Don't forget the White Sea

[Kensai]

The title is half the story cause I want to pass two messages...

• There is a White Sea sea region. I bet many of you had not noticed it. I hadn't.
• There can be raiding in many sea regions, thus raiding does NOT happen only in the two specialized boxes.

[Kensai]

Has anyone managed to ever starve Great Britain (ie put it out of the war due to high Rebel sentiment) by sinking too many merchant ships around the world seas and in the shipping boxes?

[caranorn]

Has anyone managed to ever starve Great Britain (ie put it out of the war due to high Rebel sentiment) by sinking too many merchant ships around the world seas and in the shipping boxes?

I only realised after the fact that Great Britain was probably having serious problems in one of my games due to this. I wasn't doing anything special as the CP in the shipping boxes, but the ai must have pulled its transports out. Pocus already has that saved game (unfortunatelly just 3 turns), but for different reasons...

[theknightirish]

Ah that explains why the UK has such a high rebel percentage in my game. Also I have captured a fleet of transports/freighters in Egyptian ports when the Turks took both ends of the Suez canal though what they were doing there is anyone's guess.

[Bismarck1940]

What do players do with the German ships off Africa and in the Pacific? They seem doomed within a few turns (yes, mostly historical). But how are they best deployed to raid?

[Shri]

i try sending the single ships to the 'ATLANTIC BOX' ASAP. This way i can sink some AI ships before my ships die.

[caranorn]

What do players do with the German ships off Africa and in the Pacific? They seem doomed within a few turns (yes, mostly historical). But how are they best deployed to raid?

I originally moved most of the single units to the Atlantic box and formed a small combat force in an African or Asian port around Graf Spee. My current game I moved all (except of course Goeben and co. which I send to safe haven in Austro-Hungary until I can hand them over to the Turks) to the Atlantic box, not sure yet how long I will keep Spee there as his force is a bit wasted in there (but he always ended up getting whiped by massive battleship patrols sweeping his position)...

Note, offmap naval movement seems much too fast. And of course the pre-dreadnaught British and French battleships have no business doing world wide patrols (imagine the ammount of coal expended, they'd be a huge dreg on the supply system)...

[Kensai]

I only realised after the fact that Great Britain was probably having serious problems in one of my games due to this. I wasn't doing anything special as the CP in the shipping boxes, but the ai must have pulled its transports out. Pocus already has that saved game (unfortunatelly just 3 turns), but for different reasons...

Yep, I have noticed this myself. In my opinion most future AI improvements should come to this department. So far I have noticed (many games, up to 1916):

• there is no coherent WE blockade policy
• the WE recalls its merchant ships from the shipping boxes
• all powers make big stacks (not necessarily wrong as long as they make them patrol important seas, especially in the main Atlantic/Mediterranean map)
• some sea regions connect in an unnatural way (pathfinding of regions must be checked) and allows for ultrafast movement between certain oceans as well as bizarre port calls
• the CP is not having a coherent submarine/raider policy either: perhaps we need to set some AI agents to impose the CP AI to leave submarines and raiders as single units and move them around the map (especially shipping boxes) to sink enemy ships

All in all, there are some things to improve in the AI's logic. It's not terribly broken now, but it can be much much better. That said, I feel that overall the naval game is impressively complete and bug-free in a PBEM game, so feel free to experiment with blockades and raiding.

What do players do with the German ships off Africa and in the Pacific? They seem doomed within a few turns (yes, mostly historical). But how are they best deployed to raid?

Bingo!
Look at the 2nd part of my initial post. It is not in the manual, but I have seen the messages on the news feed: your raiders will sink ships (in an abstracted way, no need to target enemy ships in the area) even out of the shipping boxes. Easter egg? Unintended positive bug? Pocus has not said, but I love this abstraction as indeed there was potential raiding in every ocean!

In order to have your scouting and auxiliary cruisers survive you need to separate them right from first turn. If you have them as unique units their Hide value will rise to 4 or 5, quite difficult to detect. Those three ships in the North Atlantic must be sent to seas or shipping boxes that don't have coverage. Yes, there is probability to have your ships sunk, but it is not that high unless the enemy combines huge stacks. If he does that, you will know he has left some other place uncovered. When done like this, I get messages that my ships evaded with some 5-7% probability of getting caught. I think it's quite low and acceptable.

All in all, as the CP, you NEED to take that risk, otherwise Great Britain will definitely prevail. In the later game of course you will need to decide if you want unrestricted submarine warfare and the rest, as this might anger the USA.

Last, for God's sake, bring Spee back to a port or at least separate his force to smaller units. Otherwise the Royal Navy will sink him quite fast!!

[Bismarck1940]

Thanks. I didn't realize ships could move from the "globe" maps to the main map.

Yes. some naval AI improvements are needed. That, along (as noted) with having the Germans better scripted in the West in the opening, would be good improvements.

[Kensai]

Two more cryptic seas you can consider are the "Asian Seas" (Indochina) and one that looks like a lake: the "Persian Gulf".