What are some of your 'house rules'

[Erkli Pasha]

Hi all,

As someone that's quite imaginative, I create certain rules and parameters for myself to make the game more interesting.

For example, I adhere strictly to historical accuracy (I never take provinces that would go against historical reality...like, as the Ottomans, I will never launch an invasion of Berlin in ETW).

I also, after especially seeing the AI really becoming tough when I do this, only use the arrows on the grid for troop movements and actions. In reality, Napoleon or any other general would never have had this 'click and order' ability, so I think this balances that out a bit. Really, this made the game really fun and also allowed for tactical battles to resemble the order (and, later, chaos) of battles.

So, I'm just wondering what you guys do...what house rules or limitations make the game fun for you? Some suggestions?

[Wally]

As I was playing as French my rules was to leave Dutch, Demark and Italy alone even I wanted Italy.

[Michael of Westmorland]

The house rules in my current GB campaign are:

• Transporting armies requires 1 transport ship for every 2 army units, so to transport a full stack I'd need a fleet of 10 Transports (Trade ships) which I'd have to actualy defend against the AI.
• No long term blockading of ports, as that seems to keep the AI stuck - unable to break out.
• If I lose men in an expeditionary force I have to ship out reinforcements to them, rather than have them go to the nearest friendly area and auto-resuply.
• No conquering of entire European Countries - instead I have to liberate them and give them the regions they should have. (to be like a "Continental Policeman.")
• I have to destroy the major armies of my enemy in the region before I capture thie city (i.e. no rushing to Paris while there are 5 stacks just out of range.)

[JohnnyDestroy]

First of I always play on hard/hard. When starting a campaign I always chose play-style; either "what if" or "competition".

What if house rules:

- prestige scenario.
- save often and re-load at defeat, unless I feel the defeat fits the "story".
- If I play as Sweden, I don't DOW in the first 20 rounds.
- rename all units to include year of recruitment and current army name.

competition house rules:

- Long scenario.
- Only re-load after computer calculated defeat, and only if I feel that I would have done much, much better had I played the match myself.
- Only auto-save, once each turn.

[Dizoakius Maximus]

I play blindfolded.

[Cromagnon2]

- rename all units to include year of recruitment and current army name.

How do you do that? I would like to do that too.


Some of my rules:

- Armies with captains (no general in it) may only have maximal 5 units, they only may have one movement order a turn.

- No recruiting of generals while on enemy soil. When an army loses a general it will disband (see above).

- Ships on route to one location must stay on route, so no sudden change of course, example to withdraw and defend home regions as there was no radio contact at the time.

- Admirals may only recruit ships when they are at anchor at friendly or neutral coastal waters.

[Lord Nova]

How do you do that? I would like to do that too.

Right click the unit, then click their name in the info box like "1st regiment of foot" can be changed to "bloody bastards". This also works for ships and even ships that have admirals, like changing Nelson's Rose ship into Victory II or something. You can even do this for the General's bodyguard unit, which I use to name the whole army like "Grand Army" or "Army of Southern Spain".

I vary my houserules from game to game but here are a couple I use sometimes

-Only Generals can recruit or move units around the map. If there is no general in the region, then I don't move units around

-Have the AI handle all construction. This puts me on equal footing with AI building progression.

-Never loot a city or deconstruct any buildings after conquering a region. It's far to easy to sack a capitol city, destroy all the improvements and then let the AI retake it so you don't have to deal with rebellions.

-I auto-resolve any battle that I don't have a general in. If I have a general then I can fight the battle. If there is an enemy general, I opt for drop-in instead of fighting the AI.

-I try to always build uniform armies instead of 1 super stack. In other words my armies will always have roughly the same ratio of cav/arty/infantry. This of course is different depending on if I make a commander a cavalry commander or infantry commander.

-I make a full cavalry stack with horse artillery and use dragoons as foot soldiers if encountered. It makes a good reinforcement army and a good raiding army.

-only re-load a previous save if due to crash or a ragequit in a drop-in battle or disconnect.

This is what I do in h/h or n/n but when I play VH/VH, the gloves are off.

[GTFO. Jamie]

my main rule at the moment: no re-loading.

If i lose a battle, i lose a battle. If i make a daring choice to move a fleet somewhere and it gets destroyed instantly, no re-loading. A defeat is a defeat, not a minor annoyance which i can resolve by loading a previous saved point

[burden010]

my main rule at the moment: no re-loading.

If i lose a battle, i lose a battle. If i make a daring choice to move a fleet somewhere and it gets destroyed instantly, no re-loading. A defeat is a defeat, not a minor annoyance which i can resolve by loading a previous saved point

Same. If I lose a battle, fleet, general etc they are lost. In life you can't just reload and do over.

Also I can't ever take an enemy region if there are armies in that region in the field. And my last major one is that I cannot destroy a major faction. If they have only one region left I need to force a peace or liberate them.

[Slaists]

Same. If I lose a battle, fleet, general etc they are lost. In life you can't just reload and do over.

Also I can't ever take an enemy region if there are armies in that region in the field. And my last major one is that I cannot destroy a major faction. If they have only one region left I need to force a peace or liberate them.

Heh. That's exactly what Napoleon did. He too Moscow while the Russian army was lurking near-by.

[pickelhaube]

My rule is to simply never reload, no matter if I made a mistake, forgot something or managed to lose battle forme its simply boring to reload and replay something.

PS. Follow that rule since RTW now that I think of it...

[Xelathur]

Oh nice thread! I love RP

I have a tip, have multiple generals in your army and ONLY MOVE TROOPS INSIDE THE GENERALS COMMAND RADIUS. If the unit ain't in the generals command radius, no orders can be given to that unit ( movement, etc ). This make the generals "kinda" important, and it's actually not that hard.

Havent played with this for long though since it's kinda restricting. Usually I try to liberate or give regions to others instead of owning a blitzkriegzergempireofdoom+5. The game becomes too easy then. hmmm.. Oh, and I don't autoresolve or reload either.

*if all your generals die, you have to intervene. Play bad in that case.

[♔ brucedickenson♔]

To never go into a battle I can't promise my men more than a 50 chance of a win!

[JohnnyDestroy]

How do you do that? I would like to do that too.


Some of my rules:

- Armies with captains (no general in it) may only have maximal 5 units, they only may have one movement order a turn.

- No recruiting of generals while on enemy soil. When an army loses a general it will disband (see above).

- Ships on route to one location must stay on route, so no sudden change of course, example to withdraw and defend home regions as there was no radio contact at the time.

- Admirals may only recruit ships when they are at anchor at friendly or neutral coastal waters.

I see someone told you how to do it. My own syntax is very specific:

11 Kav.reg *Nordanvind* 1712

A cavalry regiment (Kav.reg) founded in 1712 and currently assigned to army stack *Nordanvind*.

When regiments change armies, I edit the name accordingly. When a regiment plays a major role in an important battle they get a name of their own instead of the army name, as in:

11Kav.reg 'Karls Gossar' 1712

[TheFirstONeill]

Moved to gameplay and strategy

[Cromagnon2]

I see someone told you how to do it. My own syntax is very specific:

11 Kav.reg *Nordanvind* 1712

A cavalry regiment (Kav.reg) founded in 1712 and currently assigned to army stack *Nordanvind*.

When regiments change armies, I edit the name accordingly. When a regiment plays a major role in an important battle they get a name of their own instead of the army name, as in:

11Kav.reg 'Karls Gossar' 1712

Excellent, thanks man.

I started editing my line infantry like this:

1st reg. 3d battalion 'Normandi' .

cavalry:

1st reg. 2nd squadron 'France'.

With each regiment consisting of three battalions and cavalry 2 squadrons. The downside seems that the following recruited units don't follow tagging so i have to take note of all the regiments i created, hm a little too nerdy to my taste

[Erkli Pasha]

All,

Some of these house rules are simply amazing! I'm going to definitely incorperate them into my gameplay!

I just feel like without house rules (on H/H), this game would be boring.

On vh/vh, this game becomes ridiculous (who's interested in the great war between France and Oldenburg---in which tens of thousands die)...

We should create a house rules appendinx or something and have it put on some of the modder's lists or general forums as 'things to allow for a better game'...

[JohnnyDestroy]

Come to think of it, most of my house rules are role-play related. Some other rules I often use depending on my modd include:

- Deciding on a personality for my generals and letting them act accordingly. Is he an inpatient attacker or a patient defender? Will he fight superior numbers on a regular basis or does he not like to gamble?

- Making sure the army group a general commands is buildt around his personality.

- I never attack two citys in the same turn with the same army.

[Yin]

1. Assassinate before engage.
2. When engaging, kill all of the opponent's force.
3. Go on the defensive during the winter.
4. If I have the resources try to finish off a faction within 1 turn.

[Smokey_MkII]

I raise "peasant armies" consisting only of militia. They only fight in winter, and during battle they must fight uphill, facing away from the enemy. If I win I call this a cambered moonwalk victory. Since I play as Blighty, all of my regiments are called 'Britain's got talent.'