Back to the controlled bankruptcy issue -- sometimes
bankruptcy is unavoidable anyway -- nothing you can
do will prevent taxes from going over 100, whether
because you didn't prepare for incoming bad news or
were simply taken by surprise. So it makes sense,
if you are willing to pay for one more turn, to try
to help your allies to make up for the loss of your
nation. This means handing off artifacts and
possible pop centers, buying goods, putting valuable
characters in places they can easily/safely be
recruited, etc.
Remember though that the only gold you can spend is
what your non-sieged pop centers produce, at the
current tax rate and/or at whatever you raise taxes
to with a 300 order, but prior to maintenance being
paid. I have seen controlled bankruptcy done as the
last action of a nation that was going out
regardless twice recently, once by myself, once by
another player in a game I am in. In both cases,
tax rate made it up to 200% from the automatic tax
hike needed to pay maintenance costs. Good were
indeed bought in both cases to provide stockpiles
for the pop center receivers.
Note a couple other ramifications of this technique
however...
In almost every instance, pop center loyalties are
going to drop to about 1. They MIGHT not all do so
-- the loyalty drop is a random roll after all --
but assuming a nation is already in a bad way,
loyalties are not likely to be high, and having
taxes go up by more than 100 points means that on
average loyalties will drop by more than 50 points
-- with a minimum of 1. This has various effects.
First, and most obviously, with loyalty being
hammers, non-fortified camps are quite likely to
fade away at the moment of the tax hike and
therefore be unable to be transfered unless a
character is already present. So a camp with nobody
at it is likely to go away before it can be
transferred -- while a camp that already has an
emissary (or other character) at it is a fine place
to buy something and do a transfer. Camps with
towers or better won't fade, nor camps with
characters present at the time. Larger (villages
and towns) pop centers may well degrade by a level
on the turn of bankruptcy -- but if not immediately,
will begin to degrade the very next turn. MTs and
cities will not degrade, but will nonetheless still
have a terrible loyalty.
Second, and less obvious to many players -- existing
loyalty does matter in a pop center transfer.
Having DONE some such transfers recently, I can say
with certainty -- every pop center I transferred
ended up at 1 loyalty on the receiving side even
though some of the transfers were done by and to
reasonably high (70s/80s) ranking emissaries. This
means that a transferred pop center WILL have a low
loyalty and be in danger of fading or being taken by
the enemy easily without a fair amount of work to
save it.
That means that, in many cases, a better plan is to
NOT transfer the pop center -- whether a camp or
larger pop center -- but rather to let an allied
emissary move there to take it with 525 orders. The
525s will very likely succeed with a single shot, if
the emissary is at all decent, and the pop center
will be gained a turn later but with better loyalty,
especially if the emissary has high rank. Camps of
course could be worth transferring just to get them
immediately with stores in them for resale or use --
but in my opinion, the larger the pop center, the
better it is to get it at a higher loyalty so it
won't be immediately lost if an enemy emissary
wanders in and tries a 525.
You can, of course, combine the two techniques at
the same pop center if you like, if you have two
allied nations willing to tag-team the location. On
the turn of bankrupcty, the bankrupting nation
transfers to nation A at probably 1 loyalty, and
nation B also moves an emissary in. On the turn
after bankruptcy, nation A will get one turn of
production and revenue and can sell stores etc.,
after while nation B can do a 525 to take control at
a higher loyalty and possibly do 947 or 948 orders
on remaining stores. This is a way to get the loot
sooner and share it wider in the process among the
surviving allies.
In my own case, I was running both nations -- the
one that was going bankrupt was my original nation,
the other nation I had picked up when that player
needed to drop out, and I had tried like the dickens
to use the second nation to keep the first from
going bankrupt -- but sadly, a bit of "luck" sealed
my first nation's fate. On the eve of a battle that
would have used up enough troops to keep my nation
intact while finally removing an enemy HC army that
kept hovering around my heartland, I challenged the
enemy army commander -- and sadly, he not only
accepted the challenge but my character won it and
the HC army disbanded. And that was when I realized
that due to other factors -- such as another enemy
army showing up on one of my gold mine villages --
my taxes were about to go to 105%...grrrr... So I
decided to pay back the other nation I was running
as best I could by transferring a couple camps and a
town, and moving characters to suppress fading as
much as possible, and moving other emissaries to
locations where I could easily 525 the pop centers.
In fact I already had characters spread out to
prevent camps fading in many locations, simply
because I had been living at a high tax rate with
the first nation already and for some time,
defending myself against two enemies at the same
time. So over the course of a few turns, the second
nation absorbed much of the first nation, including
most of its pop centers and several of its better
characters. And as it has hire for free, it quickly
hired some local armies to replace the ones that
were going away...
Anyway, intentional bankruptcy can be a fine tool
for mitigating some of the down side of a failing
nation. Whether it is a nation that is simply a big
drain on resources and that has lost its best
characters anyway, or one that is doomed already and
just wants to do the best it can with its last gasp.
And as a result of my own situation in that game, I
now am playing a dwarven nation I didn't start with,
that has several mercenary elves in its court from
the first nation. The pictures are a bit amusing --
elegant elven woman, bearded
dwarven...whatever...then another bearded dwarf,
then elegant elven male...and a couple or three more
dwarves... 
-----Original Message-----
From: ovatha88@hotmail.com
To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 3:20 PM
Subject: RE: [mepbmlist] Deliberate Bankruptcy?
Hey Stuart, hope you and the threesome are doing
well.
The USA made no promises to Poland and only got into
the European war
becasue Hitler was stupid enough to declare war on
the US. Give Rooselvelt
his due, usually he followed Churchill's lead and
staying out of the Balkans
was the right decision. Instead of the French
resenting us we would now
have had the South Slavs resenting us!.
But, back to Poland, I really don't blame the Brits.
The situation changed
between 1939 and 1945. Just like situations change
in ME. It is called
Real Politik---an alien concept to some in this
game.
Ed
>From: Stuart Millgan <stuartamilligan@yahoo.co.uk>
>Reply-To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
>To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: RE: [mepbmlist] Deliberate Bankruptcy?
>Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 17:56:54 +0100 (BST)
>
>Hi Ed
>
>Hope you and the family are well.
>
>I agree.
>
>Surely controlled bankruptcy is a legitimate method
of
>retiring a nation that a team deems to be no longer
>worth supporting. Most likely when a nation’s
>financial situation becomes such a drain on team
>resources that the overall strategic agenda is
>compromised.
>A controlled bankruptcy also means that emissaries
can
>be pre-assigned to bribe or influence surviving
>characters or settlements (rather than scrambling
to
>do so in the case of an accident !).
>
>The potential benefits of the bankruptcy still need
to
>be weighed against the lost character orders to the
>team as a whole. On the whole as the FP I’d
happily
>accept such a buyout as part of the price of taking
>out a DS. In your scenario I’d still pick up
Durthang
>and Barad Perras too.
>
>Cheers
>Stuart
>
>Ed - Surely the UK wasn't the only allied power to
>abandon Poland ! Roosevelt refused to sanction a
>Balkan front or to support supply drops during the
>Warsaw rising - though Poland was almost certainly
>lost to the Russian advance before then (okay so
>Churchill held back the Polish parachute regiment,
who
>were desperate to go to Warsaw, so they could
>participate at Arnhem - where they were dropped on
the
>wrong side of the river). At least Churchill never
>bought 'Stalin the European Democrat' like
Roosevelt
>did.
>Almost a worse transgression against the Poles on
the
>UKs part was refusing to pay Polish troops who had
>joined the French and then the British armies. This
>under the pretext that the Russians promised to pay
>them if they returned to Poland !
>Polish casualty rates in British service were close
to
>10% and their pilots contribution to the Battle of
>Britain was immeasurable (about the only pilots we
had
>with genuine combat experience - any Polish pilot
that
>got out after fighting biplanes against the
luftwaffe
>was good !). They deserved better from us.
>
>
>--- Ovatha Easterling <ovatha88@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Laurence:
> > There is nothing wrong with the tactic. In
fact,
> > there will be incidents
> > where it is preferable to trying to prop up a
'lost
> > cause'. This diverts
> > resources away from other areas where great
gains
> > can be made. It is a
> > strategic decision made after meditation.
Afterall,
> > the purpose of the game
> > is to win, not cling to every hex, pop center or
> > nation.
> >
> > There are plenty of historical eamples. Say,
the UK
> > abandoning Poland
> > during late WW II and afterwards. The UK went
to
> > war with the avowed war
> > aim of maintaining Poland's territorial
integrity.
> >
> > If I may say so, the 'insular' game attitudes of
> > some Brits has constantly
> > eroded away the 'realism' of this game---which
was
> > once very great.
> > Ed Mills
> >
> >
> > >From: "Laurence G. Tilley"
<lgtilley@morespeed.net>
> > >Reply-To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
> > >To: mepbmlist@yahoogroups.com
> > >Subject: [mepbmlist] Deliberate Bankruptcy?
> > >Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:54:19 +0100
> > >
> > >GMs,
> > >
> > >I was interested to read this advocated in Mike
> > Johncock's
> > >article. Bree 33 p2:
> > >
> > >6) Deliberate bankruptcy
> > >What I call the needs of the many outweighing
the
> > needs of the one. A
> > >very rare strategy where if you see a nation is
> > facing imminent
> > >death, then you bankrupt the nation
deliberately to
> > put maximum
> > >stores in pops that you then transfer to your
> > allies. For example,
> > >the IK is going to go bankrupt as both his
capital
> > and Barad Paras
> > >both have sizeable armies on them that will
attack
> > resulting in an
> > >immediate tax raise to over 100%. So why not
have a
> > character at a
> > >non-sieged pop buy all of a product available?
> > He'll drive the tax up
> > >to say 500%, but that is just a dead as 100%,
so
> > the team will
> > >benefit at no cost.
> > >
> > >This is of course a very old one, and to my
mind
> > very much "against
> > >the spirit" of the game. I thought that we had
a
> > ruling to this
> > >effect, very many years ago. Is there anything
to
> > prohibit it in the
> > >house rules? If not, do you agree that there
> > should be?
> > >
> > >
> > > Laurence G. Tilley
http://www.lgtilley.co.uk/
> > >
> > >[]
> > >
> > >http://www.buav.org
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >[Non-text portions of this message have been
> > removed]
> > >
> >
> >
_________________________________________________________________
> > Exercise your brain! Try Flexicon.
> >
http://games.msn.com/en/flexicon/default.htm?icid=flexicon_hmemailtaglinemarch07
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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