From: charbonn@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (gary charbonneau)
Subject: EiA: A radical proposal
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 14:44:30 GMT

Empires in Arms is, to put it mildly, a rather long game.  It strikes
me that there is nothing particularly sacred about the time scale of
one turn = one month.  Hence, my radical proposal: Change the time
scale to one turn = two months.

In addition, make the following major modification to the rule about
forced marching.  Instead of allowing a corps to force march one extra
area, introduce a forced march phase to each country's land move.  This
phase would follow any regular land move (and combat, if any).  During
the regular land move phase, calculate supply normally (paying for depot
supply, or foraging, as preferred).  During the forced march phase, cal-
culate supply ONLY for any and all corps which move; such corps must
forage, with the usual +1 modifier to the foraging die roll.

The one other obvious change is that income/victory points would be
calculated only once every six months instead of once every three months.
This would in turn require modifications to the table showing the amount
of time needed to build new units, as well as the table showing each
country's victory point requirement.

Regular combat would be allowed after both the normal land movement phase
and the forced march phase.  I'm not sure whether this would also be true
of sieges, but I think so; otherwise they would tend to drag on much longer
than they did historically.  This might also imply that a besieged force
would have to roll siege supply in both the normal and the forced march
phases.

Note that under these modified rules, land units could move almost as
far in a two-month turn as they can now in two one-month turns (they
give up a total of two areas of one-month forced march).  Naval units,
of course, would only be able to move half as far.  I would argue against
changing the naval movement procedure, however.  The idea of "force
marching" a fleet is rather silly.  Rather, simply assume that the fleet
is in motion during only half the time covered by the two-month turn.

What do these modifications buy you, and what do you have to give up?
Until they are put to the acid test of actual play, I can only speculate.
The big gain is that the amount of time needed to play the game would
be cut almost in half.  I don't think it would be cut quite in half, as
there would probably be more forced marching done than is now the case
(at least in our rather conservative group), and this would take some
time to resolve.  On the negative side, it would be more difficult to
recover from a political point disaster before endgame.  I think this
would improve EiA as a simulation, but might weaken in as a game.
If that's objectionable, combine the 1792 and 1805 scenarios so that
you have a grand campaign game that still has about as many turns as
either scenario played separately.  Of course, that would make the
games just as long as always, but at least you'd have the advantage of
being able to cover the entire period instead of just half of it.

Questions?  Comments?



-- 
Gary Charbonneau
charbonn@silver.indiana.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.board