PBEM 109: Bad food and Bad attitudes - A British AAR

[Mus]

ORIGINAL: brianlala

Why don't you and Spain offer to split the difference and sign a 7 or 8 year deal? If I (still admittedly a beginner) was Britain, I'd also want that alliance to be as long as possible and would prefer the 10 year deal to the 5 year deal.

I don't actually want an enforced peace, what I truly want is a working alliance.

All an enforced peace with Spain accomplishes for me is prevents me from attacking and sinking his fleet. A working alliance (by working I mean one in which we communicate, help each other out, etc.) greatly increases my ability to project power into the Med and increases my chance of long term success.

You have to understand that it is difficult for Britain to view Spain's fleet as anything but a floating 200 Glory target. If I attack I almost certainly win decisively, gain 200 Glory and retain the strength in numbers and quality to face off with the French Navy in defense of the British Isles.

Therefore I need more than territory and an enforced peace to make a deal truly worth it in the longterm. I need the working alliance.

That is why I only want to go for the 5 year enforced peace. If the working alliance portion falls through I don't want to be locked in to peace with Spain for the entire game.

If I establish a working alliance I will be forgoing any future attacks on Spain unless the unlikely event of him betraying me took place. The working alliance is worth giving up the Glory for taking out the Spanish Fleet.

I can always smack around the Russian fleet if I need some quick Glory and National Morale down the road.

[:D]

PS The breakthrough is him dropping the 10 year enforced peace idea (I think he realized it was unreasonable and not going to happen) and showing some enthusiasm towards the idea of a REAL (working) longterm alliance.

BTW I use the term "working" alliance to distinguish it from the phoney alliances that sometimes occur in the game between players. These phoney alliances are sometimes nothing more than stronger enforced peace treaties.

I will address Austria later if I have time. I am playing Austria in a couple other (younger) games, so I have some insight, but not this deep into the game. I actually get to use Austria as an example of what NOT to do if he gets hammered here, about 2 years ahead of where I am in one of my other PBEMs.

[:D]

[Harvey Birdman]

35.5 continued.

Had a few more PM conversations with France and Sweden, confirming some of my suspicions about Prussia. I also have additional messages out to France, Spain, Turkey and Sweden.

Several of the major powers in Europe are on the brink of war. Most particularly France and Austria, and possible allies of France against Austria as well.

What's crazy about Prussia supposedly standing by and dishonoring it's mutual defense agreement with Austria (particularly in such a public way this early in the game) is that Prussia's friendship and word would become useless. Who would trust a country that wouldn't abide by a mutual defense pact, particularly one in which the pact was formed as a condition of Austria ceding massive tracts of Polish territory to Prussia? This would show to the entire world that you can't buy Prussian friendship even by giving away half of Poland!

I think Prussia must be getting terrible advice from somewhere. Either that or his pride was so injured by our earlier war of words via email (at his instigation I might add) that he is blindly pursuing suicidal policies just to get back at me.

Either way I benefit.

Blame me. He didn't like what British/turkish diplomats had done to him. He feared he was going to get into a war with britain/turkey so he asked for advice on his thread.

I told him eventually the glory leaders were going to get ganged up on. I told him the glory cost for breaking an alliance was much less than the glory cost for losing a war.

He's having money problems ie depot costs and I told him, it's not a good idea to piss off the money powers: france and britain.

What was the point of british/turkish diplomats harassing him. The unintended consequence is that he regrets allying with austria.

I checked my posts on the prussia thread. I forgot to tell him he should give back the 4 polish provinces.



Judge his behavior from this point forward.

[Mus]

Ah, I see.

Well actually the diplomatic undermining was done because he was being intransigent on the diplomatic front, not the other way around, I wonder if he received some advice from somebody earlier than that.

Regardless, I made the deal with Prussia and don't want a war with him, so it's all water under the bridge now.

[Mus]

ORIGINAL: brianlala

2. If I was Austria in this game then I would be making as hard a play for Russia as an ally as is possible. Austria seems to be in the position that if they are not ueber aggressive with their diplomacy then they are bound to be swallowed up by all the super powers (France, Ottomans, Russia) on their borders. If I was Austria then I would be trying to push the Russians into a deal against the Ottomans. Am I wrong in seeing this as Austria's only hope as the game stands right now?

Austria's position is super exposed. It is a hard country to play. It is capable of growing fairly powerful, so people get threatened by it, and it also is surrounded by countries that Austria has conflicting glory targets with.

I honestly don't know what Austria can do to get out of the situations it is in. I think Prussia is going to bail, and I think Russia and Turkey are both attacking when France does.

A quick surrender to minimize the damage would be my course of action.

[Mus]

Turn 39 and 40. Sep & Oct 1795

Nothing much going on, but a quick pace to the game, so 2 turns in one entry.

[:'(]

I conduct some tests with my heavy artillery moving them and detaching/reattaching to see how many initiative checks they fail. If they continue to fail routine things like joining a Corps the way they did a couple turns back again I will scrap them and go to Horse Artillery.

I heard back from Russian Guard, a beta tester for COGEE, and he said he believes Horse Artillery, like all Artillery, has standard Siege value of 1 point per 1500. I already explained my logic in thinking about the switch to horse artillery but will repeat it again: They have high strategic initiative and have a +1 counterassault with no drawback now that I think I know they have the same siege value as all artillery.

We shall see.

I got a deal going with Spain. As soon as I can arrange it I am moving troops down towards Portugal in preparation to receive it as a protectorate. Spain is going to declare on it, it is going to run into my arms, and then we are going to cease fire and declare some treaties.

Don't know if thats gamey, or just Machiavellian.

[:D]

I had had to hold off on starting new developments because of a critical labor shortage. That is now over and I started a road programme in several provinces that had level 3 roads to bump them up a bit. I will be proceeding with the development plan stated above: Any province with roads 3 or below will build roads. Any province that makes good money, but has banks below 4 will build banks. Any province that has achieved these other benchmarks but has a low level of culture or barracks will focus on those for increasing my morale/glory/land experience. Courts will continue to be the focus in Anglia for my super diplomat construction plan.

My first Lancer comes out of Anglia barracks this turn with a 5.6 morale at 8k strength. Should probably be around 5.4 when it is at full strenght. I order it to join my 1st Corps in SW England.

Not a bunch of diplomatic activity these last couple turns. Things quieted down a bit, except for a brief exitement about Spain attacking Venetia to get things set up for our deal. Turkey was briefly alarmed by this.

[brianlala]

Hey Mus/Brian

A couple of questions about Spain now that I've thought about things for a bit (and you've clarified other things like smacking Russia's navy around for glory points if you need to).

1. If you do get a true alliance (not enforced peace) with Spain then won't that virtually guarantee that you and Spain will be at war with France at some point? With Austria going down (in terms of glory points) and nobody else to challenge Spain then France is going to have to turn its head towards Spain once Austria is weakened. N'est pas?

2. When France turns its head towards Spain and sparks a war (either knowingly or unknowingly) with you as well then won't Preussen use that opportunity to kick you out of Northern Europe? How will you counteract this from happening?

3. I'm not experienced at all with glory points for naval engagements (as I usually play land-based Preussen) but I'm guessing you will get a pretty good dollop of points for beating France's navy into pieces during this war. Will the glory points from naval activities be enough to make up for the loss of your northern Europe land?


Brian

[Mus]

1. I don't know that France could come after a British/Spanish alliance in the way you envision. Currently everyone is building up their forces. I am doing a good job keeping up for the moment. That will change once I hit my mobilization limit which is very low at 30, but gaining Portugal as a protectorate (part of the deal with Spain) will give me about 60,000 more "free" (protectorate troop's do not count toward your mob limit) troops. That ought to raise my total up to around 240,000 and I should have about 260,000-270,000 men by next Spring or Summer. Around 300,000 at the end of next year, where I will probably top out. I also have the highest quality force in Europe, both in terms of morale and in terms of having high performance special units, with the ability to retain the morale and "specialization" edge indefinetely. Spain has one of the largest armies in Europe right now because of his control of nearly the entire Italian peninsula. Together we can almost pick our wars, and talk people we don't want to fight down.

2. Prussia currently has about 150,000 men total. Bear in mind when I discuss these figures I am not talking about militia garrison forces, just maneuver formations. Of this the bulk is Infantry. I believe he has 3 jager infantry, 2 cavalry divisions and 2 artillery divisions. I do not think he will make a play for me at the first opportunity. I plan to pressure him for continued enforced peaces and coexistence in N Europe. Failing that I myself have around 140,000 men in the area, with 6 cavalry divisions and 1 artillery division. With that kind of cavalry superiority I believe I could win a decisive battle and then march on Brandenburg. I also have Swedish allies who could help me out in a pinch. He has a small but high quality army. I will try to strengthen my ties with Sweden shortly by offering him additional land in Denmark. Sweden can also place very high for a rather small power by joining me in my wars and always winning.

3. The Glory gained from destroying the French navy in a hypothetical war would more than make up for losing all my land in N Europe (the victor in a naval battle gains Glory equal to the number of ships engaged IIRC, will get back to you from my battle logs from sinking the Dutch navy with details), but I don't believe that losing all my land would necessarily be the outcome of a war with France. I also don't really think war with France in the immediate future is inevitable. It will be some time before France and Austria duke it out. I currently have just slightly fewer troops than France does and it will be a number of years before France can enlarge his Army to the point where he greatly outmasses me concentrated at one point. For example, I sent a spy to see what kind of army France was assembling for his campaign against Austria. I have attached a screenshot of the Army. Then when you factor in my hoped for alliance with Spain the number of fronts in this theoretical war increases substantially. And the numbers start looking worse for him as well. Another point going for me in avoiding war or putting it off for a long time with France is the fact that I will destroy or drive into port his merchants and also blockade his ports. This will cause his income to plummet. He knows this, and therefore I think IF/ONCE France defeats Austria on the Continent he will actually turn his attention to other continental powers (such as Prussia, another factor that can mitigate the threats discussed in 2) he has not yet defeated, plus increasing his control over any remaining independent minors. He will also want to make sure he is ready to face a recovered Austria in 18 months time.

[Mus]

Turn 41. Nov 1795

As I said, I sent my Heavy Artillery on some random movements. The result is they only made the check to do one of their movements. This combined with the earlier failure to make the check to join a Corps, two turns in a row, makes me decide to scrap it.

Having found out that the concensus from 2 beta testers is that Horse Artillery should have regular siege value as all other artillery (1 point for 1500) means this is the way to go. I will begin building Horse Artillery as soon as I have the spare labor. I will keep my 1 regular artillery already fielded for now, possibly replacing it later should I have extra resources and the desire to do so.

I order the Heavy Artillery scrapped, returning my mobilization point it was taking up. This lesson on the drawbacks of Heavy Artillery cost me over 300 iron and 120 labor. The money I could care less about, but the labor in particular really hurts.

I also order another Light Infantry to be built in Anglia. I had wanted to hold off on building any more military units for a spell, in order to build up my Labor and reduce my inflation, but my textile production and importation is so high that I was again over 100 textiles. At that point you start consuming textiles for morale boosting purposes, which I did not want to do. Furthermore I am not ready to build another diplomat yet, my Courts are still being developed in Anglia and I want maximum bang for my super-diplomat buck.

Failed to make 1 critical move on my initiative checks, leaving my forces out of position to receive Portugal as a protectorate. I send word to Spain (Ironwarrior) that I will not be ready for another 1-2 Turns.

The delay is irritating, but necessary.

Nothing else substantial to report. All my developments are chugging along, several will be finished in a couple months. My growth compared to other powers continues to look good.

Still no loud noises on the Continent. The world is at peace.

[:D]

[Mus]

Turn 42. Dec 1795

Get my troops headed toward Portugal again and get the word to Spain to go ahead and DOW Portugal. Will see how this works. Nothing much else going down.

[Mus]

Turn 43 & 44. Jan and Feb 1796

Spain DOWs Portugal. I get called as a protectorate. Me and Spain end up at war, with a verbal agreement to call a cease fire next turn and then set up our full agreement.

This has a certain amount of risk to it, Spain could always try to backstab me here, but I doubt he would. If he does I can move troops swiftly into position and do some quick port raids on his main fleet base.

My preferred outcome is the ceasefire and a working alliance for the rest of the game.

Other than this these turns were just house keeping.

I did send a message to Prussia requesting that they send me some kind of royal marriage/enforced peace deal and in return I would start subsidizing them every turn. I am concerned that a counterweight to France or Austria may become necessary on the Continent and need to start boosting up Prussia so he isn't too weak compared to his neighbors.

Obviously to do that I have to make sure he is going to stay at peace with me.

[;)]

[Mus]

Turn 44.5

It is becoming pretty clear through PM and forum discussions with other players that this game isn't running the all generals mod, which is what we were supposed to be playing.

That is a major bummer for me as I have very little interest in playing another 23 year 1792 game, particularly as Britain. The ENTIRE point of PBEM 109 for me was to play a marathon game with all the generals showing up at their appointed time.

I think I am going to tender my resignation and ask the group to find a replacement for me. I will play until they have me replaced so as to not leave them hanging, but I think it's a little absurd that proper care wasn't take in the setup or installation of the mod by certain players.

[:-]

Thus endeth my AAR?

Maybe the new guy will post in here.

[:D]

[TheDeadeye]

This thread is years old but had to give a comment on this as a reader:

Not trying to be offensive but that was very a lame cop out and reasons why such games often don't go their full lengths due to some players suddenly having an epiphany that they don't want to be in for the long run -even more so because of a lack of a mod.

At least someone picked it up but yeah, lame.