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Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: August 27, 2019, 02:28:20 AM »

You end up with multiple colonies that you have to merge manually by using SM to transfer pop, wealth, minerals and installations. Usually it's best to let research programs finish as you cannot transfer them, only completed techs.
Posted by: Revenant342
« on: August 25, 2019, 01:58:57 PM »

This makes me want to play a game of Victoria 2 and use the Great Power list at the end of the game to make an Aurora start. 

Noob question: In a multi-faction Earth start like this, do enemies you conquer of the same species get integrated into your main colony, or will you end up with multiple colonies on Earth?
Posted by: CharonJr
« on: July 17, 2019, 12:41:18 AM »

The Ottoman Empire had a couple of crisis around this time IIRC, just did a quick search, their GDP was 4m in 1840 and 10m in 1880, even in 1890 they were still just at 18m with an army of about 120k.
Posted by: Father Tim
« on: July 16, 2019, 06:04:03 PM »

I'm sad the Ottoman Empire didn't make it into the list.
Posted by: CharonJr
« on: July 16, 2019, 03:29:12 PM »

Well, just started the AAR with the initial setup largely already discussed here. We will see how it ends ;)
Posted by: CharonJr
« on: July 16, 2019, 02:03:12 PM »

No, thank you for the input, otherwise I would have learned the hard way, that my setup will not work.

Only Germany will get the TN tech at game start, but the other nations will try to research it.

Using SM like you mentioned might still make it viable. With the UK being most likely the first target for Germany due to its fairly high research (with 4 labs and 5k for TN tech it should take about 5 years to complete the research). Essentially the same time it will take Germany to research Mobile Infantry.

After this war it will be about 50 German divisions (most likely still largely low tech INF with some low tech ARM and a couple of Mobile INF minus whatever is still needed to control 350m+ pops from the UK by this time) vs. 100 divisions (all low tech INF) from the rest of the world when the second war starts. And the longer Germany waits to build up the more nations will get to TN and research either GAR or improved combat values. In addition each other "major" has a Training Facility and Germany either just 1 or maybe 2 if the UK one does not get destroyed (2:7 at best).

Without the UK's industry the rest of the world has about 1.4k conventional factories with Germany having about 120 converted ones and 760 from the UK (at occupied production).

Essentially Germany has a 5-6 year headstart and especially due to the difference in starting divisions and TF I am not sure if Germany will win. My fall-back option is that the rest of the world stays united after defeating Germany and head for the stars ;)

All of Earth has 27 labs at game start (minus whatever gets destroyed in the wars), so once Earth is unified research speed should actually be decent and pop numbers most likely around 1.5bn. But as an additional handicap I will limit resources on Earth with none on Luna.

The basic idea is to give NPRs a fairly long time to expand and build up while there is still stuff happening on Earth.
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: July 16, 2019, 12:00:59 PM »

Ah, so you're not going to let all Earth factions research TN tech? That's an interesting premise but whoever gets TN ground forces first, will easily roll over everything else. Having everyone else band together against them does not help, since in VB6 the ground combat does not calculate multiple opponents in ground combat. So for example, if Germany gets Mobile Infantry and starts rampaging, and Russia and France attack Germany, they have to face Germany alone in both attack and defence, while Germany can use its entire force against both, simultaneously. I've done three-way and four-way wars in VB6 before and they don't work. The only workaround is to use SM mode to temporarily transfer allied armies to the leading power while preventing the aggressor from attacking the now defenceless factions.

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding you, I just want to avoid you going through the trouble of setting up a multi-faction Earth start and then being disappointed when the scenario doesn't mechanically work. Also, such a small number of Research Labs means that you'll be way into the 20th century until TN tech has advanced meaningfully.
Posted by: CharonJr
« on: July 15, 2019, 02:25:59 PM »

Thx :)

Hehe, yup, I thought along those lines as well, but still wanted something at least close to reality. In the end I gave China 50.000 soldiers.

I think that once the nations identify an clear aggressor the rest of the world would band together to fight him (first war is "free", second would be against the rest of the world combined). So depending on when this second war would happen I am not sure if the TN nation would not face some problems (I plan to start with no shipyards and just TN tech researched).

But in the end I will try to make do with the data I have now.

Number of initial divisions = Soldiers/10k (low tech INF for everybody, only TN is allowed to build low tech ARM)

Initial POP (in order to get more commanders) = POP(m) + number of research labs * 10 + Soldiers/10k

"Real" POP = POP(m)

Conventional factories = GDP * (Industry% + Service%) *5

1 Military Academy and 1 Training Facility per nation

Research labs based on tech tier (very simpified)
4 = UK & Germany
3 = US, France, Italy
2 = Japan, Russia, China

This should buy the NPRs outside of Sol 10-20 years of time before Earth is forcefully unified. And as mentioned above, I am not 100% sure if the TN nation will win - if they wait long enough to attack there will be other TN nations and with the TN nations most likely being Germany they will not have that much industry at the start to work with.
Posted by: Garfunkel
« on: July 15, 2019, 01:03:31 PM »

I've done something similar in the past. Not for 1870 exactly but for later 20th and 21st century dates. It's a lot of work for very little payoff in the end. Since Aurora does not model everything and focuses on space empire building and ship combat, there's actually no reason to try to model existing societies, industries or military in great detail. What I've ended up doing is to just get things in the right ballpark so that it "feels" right, instead of wasting dozens of hours on researching stuff that isn't really relevant after the first in-game year or two.

As to your question about number of soldiers, China didn't really have anything that could be called an army as Palace Guards armed with spears are hardly a threat to soldiers with repeating rifles and cannons. All powers could (and did) ramp up their armies as necessary, making pre-existing numbers of soldiers largely irrelevant. It's best to just have somewhat matching military sizes - otherwise what is stopping Russia or Germany to just curb stomp everyone else immediately at game start with their bigger numbers? Since Aurora doesn't model different tech levels, tactical or operational proficiency nor logistics or doctrine for ground forces.
Posted by: CharonJr
« on: July 14, 2019, 11:18:28 AM »

And does anybody have any estimates about the number of soldiers for those countries in 1870, especially for China (most likely not very relevant due to the number of colonial powers which were established in China?)?

For Germany I found 400.000 and 300.000 for France (at the start of the war), about 50.000 for the US, 300.000? for Russia, 185.000 (+ colonial troops?) for the UK, 220.000 for Italy in 1866 (during the War of Italian Independence), less than 20.000 in Japan due to no conscription at this time.
Posted by: CharonJr
« on: July 14, 2019, 06:49:11 AM »

Thx, looks interesting, any economic data included?

Depending on the ramp up phase and time needed to "unify" Earth later era ships might be more appropriate, especially since the 1906-1921 and 1922-1946 books look very interesting for Rule the Waves 1 & 2 as well ;)
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: July 14, 2019, 06:37:50 AM »

Here is a really useful book I have for naval forces in that period

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Conways-Worlds-Fighting-Ships-1860-1905/dp/0851771335
Posted by: CharonJr
« on: July 14, 2019, 06:05:51 AM »

Hi,

I am thinking about starting a 1870 Earth campaign which I will try to "replay" once C# is out.

Due to this I took a look at some pop and production figures from 1870.

Since I can imagine that other people did the same before me, I wanted to ask if anybody else has some data in addition to offering what I have found for others who would like to start in this time periode.

Here is what I found, with data for population and GDP looking fairly solid, and the sector percentages being more difficult, especially for Russia, China and France.

Top 8 (GDP) nations in 1870 (rounded numbers):
                                      Sector shares      
Country           Pop (m)   GDP (m)   Agri  Indu  Serv
UK (incl. India)   285      235        35%   30%   35%
China              370      190        80%   10%   10%
US                  40      100        30%   35%   35%
Russia              90       85        80%   10%   10%
Germany             40       70        40%   35%   25%
France              40       70        35%   35%   30%
Italy               30       40        50%   20%   30%
Japan               35       25        55%   15%   30%
remaining          360      290


Any mistakes or different data?