Manufacturing Italy (a PoN GC)
Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2013 3:43 pm
This AAR started on the Paradox AGEOD AAR forum and I'm migrating it over here. All the posts up to mid-1879 have already been shown before but I wanted to make it complete (I'll clearly indicate when new material starts here).
As the comments were such an important part of the AAR, what I've done is to also copy over most (not all) of my responses to comments in the original. Some of that discussion corrects my misundestandings and offers a deeper insight into the game or my strategic logic. I'll put in the old posts relatively quickly (not least I want to save it all and finish off the reports of my first war with Austria ... foreshadowing ...). But if there are any new comments or questions, I'll answer them as I go along (& would be delighted to see them).
My original goal was not a GC as such but instead to use Sardinia-Piedmont to explore the games economic engine (& to a lesser extent diplomacy and colonialism). As such it is hopefully a useful 'how to' resource but there are errors. I'll correct the worst as I copy files but in effect this was a 'teach yourself PoN' exercise. Where I have changed or added to the original (to correct the worst errors), I've used [color="#FF0000"]red text[/color].
By 1865 I ended up with a united Italy south of the Po (the alternate event chain) and the world that was emerging was becoming rather fascinating. So all things being equal I now intend to take this to 1920 - not least there are no other reports of the late game PoN-verse available (or at least that I have seen).
I should say, this is a vanilla game but with quite a lot of scripts and events imposed. Some of these correct for in-game event chains that are broken and some are to make my emerging Europe make sense. I love the way that PoN enforces a 19C mindset (so no world conquests here) of limited wars and small gains, but I did want some degree of dynamism as well. I'll indicate this where it happens but some egs are to give Italy the full range (& full volume) of colonial cards (since my Italy is going to become the dominant power in the Red Sea and E Africa).
Some of the older screenshots don't work any more, I find that image shack has the bad habit of sometimes eating them (there maybe a more technical explanation), depending I'll try and find back the originals if it seems to be really important.
Quick note on settings. Its on medium difficulty (up to 1875 when I shifted to hard), historical attrition for the player, and the restricted SOI constraint. For obvious reasons, despite my usual preference in AGE games, I haven't allocated the AI 'more time'.
At the start I was getting turn processing of around 2-3 minutes. By the 1870s of 4-5 minutes. As is discussed in a few places, I turned this to my advantage so a lot of turns were played when I was cooking (some recipes are included), doing housework or working on a different computer. Since you don't need to watch the screen (unless you are at war - and even then only during this actual turn processing), this has got me through around 30 years in about 9 months (+ the usual gaps of no game play at all).
As the comments were such an important part of the AAR, what I've done is to also copy over most (not all) of my responses to comments in the original. Some of that discussion corrects my misundestandings and offers a deeper insight into the game or my strategic logic. I'll put in the old posts relatively quickly (not least I want to save it all and finish off the reports of my first war with Austria ... foreshadowing ...). But if there are any new comments or questions, I'll answer them as I go along (& would be delighted to see them).
My original goal was not a GC as such but instead to use Sardinia-Piedmont to explore the games economic engine (& to a lesser extent diplomacy and colonialism). As such it is hopefully a useful 'how to' resource but there are errors. I'll correct the worst as I copy files but in effect this was a 'teach yourself PoN' exercise. Where I have changed or added to the original (to correct the worst errors), I've used [color="#FF0000"]red text[/color].
By 1865 I ended up with a united Italy south of the Po (the alternate event chain) and the world that was emerging was becoming rather fascinating. So all things being equal I now intend to take this to 1920 - not least there are no other reports of the late game PoN-verse available (or at least that I have seen).
I should say, this is a vanilla game but with quite a lot of scripts and events imposed. Some of these correct for in-game event chains that are broken and some are to make my emerging Europe make sense. I love the way that PoN enforces a 19C mindset (so no world conquests here) of limited wars and small gains, but I did want some degree of dynamism as well. I'll indicate this where it happens but some egs are to give Italy the full range (& full volume) of colonial cards (since my Italy is going to become the dominant power in the Red Sea and E Africa).
Some of the older screenshots don't work any more, I find that image shack has the bad habit of sometimes eating them (there maybe a more technical explanation), depending I'll try and find back the originals if it seems to be really important.
Quick note on settings. Its on medium difficulty (up to 1875 when I shifted to hard), historical attrition for the player, and the restricted SOI constraint. For obvious reasons, despite my usual preference in AGE games, I haven't allocated the AI 'more time'.
At the start I was getting turn processing of around 2-3 minutes. By the 1870s of 4-5 minutes. As is discussed in a few places, I turned this to my advantage so a lot of turns were played when I was cooking (some recipes are included), doing housework or working on a different computer. Since you don't need to watch the screen (unless you are at war - and even then only during this actual turn processing), this has got me through around 30 years in about 9 months (+ the usual gaps of no game play at all).