----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2003 5:46
AM
Subject: Re: [eia] corps-on-loan
I agree that repatriation is
unrealistic. But so is the prospect that a French
corps-on-loan might march all the way to Constantinople for no good
reason. So is the fact that by leaving the French corps on his extreme
eastern border (as Jim seems prepared to do), the Prussian king would be
inviting a foreign army to ravage its people all the way home.
... So it's not as if one rule is "realistic" and the other is
"unrealistic"; rather it's a matter of deciding which kind of unrealistic
rule we prefer to abide by.
Since no one has piped up in
support of my suggestion, I'm willing to seek a compromise. What I
most want to avoid are the following situations: Jim uses voluntary
access agreements to march my corps-on-loan to Jerusalem. If Jim
remained at war with Russia he could conceivably march my corps-on-loan to
Saratov or Astrakhan.
Before I suggest my
(compromise) solution, let's recall that it's not as if this corps is a
corps of mindless zombies. Obviously, they have enough free to stop
fighting in the middle of a combat once they've lost half of their
strength. That tells me that there are some lengths to which they will
not go in the service of their temporary masters. On the other hand, I
do not want to restrict the ability of the temporary master to use the corps
as he wishes. After all, marching the French corps to Astrakhan could
be a legitimate military mission - it is a provincial capital.
So here's the compromise I
suggest. At the moment the corps-on-loan reverts to its original
owner's control it is repatriated to *its previous temporary master's
territory*.
In my case, this would mean
that if the corps were in Astrakhan or Jerusalem in April of 1805, then it
would be repatriated to *Prussia*. At this point, the corps would
still have to march across Prussia to get home.
The purpose of this rule
would be to eliminate the ability of temporary controlling powers to abuse
the rules and send the corps-on-loan to far-off lands for no reason. I
know that there is a lot of resistance to the "oddity" (as Mike puts it) of
a corps moving faster than it usually does. But what about the oddity
of a French corps marching to Jerusalem for no apparent reason? Do you
really think that the commanders of that corps would obey that
command? Is that "realistic"?
In any case, if I can't get
automatic force repatriation, then I hope I can at least get repatriation to
the previous controller's country. This rule would eliminate whatever
incentive currently exists to abuse the rules and send corps-on-loan to
far-off lands for no reason.
kdh
I was thinking bringing a corps
on loan into your country would count as voluntary access so you could not
refuse the corps the right to return home. Repatriation would stop
someone from stranding the corps on a desert island though.
I think
access works though on the basis that in a long game, you can probably get
away with an abuse of that sort once and then you'd better never lose a
war to the nation you did it to. The whole point of not doing
instant repatriation was to avoid the oddity of having the troops move
faster than it is possible to move troops under ideal conditions.
Repatriation is inherently unrealistic as the troops can't go as fast as
they might under it. If a country wants to get the other corps out,
they can always dump it off near the
border.