Liu Xiang opened his mouth and was unable to answer Li Kuiqi's question for a while. Yes, if the two of them went to attack Goa on their own, would the emperor still be able to accommodate them?

Now is not the time when he was the emperor of Saigon, he listened to the emperor's orders as he wanted, and if he didn't want to listen to them, he could throw them on the bookshelf as waste paper. Even if he plundered the land of Vietnamese immigrants in the local area, causing those Vietnamese immigrants to collude with the Nguyen clan to attack Saigon, the emperor did not dare to say that he was not, but sent troops to punish the Nguyen clan for him to retake Saigon, so as to settle the pirates who submitted to the imperial court.

However, after these pirate gangs who returned to the imperial court occupied land in Nanyang under the banner of the imperial court and collected taxes, the territory and power in their hands became bigger and bigger, but they could be regarded as offending the small states of Nanyang and the European colonists.

This also put them in an embarrassing situation, in the past, if they offended the imperial court, they could still find a small country or a European territory in Nanyang to settle down. Now, these native kings of the South Seas and the European colonists hate them to death, but they are afraid of the support of the Ming Dynasty behind them, so they can only choose to submit to them.

Once it is known that they have betrayed the imperial court, it is estimated that the first to respond to the imperial court's desire to kill them are these earth kings and European colonists. After all, the imperial court didn't know much about these kings and Europeans, and after killing them, these well-known former pirates, maybe these kings and Europeans would be able to recover some of the land and trade interests.

And for those subordinates below, after more than ten years of merit and land awarding and retirement and transfer into the implementation of the system, where can they give up their military merits and official positions and go to the sea to become pirates, even Liu Xiang's younger brother can fall out with him for an official position of Hong Kong garrison, not to mention being a two-hearted bystander.

What made Liu Xiang feel the most sad was that whether it was the meritorious granting of fields or the transfer of retirement, the fields and local official positions allocated to the soldiers by the imperial court were actually the land they had fought with their own lives. But those subordinates just recognized the land deed and appointment letter given by the imperial court, and did not recognize him Liu Xiang.

There may still be some mountain disputes between the various pirate gangs belonging to the imperial court, but for the willingness to resist the imperial court, even the former sea defender Li Kuiqi, who is sitting next to him, is not optimistic. Liu Xiang thought that compared with the Zheng Zhilong who fought for power and profit, and the current Tang King who seemed to be shrewd and capable, the Chongzhen Tianzi who lived in Beijing City and fed them honey wrapped in poison was the real ruthless character.

Just when Liu Xiang was silent, Li You, who was standing in front of everyone, finally spoke up and said to everyone: "The war game deduction I want to demonstrate to you today can be regarded as a kind of war that happened on paper. Before we begin, I'm going to tell you about the rules and some terminology of the game, so as not to wait for you to understand the deduction process..."

Li You thought about introducing the simple rules first, so as to avoid interrupting the process of wargame deduction due to the constant questions asked in the middle of the way. His idea was originally good, but he still underestimated the curiosity of many people present, and from the moment he began to introduce the rules, some people kept asking questions, which once made him a little dizzy.

Or perhaps the generals under the Governor's Office had taken Li You as a lobbyist for the Tang king, fearing that he would play a trick that no one could understand to prove that the plan to send troops to Goa was not feasible, so they questioned any provisions of the rules, especially the figures of the combat power.

For example, Liu Xiang, Li Kuiqi and others were very dissatisfied, Li You set their warships at 0.32, which was the same as the combat power of the Portuguese warships, but set the Dutch warships to 0.65, while the British were as high as 0.75.

Li You had to explain in detail to everyone: "The naval combat power 1 in the wargame represents a standard model of Ming-class warship, that is, a tonnage between 600-800, equipped with 30-35 guns, equipped with a crew of 110-160 people, more than two-thirds of the crew must be ordinary crew members who have been sailing for more than 3 years, and the career of the captain, chief officer, and navigator shall not be less than 5 years, and they have participated in at least one regular naval battle.

According to the information we have, most of the ships under your command do not have more than 20 guns, and many of the ships are converted from merchant ships that are not strong enough to allow the guns on the side of the ship to fire at once. Your men may have fought many naval battles against merchant ships, but such ships are incapable of much use in the face of real warships.

And my description of the Dutch ships goes like this, each of which was armed with 30 cannons; The ship carried a large number of firearms and combatants; Nothing is piled up on the upper deck of the battleship; The ship's gunners were also well-trained, and most were competent for the work of soldiers, seafarers, and gunners; The sailors had not only nautical experience, but also real combat experience in landing and naval battles.

The only flaw of these ships was that the Dutch had not yet divided the design of merchant ships and warships, so the ships were not as strong as our Ming-class warships. Another defect that is not a defect is that the cannons equipped on Dutch warships are generally not of a large caliber. Therefore, when our Ming-class battleships engage Dutch battleships, if we implement the tactics of close shooting, our battleships will have a victory rate of more than 70%.

As for the Portuguese ships that fought against the Dutch warships, they are numerically better than the ships under your command, but the soldiers on the Portuguese ships have always been negligent in training, and the crews are difficult to recruit skilled sailors with seafaring experience due to the lack of reserve forces, so after weighing up, we believe that the combat power of the ships under your command should be comparable to the Portuguese warships..."

With Li You's continuous explanation, the officials of the Governor's Mansion, who originally regarded today's war game as a farce, finally became serious. Especially when the wargames began, as Li You wrote down the various messages on the blackboard, and then wrote the decisions made by the Governor's Palace, and then came back from other adjacent rooms with the assumption of British, Dutch, Portuguese, and even the reactions of the local people. Everyone finally understood why Li You said that this was a war on paper at the beginning.

If it weren't for the fact that the officers around Li You listed various formulas on the blackboard, how the reactions of all parties pushed the events forward, then this was really no different from a game of children fighting on horseback. But it is precisely because of the existence of these formula calculation processes that both the former pirates and the civilian generals around the Tang King feel that such deductions may not become a reality.

In order to verify the correctness of these formulas, some civil officials and generals interrupted Li You from time to time by raising their hands, asking for a temporary change in the setting. When the number of interruptions was too much, Li You had to say to everyone again: "If everyone is interested in the wargame itself, then it is better to organize a simple version of the wargame for everyone after the end." As for now, try not to take some too nonsensical conditions for us to calculate, which will not only waste time, but also make the actors lose their judgment, thus making the result even more distant from reality. ”

Gu Yan, the senator beside King Tang, suddenly said in surprise: "Can such a thing also be passed on?" Will it be taken away by those barbarians, and then used against my Da Ming? ”

Li You replied with a smile: "Senator Gu also saw that it is useless to just get these data, the important thing is to be able to list the formulas on the blackboard behind me, and the collection of various intelligence."

If these two things can be achieved, then they are not a barbarian country, but a civilized country worthy of careful treatment by the Ming Dynasty. For another civilized country, even if we keep this little secret, the other side can still follow this path.

Then in a war with such a civilized country, who has more and wiser officers will become the key to determining the outcome of the war. So keeping it a secret from our officers became a foolish choice. The above is His Majesty's judgment. ”

Gu Yan was silent, but Su Guansheng beside him asked, "I still have a question to ask, is it too child's play to use the dice to decide this weather and some other uncertain factors?" In addition, can the combat effectiveness of warships and armies really represent their true combat effectiveness by marking them as numbers? Aren't there many examples in history of defeating more with less, and defeating the strong with the weak? ”

It was the first time that Liu Xiang, Li Kuiqi and other military ministers agreed with Su Guansheng's opinion so much, and they were still a little dissatisfied with Li You's calculation of the army into numbers, without considering the command bonus of the officers. Of course, there is no such fear in their subconscious, if the combat power of the army can be expressed in numbers like this, then their current position can not be replaced by others at will? In this way, in the future, the army of the Ming Dynasty will really become the army of the imperial court.

Li You didn't answer this question immediately, he slowly glanced at the expressions of everyone in the observation seat, and then said unhurriedly: "Su Changshi's eyes are really sharp enough, and the question you raised is the biggest flaw in the war game deduction.

As the saying goes, manpower is sometimes poor, and what we can calculate with a formula is an inevitability. Wargame deduction cannot be used to calculate probability, just like the east wind in 'Dongfeng does not cooperate with Zhou Lang, Tongque Chun Shen Locks Er Qiao', which cannot be calculated in wargame deduction.

Therefore, His Majesty believes that certain uncertain factors are actually the same as the number of days in the casino. That's why we use dice rolls to determine some conditions that are difficult to determine.

This is why I have been reminding you from the beginning that the changes in the events given by the wargames do not mean that they are consistent with the facts, but only what kind of trend changes will occur in the events under our given conditions, so as to help us develop our ideas and make decisions..."

After listening to Li You's answer, the civil ministers and generals of the Governor's Mansion calmed down and began to seriously observe this war game. Liu Xiang, Li Kuiqi and other generals who were originally dismissive of this quietly moved to the front row, and they didn't dare to let go of any change in front of them.

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