harrybanana
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Seeking Guidance

Fri May 31, 2013 1:24 am

I am playing Austria in a GC and it is now early 1867. My world rankings (according to the screen you get sent to when you hit the F10 key) are: Economy 1, Military 3, Commerce 4, Technology 7 (though this one seems to vary quite a bit from turn to turn). My average contentment is 60% but I do have a few areas in the 39% to 49% range. The militancy of all my areas is 1 or less except for Lombardia (14) and Venezia (4). The loyalty of Lombardia and Venezia to Austria is also very low (ie 15% and 25% respectively). I assume this is scripted but if there is any way to improve loyalty I would love to know what it is. I am supplying my population with 100% of the food and common goods they require, but only about 25% of the luxury goods. The problem with the latter is that there are very few luxuries on the market. I am maximizing my production of luxury goods and gems, but gold and opium are not being produced in any sizeable quantities anywhere. Neither Italy or Prussia have declared war on me yet and I suspect they never will. I still hold all of my original provinces, but have not gained any new ones.

So my question is what do I do now and in particular how do I gain the prestige points I need to win the game? I am currently sitting in 5th place. There are areas outside my Empire that I gain prestige points for if I control, but I do not have claims on any of them. My understanding of the Rules is that if I do not have a claim I can not demand the province in a Peace Treaty no matter how high my War Score; is this right? If I forge a casus belli on another nation will this give me a claim to one of it's provinces? If not how else do I gain these claims? Do I have to wait for a scripted event? Any advice would be appreciated.

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Jim-NC
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Fri May 31, 2013 2:29 am

Factories/plants will generate prestige for you (you will be able to create these in a few years or so - depending on technology). You can try to get a colonial empire (capture a few regions, or win some colonies from wars with your neighbors). The AI calculates the odds before attacking, and Italy probably never will attack you. You can see what happens with PP from wars by reading Loki100's AAR. Basically, he has been wildly increasing prestige by attacking other nations (most notably the Ottomans and Austrians). He is currently planning for war with Britain. The AI doesn't do a good job of producing things that are needed, and thus there will probably never been much gold/gems/opium for sale. You can try to colonize those areas (you only need a tradepost to get the goods), but I am not sure what colonial options you have.
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Kensai
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Fri May 31, 2013 9:34 am

harrybanana wrote:So my question is what do I do now and in particular how do I gain the prestige points I need to win the game? I am currently sitting in 5th place. There are areas outside my Empire that I gain prestige points for if I control, but I do not have claims on any of them. My understanding of the Rules is that if I do not have a claim I can not demand the province in a Peace Treaty no matter how high my War Score; is this right? If I forge a casus belli on another nation will this give me a claim to one of it's provinces? If not how else do I gain these claims? Do I have to wait for a scripted event? Any advice would be appreciated.


Austria-Hungary can win this game even if doesn't claim any colonies. Actually, most colonies on the map will give negative points of prestige if you play with historical Spheres of Influence. Austria-Hungary will need to add the extra prestige it needs by making alliances with potential winners in historical wars and having the best possible industrial base. Obviously, keeping the Empire intact is critical, many minorities lurk inside.
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harrybanana
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Sat Jun 01, 2013 6:31 pm

Thank you for your advice Jim-NC and Kensai. Colonies does not seem to be the way to go for Austria. So it seems the only way I am going to gain prestige (over and above what I gain every turn for certain regions I control) is by winning some Wars.

But can anyone tell me if there is a difference between a particular Region being "claimed" by Austria and it being an "objective" of Austria? The Rules (page 156) say that a Claimed Region "is a region containing ... or one of your objective regions."

A couple Turkish Territories are Austrian "Objectives". Does this mean that if I go to War with Turkey and get a high enough Warscore that I will be able to acquire these regions at the Peace table? I ask because Serbia is one of my Objectives so I forged a casus belli against it (at a cost of 100 prestige), defeated it's armies and occupied it's capital; but acquiring Serbia is not one of my options at the Peace Table. So conquering Serbia is going to end up costing not gaining me prestige. I don't want to make the same mistake in a War against the Ottoman Empire.

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Jim-NC
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Mon Jun 03, 2013 2:44 am

I must admit that I am not 100% sure how it works (haven't been in enough wars to figure it out).
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Mon Jun 03, 2013 6:49 am

Jim-NC wrote:I must admit that I am not 100% sure how it works (haven't been in enough wars to figure it out).


my experience (playing without extended claims) is that something doesn't quite work for the claimed regions. As an eg, as Italy I had the 5 N Itialian provinces and Split as objectives. In my wars with Austria the provinces that had a direct overland connection to the rest of Italy (Lombardy-Trieste) appeared in the claims screen with a price etc (and over 2 wars I managed to gain the WS for them all). Split never did - and Split is separated from the rest of Italy by another Adriatic province.

in my Ottoman wars, none of my objectives ever appeared as claimable provinces (again all, obviously are physically split from Italy) but I could claim their colonies - both colonial objectives for me such as Libya and also Iraq etc.

So I think there is a problem in this respect that you cannot (using restricted claims) claim an objective province which is not contiguous. I sorted it by using my 'is it reasonable to make this happen?' test and in the 2 Ottoman wars gave myself Tirana, Corfu and the Dodecanese but left Adana to the Turks (it seems unrealistic). Not ideal but it keeps the game moving a bit more dynamically.
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harrybanana
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Wed Jun 05, 2013 12:42 am

Well Serbia is contiguous with my territory so this doesn't explain why I couldn't claim it in a peace treaty. But perhaps you just can't take another nations capital region no matter what. Though if that is the case why does it even show up as an Austrian objective?

In any event one of the two Austrian objective areas controlled by the Ottoman Turks is contiguous with my territory so I will forge a Casus belli and see what happens.

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Wed Jun 05, 2013 6:57 am

well an objective yields a CB, and there are other war goals than simple territory acquisition. Wars=prestige and it means you have, as historically, a permanent interest in what Serbia was up to
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Wed Jun 05, 2013 8:18 am

For how long did you occupy Serbia? Objective regions do appear on your F9 screen (as the winner) but you will have to have enough warscore for that to happen. Perhaps Belgrade is bugged given that it's the capital of another nation, but generally claimed areas and objectives regions, if set, can be asked for. You simply need to acquire a lot of warscore, sometimes 1-2K, to put them on the table.
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harrybanana
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Tue Jun 18, 2013 4:23 pm

loki100 wrote:well an objective yields a CB, and there are other war goals than simple territory acquisition. Wars=prestige and it means you have, as historically, a permanent interest in what Serbia was up to



Actually none of my objectives located in any foreign nations (and I have several) give me a CB against that nation. The only way I can gain a CB against another Nation is by forging one. Of course that costs me diplomats and prestige and, unless I'm very lucky, takes several turns to obtain. As for wars gaining prestige, I believe the only prestige you gain is from inflicting casualties on the enemy. Is that true, or are there other ways to gain prestige from a War? The problem with my war with Serbia is that it cost me more prestige to forge the Casus belli and declare war than I gained from inflicting casualties on it's small army.

harrybanana
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Tue Jun 18, 2013 4:32 pm

Kensai wrote:For how long did you occupy Serbia? Objective regions do appear on your F9 screen (as the winner) but you will have to have enough warscore for that to happen. Perhaps Belgrade is bugged given that it's the capital of another nation, but generally claimed areas and objectives regions, if set, can be asked for. You simply need to acquire a lot of warscore, sometimes 1-2K, to put them on the table.


I forget exactly how long I occupied Serbia, but it was several turns; maybe even up to a year. Annexing Serbia never showed up on my peace table. Not sure as I understand what you are saying about objective regions showing up on the Peace table. My very limited experience is that certain selections will show up on the peace table from the beginning of the war (such as liberating certain regions) with an indication of the Warscore you need to ask for that concession. But I have never yet had the option to select annexing a region with an indication of the warscore I need to ask for that concession. Are you saying that if I waited long enough and built up a large enough Warscore then a new Peace Option would appear showing that I could annex a region if I built up a large enough Warscore?

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Kensai
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Wed Jun 19, 2013 12:08 pm

Objective regions should appear in the F9 negotiations. I believe you are right though that it might be inconsistent sometimes. Playing as Japan and conquering Korea, I got Pusan on the screen (as it was Japanese objective region) only after a while, I think it was not there since the beginning.

You can annex objective regions, if Serbia is NOT in the F10 list, you will not be able to negotiate for it. If you really think it is important for your storyline you could activate 'extended regions' from Options just for a turn or two before asking for peace. This will allow the engine to treat every region as potential objective, according to warscore as always.

I am generally against extended regions as they tend to give an unrealistic power to the player which destroys the historicity of the era, but your own history in the making has certainly priority! ;)
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harrybanana
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Thu Jun 20, 2013 5:38 am

Kensai, I agree with you that using extended regions can make for unrealistic results so I would prefer not to use it. But in the case of Austria it appears to me so far that I can not gain any regions at all despite having several objective regions in other nations territories. I made peace with Serbia when it became clear that I would never gain Serbia. I then spent several turns, prestige and diplomats to gain a forged casus belli against the Ottomans as it has 2 of my objective regions. I have now been at war with the Ottomans for several turns, conquered several regions and won several battles. But on the peace table I do not have the option of obtaining either of my objective regions. I can demand a few colonies but they would actually give me negative prestige every turn. I intend to remain at war with the Ottomans until I have captured Istanbul and have a large Warscore just for the fun of it and see if I can gain enough prestige from winning battles to make up for what it cost me to declare war. But if I can't grow Austria at all it kind of takes the fun out of the game.

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loki100
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Thu Jun 20, 2013 9:33 am

I think your problem is you have hit what I personally think is a fundamental design concept to PoN. If you play Victoria 1/2, you can remake the map of Europe as you wish (indeed do a world conquest if that is what floats your boat), PoN operates from the view that between 1850 and 1914 there were very limited changes to the political map of Europe. The exceptions are the emergence of the Balkan states from the Ottoman Empire and of course the German and Italian unifications. It really does impose the diplomatic norms of the Congress of Vienna.

So in that concept, your Austria has every reason to be worried/annoyed at those upstart Serbs and your old enemy the Turks. You don't have international acceptance that you can, however, go and take land off them. What you can do with Serbia for eg is to impose a peace deal (reparations and demobilisation) that will mean they are no threat to you for some time - the International community would settle for that as a reasonable exercise in power (well Russia wouldn't).

War does pay though. You can take all the industrial and agricultural production from provinces you occupy, even better your PC will increase as you sell goods to regions you occupy. The NM and prestige gain from capturing provinces, temporarily occupying objectives and winning battles are all worthwhile. There is no reason why you couldn't militarily administer Serbia for several years, gaining prestige all the while (ie Austria is seen on the world stage as a power not to muck about with).

But in the end, without the extended gains, the map of Europe is not going to change.

Now having said all that, in my Ottoman wars I never was able to claim any region, in my Austrian wars I could claim those that were physically adjacent to Italian provinces, so I think there is a underlying bit of code - something related to population acceptance of your state.

Edit - should add, if you hold a colony for long enough, even if it is originally outside your SoI, then the legitimacy of your occupation will improve and sooner or later you will get prestige. Of course, even without the prestige, a few well place colonies can yield all sorts of nice luxuries or hard to import food/common goods.
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Re: Seeking Guidance Annexation

Fri Jul 13, 2018 9:17 pm

I see that this is an old thread. Has there been any updates on annexing neighbouring provinces? I am playing Austria and have occupied neighbouring provinces. If I hold them for long enough (game years?) do they become eligible for annexation through the peace process of is this just something that can't be done in the game?

Thanks

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