat simulate this.

It also seems to be the case that the Napoleonic system actually made some places more productive -- and our government rules reflect this: provinces under the rule of nations with high levels of feudalism provide free basic troops during the Spring levee, but their economic values are diminished.

[sol_invictus]

I would also think that on a global scale, when a conqueror just keeps on conquering, eventually, everyone will despise him and put aside their differences to squash the troublemaker. Sorta like what happened historicly. No nation can take on everyone. Seems like that would happen from reading the features of the game. I guess it would make diplomatic AI assume a very important role.

Paradox did this in EU with the Badboy rating for certain actions. After so much conquering, everybody would be beating a path toward your border. Also, it might be possible to model it historicly and after so much time of French or other occupation, the people would start to realize that these liberators are here to stay and the occupier would start to have difficulty keeping people in line. Is it possible in the game for a nation to actually liberate a people and give them autonomy? Can we as Napoleon play the part of Son of the Revolution and become the enlightened liberator of central Europe? Create a fledgeling German or Italian State that isn't a puppet or vassal?

[strategy]

Good looking game; but then I would think so, working on something of the same type.

If I may make a suggestion, what you would want to model to prevent "snowballing" is the effect of French policy in Europe. Napoleon/France's advantage initially (to put it a bit simplistically) was that they were riding on the wave of the French revolution, which meant that many of the common people initially supported the French avidly (with the exception of a few states/provinces with strong loyalties). As time passes however, and the "liberation" that these idealists turn out to be just another oppressor, the mood turns - and France inevitably suffered from the same problem that affects almost all conquoring powers... over-extension.

Had Napoleon done as Arinvald wants to - become the enlightened liberator (rather than just pretending) - then things might have held together much better.

[Roads]

ORIGINAL: jnier

As a general rule, I would agree with you, many large empire collapse under their own due to the inefficiency that comes with a massive empire. And in many games, players get too many benefits from conquered territories. OTOH, Nappy was able to get LOTS of fairly high quality soldiers from his conquered territories and sattelites. So in some ways I think that Napoleon was the expception to the rule. The Poles, Germans, and Italians troops all fought fairly well for him (esp. Poles), because many saw HIM as the liberator, not the allies.

It's true that Napoleon did recruit consistently good troops from parts of Germany and Italy, and particularly from Poland. On the other hand the troops he recruited from Naples and the Netherlands, for instance were pretty poor. By 1809, if not earlier, the French were hardly seen as liberators any more, and I think one can make a very good case that the satellites were a significant burden on France - in other words while there was clearly a big contribution of manpower, it's far from certain that they were of any financial benefit at all.

[jnier]

ORIGINAL: Roads

ORIGINAL: jnier

As a general rule, I would agree with you, many large empire collapse under their own due to the inefficiency that comes with a massive empire. And in many games, players get too many benefits from conquered territories. OTOH, Nappy was able to get LOTS of fairly high quality soldiers from his conquered territories and sattelites. So in some ways I think that Napoleon was the expception to the rule. The Poles, Germans, and Italians troops all fought fairly well for him (esp. Poles), because many saw HIM as the liberator, not the allies.

It's true that Napoleon did recruit consistently good troops from parts of Germany and Italy, and particularly from Poland. On the other hand the troops he recruited from Naples and the Netherlands, for instance were pretty poor. By 1809, if not earlier, the French were hardly seen as liberators any more, and I think one can make a very good case that the satellites were a significant burden on France - in other words while there was clearly a big contribution of manpower, it's far from certain that they were of any financial benefit at all.

I agree, but I would also add that France desperately needed the manpower (from Germany Italy & Poland), so that was a greater consideration (especially in 1812-1813) than was the financial burden they imposed.

[Iñaki Harrizabalagatar]

That is not the case, every year about 70% of the conscriptable population in France was declared exempted, mainly on social considerations.

[ancient doctor]

I think its not difficult to implement the cost of maintaining a huge empire by getting anc controlling unfriendly lands.Simply add some garrison requirements that grow bigger the farther from your borders the area is.Also make an in game penalty on production earned from conquered territories ecpecially those taken away from other non friendly empires.In the end a a cherry in the cake make a cultural and ir religious penalty to ensure that differences of that kind will prohibide players to use the snowball effect.
Of cource all the above are ideas and i dont know if they can be implemented with the game engine that you developed since i am not in the makers team.

[jnier]

ORIGINAL: Iñaki Harrizabalagatar

That is not the case, every year about 70% of the conscriptable population in France was declared exempted, mainly on social considerations.

In all cases of conscription there will be a substantial proportion of people who are not drafted because they are needed to do other things. You cannot conscript 100% of the male population and expect the country to function.

[jnier]

double post

[Iñaki Harrizabalagatar]

Of course you can´t draft 100%, but in the case of France there was the lower classes that got drafted, what I mean is that France was not ina desperate need of manpower, however it is true that drafting the higher classes would risk turmoil and decrease support for Napoleonic regime.

[jnier]

ORIGINAL: Iñaki Harrizabalagatar

Of course you can´t draft 100%, but in the case of France there was the lower classes that got drafted, what I mean is that France was not ina desperate need of manpower, however it is true that drafting the higher classes would risk turmoil and decrease support for Napoleonic regime.

If there was no manpower shortage, and the French didn't need satelite troops, explain why classes were constantly being called up early, so that by the time 1814 rolls arounds Nappy has an army full of 15 year olds? If there was no manpower shortage, how come Nappy was outnumbered so greatly after he lost his satellites in 1814?

[Iñaki Harrizabalagatar]

Here you mix 2 issues
1) how come Nappy was outnumbered so greatly after he lost his satellites in 1814? of course satellites provided additional manpower, I don´t deny that
2) why classes were constantly being called up early? not constantly, only in 1813-1814.
My point is that Napoleon´s regime was based upon the support of the medium-high French classes and he could not draft heavily on those classes without risking losing their support, keep in mind that Napoleon´s regime lacked legitimacy, and ultimately depended on constant success.

[JosephL]

Er, I stopped reading this thread around Eric Babe's post: But I will say this.

Having just played through the beta test version I can say that while the classic "Snowball" model is typical, there are some things about COG (in the version I played) that make it a little... difficult. It isn't so much that size creates inefficiency... its that growing to be huge takes... huge amounts of effort and time. As I marched my Swedish Army on Moscow (haha, that was thanks to setting myself on "Major Advantage" and everyone else to "Major Disadvantage) I really found that my war of taking out 4 russian provinces and Norway (don't ask) hadn't really given me that much Glory! (Getting Glory is the point of the game in "normal" mode).

Yes I now had more resources coming in, but I also had a very large russian front to defend and it would take QUITE a bit of time for me to get the resources pooled to create a new army to defend my new land. Plus Russia had apparently adopted the strategy of making guerilla units in my new lands...

So... my point is there are definate disadvantages to trying to snowball your size... the largest of which involves having a huge army starving to death because the bugger guerillas are destroying your supply depots... (there go 10,000 soldiers a month... which is a lot more than the storming of Stallingrad lost me)

-Joe

[Roads]

Any other examples of how the game counters 'snowballing'? I don't mean to sound critical, but I tend to agree with Inaki that this is the biggest problem I have with most games - once you get big you can outbuy everyone and the game becoems boring. While things like needing a long time to massively expand an army can slow the snowballing, they don't really stop it unless it becomes increasingly hard to support the large army.

Do the guerillas last forever? Does it cost signifcant resources for the enemy to produce them?

[JosephL]

these are questions that will be good for a certain upcoming chat we have planned *wink wink* but my feeling from the beta was this:

Guerillas are exceptionally easy to make. You can easily create them in any country someone else has conquered (diplomats are the ones who make them). You can also use diplomats to really beat up on a conquering country.

I suspect another "stopper" in snowballing is the diplomatic options. There's more than one way to skin a cat, and while I can't comment on the AI (I'll leave that for Eric) I would imagine in a multiplayer game with more than 2 people it is very likely that the two people are not going to sit idle while someone else snowballs, they'll form secret alliances, trade routes, lend armies... Diplomacy is definately a wild card you don't encounter in other games of this type (seriously, I sat jaw agape when I realized how many diplomacy things you can do).


I also think the concentration on glory lessens the importance of snowballing. You may be huge, you may be unstopable, but if the enemy is running for their lives and hiding in forts you don't get jack-squat for it. Instead if your enemy is running around your country guerilla style (not actually guerillas, but using small corps of soldiers set on avoid battle and pillage) they can seriously steal glory (art and culture). A lot of this game in the beta stage seems to lead to fortune favoring the bold. Get out in the field and battle to gain glory points the fastest... so if someone is building a massive army and prepping for the invasion to end all invasions, you can be out there, countries away from them, swarming the enemy corps and armies as much as possible.

In the end though, you are rewarded for winning: If you are winning you get bonuses, the more you win the harder you become to stop. In theory the more you win I would hope the more the AI would band together against you (I didn't play long enough to comment on that though). With the diplomatic options it is CERTAINLY possible that the AI could use its combined strength to thrash any one opponent. France may be tough, but if England invaded from the north, Prussia and Austria from the west and Spain from the east the little buggers wouldn't last forever... especially if France had already extended an arm into another country (hit the supply depots and start starving the army).

-Joe