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Just took a look at the Risorgimiento scenario from the Austrian side and was surprised not to see any evidence of the famous Quadrilateral.

I'm sure they were older fortresses by the time of this war, but they were big and would have had an impact.

Is this a glitch that crept in during the last patch, a deliberate oversight, or am I missing something?

I wouldn't expect an industrialized fortress to be sitting in the Venezia area, but I would expect a pre-industrialized one.

I would say an oversight and a setup omission

So what would be your suggestion for fixes, I can add these quickly and post a revised scenario here?

Off the top of my head I would think that what is needed is a size 3 pre-industrial fortress in the Venice area named either "Venedig Fortress" or "Festung Verona".

The garrison (which is already there) is named "Venedig Fortress" so you wouldn't have to rename it. Just make sure the garrison is inside the fortress.

The reason I mentioned size 3 pre-industrialized fortresses and "Festung Verona" is because that is what Austria starts with in Venice in the Grand Campaign scenario.

I can't be sure exactly what effect it will have on the scenario without playtesting it, but this seems like the right thing to do. If a size 3 fortress wasn't too large or too small in the Grand Campaign, it should be the right size in this scenario.

There also may be a fortress missing in the Milan space. The Austrians have a Lombardia Fortress garrison but no fortress.

I don't have the same level of conviction about this as about the Quadrilateral, and don't have any hard information about the relative strengths of the two areas. But I would think that a garrison would imply the need for a fortress, and it would probably be smaller than the one that go in the Venice space. So it might be a size 2 pre-industrial, or perhaps even a size 1.

I've never researched this campaign so this is just an initial reaction.

Nice catch.

Perhaps we should open a subsection in the PoN wiki to have minor suggestions for future patches. Minor stuff that the developers or users can see and edit and then perhaps get them accepted for an official patch.

For example, ourselves in the MP game have implemented a serious decrease to the colonial options for all nations to slow down the colonial exploration and expansion.

Slowing things down is an interesting concept. And it does raise two other concerns I've been wondering about.

I've noticed that I can probably get Austria fully covered with a railroad grid in the Grand Campaign in about six years from the start of the scenario. I haven't checked to see when Austria really was fully railroaded, but my gut feeling is that this may be a bit too soon. My sense is that something that may have taken place over about twenty years is happening in six. However, I haven't looked into how long it actually took this to occur, so I have no idea what the correct speed is. But six years for full coverage seems a little quick and a bit too efficient for Austria.

If it turns out that it is too fast, I'm not sure if the correct solution is to slow down the rate at which a railroad expansion is completed, or to put some kind of cooling off timer in place. The simplest solution would be to slow down the build rate (halve it?) because we aren't just talking about building a single railroad line across an area. The problem is I have no idea how quickly a region got covered with tracks back then, and suspect that the rail grid gets expanded quickly because there often is simply nothing else for a player to do with his resources.

The other thing I wondered about is the situation where you have an enormous amount of unsold goods in a trade area, but lots of demand and no goods for sale in the trade area right next door. Now I'm extremely aware of the market imperfections that can cause that kind of situation to exist in the first place, and it makes sense to me that if the surplus is in Europe and the demand is in South America or Asia, it is quite possible that supply will never meet demand in the context of the 19th century. But if the surplus is in Northern Austria and the demand is in Northern Germany, I'm pretty sure that people will eventually spread into a more or less adjacent market to do some buying. So I think what is needed is a 'leakage' factor for supply and demand -- if goods are demanded and the demand is unsatisfied, some of that unsatisfied demand should go to an adjacent trade zone if that zone has that good on offer and no one is buying. Not sure how to effect that in practise, though.

I don't think it should be just a question of if Austria built out it's RR in 6 years instead of 20 or however many. Rather, could they have done so instead of doing other things. If their economy is more or less in the ballpark in that regard, then it's a matter of the player's priorities.

I did a bit of poking around on the railroad track question, and I'm getting the impression that the game may not be modeling reality all that closely in that you can have a rail grid at the end of six years that pretty much looks like what was achieved in fifty. That seems a bit extreme.

I'm all in favor of a player being able to empasize one aspect of his economy and development over others. But we're talking about modifying (accelerating or decelerating) development by ten or twenty percent over longer time frames. Fifty years in only six means your development is proceeding almost ten times faster than in reality, and since this wasn't exactly a neglected area without resources being pumped in, I can't accept that (except in a 19th century-themed fantasy game, which this isn't). And there's the additional problem that if everything is proceeding to quickly, you'll start running out of things to do after twenty years or so.

I suppose what holds it in check is that the actual rail lines (as opposed to the general grid) are pre-programmed, and that keeps things from looking too unreal.

Kensai wrote:Nice catch.

Perhaps we should open a subsection in the PoN wiki to have minor suggestions for future patches. Minor stuff that the developers or users can see and edit and then perhaps get them accepted for an official patch.

Great idea, Kensai!

Philippe wrote:[...]
The other thing I wondered about is the situation where you have an enormous amount of unsold goods in a trade area, but lots of demand and no goods for sale in the trade area right next door. Now I'm extremely aware of the market imperfections that can cause that kind of situation to exist in the first place, and it makes sense to me that if the surplus is in Europe and the demand is in South America or Asia, it is quite possible that supply will never meet demand in the context of the 19th century.

PoN is my favorite AGEod game, but there are a few omissions that have really surprised me. One of these deals with trade. I've often wondered why one cannot designate a commercial fleet to deliver various commodities to foreign markets. There are an enormous number of historic precedents for this.

My husband doubts that this is an oversight, and tells me that the lack of this capability is most likely due to issues involving game mechanics and complexity issues for the AI. Even so, this capability probably tops my wish list, for PoN.

Beyond the obvious economic advantages, it seems that this could greatly facilitate diplomatic interaction, as well. As but one example, providing a resource that you have in abundance to a small nation which is starved for the resource might lead to usage of one of their ports that would be useful to you. Furthermore, such deals could potentially lead to Machiavellian maneuvering by your enemies, e.g., the banana republic of Obscuro suddenly finds itself being courted by world powers who are quite interested in denying you a refueling/re-provisioning port in that theater.

"My husband doubts that this is an oversight, and tells me that the lack of this capability is most likely due to issues involving game mechanics and complexity issues for the AI. Even so, this capability probably tops my wish list, for PoN."


not that simple i fear our queen,

Sir Garnet brought up the discussion for the leakage effect months ago, in a group have some experience with try/error about it...

where we stood last winter:

based on the different, overruling pricing system we barely have the need for these ever given amounts of goods AI shall keep in stock to ensure market price for a start period and to avoid AI steamrolling the inexperienced or slow player.
since too much cash turned out to be a problem, we multiplied every number with 100 to make fine adjustment possible.

also disabled the economic crisis system, used historic events for the major countries instead.

now you see our problem, it leaves PONs DB totally, for some aspects, thus international copyright is a problem...

since this break was now loose, it turned out that AI has that much free resources that it either could start with i.e. RR and depots in every province etc...
we had to define new limits of economic structures on base of every 5 year period, given techs are researched it is still enough air to breath for strategical planing.

we also had to cut down the limits for stocks, now goods are rotting as fast as in the beginning as soon you have 25% more in stock than actual production would need, unless its gold, steel etc. no more 2500 units in stock.

However we have a constant stream of SMUGGLING implemented on this base.
As higher the stock, as higher maritime tax, as higher customs, as higher the "investment" in neighboring countries.
simply by "rotting" goods in burdened warehouses are not longer total losses

thanks to the other economist in the forum back that days, who actually brought us to the point to use a well defined CES function / constant elasticity of substitution to get it running.

this stream also holds for private capital for a value of 1/6 of the new businessmen emerging problem (which now triggers earlier as it should be even in the developer economic crisis system), thus small but permanent numbers go to the minors

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however, now especially outside of Europe's small provinces you run into different problems.
even teaching/enabling the AI to make more use of economic structures does not work, for it still has problems with the infrastructure and this should stay as scripted as it is.

lately i saw my suspicion confirmed by the explanations about the double side collection center approach by the developers.
Explained the unsystematic problems we saw for few minors, should have asked them earlier, i know...

it also does not work with oversea investment/smuggling, since AIs merchant fleets are partially locked. but we are not willing to enable market access for free.
admittedly, what we totally missed to acknowledge the last weeks, as Gen. described it last evening the loose end approach for merchant fleets of minor states...

[color="Red"]But i do have to disappoint you, it will not be the golden bullet to solve the low contentments level for minor states, for they partially also lack the ability to reform, the level when regaining contentment starts to be close to impossible is much higher than the 20/25 a fellow player and me stated in both forums independently for player lead countries [/color]

thus covered demand is probably a way, but not they key element
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i can only say it again, even if PON-dev team would accept the work done, the group i left in December couldnt publish it in every country the way we solved it.
we already checked it with two lawyers who are specialized on it.
(bad experience from days long ago)

everyone who is actually willing to change this weakness of the economic system can alter it / mod it.
As is explained in October/November 2011, one needs tow follow conclusively one of different possible approaches:

- hot fixes for single problems

- or nilling the caps and static values and substituting it with five-year-based numbers

- or the most complicated, taking the year 1900 as a value of 100 points of economic development, now counting back to make it as historical as possible for small nations lead by AI.

As soon AI does not invest, and falls back drastically, events can trigger to bring them on to the state of worlds economy or to clear the situation, also on 5 or ten years basis.
the problem is, mal-investment of 1850s destroys the games mechanics the next years. AI keeps up logically, rational, but not economically.

the deadly bullet for PON is the ever changing here and there. its not only creating new bugs, but also new bottlenecks.
but who the hell has the time for all that...its a pitty