Have You Invaded Anyone Yet?

A more light-hearted post.

My other half does take some interest in the games (she's a different sort of girl who does enjoy playing role-playing games and the like) but her one question every time she seems me working on a turn is "have you invaded anyone yet"...she always seems disappointed I'm not slaughtering my way across someone elses country!

So far in game 2 many years I nvade Estonia as Russia captured after a breif dtruggle

For some reason I thought you had invaded Poland too but must be imagining things

It does surprise me sometimes how little I have invaded anyone...just one colony in game 2...

Clearly you are not playing Prussia, Ottoman Rumelia or France in Game 2
I think the first two may be ahead in terms of actual numbers of invasions but the French hitting England, Prussia, Rumelia & Spain (probably by accident) all in one month must be some kind of Gloire record for most people upset in a single month.

Invading people is becoming much more difficult! When I first started in LGDR 2 back in 1989, wars were happening all over the place. Ditto LGDR 1. Trouble is that with fewer players in the game, it's more difficult to start a war - NPCs don't tend to be aggressive. When a game is full, you invariably get a handful of players with expansionist policies, making war far more likely and the games more interesting (in my view...).

Case in point is the HRE - in the older games, wars happened all the time and consolidation in the Empire was a reality. Now, it's almost impossible to expand as an Imperial state, except for pursuing hereditary claims.

So, let's recruit friends into the games and start a few nice conflicts! :-)

I fully agree. War is becoming very difficult. Too difficult. My thread on honour explains that i think honour is becoming too dominant a factor in the games.

If Agema makes an error and you spot it and tell them, you will often gain honour. One player on the honour thread, explained how 25 per cent of his income came from honour points.

The new rules on grain, makes war harder as well. You need to constantly move grain around and house it more.It has added to the expense of war as well.

Looks like we agree 1989-er.War is becoming too difficult and peace and honour has a far more significant role than it used to have.

These beutiful games always need to be a fine balancing act, and perhaps we are getting to the point where the scales need a slight re-balance.

jamesbond007 wrote:I fully agree. War is becoming very difficult. Too difficult. My thread on honour explains that i think honour is becoming too dominant a factor in the games.

If Agema makes an error and you spot it and tell them, you will often gain honour. One player on the honour thread, explained how 25 per cent of his income came from honour points.

The new rules on grain, makes war harder as well. You need to constantly move grain around and house it more.It has added to the expense of war as well.

Looks like we agree 1989-er.War is becoming too difficult and peace and honour has a far more significant role than it used to have.

These beutiful games always need to be a fine balancing act, and perhaps we are getting to the point where the scales need a slight re-balance.

In all fairness, the 25% was when I played a weakened Denmark (no Norway and a weak economy and few recruits) with a low income and regardless of how much of its few recruits I committed to economic development, trade and tax income never increased that much...without a high honour score, I am not sure the weak Denmark was viable as a position.

I am a bit undecided on the grain rule. It does make movement difficult until you have a grain surplus or managed to buy some from someone though it does add an extra element of realism. I wonder if a better rule would have been to treat it like the old setup for magazines-for all movement you would have to say which granary the grain was coming from (so movement outside your country would be easier as you wouldn't carry it with you) but with the added rule that there were dangers of supply lines being disrupted by raiding parties, bad weather messing up roads or shipping routes etc. So an army or fleet would have to be allocated a magazine and granary to supply it.
I do think though that if a new game is started, all positions should have some grain to start with though or a new player to an existing game should automatically have a supply if there isn't one already in the nation.

Have recently found that making war is much more difficult. The non active positions don't seem to need to worry about supplies, Paying troops or other economic matters. Even the fall of there capital cities & seizure of treasury makes little difference to them. They continue to fight on regardless, even when envoys are sent to negotiate. they are usually totally ignored.

I wonder if the supply rules would benfeit from the introduction of Supply train units, or carts, to carry supplies between locations, it would also make players better consider protecting there lines of supply. also the deeper you go into enemy territory the more suseptable these would be to attack.

I think the new rules do bring out this aspect of the period quite well without the need for actual supply train units.

Basically an army's supply trains can carry three or four months supplies (nominally 15,000 or 20,000 tons of grain).

On the basis that it uses up a months suppliers just getting into position that gives you two or three months to conduct a siege before you run out of supplies and need to send another force with additional supplies to reinforce the force carrying out the siege. Like the great supply trains which Malborough had to organize to keep the siege of Lille going.

I am told that running out of supplies mid siege is really bad for sickness levels and unlike the days when armies in Glory du Roi could carry years of supplies with them your opponent now knows that at some stage you will need to resupply and can plan to attack the force bring up the supply.

I assume that a force of say 6 units of dragons and 15,000 tons of grain is basically a convoy of civilian supply waggons with escorts rather than horses and riders loaded with grain. Even though that tactic was used by people trying to get supplies into a besieged fortress.

I assume if you wanted you could have the "military" take over from civilian drivers and proper military trains on your army list.......in much the same way as military drivers slowly took over from civilian drivers in the artillery.

But this seems more suitable for later periods and seeing myself more as a dashing naval/cavalry type I have enough trouble keeping tabs on the grain without having to worry about the transport as well !!

Indeed I would suggest that such concerns are below a true gentleman. You Sir are clearly one of those dodgy Merchant types from the UDP, England or Venice. That or one of those Russian or Prussian types who want to put everyone in a uniform including camp whores and the regimental latrine cleaner.

I have actually only launched one invasion during my years in the game, my 30,000 infantry/cavalry against about 8,500 tribal warriors with spear. I won the battle, captured the bulk of the enemy and the rest gave up after a while. Very quick and easy, but it could have been a lot messier if the tribesmen had greater numbers.

I got so sidetracked with musing over the difficulty of making war that I neglected to answer the original question...

As France in LGDR 3 I attacked Spain and took Luxembourg and some of the West Indies

As Turkey in LGDR 1 I attacked Venice and retook the Balkans

As the Jacobites in LGDR 2 I attacked England but completely messed that one up and lost!

Invasions are so much fun... I miss them...

I got round to invading Mecklenberg, which triggerd a war with Sweden. I am proud to say that the Prussian yacht club was able to defeat the might of the Swedish navy, Ok it was dark, they were all confined in Narva harbour, & I had to send in marines in rowing boats to throw grenados onto the ships. But I still class it as a naval victory. which for a nation with 3 SOl & 7 FRG is something.

You have the advantage of an emasculated Holy Roman Empire (and indeed, Prussia ruling Austria directly!), which nicely gets around the problems of attacking fellow Imperial states without triggering the Imperial mutual defence pact! If only we were so lucky in other games...

Unfortunatly the French are a bit upset, they keep on mentioning things like Partition of Poland, 1914, 1871, 1939. I simply can't understand what they mean ! Is something important going to happen then? For some reason a united Germany seems to scare to hell out it's neighbours. All the Germans want to do is drink beer , eat bretzels, oh, and beat the English at football.

My kids are half German & half English so if I get them to play LGDR there will be a problem. They will want to conquer the world but they are too polite to do it.

J Flower wrote:Unfortunatly the French are a bit upset, they keep on mentioning things like Partition of Poland, 1914, 1871, 1939. I simply can't understand what they mean ! Is something important going to happen then? For some reason a united Germany seems to scare to hell out it's neighbours. All the Germans want to do is drink beer , eat bretzels, oh, and beat the English at football.

My kids are half German & half English so if I get them to play LGDR there will be a problem. They will want to conquer the world but they are too polite to do it.

Too funny my frend!

I think we can also turn this question on it's head, Have you been invaded by anyone & lived to tell the tale. It seems that defeated players disappear off the Radar, has anyone stuck with a position that has suffered a defeat?

Does that include an invasion of stupidity by me (as the ruler) I have a couple of positions where my position has suffered self-inflicted defeats but Im still fighting to see another day

I can think of a few examples:

1) In G2 the Earl of Essex meet with total military disaster trying to save Portugal from Spain........stayed with it and had another one or two goes at Spain with the same result as the first.

2) Also in G2 a very new Ottoman Grand Vizier got invaded by the Ottoman Sultan on his first turn and later responded on about T3 by going bare foot into the Sultans camp with a silk rope round his neck and begging for mercy and the chance gain the Sultans favour again.
The GV got his pardon on condition that he brought the Sultan the head of the rebel prince of Moldavia and Wallachia..........Ottoman Sultans being real men in those days!

3) Final example is from G7 where Blackbeard lost his den, his prizes and £400,000 after being betrayed and hunted down by the Navy of Spain (who may have been a bit upset about the sack of Havanna) and got away from a Spanish neck tie party with only the Clothes on his back and a ship. He is now back..... bigger and bolder than ever and will no doubt end up the Hon Lord Teach of Bristol given the current state of English politics in G7.

With the return of Blackbeard in G7 I was wondering if in other games:

1) People have more examples of players/positions who took a real beating but have recovered?

&

2) Have players got the hang of the new campaign rules and are we seeing a return of "invasions"?

In one game Blackbeard was reported to have drowned/killed at sea, the world breathed a sigh of relief, his ships was sunk and no sign of him was found afterwards.

Many months later the Governor of a colony in the Americas was astonished to find a certain Blackbeard sat in his study, who then seemed to take control of said colony and so once more Blackbeard roamed the seas...

I think people might have got the hang of the new rules now...let bloodshed commence