A used car salesman in Napolonic Europe

[joncnunn]

Well, that's a UK and US persepective, but not indicative of perspective of some other countries:

Russia has always been more army centric than naval centric.

Napolean himself was more concerned with dominationing the contientant of Europe with his armies than trying to build up a Navy large enough to allow an invasion of England. On the naval front, he largely kept it just large enough to prevent England from directly invading France itself, but not large enough teven keep England from landing troops in harbors controled by third party countries that supported England.

Originally posted by Antrine
Historically, 'occult' only meant hidden or secret information. My English weighs in at about 1910 due to the literature I have favored these many years.

And about Napoleon or European wars, unless you controlled the seas as the British Empire did or the Spanish Empire before them, you could 'control' all the turf you wanted but 'domination' would still elude you. Point in reference we (the dasdardly over-reacting and over-reaching US) effectively control said world largely by following the British empires model of sea domination now with air added thereto. That is with World Class Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups. I forget now how many we have, however it is more than the rest of world combined and is VERY expensive and effective.

[Antrine]

Yes and both Napoleon and Russia are 'nothing'. Land centric empires have not panned out to well. Look at UK and US military philosophy, 'stay mobile and bring the war to you'. Anyway the Napoleon Conquest needs a facelift. If victory conditions required that France control London and that Old England control Paris. Then I think the scenario has more a chance of being functional. What do you think?

[joncnunn]

current US policy is deter threats as far as possible from our borders.

That hypotechical 3rd country opening threatening the US by sea would find Stealth Bombers starting take out the command and control centers of the country almost before its fleet was lauched. (Stealth Bombers can reach anywhere in the world on 24 hours notice, with two air-to-air refuel in route)

Actually the US CIA isn't first tier, but instead is second tier. But this doesn't matter much because we are close allies with two countries who do have first tier spy agencies, and when both of them say the same thing, it can be relied upon.

Yes, economics is our top strength. It's nothing that other countries couldn't do if they reformed their taxes & business laws. (Let failing companies go under to clean out the dead wood [re: Japan] and keep taxes in check to encourage new companies to form. [re: EU])

Originally posted by unscratchedfoot

As for US navy, I think you are overrating it cause the navy is much less significant now than in the age of sail because the majority of overseas shipments and people transfers is done by air. If another country threatened the US by sea, they'd by sunk by air units, not naval, though probably from a carrier if not from landbased B-52s. From what I've read, the US dominates mostly economically and through the CIA much more than militarily, though it all kinduv works together in a synergy to put forth the US strategy of maintaining its position as a global superpower.

[joncnunn]

It's really beyond the scope of the Civ III editor to fix. [There's no you must own all VPs this turn to win option.]

Even without the MPP behavior, you can still trigue both domination and score based victories without capturing the other's capital playing either civ. And for that matter with more skill and/or playing lower than normal levels playing a 3rd party civ you can also become 1st tier and trigure either score or domination without taking either Paris or London.

Originally posted by Antrine
Yes and both Napoleon and Russia are 'nothing'. Land centric empires have not panned out to well. Look at UK and US military philosophy, 'stay mobile and bring the war to you'. Anyway the Napoleon Conquest needs a facelift. If victory conditions required that France control London and that Old England control Paris. Then I think the scenario has more a chance of being functional. What do you think?

[joncnunn]

In this case, I'm of the believe that shorter is better. My focus is really on the absurd cities allowed to be traded during MPPs, so I added more absurd elements.

Originally posted by SKILORD
Also the time machine isn't mentioned in the story's beginning. What I'[d do is just tell the story from the perspective of the salesman (maybe even 1st person) to have this and to give the character a little more girth so that we are all genuinely upset by his inability to get home.

Also, Napoleon explains his problem to him... why Napoleon? Does Napoleon really know that much about the mechanics of time travel? But you see you don't provide any other character who might do that... maybe add in a philosopher character for him to befriend to postulate this at the end....

But all of this would make your story a lot longer.... it's problematic.

[joncnunn]

In real life, I'd agree with you.

But in the whole series of Civ games ....

Maybe for Civ 4 they should consider some sort of roads and rail for water tiles and call them sea lanes. Something like the Galley can create a sea lane on the coast which then allows ships to use only 1/3rd MP along, the Caravel then allows creating of sea lanes along both coast & sea tiles. The freighter would then allow creating of sea lanes in all water tiles, and some tech, maybe Mass Production would further reduce MP costs along the sea lanes to 1/10th MP. (Along with RR changing from unlimited to 1/10th MP.) This would eliminate the post-rail extreme movement advantage land units have over naval units in Civ III.

Originally posted by Antrine
Yes and both Napoleon and Russia are 'nothing'. Land centric empires have not panned out to well. Look at UK and US military philosophy, 'stay mobile and bring the war to you'. Anyway the Napoleon Conquest needs a facelift. If victory conditions required that France control London and that Old England control Paris. Then I think the scenario has more a chance of being functional. What do you think?

[ChrisiusMaximus]

A nice little yarn that joncunn, once again short sharp and sweet

As for the ongoing debate here regardless of these flaws with the AI etc I actually really like this scenario. In particular Ive played in several PBEM's here at Poly with up to 8 humans using this scenario and they have been really good fun

Maybe what you are all missing out on is playing against human opponents, which is much more of a challenging experience. The PBEM community here is thriving and there are scores of regular players in many games.

I really would reccomend the multiplayer PBEM experience to all to get the very best civ experience there is. Of course you cant always guarentee you will win but its so much better than SP that simply taking part is enough to satisfy your civ addiction

[Antrine]

Well noted! ChrisiusMaximus, however AI's I can beat up, but humans oh that sounds dangerous.

[unscratchedfoot]

Originally posted by joncnunn
It's really beyond the scope of the Civ III editor to fix. [There's no you must own all VPs this turn to win option.]

Even without the MPP behavior, you can still trigue both domination and score based victories without capturing the other's capital playing either civ. And for that matter with more skill and/or playing lower than normal levels playing a 3rd party civ you can also become 1st tier and trigure either score or domination without taking either Paris or London.

It's very easy to use the editor to set this up properly. Just make Paris and London each worth a huge number of victory points while the other cities 0 points so that if either capital falls it triggers a victory. I'm making my Vietnam mod like this so that if either capital of north or south vietnam falls then a victory occurs but still not sure if I will include this cause if China backstabs North vietnam it will end the game too soon.

[unscratchedfoot]

[SIZE=1]
Yes, economics is our top strength. It's nothing that other countries couldn't do if they reformed their taxes & business laws. (Let failing companies go under to clean out the dead wood [re: Japan] and keep taxes in check to encourage new companies to form. [re: EU])

How about making the national reserve privately owned with only 20% of it bought by the government to produce a fractional reserve and debt based currency powered by the biggest national debt in the world? That's the real muscle behind the US economy, not to mention alleged drug laundering in the billions to help prop up the stock market when presidential elections are approaching. I think other countries might have a little difficulty in modeling their own economies on this. But its all good and nobody really knows for sure what goes on among those folks who tell Greenspan what to say to us.

[joncnunn]

Originally posted by unscratchedfoot

How about making the national reserve privately owned with only 20% of it bought by the government to produce a fractional reserve and debt based currency powered by the biggest national debt in the world? That's the real muscle behind the US economy, not to mention alleged drug laundering in the billions to help prop up the stock market when presidential elections are approaching. I think other countries might have a little difficulty in modeling their own economies on this. But its all good and nobody really knows for sure what goes on among those folks who tell Greenspan what to say to us.

A countries' national debt in isolation is just as meanigless as an indivual.

Donald Trump has lots and lots of debt, but has lots and lots of assets to compensate.

US also has the highest valued assets in the world, and like the typical American, most of it is realtively iliquid in the form of property.

Should the US sell off enough property to pay off the national debt right away? Nope, that would be just as nutty as an indivudal liquidating his house to wipe out all his debts.

What really matters are:
1. Interest rate your paying vs Interest Rate receivining.
2. Precent of money going to pay interest.
3. Amount of the debt reative to income.

By these measures the US debt is fine.

On the related deficit forcasts, there are such wide error margins that anything past five years is totally meaningless. (Large changes in forcasts not accounted for by change in fiscal policy.) For the 12 month they tend to be +/- $100 Billion and the margin continues to expand by at least that amount every year further you go.

With regard to the stock market, the late 1990s was largely reprize of the late 1920s. In both cases, they were over ethusanic about the stock market follwed by being over pesentimenstic about the stock market. The key difference was that Americans remained confident in their banks and the value of their homes during the bear market.

From where I'm sitting, looks to me like our economy (US based) is getting ready to boom again, I've seen a lot of pick up in the economy and while gas prices have large swings on a weekly basis, every thing else is stable, and my vechicle holds enough gas to buy it where it's cheap if I'm driving out of town or at the local price minimum when I'm staying in town. (I'm more observant of gas prices at the stations than anything else because of it's price swings and am also well aware that urban areas gas prices swing much more than rural areas.)

[Antrine]

I am switching to bio-diesel like the Germans with a fine made German car, however it is still passing muster at customs (in south Seattle now). It seems they have 'issues' with vehicles that sport 50 miles or more to the gallon and that on diesel or bio-diesel. Forget gas stations, go to McDonalds and get their grease for free and process that!

[SKILORD]

I've got an '84 Diesel Mercedes... she works like a pro.

[joncnunn]

In the US, imports of EU cars are hevially scurtized, the EU and US are testing different things, and so there are vechiles sold in the EU that don't pass US requirements and conversely vechicles sold in the US that don't pass EU requirements.

The tests the US use tend to make it much easier for heavier vechicles to pass than lighter weight ones.

To my knowelge, EU's safety tests tend to make it more difficult for "top-heavy" vechicles to pass.

Originally posted by Antrine
I am switching to bio-diesel like the Germans with a fine made German car, however it is still passing muster at customs (in south Seattle now). It seems they have 'issues' with vehicles that sport 50 miles or more to the gallon and that on diesel or bio-diesel. Forget gas stations, go to McDonalds and get their grease for free and process that!

[Antrine]

Alright joncnunn, there you go presenting facts, just when I had a goodly drama warming up! It seems to be heading our way in a few days or weeks.