Re: [eia] a try for a simple solution to 12.4

[Michael Gorman <mpgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Taking that into account, here's a modified proposal:
>
> 1. At the time peace is made, any garrisons in formerly enemy territory are,
> at the owner's option, repatriated to the nearest city in friendly territory
> that can hold them.

I'm not entirely happy with this as that can involve a lot of movement 
points if you're invading Russia or Turkey from the west.  Part of the 
difficulty you're supposed to have in invading those nations is getting 
back out in a timely manner.

In western Europe, this solution will likely never involve more than a 
turn, maybe two of movement points, but in Astrakhan or Armenia, it's 4-5 
months of movement to get to the Austrian and Prussian borders.  You barely 
have enough time to walk corps out without naval transport.  If you have to 
zig-zag and collect garrisons, you don't have time at all.  Hand waving 
that you can do it doesn't make much sense when it isn't actually possible 
to get all those garrisons without more corps markers to do it.

I think we're working too hard to protect garrisons.

Maybe this means that you delay peace one turn so that an economic phase 
will pass in the three month period and you get to buy new corps 
markers.  Maybe this will mean people will have to look at negotiating 
armistices and cease fires rather than just final peace agreements.  I 
don't see this as a bad thing at all.

If everyone knows how the peace time access is run, then everyone can know 
if they can afford to make peace in a given month and this becomes a 
non-issue.  I think it's only a problem because we don't yet have a rule in 
place on how to run peace time access.  Once we write the rule, then the 
issue of garrison extraction becomes just one of the many logistical issue 
you have to deal with when fielding an army and really, it's not likely to 
be a big issue very often.  And if it is, there's already a surrender term 
in the game meant to deal with it.

> 2. A ground unit in formerly enemy territory may move only by satisfying one
> of the following conditions, using movement points as the distance metric:
>  a. The ground unit ends its move nearer to the nearest accessible friendly
> area.
>  b. The ground unit ends its move nearer to the nearest of the former enemy's
> ports.
>  c. The ground unit ends its move nearer to the nearest enemy area, and the
> nearest enemy area is nearer than the nearest friendly area.
>  d. The ground unit begins its move in an area that can be reached 
> overland by
> an enemy unit from that enemy unit's current location during that enemy unit's
> next move.

I don't think there needs to be a nearest requirement.  A lot of the 
concerns about forcing particular paths go away if you drop that and let 
forces go to the most useful border rather than the nearest.  Yes, it opens 
rooms for abuses and diplomatic nastiness, but that's just part of the 
game.  The supply chain risks of using this option to invade someone else 
should be sufficient constraint.

> 3. No land unit may cross into formerly enemy territory without an access
> agreement.

This I fully endorse.

Oh, the one uncertainty I have in this reading is whether or not ceded 
territory counts as formerly enemy?  My feeling is that it does, but I want 
to make sure I'm in agreement with others on that point.

This would allow corps in ceded territory to be covered by this access 
which would solve the stranding issue if a corps gets isolated by ceding of 
discontinuous minor states or provinces and also prevent my reservation on 
point 1 from having all the corps involved in the attack suddenly departing 
enemy territory by having it become friendly.

We had talked about modifying B.7 to cover some of this, but I then 
realized that under our modified reading, Britain cannot be forced to cede 
territory under B.7 as it is adjacent to no one.  It also would mean that 
in joint efforts like the attack on Russia, nations not on the Russian 
border could never be allowed to have provinces ceded to them under B.7 
since they would never be adjacent.  Spain, for example, if it did not 
control Sweden, would have no adjacent provinces in Russia and thus could 
not have territory ceded to them with an unconditional surrender.

Currently, neither Britain nor France have adjacent territories so they 
cannot have Russian provinces ceded to them.

Britain can never have provinces ceded to them unless they have minor 
states and in no case can  anyone take British territory without an 
unconditional surrender.

So, I'm going to ask that we rethink our ideas on modifying B.7 at this 
point as well.

> 4. A fleet owned by or allied to a power that made peace may enter a port in
> former enemy territory if a land unit allied with that power is in the port
> or could enter the port later during the turn.
>
> 5. A fleet that enters a port under 4 must embark during the next naval phase,
> carrying, at least one land unit if possible. A fleet that enters
> Constantinople without an access agreement must exit the Dardanelles into the
> area through which it entered.

I think this is fine but it should be no problem if a fleet remains in port 
if it is possible in the new turn that a corps could arrive.  This deals 
with JJ's concern that someone could delay a corps one month and tack a big 
delay on the corps getting out of the country by forcing the fleet to 
depart and return.  Yes, someone could choose to park their fleet in a port 
and never pick a nearby corps up.  But, so what?

So, I think we should strike point 1 and remove the nearest requirements in 
point 2.

Yes, I know you guys have talked for a while about point 1, but until I sat 
down and read the entire proposal as a unit and thought about how it would 
work in possible future wars, I thought it was fine.  Then I decided I 
really didn't like it and went back to thinking that choosing the time for 
a peace treaty so you can buy more corps counters will solve almost all of 
these problems with the already existing diplomacy phase.

Mike



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