PBEM - New World Order (started 2011)

[JPetroski]

Well, I’m the European Union and I wanted to keep on with the unification process, especially of the eastern countries, for example, Hungary joined the EU in May 2004, how could I achieve that in this scenario without invading the country or losing any points??? (in fact I should win points for that ) Maybe by bribing the city or something? Too bad there are no events for this…

OK, in the interest of giving us all somewhere to expand, how about we institute "unification" and "annexation" rules.

Unification
Unifying (bribing) a neutral city gives (.5*city size) points. For example, Warsaw (17 size city) would be worth 8.5 points while Krakow (8 size city) would be worth 4 points.

Bribery can get very expensive, so there is a positive reward for doing it.

Annexation
Let's use annexation as an excuse to get the major powers fighting proxy wars. The following are modified rules from "First Strike:"

For points, let's use the formula:

P=(.25*city size) IF contested by a great power (proxy war fought) and;
P=(.1*city size) if NOT contested by a great power.

So you can still get points either way, but there are many more to be made via peaceful annexation.

How to start a proxy war
Proxy Wars are started using Dario's Diplomacy tool (rember to save from both civ sides). You force war, and before you save your turn force peace, so that the AI won't attack you from another neutral country independent of the proxy war you're fighting.
If a player decides to start a proxy war, he must announce this 3 turns before he sends his units from his home ports. This gives the opposing side time enough to scramble troops for a counter move to the same country.

What you may bring
A player may only bring with him x100 (planes count x200 (including helicopters), ships nothing) worth of units in terms of shields of what the actual city size is. If a proxy war is started in a size 5 city, the player is allowed to bring with him 500 shields worth of units.
Whole countries are represented, so if the country has more than one city, the city sizes are added together as one city size to determine how many shields may be brought along.
If you lose units in the fight you may send in additional reserve forces. You can send unlimited units into the territory, as long as you stay within the shield limit.


How a proxy war is won and what you do afterwards
A player may claim victory in two cases

1. Annihilate the enemy force. 2. Capture and hold all cities for 5 turns.
After this a new proxy war can't be started for another 4 (1 game year) turns by the opposing side, so that remote participants in a future proxy war can prepare for the next assault.

EDIT: I edited the first page of rules. Please note I also included rules for "liberation" in addition to these (see first post for details).

The gist of it is if you want to reverse the annexation of major powers, you can liberate nations but must return them to neutral control (+5 for keeping your word, -5 for breaking it).

Further, I've barred the bribing of cities and units of human players. ONLY neutrals may be bribed (or any other civ that isn't played by a human, in case the Allies never get a player--which might be best, really).

Edit 2: Unless someone REALLY wants to play as the Allies, I have made them AI controlled. They will have the same "status" as the neutrals except I will probably feel compelled to defend all of them from annexation.

[Rebelious]

It seems OK to me

Anyway I will start playing historically and will try the unification of Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Czech Republic and Bulgaria but it may take a while since for example the bribing of only Warsaw would cost me more than 10.000! Another option would be annexation by proxy wars with probably Russia has my opponent...

[JPetroski]

Ok then, as soon as someone takes Russian and India, we can begin!

Edit - and come to think of it, we should probably reduce civilian casualty penalty to -1 instead of -5, or else it would never make sense to attack some smaller cities.

The Rogue Nations can keep their +5 for killing them.

Edit - it won't work to have the Allies as an AI power. I forgot they are a nuclear-armed civ.

[cupcoffee]

I recall in an old pbem of this game, what they did was have the USA and the Western Allies in an unbreakable alliance, and they would work in essence like the pro-west civ in First Strike, except that it's player controlled.
To represent American expansionism, they would invade a city and then gift it to the Western Allies to represent the Americans setting up a government loyal to the US there.

Should the bribing of cities be a EU specific rule? I'm thinking he can bribe neutral cities, but when it comes to Poland perhaps it would be best if they work something out?

[JPetroski]

I recall in an old pbem of this game, what they did was have the USA and the Western Allies in an unbreakable alliance, and they would work in essence like the pro-west civ in First Strike, except that it's player controlled.
To represent American expansionism, they would invade a city and then gift it to the Western Allies to represent the Americans setting up a government loyal to the US there.

Should the bribing of cities be a EU specific rule? I'm thinking he can bribe neutral cities, but when it comes to Poland perhaps it would be best if they work something out?

But who controls the Allies? An independent third party or one of us? I'm not sure someone would be keen on playing a lapdog for the entire game, and it would make me WAY too strong to play them too.

I think they should be played by an independent player that is not obligated to do anything other than what is best for their civ.

As far as bribing goes, I think everyone should be able to do it. The EU may want to expand the member states, perhaps the U.S. wants to take NAFTA to a whole new level, Russia may want to reform the USSR, China and India may like to expand in Asia, the Rogue Nations may like to expand everywhere... I think it will make the game more interesting

[cupcoffee]

Sure, I'm okay with that (though I'll probably be taking a more pro-active form of unification ), but it's probably best if we limit bribing to neutral cities, and like I mentioned before, perhaps we should be given the options to bribe refugees that are a result of conquests, just to give another option besides outright killing them.

By the way, I just noticed that the Rogue states can research Democracy, should we disallow government change?

Okay, the Allies can work independently then, in any case, they should have a player and not be left to the AI.

[JPetroski]

After looking at the files, I could remove the Allies' nukes, remove their engineers, change the prerequisite for engineers to "not West," change the obsolecence of nukes to Railroad, and give RR to the Allies if we wanted them to be AI.

Edit - I've gone ahead and done that... See the first post.

[cupcoffee]

We'll still have the problem of having the AI annoy everyone else by declaring war randomly, the USA in particular will have to deal with the Canadian army taking a prolonged vacation around New York.

It'll just save us a lot of trouble if they were player controlled, even if it's under the American player.

[JPetroski]

I would agree to not use it offensively and merely babysit each turn, placing every city on capitalization and not moving any units (I'd move units outside of allied countries to the closest allied country). The idea being to preserve their power in case someone wants to join later, but also to not give me any advantage whatsoever.

Is that acceptable?

[Ingvar]

I can play the Allies maybe?

[JPetroski]

You're more than welcome to Ingvar, thanks for joining!

We need two more players and we're good to go... One is the Russian Federation, and one is India. Both fun choices!

[cupcoffee]

If we can't find enough players, I'd be willing to take over the Russians instead, because if any civ should be left to the AI, it would probably be best to leave them to the Rogue states.

[JPetroski]

I'm going to try bumping this... Cupcoffee, you are probably right that the Rogue Nations are best left to the AI if we can't find another two players, but we still need at least one more, as India and Russia should both be player-controlled... Anyone have a friend they can call on?

[JPetroski]

Alright, you know what... Let's do this: Let's use Dario's diplomacy tool to make India allied with EVERYONE for the time being until someone either wants to jump aboard, or wants to make war with India.

This should keep their nukes from becoming a problem (I think)... Given this, I'll set up the scenario and post the first turn later tonight.

[cupcoffee]

I'd really prefer if we wait until we have at least 6 players
There's a lot of games going on right now so maybe if we wait a bit for one of them to die down we might be able to recruit some.

This is, after all, an MGE scenario, so we should have enough players, is there just not enough interest for this particular scenario?