Spanish Army Reform Question

[Offworlder]

Does the AI use them effectively though? I know nothing of code and to be honest the whole Spanish Ulcer chain was rather unclear to me until you explained it earlier. However, shouldn't the constant victory over inferior forces give additional NM/VP?

So basically a French player needs to make a smash and grab campaign and rapidly submit Spain or else it could be easy for Spain to remain in the field. However, if Spain is the endless quagmire in game as in real life, then the game is spot on!

[I admit that I only played up to 1810 and kept most of central and northern Spain under control against the AI with 2 strong corps (4 inf and one cav division) + 1 cavalry corps of 2 dragoon divisions, plus 2 weaker corps operating in Catalonia and Basque countries. I constantly swept the rear areas with cavalry and couldn't find any opposition in my backyard, though the constant stream of weak divisions/corps that hit Burgos and Madrid (where the 2 strongest corps lay with the cavalry corps alternating between the two areas to finish off any weakened force). I stopped because this particular game had become rather buggy and was in the process of training several of the depot brigades to form additional divisions/garrison forces to relieve the main forces. BTW I hardly touched the Grande Armee and Army of Italy to supply troops for Spain.]

[vicberg]

That's a very good point. Can't speak to the AI, but will bet it didn't capitalize on the free upgrade event. Once invasions occur with a Spanish player, the partisans will show up threatening all LOC. Brits will be into the mix quickly. Spain will max out their RGD Partisans and then probably build a LOT more volunteers, etc, further south and let France come after them. The event that auto-upgrades fires every month, 75% chance of it going off and 30% chance per paritsans, volunteers, etc., to upgrade to conscript and a 50% chance to upgrade conscript to regular infantry. Event fires each month for 60 turns after being invaded. Doubtful the AI was taking advantage of that.

[Offworlder]

Well I've seen a constant stream of units normally hitting Burgos and Madrid (and environs), division or corps size but I assumed that these were the regular armies and the locked formations which became unlocked. However, I did see a few partisans and sort of armed civilians intermixed on a few occasions. I must say that single French divisions would have been overwhelmed if caught alone, though. I did see a message saying something like 'Spain invaded....fanaticism (something or other) - could this be the events/RDGs firing?

Probably, a more cautious Spanish approach, which a human would certainly take, of turtling in the south while keeping an invading force occupied with partisans etc, could easily result in a decent Spanish army which could actually strike some heavy blows against the French with that sort of RGD. Indeed its pretty easy to cut supply lines even in the north of Spain since it only takes a unit that flips the military control of one area to Spanish control again.

Having said that, the French have a definite advantage in generalship as even divisional commanders easily outperform most of the generals available to the Spanish. If a player brings Napoleon in the field with the Grande Armee, in all probability a player would be able to blitz the Spanish, though there is also a high probability that there will be large losses due to lack of provisions. Indeed, I have found that supply issues stopped me dead in the first year and had to withdraw back to Burgos-Madrid axis until I managed to set up two supply chains running from Bayonne and Perpignan - then winter hit.

[vicberg]

Yes, that's the idea. For France to "win" in Spain, it has to take all 40 cities. Doable? No idea, but definitely challenging and requires the Grand Armee to do it. With the British lurking around, more challenging.

But you are bringing up another point that I haven't resolved yet. Nappy went into Spain primarily to take Portugal. It's quite possible for a French player to ignore Portugal, which keeps the British away from a large amount of supply cities (in Portugal), a lot of threats on the French LOC and prevents the Portuguese corp from spawning, which quickly upgrades from conscript to veteran. So, I'm not sure exactly what to do in terms of Portugal.

Choice or no choice?

[veji1]

Yes, that's the idea. For France to "win" in Spain, it has to take all 40 cities. Doable? No idea, but definitely challenging and requires the Grand Armee to do it. With the British lurking around, more challenging.

But you are bringing up another point that I haven't resolved yet. Nappy went into Spain primarily to take Portugal. It's quite possible for a French player to ignore Portugal, which keeps the British away from a large amount of supply cities (in Portugal), a lot of threats on the French LOC and prevents the Portuguese corp from spawning, which quickly upgrades from conscript to veteran. So, I'm not sure exactly what to do in terms of Portugal.

Choice or no choice?

The overall dynamic of the game (imho of course, to make it sort of WITPish) is that the french player NEEDS to bring the whole of continental Europe under his rule, direct or via some sort of vassalage relationship post advantageous peace (ie like Prussia or Austria after being defeated). Any hole in the net needs to become an undying problem for the french player. This would be the way to force the "at war with everybody" end situation. At least it should be so in single player.

Multiplayer is a completely different game, because in multiplayer you want to keep it more open so that if players want to go almost all EiA style, why not. The idea in mutliplayer would then be to sort of prevent the game from going all bonkers in 1805 (all against France, etc...) by keeping a somewhat rigidish structure to begin with, becoming looser and looser as the game goes on so that eventually after 3/4 years players are really free to play it the way they want.

[vicberg]

My lines of thinking exactly. Portugal has to be tied into the Spanish morass directly

[veji1]

My lines of thinking exactly. Portugal has to be tied into the Spanish morass directly

Ideally in a way one would want to have 2 options for each type of play (single player and multi) : historically deterministic and fun.

Basically the historically deterministic wouldn't be a very rigid set of events forcing the exact timelines, but a dynamic way of nudging the players towards the key feature : Napoleon's never ending overreach and the eventual global coalition to make him fall. In this sense the events and scripts should make it inevitable that France is at war with Spain at some point, with Russia, etc... In single player this would have to be pretty rigid and probably mainly playable as the french. A multiplayer of this would be something a lot less deterministic but still quite scripted for the first few years before giving players freer reins with still VP and NM Dynamics nudging them towards realism.

The fun mode would be mainly for multiplayer : after all if the engine is honed well enough that players can use it to have fun in a sort of EiA game, why not ?

But would this all be doable ?

[Offworlder]

My lines of thinking exactly. Portugal has to be tied into the Spanish morass directly

Indeed. My guess is that a sort of countdown should start once France decides to invade Portugal post Berlin decrees. Spain should basically start moving away from France once the Portugese invasion option is chosen with the final breakdown of relations being the Bayonne event...

[veji1]

Indeed. My guess is that a sort of countdown should start once France decides to invade Portugal post Berlin decrees. Spain should basically start moving away from France once the Portugese invasion option is chosen with the final breakdown of relations being the Bayonne event...

Basically the game should work with a dynamic like :
- UK announces the embargo.
- France announces the continental blockade
- For every country that does not apply the continental blockade (it would mean giving up access and supplies to the french + losing x portion of the income per year) France loses x VPs and other countries in the area lose fear of France.
- Makes France need to whack all european countries into the continental blockade (Portugal, etc).
- For Spain make applying the continental blockade so painful (loss of much of the Indies income + NM penalty) that mechanically Spain has to break it up with France.
- France must reinstate the Blockade in Spain -> invasion, war, quagmire, etc..