Italy DOWs Austria -twice!

[Karhu]

It's early 1917 in my current PBEM game and Austria-Hungary has collapsed and been replaced by the various successor states, while Germany fights gamely on.

So far so good. However, my Entente opponent (yes, the same one who launched a thousand amphibious landings) has now had Italy declare war on Austria - again! I think his plan is to get at southern Germany through Innsbruck.

Italian NM is at 130%. The Austrians, who thought they were done with the war and were busy ski-ing and drinking mulled wine, are not able to offer much resistence with a few shattered units and NM at under 50%.

The thing is, shouldn't Italy face some negative consequences from breaking a peace treaty before the ink is even dry? The US is already in the war, but I would think Italian NM should take a massive hit - the people thought they were done fighting the Austrians, and now their government wants them to do it again straight away.

[Isnogud]

I encouterd the same problem with the sucessor states of Russia.

Germany could declare war at them even after signing the peace treaty.

Futhermore this did not raise the war readyness of Russia itself.

Since Russia is out of the war, the sucessor states do not even have MPP to reinforce there troups. It should not be possible to declare war after the peace treaty or Russia should come back to war with a NM of 100% since this is a new for for them now.

[Bill101]

Hi Karhu

Thanks for posting this and you do make a valid point. It's on my list of things to focus on!

Bill

[Bill101]

I encouterd the same problem with the sucessor states of Russia.

Germany could declare war at them even after signing the peace treaty.

Futhermore this did not raise the war readyness of Russia itself.

Since Russia is out of the war, the sucessor states do not even have MPP to reinforce there troups. It should not be possible to declare war after the peace treaty or Russia should come back to war with a NM of 100% since this is a new for for them now.

Good point, and there will be some changes here in the future to discourage and penalize the Central Powers for such actions.

[Omegaman1]

One of the reasons the Germans were eager to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was the desire to secure grain from Ukraine. Perhaps in the event of a Russian surrender, states like Ukraine could be treated like the Netherlands -- given a certain diplomatic point level, that country will open a convoy route to Germany and provide additional MMPs. This would discourage the Central Powers player from just declaring war in order to gain the post-surrender resources.

Dave

[Barbierir]

my Entente opponent (yes, the same one who launched a thousand amphibious landings) has now had Italy declare war on Austria - again! I think his plan is to get at southern Germany through Innsbruck.

Historically the armistice of november 4 between Italy and Austria allowed the passage of italian troops, when the war ended some days later, the italians were about to advance to open a new front in Bavaria

[Bill101]

One of the reasons the Germans were eager to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was the desire to secure grain from Ukraine. Perhaps in the event of a Russian surrender, states like Ukraine could be treated like the Netherlands -- given a certain diplomatic point level, that country will open a convoy route to Germany and provide additional MMPs. This would discourage the Central Powers player from just declaring war in order to gain the post-surrender resources.

Dave

Great minds think alike Dave!

[Bill101]

The thing is, shouldn't Italy face some negative consequences from breaking a peace treaty before the ink is even dry? The US is already in the war, but I would think Italian NM should take a massive hit - the people thought they were done fighting the Austrians, and now their government wants them to do it again straight away.

Hi Karhu

I've been giving this a lot of thought this week but a number of points keeping springing to mind:

Firstly, if Austria-Hungary has been defeated and Italy is doing well then while we could penalize Italy for driving through the rump of the Empire to get at Germany, would it really impact the game in any real way?

For instance, we could penalize Italy's NM when her troops advance into Austria proper, or even into Germany, but given the situation Italy's NM would still be very high and therefore unlikely to worry the player. This could possibly end up just being seen as an unnecessary irritant to the Entente player.

Secondly, if Italy is penalized for such a move, could implementing this open up a can of worms as perhaps it could be argued that other countries should also face similar issues.

For example, if Russia and Serbia are beaten, Austria-Hungary has achieved her own original war aims, yet a penalty to Austria-Hungary for using her forces elsewhere against a different foe might seem a bit tough. Historically Austria-Hungary did send troops to fight in both France and the Middle East, and I'm not aware of any negative repercussions specific to these deployments.

In the same way, did Russia's deployment of a small force to the Western Front, or the Ottoman deployment of forces on the Eastern Front cause any great issues back at home?

So essentially I have been wondering whether:

a) is introducing anything here going to provide a positive impact on the game, and

If we do introduce something, where do we draw the line?

These are the issues I've been pondering over the last week and I thought I'd outline them here so that we can discuss them further.

Bill

[Karhu]

Hi Bill,

To take your second point first, I think there's a big difference between Italy attacking Germany through a now-neutral Austria and the Ottomans or the Russians sending troops to fight in other theatres. The issue is not one of sending troops abroad - I don't have a problem with that at all, if you can spare the troops - but rather one of declaring war on a country you have just signed a peace treaty with.

Peace treaties were taken seriously in those days, and breaking one just as soon as it was signed would have serious consequences, so much so that it almost never happened. I say almost, because Bulgaria did fight the Second Balkan War with Serbia and Greece after the peace treaty to end the First Balkan War. But even then the original peace treaty was with Turkey, and Bulgaria went to war against Serbia because Serbia refused to abide by an earlier agreement on dividing Macedonia with Bulgaria. Despite the extenuating circumstances, Bulgaria became a virtual outcast in international circles, even being disavowed by its old ally Russia. Germany was only too happy to take advantage of that soon afterwards.

My solution would be to say that you can only declare war on a country once in any given game. The time span of the game is too short to allow a peace treaty to be signed and then broken again. If it ran over 30 years (like the time between Germany guaranteeing Belgium's neutrality and then violating it) then fair enough, but from one month to the next is not on.

That would answer your first point, about it not really having an effect on the game. I appreciate the situation would be different with newly-independent countries (the Ukraine, the Baltic states etc), but here I like the 'Dutch' solution suggested earlier by Omegaman1. Giving Germany even a few MPPs from these countries would make invasion pointless.