Re: [eia] impasse

[Michael Gorman <mpgorman@xxxxxxxx>]

At 02:37 PM 7/21/2005, you wrote:
> I've never claimed anything more than a maximum of luck and a minimum of
> mistakes in the present game.  Certainly the dice leaned my way in really
> critical situations.

But we'll still credit you for a well played game.

> In the present and past games I've tried to play along the lines of
> long-term survival and prosperity that Mike talks about, but it's easy for
> me to say that, since it's harder for a true catastrophe to befall Britain
> than most other countries.  I'm willing to tip my hand to the extent of
> saying that I've played the 1805-1807 years as GB enough times (and gotten
> as lucky as I could hope to again), and I'm ready to move on to a different
> country if we start over.
>
> By and large, I'm happy to start a new game, but I worry a bit about the
> idea that one player being way ahead is sufficient cause to end a campaign.
> In the real Napoleonic wars, France dominated in the early years, and the
> supposedly crushed opponents rose from the ashes to strike Nappy down in the
> end.  I would hate to think that we would have stopped the "game" at the
> Treaty of Tilsit, and never played out the German resurgeance, Russian
> invasion, or Penninsular war.  Maybe the fact that GB, unlike France, is all
> but impossible to access in the face of a dominant navy makes the present
> game situation different.

The time scale of a naval build up is also a big factor.  You can rebuild 
your infantry army in a year and a half and be ready to mix it up when an 
enforced peace ends.  I saw that in our first game where I pretty much lost 
my entire army but in 18 months I was winning wars.  Rebuilding a navy 
takes years.  So even if an anti-Britain coalition formed up and started an 
active naval buildup, it'd be several years before that would lead to 
actual warfare.  So once Britain reaches the point where there are no 
navies in Europe able to threaten British supremacy, it's nearly impossible 
to ever take that away on what is suddenly a relatively short time scale of 
the campaign game.

What made this game so one-sided was that Britain accompanied achieving 
naval domination with a string of mainland victories.  Otherwise you end up 
simulating the historical scenario where Britain dominated the seas around 
Europe but could only risk entering the mainland with a lot of help.  So 
it's political status was not so resoundingly strong.

In the real world Britain was starting to feel the pinch of the arms race 
half a century later, but it took a long time and a lot of commitment by 
the continental powers, and a growing US Navy, before Britain lost the 
naval supremacy it won in the Napoleonic Wars.


Mike

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