HOLF Players' Guild Forum

I've read all the posts made so far, and made a few replies. I hope people will continue posting, and I'll keep replying if they do. However, I think we have something resembling a majority view (not a consensus but at least something fairly widely agreed) that the game should have more historical fidelity, but without reducing it to purely historical channels; in particular, without forcing the pattern of historical alliances more generally.
I think the key to doing that is to make France more distinctive. The rules as they stand are basically a contest for hegemony among five nations, of which France is the biggest but otherwise not particularly different from any other. I designed it that way originally, but always with the notion that I might decide to revisit it to make France more Revolutionary. There remains the conceptual problem that France turned itself into an Empire by 1804, by which time it really wasn't all that different from the other monarchies - but let's background that for a moment or three.
What I'd like to do is look at ways to give France a revolutionary cast. I think a number of things that have been suggested could work for that:
1) No active alliance between France and another major until the other major has been vanquished. Nations can still tacitly work together with France (as Russia did for quite a while) or can remain neutral and bide their time if they don't think they'll benefit from a grand coalition rush to crush France (which Prussia did) but they can't actively join forces. I have two concerns about this, though. First, whether it can really work. Britain and France did very little in NWOL-2 that required them to have an active alliance, so the lack of one might not hinder them much. (I know they fought together as allies at several battles, notably Bremen, but had they needed to work around that, Britain could have given France money to fund French troops instead of landing her own.) Second, whether it might encourage someone to concede a VQ to France only so that they can subsequently ally. I can see, for instance, Britain agreeing to pay a 10% VP penalty to just up and give a VQ to France so they can ally subsequently, figuring that they'll make it back with interest as they sweep across the Continent. And they'd probably be right if they thought that way. Or, if they're willing to accept a second-place finish as they were this game, all the more reason to just pay the 10% up front and be done with it. Even if it was as much as 50%, they could probably still make it back, and I don't think the penalty can be as much as 50%.
2) Only allow France to create new fragmented states. This is spreading the Revolution, which was clearly a French policy goal prior to 1800. We could even go so far as to give France a VP bonus each time she creates a new Republican government in a fragmented state or in a minor. This will give France an incentive to want to attack the minors and frags (historically accurate) and the other majors an incentive to want to defend them (to keep France from getting the bonus, also historically accurate). But then the majors all compete to see who among them can be the best protector of the frags and minors.
3) Create the Bourbons as a dependent of one of the other nations, probably Britain, and give the protector of the Bourbons a VP bonus if the Bourbons achieve anything useful. The problem with this is what to do if France vanquishes the Bourbons' protector, but the Bourbons can probably hop from one major to another, or maybe to Holland which is where they did go initially. France can't vanquish all four majors because the game ends if they vanquish three of them, so the Bourbons would never have to decamp to Guadelope (the way the Portuguese monarchy did have to to go Brazil for a while.)
All of those things would create a historical cast to the victory conditions which they presently lack, and would reduce the odds of a sustained alliance between France and another major which seems to be the desired effect.