Vauban wrote:It is Austria's view the Duchy of Krakow is a vacant title, hence the effort to install a Hapsburg favourite. If there is already a Grand Duke, then Austria has been misinformed and something was lost in translation!
Thank you Vauban ... hopefully this will be clarified next turn.
Stuart Bailey wrote:
2) Speaking as someone who has won the Czar's we sink ships trophy more than most unless you have loads of Navy ships assigned too helping trade in an area the vast majority of merchant ship losses do not show up on your sheet.
Actual immediate result of a lost ship is a £4,000 reduction in your end of year trade income from the area of the loss so last months loss of 126 ships by last months we sink ships award will be a £504,000 reduction in end of year trade revenue.
If such losses continue for a long time is that other possible effect which may differ with positions is that a positions economic health may suffer a reduction as shipping and insurance costs go up due to the losses and industries are starved of raw materials. Though I have noted that the economic health of traditional trade powers like Venice, England and UDP seem to suffer more from this than basically farming positions.
It is also possible that Blockades do more damage to Economic health than privateering and a lot will depend on which port is being blockaded and how many Ports a position has. So Venice seems to be very sensitive to Venice being blockaded since its generally the positions only main Port. Such Blockades also hurt a positions income from customs duty (tax on foreigners).
Spains income from customs duty in G7 is so flipping low (think we have an honesty box at end of pier and someone has thrown a shipping net over it) that its hard to imagine Madrid will even notice this but some positions which relied a lot on transit incomes/customs duties could be hit hard. Played a small Rhineland position once and over a 1/3 of positions income came from this source so a blockade of the Rhine would be really bad news.
The other question I think the Court of Public Opinion is still out on is does Mercantilism or "Colbertism" as practiced with much dedication by the Shah of Persia help your trade and economic health? As Persia has taken out trade rivals and gained lots of really cheap ships and cargo. Not 100% sure but while the Shah may have wiped out one rival (France) in the Indian trade zone is Persia actually doing better as a trade power because of this? As opposed to just being above France on the trade table?
I think it is hard to draw general conclusions. When I was Venice (briefly in one game) a blockade of the Adriatic would undoubtedly have caused major problems, but that could have been because Venice was a major trading hub, a port through which goods were landed and then shipped on to other destinations. Stuart's point about a blockade of the Rhine hitting trade from a Rhineland position would therefore be likely to hold in that case. However, I don't think it would hold in the case of any blockade of London simply because goods could be diverted to any number of south coast ports and merchant ships use them instead (or even to Bristol, Hull or any number of other ports for exports).
I certainly haven't noticed any reduction in EH from merchant shipping losses in the Indian trade zone - EH actually rose this turn. And I don't think there was any reduction during the last war with Spain in the Mercantile trade zone. Where a blockade is more likely to be effective is where trade cannot be rerouted or there is severe disruption, e.g. at the entrance to the Med.
It is difficult to judge the effect of the orders we give simply because EH is on a scale of 1-10, and varies inversely with honour which to the upside can have some crazy numbers. If think originally there was a note in the rulebook which said something like if your honour was above 6 then you were considered popular, and if it was above 10, you were applauded in the streets? Not that you could go into the streets to enjoy it without losing honour since kings didn't tend to mix with the people. It also used to be the case that when honour rose EH fell, but I think in practice it was not so straight forward as throw a ball (honour +1, economy -1), or build canals (economy +1, honour -1). So although the tables can help provide players with a rough idea of how they are doing in those specific terms relative to others, it is hard to estimate precisely why or how much higher their score needs to be to get above their rival on a particular table. The honour table seems to be vulnerable in some senses with once played (now inactive) nations sitting there almost forever. An interesting twist could be if every nation (played and unplayed) found their honour reduced by 1 every few months, so simply to maintain your position on the table you would have to submit an order to try and increase it somehow. As for the trade tables, given Spain's dominance of nearly every area (closely followed by Russia), the top spots are meaningless for most players looking to make a marginal improvement. In this month's Europe trade listing, for example, the table runs: Spain (1), France (2), Austria (3), Russia (4), Sweden (5), Bavaria (6), Prussia-Brandenburg (7), Persia ( 8 ), Pfalz (9), Hesse-Kassel (10). Pfalz is very much a Rhineland state which depends on the transit trade, so as the overall volume of trade through the HRE to Flanders increases, so should Pfalz's trade income. Yet Persia's European trade is higher? I suspect the first 4 positions on the table have trade worth many millions in this region alone. Arithmetically it will be very difficult for them to be caught up by the smaller nations, unless (like RDW/RDE) they are using money given to them by a more wealthy player to help grow their economy.
Stuart Bailey wrote:
3) Ref the rules changes have always used 1 supply patrol per Army but may now have to either move some barges or grain so they are in same place. I swear that with Cowards like Tesse and multi layer fortress defenses this game is more and more about logistics and engineering and less and less about dashing cavalry charges and flashing blades.
I always thought it was a case of 1 supply patrol per army, but perhaps it is complicated by moving formations 'together'. On the asset list it is not always clear what counts as a formation when regiments are named/numbered. It isn't dependent upon whether they have a named commander, since at times I have asked an (unnamed) officer from a particular regiment to meet with an enemy commander - he then appears as a named officer on the lists for administrative convenience. When I merge forces together the old formation name often remains, and at a later time I might decide to send that formation scouting ahead or to garrison a town captured en route. Does such a formation use a single lot of supplies/single patrol or require multiple ones? It isn't always easy to know, then you suddenly find SL shooting up.
Also formations which carry grain with them do not always eat the grain they have, whereas I thought the rule usually was that they would eat the grain that is with them in preference to any that had to be supplied. I had the ridiculous situation once when I had lost nearly all the troops from starvation in an army which had been stockpiling supplies (and had 3 different lots of thousands of tons of grain with it), ignoring orders to eat the grain they had with them! Such common sense seemed to be missing from that particular army, even though the rules once said something to the equivalent that units like TW can be assumed to be on the lookout for criminal behaviour without being ordered to do so every month. In this particular example I am referring to, in the end individual army commanders survived (still with the grain noted as being with them as part of their formation, even though the formation had ceased to exist). Perhaps it is the way I write orders, but it does seem strange that although most game mechanics are simplified, logistics seems to be a perennial problem. The patrol system should be a simplification, but so should armies taking grain with them? Both seem open to difficulties.