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I don't really like how the naval focus points give specific numbers of capital ships and total ships. It inherently biases the ship selection towards having as heavy of ships as possible, and away from a more sensibly designed fleet. Having a fleet total tonnage, say, level 1 gets you 600k tons, and scaling from there. Assuming the same linear scale, that gives a 5 level a 3 million ton budget for ships. Though, that actually seems a bit high, and should probably be level 1 gets 300k tons, scaling to 1.5 million tons at level 5. The US only had 29 dreadnought battleships planned before the WNT came along, forcing the cancellation or early retirement of a number of them. Add in the Lexingtons and it comes out to 35 capital ships. Also, this avoids hazy definitions as to what exactly is a capital ship, and what is a battleship, and the difference between a fast battleship and a fully armored battlecruiser. Example: Kongo class battlecruiser. Went in for reconstruction, and came out faster and more heavily armored, classed as fast battleships.

Credit to Ryan for this, but unless someone presents an alternative I'm going to roll with his proposed scale.

If you have no hard data on various areas, I recommend you use this for countries:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... 7rank.html

Also, Wiki could provide the areas, especially for subdivisions (using it for states and provinces in my case).

After some discussion I've decided to raise the air cap to 800 aircraft at Air Focus 5.

Steve I'm gonna PM you a suggestion for the point system, please check before deciding.

Beowulf's corrections to Naval system make sense.

I can support two caps:
(1) the cap on total tonnage of Navy combatants (those above 200 tons of displacement), I'd support a scale like 150 k, 300 k, 600 k, 900 k, 1200 k and so forth, and
(2) the cap on tonnage of capital ships. No ships larger than 40,000 tons for example unless you have a minimal Industry of 3 (such large combatants would be unlikely built for you by a foreign nation). No ships larger than 50,000 tons prior to game start may be declared. About it.

Peacetime airforce caps make sense to me (as well as make historical sense), and I support Steve on them.

Army, haven't looked into it.

Tweaked Russia:
Pop: 5
Territory: 5
Colonies: 0 (lost all of them, the Tsars were really pathetic in this timeline)
Industry: 3
Economy: 3
Infrastructure: 2
Standing military limit: 3
Navy: 3
Army: 5
Air force: 1

Wohoo! Now, how did I arrive here? Pop: ~130+ million or something. Territory: self explanatory. Colonies: now with Slacker claiming Poland, i'm left without the only territory reasonably to be ascribed as a colony. Industry: 3, for I have an 8 (Pop 5 + Economy 3). Infrastructure: 2, Russia's only rule is railroad. Standing military: 3 standard. Navy: 3 (exactly fits my total tonnage, number of large ships, etc. - despite only being eligible for NF of 2, I used my Industry of 3 to give bonus to Naval Focus), Army: 5 (1 million), Air Force: 1, Russia barely had 100 planes left after WWI and even the milder version of Civil War of this reality, and the 1920s were almost without air power since the obsolete planes rusted away and new planes only arrived in the 1930s.

I must say the point system makes sense. The tweaks look workable to me, at least I could create a Britain for try.

Federal Socialist Republic of Brazil (FSRB)

All very provisional mind!

Population: 4
Due to heavy immigration and native growth Brazil has had an enormous population increase since the early 19th Century. The Brazilian population is also extremely diverse, being of every single race and nationality. The FSR endeavours to have all these different racial groups living together in peace and harmony, a symbol to the rest of the world, and living proof of the equality of the races.

Home Territory: 5
The FSR of Brazil is enormous, stretching from the Sea Atlantic to the Andes Mountains, from the Caribbean to the Platte. It is hard to describe Brazil in simple terms, except to say that the great jungles in the interior would swallow up France and Germany without a trace.

Colonial Territory: 0
The FSR of Brazil has no colonies nor any desire for colonies, the FSR seeks to liberate the people in the colonies and help them be free.

Industry: 3
Despite the best efforts of the FEPLAC (Federal Economic PLAnning Committee) Brazil still lags behind for a nation of its size and strength. That said great strides are being made, the nation is outputting more pig iron than ever before! Soon every family will be able to own their own six hundred pound pile of pig iron! Whereas in the past the farmers were tied down to the estates of powerful landlords, they are now free to join whatever co-op or collective that they want.

Economy: 3
The economy of the FSRB is a true FEPLAC triumph! Freeing up peasants from massive landlord estates and integrating them into the monetary economy has helped in itself. So has granting living wages to all workers, so that they can afford to both spend and to save money. The recent socialist revolutions have also led to heavy economic growth as the FSRB have opened up trading links with the new Socialist Republics in Europe and elsewhere.

Infrastructure: 4
The FSRB has promised a job to anyone who wants one and what better way of using excess labour than to build roads, railways, and harbours? Better yet this takes advantage of FSRB strengths, which is a large population and a lot of heavy industry. Despite this high rating though large sections of the interior still lack any kind of roads, indeed the railways are often the only path cut through the wilderness.

Standing Military Limit: 3
Despite being a peace loving nation the FSRB realises that the Capitalist Oppressors will not long tolerate a truly free state, thus the People's Committee on National Self-Defence has recently had their funding considerably increased.

Naval Focus: 3 (2+1)
The FSRB has a very long and vitally important coastline, even with the new railways coastal shipping is of enormous importance. Beside that the FSRB must also defend the trading routes to the Socialist Republics in Europe. Thus the People's Maritime Self-Defence Force is unusually well-funded for a state in Brazil's circumstances.

Army Focus: 3
The People's Ground Self-Defence Force is somewhat limited in size, despite the fact that the FSRB could easily boost its size. The reason is part a traditional worry that the army (and yes the PGSDF *is* an army) could launch a coup, but more importantly the FSRB believes in the concept of People's War. Thus the purpose of the regular army is to slow down an enemy invasion and to act as a cadre force as a total mobilization order goes into effect.

Air Focus: 3
The sheer size of the FSRB as well as the worry of enemy surprise attacks has led to great investment in the People's Air Self-Defence Force, both in terms of airplanes and airships. The great Flying Boats of the PASDF is the envy of the world, capable of landing even in the great Amazon river if need be.

Stas Bush wrote:You can present the claim to Steve. I might allow the loss of Poland and Lithuania, and maybe Western parts of Ukraine making the USSR look more like it's 1925 borders in the West. Then again, of course this could lead to an in-game war, like territorial claims do IRL. But maybe not

Steve and I were batting around ideas-the idea would be a democratic and generally neutral Poland might ratchet down some of the pre-game tension in Central and Eastern Europe and make BOTH of you feel a little less boxed in.

A functional Commonwealth requires a decent bit out of Germany too, so it's not like it wouldn't be coming out of both sides.

Like I said to Steve, I'm not going to step on toes here. I think it's potentially interesting. The counter to that is that I've played in a metric shitton of games like this before, and I don't *have* to play-Steve mentioned it to me and I thought it'd be interesting. If you guys don't want it, it's all good.

To re-iterate, since other things are coming up....

Cascadia's claims for home territory, as of now, are Alaska, Yukon, Alberta, British Columbia, the western-most tip of Montana that lies west of the line the Idaho-Wyoming border would form if it kept moving north, Idaho itself, Oregon, Washington State, northern California down to San Francisco and the northern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, and northern Nevada eastward of where the state's diagonal southwestern borderline forms (will post a more exact line of my border with Shroom's wacky Barony later). This is somewhere between 4,416,234 square kms and 5,072,719 square kms (Derived by re-adding Oregon, Washington, and Idaho's areas to account for the extra bit of Montana, California, and Nevada, and I honestly think it's a bit less than that - I'm probably just below the five million square kms mark. And I'll note that about 2 million of that is in inhospitable Arctic land that might one day grant me an oil windfall, but I don't think I can exploit Alaskan oil at 1925 tech level).

Colonial claims I'm levying are Hawaii, Midway Atoll, Wake Atoll, Truk Lagoon in the Carolines, and the islands of New Britain, New Ireland, and Bougainville in the Bismarck/New Britain archipelago. This comes out to roughly 74,393 square kms.

My claim on Nicaragua is maintained only until I hammer things out with Wilkens, but I suspect I'll cede it to him in light of his apparent history plan for Mexico.

Beowulf wrote:I don't really like how the naval focus points give specific numbers of capital ships and total ships. It inherently biases the ship selection towards having as heavy of ships as possible, and away from a more sensibly designed fleet. Having a fleet total tonnage, say, level 1 gets you 600k tons, and scaling from there. Assuming the same linear scale, that gives a 5 level a 3 million ton budget for ships. Though, that actually seems a bit high, and should probably be level 1 gets 300k tons, scaling to 1.5 million tons at level 5. The US only had 29 dreadnought battleships planned before the WNT came along, forcing the cancellation or early retirement of a number of them. Add in the Lexingtons and it comes out to 35 capital ships. Also, this avoids hazy definitions as to what exactly is a capital ship, and what is a battleship, and the difference between a fast battleship and a fully armored battlecruiser. Example: Kongo class battlecruiser. Went in for reconstruction, and came out faster and more heavily armored, classed as fast battleships.

Yes, that makes for a lot more sense. However, I would still add the size limitations I originally proposed for BBs. Also, the capital ships numbers was included to prevent people from building all-dreadnought navies. For example, someone blowing his entire points on BBs. What I based my scale on was the combined BB, BC and CV tonnage of the royal navy at the end of WWI.

As an aside, if anybody wants to use the german navy designs, please PM me so that we can work something out.

Slacker wrote:

Stas Bush wrote:You can present the claim to Steve. I might allow the loss of Poland and Lithuania, and maybe Western parts of Ukraine making the USSR look more like it's 1925 borders in the West. Then again, of course this could lead to an in-game war, like territorial claims do IRL. But maybe not

Steve and I were batting around ideas-the idea would be a democratic and generally neutral Poland might ratchet down some of the pre-game tension in Central and Eastern Europe and make BOTH of you feel a little less boxed in.

A functional Commonwealth requires a decent bit out of Germany too, so it's not like it wouldn't be coming out of both sides.

Like I said to Steve, I'm not going to step on toes here. I think it's potentially interesting. The counter to that is that I've played in a metric shitton of games like this before, and I don't *have* to play-Steve mentioned it to me and I thought it'd be interesting. If you guys don't want it, it's all good.

No, sorry. I'd rather not have seven players surrounding me when I already have six boxing me in. So I'll not surrender part of Germany's eastern territory, especially not when there are both important coal and ore mining area and it also is necessary for me to keep Silesia as a buffer zone for Prague/Berlin.

A question, what does it mean by "1 to economy" etc. etc. ? The wording does not make too much sense to me.

Are we going to start laying claim to designs? Because at this point, I'm going to be fairly liberal as to where the designs will come from, be they RN, or USN.

+1 or -1 depending on what is written in them.

EDIT:

Are we going to start laying claim to designs? Because at this point, I'm going to be fairly liberal as to where the designs will come from, be they RN, or USN.

For all I care, everybody can use the designs of the German Navy besides me, but I'd rather we work out some history how they got them.

Updated Union of the Low Countries Distribution.

Population: 2 (+2 from Colonies)
Home Territory: 2 (41,526 km2 (Dutch) + 30,528 km2 (Belgian))
Colonial Territory: 4 (the Subsidiary Union of the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Abyssinia, and Kenya), and the Subsidiary Union of the West African Coast (Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Guinea) (This is pending some dealings with Baerne), and the Special Union of Curacao.
Industry: 4
Economy: 4
Infrastructure: 4
Standing Military Limit: 3
Naval Focus: 3 (+2 From Industry)
Army Focus: 3
Air Focus: 1

Are we going to start laying claim to designs? Because at this point, I'm going to be fairly liberal as to where the designs will come from, be they RN, or USN.

I will not be caring where I got my design from, for the most part, either, though I will be trying to stay with Belgian/Dutch designs if I can.

Karmic Knight wrote:

Are we going to start laying claim to designs? Because at this point, I'm going to be fairly liberal as to where the designs will come from, be they RN, or USN.

I will not be caring where I got my design from, for the most part, either, though I will be trying to stay with Belgian/Dutch designs if I can.

Generally even designs that on paper seem identical look very different when actually built, since most nations would emulate what seems like the best layout I'd expect fairly similar, though not identical, designs.

Alright, because while some Italian battleships might be worth looking at, I can't say for many of their designs. Perhaps the initial dreadnaughts might follow them, but not all.

BTW, Steve, I might be willing to look for a small colonial possession with points 1-2, but I'm not 100% sure where I should get one, aside from one somewhere in Africa or maybe in S. America.

Slacker, I'm all for you playing and actually I've even devised a reasonable backstory how the Tsars pathetically failed to take over Poland... which led to your nation currently existing.

BTW if I do Brazil as a socialist republic I am thinking of having The Revolution occur in the late 19th early 20th Century, unless Stas Bush objects strenuously on the grounds of wanting to be the First Socialist Republic or something. My idea is basically of a state that instituted radical Libertarian policies, with all that this entails, and utterly refused any reform or change which would detract from Liberty! This of course led to the inevitable Communist revolution.

Whatever, man. The matter of Brazil doesn't really change stuff. The theories of October Revolution would only be strengthened if another brotherly nation follows the path of socialism.

I presume you would be eager to install contacts with the Soviet Russia, right?

Stas Bush wrote:Whatever, man. The matter of Brazil doesn't really change stuff. The theories of October Revolution would only be strengthened if another brotherly nation follows the path of socialism.

That's good then, I'll fix a history which looks suitably realistic, in as much as that is possible.

Stas Bush wrote:I presume you would be eager to install contacts with the Soviet Russia, right?

Yes, I think the logical thing would be that there would be contacts soon after the Revolution actually, or even during the Revolution, aid and such limited by concerns of practicality but still. We should also discuss naval cooperation.

Third French Republic
Territory: France, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Laos, Cambodia, and Tahiti.
History: To Be Inserted

Population: 3 + 2 Colonial Territory
Home Territory: 3; France
Colonial Territory: 4; Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Laos, Cambodia, and Tahiti.
Industry: 5
Economy: 3
Infrastructure: 4
Standing Military Limit: 2
Army Focus: 1 + 3 Industry
Navy Focus: 3
Air Focus: 2

Seeing as no one has claimed much of SEA, I've decided to claim Singapore, Bantam (some bunch of islands around it), and the southern part the Malayan Peninsular, or rather the area with KL and down to Johor. Might even claim more of the area up to the Isthmus of Kra and build a canal there...

EDIT: Might claim Sumatra for the Oil. Let me think about it, and how many points it would constitute.

EDIT: Is Klavohunter still playing? I don't see him marked anywhere, and he claims the above mentioned. Otherwise, I'll claim the area where Carthage was as a colony (admittedly, one can't really look at it as such, to be honest, since it was formerly Roman territory!)

On a different issue I'm thinking of having a Brazillian Civil War 1897-1904, who would be inclined to intervene on the side of the Republicans against the Revolutionaries? I'm kind of interested since I'm working on a history and I'd like to know if there will be any IC grudges to bear in mind.

Norseman wrote:On a different issue I'm thinking of having a Brazillian Civil War 1897-1904, who would be inclined to intervene on the side of the Republicans against the Revolutionaries? I'm kind of interested since I'm working on a history and I'd like to know if there will be any IC grudges to bear in mind.

What would they represent?

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

Norseman wrote:On a different issue I'm thinking of having a Brazillian Civil War 1897-1904, who would be inclined to intervene on the side of the Republicans against the Revolutionaries? I'm kind of interested since I'm working on a history and I'd like to know if there will be any IC grudges to bear in mind.

What would they represent?

Republicans = The legitimate rather libertarian style government who have permitted massive foreign investment over the years.
Revolutionaries = Various shades of Socialist who are, at the very least, going to nationalize pretty much all foreign holdings.

Thanas wrote: No, sorry. I'd rather not have seven players surrounding me when I already have six boxing me in. So I'll not surrender part of Germany's eastern territory, especially not when there are both important coal and ore mining area and it also is necessary for me to keep Silesia as a buffer zone for Prague/Berlin.

Erm, actually, when I talked to Steve, I specifically excluded Silesia and Pommerania from my proposal. In the west I was figuring 1920 borders at best, the little bit of extra I want comes from the Russian side of the frontier. Obviously I'd be gaining Galicia, Ponzan, Krakow, and I'd really like Danzig, but I wasn't claiming Breslau or the Silesian industrial zone.


And Stas, I appreciate the vote of support there.

Incidentally I want to know what the rules are on airships? For that matter what about bombers? Should we say that the number of airplanes are actually the number of *engines*? That would sort of work, even with airships (eight engines or more) but I'd like something official.

Also another question, are we once more playing ourselves getting zapped into the bodies of the leaders of these nations? I mean as in the previous games?