All units (not only naval) will survive even if the country is conquered. And since no unit can ever run out of supplies, they will survive until destroyed. If the country is AI you can change your relation towards them to peace and they will probably respond few days after that. If it is human, well, you can talk to him but he will probably try to be annoyance or just leave the game.

I had a situation when I completely destroyed one country while it was invading someone so it had a lot of troops far from home. A week or two later, it appeared with 60-70 units at my shore. Of course, I dealt with him quickly, but it is a fine example of what may happen. It is how game works and I don't think anything should be changed even if it looks a little illogical.

Not illogical at all. The Polish and French armies continued to fight all of World War II, long after their countries were overrun.

My favorite unit: 12th Polish Uhlans, spectacular combat record!

No, that NEVER happens. I've played 11 games in 6 months, and I always reset the diplomatic settings to "peace" after eliminating a player, either human or AI, from the game so I can keep track of them on the diplomacy big board. Not once has a completely defeated AI country accepted that de facto peace offer after being completely defeated (i.e. losing all of its provinces). This is COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC, and one of the weirder current features of the game. No warship could operate indefinitely without replenishment of food, fuel and materiel. In both world wars, the defeated navies were obliged to accept the surrender of their countries, and to either surrender to winning forces on the high seas, or sail to a port of the victor under a flag of truce and surrender there. Captured naval units were war prizes and treated as a form of reparations. Alternatively, diehard crews could scuttle their own vessel in defiance of their own country's orders to surrender. Either way, they could not continue to sail the seas like some sort of Flying Dutchman, attacking the ships of the nation that had defeated theirs.

This bizarre feature of the current COW game should be changed to bring it in line with reality and the strong historical precedent of both world wars. I hope some of the game developers read these comments, because this feature of the game is JUST PLAIN WHACKO.

Poland had no significant surviving navy to speak of (3 destroyers and 3 submarines sailed to Britain), and virtually all of the handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts crewed by Polish sailors after 1939 were in fact rechristened Royal Navy ships, and all of them were fighting under Royal Navy command and control. Britain faced significant manpower shortages, trying to maintain the world's second largest navy, the world's largest merchant navy, and a world-wide army and air force actively operating in almost every theatre of war, and they accepted many orphan fighting men and units under British command, but no Polish ships were fighting independently after 1939. How could they fight anyone without a support infrastructure to replenish their food, fuel, ammunition and other materiel?

The French case is also instructive, but it is at best a special and unique case. After the surrender of France in 1940, the terms of the armistice required the bulk of the French Navy to be interned at Toulon and two French African ports, under the nominal control of the collaborationist French government at Vichy. As you may recall, this ambiguous situation was considered as a major threat to Royal Navy control of the Mediterranean, and Churchill ordered the French capital ships at Mers-el-kebir to be sunk after giving the local French commanders an ultimatum to join the Allies, surrender, or sail to America. The remaining handful of French naval units still operating were split between Vichy and Free French control until 1942, when all French ships effectively rejoined the Allied cause with the collapse of the Vichy regime, and accepted Free French command and control under DeGaulle.

Again, no Allied or Axis ships continued to operate independently under their own command after the fall of the parent nation, and I challenge you to provide any example of such.

I agree about the rogue Naval units, they need to go, it needs to be fixed. Someone stated earlier they stay in one spot, but that's not correct, for the most part, they will ferry between two waypoints, but I have seen them move long distances. I play Ukraine a lot in the 22 player map and I've seen Yugoslavian rogue ships enter the Black see and move all around. Would really like to see this rectified.

I agree with everything you said above. And I have seen an orphan German destroyer in Chesapeake Bay, and Yugoslavian and Italian orphan ships in the Sea of Azov (north of Crimea). I would propose that orphan naval units should either (a) surrender, (b) sail to an Allied port, or (c) scuttle within 7 to 10 days after the fall of their parent country.

I agree, no country = no resources = no operation. Negative in moral and resources during game play = loss of production and rebellion. Therefore remaining units should either defect (if allied with another player) or surrender to the over-taker.

. . . or scuttle in the best traditions of the German navy at Scapa Flow. I would be satisfied if it were some random combination of those three outcomes: (1) surrender to the victor, (2) affiliate with an allied country, if there was one, or (3) scuttle. There also needs to be a time limit for this to occur, and I think 7 to 10 days after the loss of the parent country's last province would be a good compromise. Unlike ground troops who can forage and live off the land for some time period, modern warships are done when they run out of fuel and food, and without parent country they can't even buy what they need in a foreign port. No parent country, no currency, no credit.

If Britain had been successfully invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940-41, I have no doubt most if not all of the surviving Royal Navy ships would have sailed to Canada -- part of the Empire and another of the then-King's dominions -- rather than surrender to the Germans. In rallying his cabinet in the summer of 1940, Churchill once famously said "If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood . . . ." It's hard to imagine the Royal Navy joining the Kriegsmarine.

I would think more in "game setting" and not in "reality standards" - there are quite strategic aspects when homeless units may still be active (at least for a while).

On one hand, maybe sometimes you have to think about first, whether and when especially KI countries with a great navy should be conquered completely or rather should offered peace - and/or let the last province/s for another avid conqueror.
(because without any land there is no government which would agree to peace as you know now; and if that nation has a lot of subs for example the remaining playing time can be very funny)

On the other hand it's currently so, that ground forces which have no homeland are still able to conquer new lands.

But all the same, in my view that should not be possible for an endless time, and I think the best solution would be:

Units without any homeland should lose morale, in a reverse manner as in healing, day after day a little until they are destroyed...

Then they can cause trouble only a limited time...

And in that time you could still hunt them if you want...


For my opinion suggestions as "surrender to the victor" or "integrate to an allied country" are not really good ideas.

Who wants to take over and feed those units after each war, mainly marine units probably, which most likely may not fit into the own strategic and economic plan.

Then it could easily happen that a players economy will be "Ruined by winning wars".

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Please, don't worry for my horrible English language, I'm an old fucking Kraut and learned it while drinking beer with British soldiers in German pubs in the early seventies - so simply drink a beer and think you're in the pub, then you can read this without problems...

I recently played a pacific map where a nation had a stack of 20 Destroyers after I defeated it, Yes 20 and it was an A.I. nation from the start. (Apparently it had a affinity for destroyers.) These ships sat off or around the coast of Indonesia for some time until I felt like taking them on, but I found it extremely logic breaking to see such a massive group of ships hanging out in the high seas awaiting to pounce on some careless convoy or sub. As I conquered a few more of the island nations that litter the South East Asia Seas, these roving bands of former nationals, with boats, grew in numbers.

I granted them all the name of "the South Seas Pirates organization" and dealt with them in time.

But in the end it just did not make much sense in either historical context or game play. While I can accept the argument that these ships could keep fighting for a short time and in short numbers after their homeland has been conquered, it does not make sense for such a large force to keep at it over time.

Either they should slowly die off or a portion of them should be converted into the winners inventory (I.E. as tanks and ships were absorbed into other nations.) This should only effect A.I. nations tho.

The casualty-free solution to large stacks of destroyers is a level 4+ battleship (with escorts) that can sink 4 or 5 destroyers per hour while remaining outside the destroyers' range to return fire. When the destroyers pursue the battle group, retreat for 10 to 15 minutes and then start firing on them again from a distance.

I was recently in a game in which a human player built almost 90 DDs and combined them in flotillas of 5 DDs each to protect North America from invasion. My answer was an invasion fleet of 80+ ground units and 30 aircraft, escorted by two battle groups of 4 BBs, 4 CCs and 12 DDs each. It was a long game, but I sank 60+ destroyers at the cost of a handful of DD casualties. And, yes, I hate when AI players randomly build a ridiculous number of a particular weapon system -- it usually requires you to create an equally unbalanced counter-force to defeat it, which is usually overkill for dealing with any other country on the board. I'm in a game now where AI Italy built over 50 level 6 fighters, and a much lesser force of a dozen SP AA units put an end to that.

@ Armatus, on the European map if certain AI countries are not taken out early, they will often continue to build naval units of a particular type. I have seen AI Spain build a large submarine fleet; AI Finland will sometimes build 25+ cruisers and destroyers; AI Algeria and Morocco will often build a substantial number of cruisers that bounce back and forth between the African and Spanish coasts; and most weirdly of all, AI Yugoslavia will keep building destroyers and sending them into the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, on which Yugoslavia does not even have a sea coast. The solution is often a street-sweeper battleship group that can sink CCs and DDs from a distance. Killing higher level DDs and CCs in multi-unit stacks can be done with aircraft, but is often costly because of their substantial AA defense. Killing large stacks of sub squadrons is always tricky, and is best done with a substantial stack of DDs shelling them from a distance. If any of these large AI naval unit stacks make physical contact with yours, you will incur substantial casualties. The best strategy I have found is to shell them from a distance outside the range of the enemy AI units' own guns, and then retreat when the AI stack tries to close the distance to yours.

Bottom line: AI orphan naval units should not continue to exist indefinitely after their parent nation is defeated, and any of the alternatives proposed above would be an improvement over the present situation.

So, I call for a hand count --

How many players are in favor of AI orphan naval units not roaming the seas indefinitely after their parent country has been completely conquered?

How many players think AI orphan naval units should continue to roam the seas until they are sunk or the game ends?

I am in favor of having these pirates continue to roam the seas.

However, they need certain conditions:
-After 3 days they revert nationality to "Big Phat Phunny Pie Rats" with their flag brig a pirate flag. All units revert to level 1.
-They lose 10 morale per day, because they're now pirates and no government will sell pirates fuel.
-They become hostile to all nations. So maybe your own enemy will run into pirates and die. That oughtta be funny.