Capital Penalty

General Freiheit wrote:

The "Distance from Capital" penalty is a needless and harmful penalty. In HWW it hinders the nations USA, USSR, France, Italy, and UK. The penalty seems needless because of the already-oppressive expansion penalty. It is essentially the same penalty, just double dipping.

The expansion penalty applies to all provinces equally. While the distance from capital applies to ones as the name implies that are farther from your capital, so often your core is immune from this. This distance from capital will hit remote countries (Ilike island nations) harder as it will players that attack in one direction.

Yes these will often both hit your recent conquests but your core and the territory you conquered in the early game is only affected by the expansion penalty.

The concept of "distance" is trickier to implement that it may appear.

Sure, travel time... that's a starting point.

But if you are Great Britain and your navy rules the world's oceans, traveling by water is SAFE and EFFICIENT.

This is how Great Britain was able to rule far-away colonies with relative ease.

They are far in some sense... but not difficult to reach.

Commerce is conducted freely.

Communication is unencumbered.

CoW does not model this historical reality well.

Without the realities of supply and road+rail infratructure, land-based travel (and war) is far too easy.

This makes ocean-based empires look too weak in comparison.

And this is why the distance penalty is broken.

6thDragon wrote:

General Freiheit wrote:

The "Distance from Capital" penalty is a needless and harmful penalty. In HWW it hinders the nations USA, USSR, France, Italy, and UK. The penalty seems needless because of the already-oppressive expansion penalty. It is essentially the same penalty, just double dipping.

I disagree about it being the same penalty, but will freely admit to having no experience with the HWW map.

The expansion penalty applies to all provinces equally. While the distance from capital applies to ones as the name implies that are farther from your capital, so often your core is immune from this. This distance from capital will hit remote countries (Ilike island nations) harder as it will players that attack in one direction.

Yes these will often both hit your recent conquests but your core and the territory you conquered in the early game is only affected by the expansion penalty.

The whole idea of penalizing expansion is weird. We all want games to end faster. Bytro should want games to end faster, to save server resources. Why have games take extra days, even everything is decided and all that's left of the grind? Who benefits from that?

I've heard that explanation that countries can come back to win. It's rubbish. The dominant power or coalition that beats its main rivals is going to win. There is no coming back from a lost war. There is only the pointless grind filled with days of pointless rebellions.

Save money. Save us all the agony. Let games end faster. End the expansion penalty and the distance penalty.

Completely agree. Actually I think the victory thresholds of many maps should be lowered as well.

I sorta agree with the distance penalty thing, but I mean, all you have to do is build your capital in the "middle" of your country (don't put it in the complete middle, it should be in the middle of your core resource base).

Regarding expansion penalty, I feel just removing or reducing it's debuff in core territories would do the trick; maybe further reducing it's penalty by like 50% would work, perhaps?

distance and expansion are two different animals,

distance, a circular expanding country is having les penalty than one extending along only one axis.

expansion is dependent on amount of territories/provinces without considering direction of expansion,

Only expanding on cities and resource rurals does not work because of neighbour effects.

Would it be better that it does not affect revolt, but more army battle statistics. Morale is lower the more distant you fight. That would provide opportunity for defending nations? Maybe not, because in the end the economy is supporting the stronger nations and the battle will still end in a less efficient grind again.

Diminish economic returns instead of standard 25%?

I'm all for reducing the penalty, if that's the best we can do. But if have to ask a more basic question: Why do we need penalties that prolong games that have already been decided on the battlefield? Who wants that? Who needs that? From what I understand, everybody (players and Bytro) would be better off if games could end a few days sooner. More fun for gamers, more new games and more gold spending for Bytro.

z00mz00m wrote:

I'm all for reducing the penalty, if that's the best we can do. But if have to ask a more basic question: Why do we need penalties that prolong games that have already been decided on the battlefield? Who wants that? Who needs that? From what I understand, everybody (players and Bytro) would be better off if games could end a few days sooner. More fun for gamers, more new games and more gold spending for Bytro.

I don't hate the penalties enough to want them gone, but honestly wouldn't mind if they get dialed back a bit.

I'm having some fun in a HWW map right now trying to see how many revolts I can get at day change. Had 94 today. It's kinda amazing to watch the feedback loop when neighbor penalties join the fray, all the provinces' morales spiral downward together.

But yea if this was still a competitive game it'd be frustrating.

In other words, watching provinces flip is like watching a car crash in slow motion.

_Pyth0n_ wrote:

Regarding expansion penalty, I feel just removing or reducing it's debuff in core territories would do the trick; maybe further reducing it's penalty by like 50% would work, perhaps?

General Freiheit wrote:

This penalty is also very unrealistic, as irl most people dont care where their capital is.

jubjub bird wrote:

I don't hate the penalties enough to want them gone, but honestly wouldn't mind if they get dialed back a bit.

I'm having some fun in a HWW map right now trying to see how many revolts I can get at day change. Had 94 today. It's kinda amazing to watch the feedback loop when neighbor penalties join the fray, all the provinces' morales spiral downward together.

But yea if this was still a competitive game it'd be frustrating.

S Schmidt wrote:

General Freiheit wrote:

This penalty is also very unrealistic, as irl most people dont care where their capital is.

Actually it is very realistic as the farther from the capital you are the less control over those areas you have. Just ask the Romans, Incas, Persian and Chinese Empires. These Empires built roads for the reason that it made communication (as well as being able to project force to deal with breakaway regions) with the capital faster and therefore the capital could exert power over outlying areas. Napoleon used a semaphore system that was the world's first telegraph network, carrying messages across 19h-Century France faster than ever before. Railroads and Telegraphs allowed the US to remain united, before they were used there was discussion in the west of breaking away from the rest of the county as Washington DC was far away and could not respond to crises in a timely manner. Distance from a capital is today no longer as important as it once but during World War II it still had some basis. So the expansion penalty is the best way to show how distance makes ruling distant areas difficult.

Are we really going to compare an ancient, stone age empire like the Incas with a WW2 country capable of building aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and (eventually) nuclear missiles? There are entire air forces moving around the map in mere hours, scouting and coordinating strikes on corps-size troop concentrations. These countries have difficulty administering far-off provinces? Come on... this is a very silly conversation. None of the morale penalties ever made sense EXCEPT the war penalty, the one that's been removed from the game. Citizens being upset by an increasing number of wars could be a real thing. If you want to make it realistic, make the penalty based on troops lost. Citizens do not like to receive notice of their sons dying in battle, or their cities being pounded into rubble. But expansion? No way.

z00mz00m wrote:

Are we really going to compare an ancient, stone age empire like the Incas with a WW2 country capable of building aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and (eventually) nuclear missiles? There are entire air forces moving around the map in mere hours, scouting and coordinating strikes on corps-size troop concentrations. These countries have difficulty administering far-off provinces? Come on... this is a very silly conversation. None of the morale penalties ever made sense EXCEPT the war penalty, the one that's been removed from the game. Citizens being upset by an increasing number of wars could be a real thing. If you want to make it realistic, make the penalty based on troops lost. Citizens do not like to receive notice of their sons dying in battle, or their cities being pounded into rubble. But expansion? No way.

S Schmidt wrote:

General Freiheit wrote:

This penalty is also very unrealistic, as irl most people dont care where their capital is.

Actually it is very realistic as the farther from the capital you are the less control over those areas you have. Just ask the Romans, Incas, Persian and Chinese Empires. These Empires built roads for the reason that it made communication (as well as being able to project force to deal with breakaway regions) with the capital faster and therefore the capital could exert power over outlying areas. Napoleon used a semaphore system that was the world's first telegraph network, carrying messages across 19h-Century France faster than ever before. Railroads and Telegraphs allowed the US to remain united, before they were used there was discussion in the west of breaking away from the rest of the county as Washington DC was far away and could not respond to crises in a timely manner. Distance from a capital is today no longer as important as it once but during World War II it still had some basis. So the expansion penalty is the best way to show how distance makes ruling distant areas difficult.

I believe the expansion penalty is a result of wartime casualties, higher taxes, and other wartime rationing and restrictions. Not everyone is happy to see their sons and husbands off in foreign lands. Some countries controlled the media better than others to minimize this. With this in mind, it makes sense. Plus you always have the debate over which conquered territory is formally annexed and those living in that territory being granted the same rights of citizenship. Continued occupation was always an option as was puppet governments in charge of local affairs. All of these things left some unhappy.

I agree with distance penalty being less applicable in WWII than in previous eras. Perhaps there was a psychological element to decisions being made in a far off place.

With all that said I think the resources from looting are probably a little too high compared to the era, but the non-core penalty is a little high too. But that's just my opinion.

z00mz00m wrote:

Are we really going to compare an ancient, stone age empire like the Incas with a WW2 country capable of building aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and (eventually) nuclear missiles?

z00mz00m wrote:

But if you are Great Britain and your navy rules the world's oceans, traveling by water is SAFE and EFFICIENT.

This is how Great Britain was able to rule far-away colonies with relative ease.

General Freiheit wrote:

Yeah. Most people would be estatic that their empire is expanding. Germany in WWII, the people were happy as hell to see Germany grow. Same with Japan and all other modern countries. Even in WWII it was easier to control large amounts of land. Telegrams, phones, railways, cars, planes! They all made it easy to control large amounts of land

As a post script I would like to address z00m's statement about "This is how Great Britain was able to rule far-away colonies with relative ease." The reason the British Empire was able to rule far away colonies was in fact more to do with their having firearms and cannon and machine guns while the indigenous peoples they ruled had spears and bows and arrows. The only time British Empire faced a foe with the same modern weaponry they were beaten, yes I am in fact speaking of the American Revolution.