WesWorld

I'm warming to one of three different nations. Japan, the Ottoman empire (that does not completely collapse during WW1) or a Gran Columbia (that also doesn't fall apart) that includes Panama, Costa Rica, Aruba, Curacao, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada and likely some other smaller Islands in the region. (sounds like I'm warming to option three lol)

Did a small research on some of the countries

That's how "Grand Mexico" can look like at the start or also the USA (or may be CSA)



Or may be this "New Spain" or this version of the USA (or the CSA)



Or may be someone prefer Austria- Hungary



Also the "Ottoman-Empire" looks quite nice



For sure the maps are from different times, but a good base for discussions. By the way ... if anyone has some other maps of the mentioned countries, i would be thankfull if he shares them.

All interesting ideas.

I think that everyone should start picking their nations, and then we can start finding the overlaps where we will need to make some gentlemen's agreements.

Not for nothing, but I think that "picking nations" is far too premature in the process of the next iteration of Wesworld. Particularly among the current active players there is no consensus of what form the game might take, and of the form being advocated at the moment, I have relatively little interest. At the rate of play the current iteration has at least another year of play left in it, if not more.

Just going off of Navalism, it might take a year for the setup process. While it is quite too early to begin "picking nations", I'd argue its never too early to discuss the next iteration of WW, I'd even say the earlier the better. But there is no harm in throwing out nation ideas, see what everyone is thinking/has in mind.

Personally (as everyone probably already knows) I would love to play a Greater Mexico, but lots of other interesting options as well, Siamese Empire? Modern Israeli Empire (in a no Ottoman Empire scenario)?

I trust you will forgive me if I do not look upon Navalism as a good example of how to structure a game. It has gone through too many iterations and restarts.

Overall, just from reading up on the current game, I'd say that now is about the right time to start working on setup for a new game start. That's based on there being approximately 6 turns left in the present game at maximum, and the turn length kind of dragging out due to the normal sort of fatigue that hits forum games.

As for picking nations, the sort of nations available to be picked is just one element of the setup process. Pursuing any alt-history nations or other things of that nature is probably going to be the contentious bit in the bidding process.

Quoted

I trust you will forgive me if I do not look upon Navalism as a good example of how to structure a game. It has gone through too many iterations and restarts.

True, but I think that's what makes it a great case study, lots of different examples of what to do and what not to do.

Right now you have no more than six players who to any extent active in the game. There is no consensus among them of what form any "Wesworld 2" would have. Getting random ideas from folk who have no stake in the game and bundling these will not, IMHO, create a long term game. You would have another Navalism that crashes far too often and has to restart because of its internal inconsistencies.

We have several NPC nations begging to find an active player. Perhaps you might consider taking on one of them.

That's exactly why we should be having these discussions, so that everyone can come to a consensus.

At this stage with 6 quarters left, there is no point in taking over an NPC, but it is the time to start discussing what comes next.

Quoted from "Desertfox"

That's exactly why we should be having these discussions, so that everyone can come to a consensus.

At this stage with 6 quarters left, there is no point in taking over an NPC, but it is the time to start discussing what comes next.

Really? How about gaining experience in ship design? This is supposed to be naval sim with a specific set of design rules. When I asked to join the game it was strongly suggested to me that I learn how to sim before taking over my first country, Yugoslavia. Will Wesworld 2.0 continue to sim vessels or will we just hand wave things into existence?

And for my own preferences on Wesworld 2.0, I prefer to deal with a world starting at a single point of departure from historical rather than a mix of every player's fantasy nation.

Quoted from "BruceDuncan"

And for my own preferences on Wesworld 2.0, I prefer to deal with a world starting at a single point of departure from historical rather than a mix of every player's fantasy nation.

My strong preference at the moment would be for a new sim, starting 1890, which would start largely historical (or with relatively minor, explicitly stated departures from historical). I'm not going to say I wouldn't stick with it if people started bringing in new or ahistorical countries, but the more ahistorical the map looks, the more my enthusiasm would be diminished.

If we stuck to an 1890 start date and a historical map, we could comfortably fit nine players into the game. That'll probably be about manageable, and even with this list, we'll probably need to have a few people wearing multiple hats.
1. Great Britain
2. France
3. Russia
4. Italy
5. Japan
6. Austria-Hungary
7. Germany
8. Ottoman Empire
9. United States

As for whether to start setting things up now - aside from some miscellaneous chatter, I'm not sure I have enough concentration and time to both finish up WW and work on setting up a new iteration at the same time.

Brock scripset:

Quoted

My strong preference at the moment would be for a new sim, starting 1890, which would start largely historical (or with relatively minor, explicitly stated departures from historical). I'm not going to say I wouldn't stick with it if people started bringing in new or ahistorical countries, but the more ahistorical the map looks, the more my enthusiasm would be diminished.

If we stuck to an 1890 start date and a historical map, we could comfortably fit nine players into the game. That'll probably be about manageable, and even with this list, we'll probably need to have a few people wearing multiple hats.
1. Great Britain
2. France
3. Russia
4. Italy
5. Japan
6. Austria-Hungary
7. Germany
8. Ottoman Empire
9. United States

As for whether to start setting things up now - aside from some miscellaneous chatter, I'm not sure I have enough concentration and time to both finish up WW and work on setting up a new iteration at the same time.

This is the sort of game I would favor.

One approach would be to look back from the projected start date a decade or two – say 1870 – and work out what departures from a historical timeline would be acceptable.

For example – if Germany is presumed to be a major power, it implies that the Franco-Prussian War occurred in its general historical form. But on what specific terms did it end? There are a host of possibilities:

Napoleon III was not taken prisoner at Sedan and the Empire negotiated a quicker peace – the in-game France might be ruled by his descendants, or

The Prussian victory was so overwhelming a humbled Republican regime sued for peace in the summer of 1870 – Germany might have settled for a larger indemnity but not demanded cession of Alsace-Lorraine, or

A triumphant Germany, in addition to requiring cession of Alsace-Lorraine, demanded cession of some colonial territories – initiating the scramble for Africa a decade earlier than historical.

Such agreed upon diversions from history could set up very different conditions for the start of the game and shift what might seem as ‘fore-ordained’ conflicts.

The mechanics of determining the economic start conditions for each of the player countries in the sim would be another area requiring agreement, and I could go on. But ‘picking a country’ before the rules and conditions of the proposed game are worked out is quite premature.

Quoted from "Brockpaine"

My strong preference at the moment would be for a new sim, starting 1890, which would start largely historical (or with relatively minor, explicitly stated departures from historical). I'm not going to say I wouldn't stick with it if people started bringing in new or ahistorical countries, but the more ahistorical the map looks, the more my enthusiasm would be diminished.

If we stuck to an 1890 start date and a historical map, we could comfortably fit nine players into the game. That'll probably be about manageable, and even with this list, we'll probably need to have a few people wearing multiple hats.
1. Great Britain
2. France
3. Russia
4. Italy
5. Japan
6. Austria-Hungary
7. Germany
8. Ottoman Empire
9. United States

As for whether to start setting things up now - aside from some miscellaneous chatter, I'm not sure I have enough concentration and time to both finish up WW and work on setting up a new iteration at the same time.

This is also the sort of game I would favor.

But if we stuck to an 1890 or something like this, i would say we have 10 nations . You have forgotten China, cause with this starting point the First Sino-Japanese War didn't take place and therefore China must be on the table ! (from wikipedia: "Due to Li's influence in the imperial court, the Beiyang Fleet garnered much greater resources than the other Chinese fleets and soon became the dominant navy in Asia before the onset of First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 — it was the largest fleet in Asia and the 8th in the world during the late 1880s in terms of tonnage." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beiyang_Fleet)
And if we take a look in the past, like Bruce said ... then we have take a look how the Sino-French War (August 1884 - April 1885) take place or ended.

So, I think that is the first step that needs to be done, the following:

What does the world look like? Means what's the starting point (Year) ? How many and which nations do we have ? And how does the world look like - means what about the colonies of each contries ?

IMHO this should be the first step.

Quoted

Really? How about gaining experience in ship design? This is supposed to be naval sim with a specific set of design rules. When I asked to join the game it was strongly suggested to me that I learn how to sim before taking over my first country, Yugoslavia. Will Wesworld 2.0 continue to sim vessels or will we just hand wave things into existence?

I'm pretty sure we are all fairly competent with SpringSharp and anyone new has plenty of time to gain experience.

Quoted

And for my own preferences on Wesworld 2.0, I prefer to deal with a world starting at a single point of departure from historical rather than a mix of every player's fantasy nation.

The mechanics of determining the economic start conditions for each of the player countries in the sim would be another area requiring agreement, and I could go on. But ‘picking a country’ before the rules and conditions of the proposed game are worked out is quite premature.

I wouldn't call it so much "picking a country" as "stating one's preferences", since that would go a long way to establish how ahistorical we want it to be and what the date of departure should be. For example a Boer South Africa would fit seamlessly with an 1870 date, while a Greater Mexico would require an 1830's date, and a CSA could fit with either an 1830's or 1860's date.

I have to agree with Foxy, early on in the sim we had plenty of people still learning how to perfect their designs and encyclopedias are chocked full of designs that have been altered to correct mistakes. We also have the gentlemens rules to help guide as well. There is plenty of help from the few of us who have been using springsharp for literally years.

I definitely appreciate the vote of confidence on being able to learn SS.....on Drachinifel's channel those who want to learn SS are getting the hang of it rather quickly.

Anyway, I'm more along the lines of an 1870s departure at the latest, if the game is supposed to start in 1890, you don't want to go more than 20 years back fiddling with history. Yes this takes out the possibility of a CSA, which would have been one of my preferences. But it minimizes quite a bit of the world map changes and really only makes some changes to stance or maybe form of government for a lot of areas.

I would prefer an early 1800's departure date, I feel that would be the best compromise between those than want to stay as historical as possible and those than want some ahistorical countries. There's plenty of major world events in the late 1700's and early 1800's that could easily be tweaked to cause the departure and it provides a chance to take out the 800 lb gorilla in the room in the USA. By 1870 it would take something drastic to alter the course of the USA becoming an unchallengable world power.

An I, for one, have no interest in dealing with ahistorical countries in a Wesworld 2.0; I'll state that plain and simple.

What would you define as ahistorical? By definition wouldn't everything be ahistorical? Say the point of departure is a victorious CSA in 1864, would that be considered ahistorical?