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Dev Diary #44 - Battles

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Ave and welcome to another Dev Diary! Today I will be talking about how Battles work and what their consequences are. If you haven't already, I suggest you first read through the dev diary on Fronts and get acquainted with the concepts explained there.

Let's start off with a somewhat updated version of the Front panel. Do note that this is all still very much WIP and not all values are hooked in, balanced or polished. For example at the moment there are a lot more deaths in battles than there should be.

Who could’ve seen this war coming?

DD44 01.png


In order for a battle to happen one side must have at least one General with an Advance order. Once this happens an advancement meter will slowly start to fill up and once it’s full a new battle will be launched. Various factors can increase or decrease the time it takes.

When the battle is created a sequence of actions unfolds before the fighting begins. All of these are in script and can be tweaked by mods as desired.
  • The attacker picks their leading General
  • The defender picks their leading General
  • The battle province is determined along the frontline
  • The attacker determines the number of units they can bring
  • The defender determines the number of units they can bring
  • Both sides selects their units
While there can be several Generals on the Front, only one is selected for each side in a Battle. They are not limited to selecting their own units and so may borrow additional ones from other Generals or the local Garrisons.

In addition each side randomizes a Battle Condition which provides bonuses (or penalties) to their units similar to Combat Tactics in Hearts of Iron 4. Unlike HOI4 though these are fixed for the duration of the battle. For example a General with the Engineer trait has a higher chance of selecting the “Dug In” Battle Condition which provides defensive modifiers.

Königgrätz anyone?
DD44 02.png


Now the shooting (and dying) finally starts! The battle takes place over a number of rounds and will continue until one side is either wiped out or retreats. The round sequence is roughly as follows:
  • Each side determines how many fighting-capable men it still has
  • Each side inflicts casualties on the other side
  • Each side attempts to recover wounded casualties
  • Each side also suffers morale damage according to casualties
  • If one side is wiped or retreats, the battle ends

Units have two primary combat values: Offense is used when attacking and Defense is used when defending. It is wise to plan ahead and specialize your armies for the war you are planning to fight. There are of course a whole bunch of additional modifiers used in conjunction with battles.

Crack open the fortress of Liège!
DD44 03.png


Casualties are determined by both sheer numbers and the relative combat stats between the two sides. For example a numerically inferior force equipped with more modern weapons may still emerge victorious against a larger foe.

When a side takes casualties it is randomly distributed amongst its units with some caveats.
Each unit has a majority culture depending on the pops in its barracks and casualties are applied roughly in proportion to unit culture. So with 4 French/1 Flemish units fighting on the same side the French will take roughly 80% of the casualties.

Not all pops who take casualties will end up dead though. A portion of these may instead end up as Dependents of other pops. After a long bloody war a nation may thus end up with a large number of wounded war-veterans who need to be supported by the rest of the population. In the long term this may be a cause of unrest and financial strain on the economy.

Morale damage is inflicted in proportion to the casualties and will slowly recover over time outside of battles presuming the units are in good supply.

One step closer to Unification
DD44 04.png


After the battle is over two things will happen:

A number of provinces are Captured depending on how decisive the victory was, unit characteristics, Generals, etc. This will alter the frontline and the winner will occupy those provinces until retaken or the end of the war.
A victorious defender will only take back land that was previously lost to the enemy while a victorious attacker will push into enemy land and take control of more provinces owing to their aggressive posture.

Devastation is also inflicted on the State in which the battle was fought. Large, brutal battles waged with modern weaponry will increase the devastation caused. It reduces infrastructure and building throughput, increases mortality and causes emigration. These effects persist after the war and will take quite some time to recover.

That’s it for this week! Next week we switch over to the political battlefield and discuss Elections! *ducks back into the trenches*
 
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Okay, I think I’m done with this conversation. It seems to be going nowhere for both sides. Where’s the mute thread button?
 
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Thanks for this week DD.
 
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I was thinking about the economic impact of war and was wondering if there would be something like the bombardment stances from stellaris. There have been instances where armies deliberately targeted infrastructure and industry such as Sherman's salted earth policy when fighting in Georgia or Russia's scorched earth defensive stance that hurt their own agriculture that year.
 
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Great diary however I wish we heard something about encirclements - like the one Wiz arranged in his Ottoman AAR, this seems like one of the most exciting things about warfare, I wish there was at least some way to encourage your generals to do it

Also pretty please make unifications diary very soon
Disagree, I like this direction. In HOI4 you win the war by having a bigger economy. And with an economy soo big you don't even need to control your units. Also wars are simply a means to expand territory. So HOW that gets done is really irrelevant to me.
 
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Disagree, I like this direction. In HOI4 you win the war by having a bigger economy. And with an economy soo big you don't even need to control your units. Also wars are simply a means to expand territory. So HOW that gets done is really irrelevant to me.
So maybe we should remove war from the game and just turn it into an "expand territory" button? You just have to build up enough mana to use it?
 
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Sorry @KaiserJohan, but this is one of the worst DD I've read. Nothing is explained. From the read of it, battles go like this:
Generals are chosen (randomly)
Battle location is chosen (randomly)
Units are selected (randomly)
Battle Condition is selected (randomly)
Casualties and morale dmg is calculated.
If it's over the threshold, battle ends and random province(s) is occupied by the winner.
Else, next round of battle starts.

That like does not tell us ANYTHING and make battles a boring black box. And I'm not talking about the lack of Player Input in these battles, because we were already told that we would not be able to directly command armies. So... How about telling us what we actually CAN do and how battles actually work?
How do production methods impact battles? Is this just newer=better?
What's the difference between more (better) infantry vs more (better) artillery?
How are generals and provinces selected?
Are Battle Conditions dependent only on General traits (and Attack/Defend order) or do our laws or techs also impact it?


Literally every second sentence in this DD screams for [1]How? annottation.

While I agree that more detail would be nice I'm also aware they haven't started balancing it yet so they wouldn't be able to tell us even if they wanted to.

We can however infer a lot from the DD if we choose to.

1) No the battle system isn't just roll 1d6 and one side wins (shouldn't need to be said but hey that's the world we live in now)

2) They have tried to reduce the game to the simplest functioning rule system (this isn't a complaint - it is just a recognition of their design philosophy for the games from HOI4 onwards. Start simple but functional and expand from there.) This also means that each step in the process is necessary and serves some purpose - none of them will just be roll 1d6 and move on.

3) Ticking battle score suggests multiple offensive generals give an advantage. Also that the speed that battles occur will probably change over the game (why have a counter if it's just 1 in 10 chance)

4) Generals have traits, levels and allegiances to IGs. Since only one general will fight do you go for a super promoted general and run the risk of issues with the IG later or do you go for a lot of weak generals and run the risk of loosing battles. In the DD about intent for the war system one thing they noted was that war changes over time - if you have a super promoted general with an old style trait but you have entered a new era of war then what do you do? (e.g. a trait that gives a bonus to cavalry charges in the great war). We have also seen generals with traits like "gout" - maybe your super general is having a bad day and has to miss the next battle.

5) In the fronts DD they mentioned that if your general has a terrain trait they will try to pick that terrain. Again no details but already it suggests strategic choices - do you send your high level desert rat general to invade Switzerland or do you use a lower ranking mountain expert. Recon and opponent skill are probably used in these contested battles.

6) Units being selected randomly means you can't just have one perfect hammer because unless you use them alone. Raising conscripts will bulk your forces up but might also weaken you. How do you handle that?

7) Battle condition is selected depending on traits and terrain. You can nudge the result but not control it.

8) damage and moral are handled independently (which is the same for all Paradox games to be fair) so you can focus on forcing the enemy to retreat but at the risk of fighting them another day or do you stack damage modifiers?

9) Battles are meaningful - there aren't skirmishes where both sides break off. These are serious battles and the state of your forces afterwards might be strongly impacted

10) You gain a variable amount of terrain depending on your success - this means you can have lightning wars or you can have meat grinders. It also allows a certain amount of pacing - if 2 provinces is a normal victory then your army might be designed to survive 3 fights to conquer each state region. Technology will also probably have a strong affect here.


And probably the MOST important line of the DD

All of these are in script and can be tweaked by mods as desired.

Battle conditions aren't a hardcoded internal AI routine - they are moddable!
 
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I have a couple questions about casualties:
  1. Is there some way to see how many of the casualties have become dependents? They aren't specifically listed on the battle screen, as far as I can tell, but perhaps they should be.
  2. Is the fact that these battles all have several times more dead than wounded part of the WIP nature of the screenshots? If not, I think it should be. In the real world, battles tend to have several times more wounded than dead. Somehow I completely missed the part where this was mentioned as a known issue. My bad!
Are dependents better than dead people? Suppose I have a war where I lose 50K men. Is my nation better off economically if the 50K men are Dependents or if they are actually Dead?
 
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How do you determine who is attacker and who is defender in Battle if both sides have an advancing general?
Is there some way to stop advancement at natural chokepoints or barriers? If the Ottomans decisiveley lose a battle of Edirne against advancing greeks will they possibly lose provinces on BOTH sides of the Bosporus?
 
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calling something a "mobile game" is maybe the most meaningless criticism possible, and it would be infinitely more helpful to everyone if you explained what you actually meant, because I'm pretty sure I've never seen a mobile game that works like this, nor are these mechanics quintessentially "mobile" in nature
Didn’t you read they dev diary? They CLEARLY state that you have to tap the screen repeatedly in order to fill up the advancement meter (Or do it instantly for 3 red gems, only 99¢ in the store!)
 
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How do you determine who is attacker and who is defender in Battle if both sides have an advancing general?
Is there some way to stop advancement at natural chokepoints or barriers? If the Ottomans decisiveley lose a battle of Edirne against advancing greeks will they possibly lose provinces on BOTH sides of the Bosporus?
I assume the side whose advancement meter fills first.
 
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It does not count much either, only the phases of the combat and how it is reached. But the important thing would be in the modifiers, how technology influences, the equipment, what happens if both sides want to attack... both for the battle and for that previous preparation.

I would like to see more variety of orders like those indicated, combined with "rules of engagement", it could give a certain game (especially with the traits of the generals). Also the composition of the armies. In any case, I would like to see how they simulate the transition from a post-Napoleonic system to the PGM fronts.

I hope that they persevere in this new model and introduce more complexity in other ways, when it comes to composing your armies, the orders and "postures" that you give to your generals, the management of reserves, the more "doctrinal" aspects, etc. .

That we do not have dolls, it is not a drama either, the important thing is in the , modifiers, composition, terrain, generals etc. The bad thing would be that they will stay on the surface. For now it leaves me cold because they are not going deeply into the matter and what scares me is that at that door, we have nothing.
 
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Does this mean that multiple generals with an offensive stance have their own "battle counter", so that multiple battles can happen at the same time? What about a general discrepancy (For example, 2 attacking generals vs 1 defending general)?
 
Personally I dislike this system as presented. I've been pleased (or at least not annoyed) by everything presented do far in the DD's but war simply doesn't look good at all.

Now, let's look at why I see it like this.

First of all let's see what the intention with these changes from previous games is:

1) to eliminate micro.
2) to better model the "hands off" approach that Vicky3 is taking for state governance into the realm of warfare.
3) to avoid cheese.

And I think it fails at these three things in one way or another:

1) It eliminates micro alright but it does it by basically removing basically all player agency. The player is reduced to telling the AI (and we are talking about Paradox's terrible AI here) to "go ahead" or "stay put" and turning everything into basically modifier stacking.

2) This, IMO, doesn't work for a game. The game expects us to delegate to the generals and hope they'll do what we want with only vague instructions, much like how we are expected to react to the economy and the geopolitical stage by applying indirect pressure to issues to manipulate them, except that this is not how games are. IRL I can delegate matters to someone else, to tell a general (who knows better than me) "plan this war and win it, I'll manage the home front" but in a game (especially one of Paradox's, whose AI isn't anything to write home about) it simply removes ones capability to do things the smart way (and I'm not talking about cheesing the game here!). I can't trust an AI general to do a good job because the AI general has the brainpower of a gnat, if not less.

To illustrate this let me give an example from Vicky2:
It was the Great War, the alliance of Italy (me), Rusia and Spain stood against France, the Austrian lead german nations and a few other minor allies (eg Netherlands). All told our respective military power was very close with our biggest advantages being Italy's navy overwhelming control of the Mediterranean and Spain's gigantic standing army versus the Austrian's numbers of high quality troops and the French defensive lines in the south.
As the war started and Austrian forces clashed against the hastily mobilised russians a combined french and austro-germsn offensive struck the Alps, thr italian army held their ground... Until they didn't.
Once a breakthrough was achieved (after most of the available italian reserves had already been committed), the superior defensive positions of the italian army were of no use, individual armies were encircled and destroyed piecemeal as both fronts disintegrated and the Italian army started a general retreat.

Here in Vicky3 we would simply have X amount of provinces be occupied and then the fron would continue to push backwards, the Italian army basically dead already as magical numbers™ simply tickled down whereas even with Vicky2's not-very-good system allowed more leeway. So going back to the story; the Italian army retreated in good order, using fortifications and geographical advantages to bleed the enemy (which required for the sacrifice of s number of armies) all the way to Sicily as they abandoned continental Italy with the cover of the navy.
Thus Italy found itself with its heartland occupied but the control of the islands and more importantly, the colonies, was maintained. It was then simply a matter of raising more troops by way of the colonial populations and wait for the russian breakthrough (whatever forces the french had committed had already retreated or been destroyed as the combat in the south intensified) and thus a counterattack by way of a naval invasion of the occupied mainland (with some Spanish reinforcements) pushed what remained of the austrian forced out. After that it was simply a matter of continuing.to push into Austria, carefully picking what battles could be won as both countries depleted armies slugged it out.

This was intensive, it was nerve wrecking and more importantly, it was fun. I went from confidence in my victory to desperation as the enemy marched through my country to elation as we pushed them out and from what I'm seeing here this won't be possible in Vicky3.

Now, one may want to argue "but that's because it is realistic, in war you don't win by ingenious plots, you win by a bigger economy and better preparations" which ignored that I had both. My economy was just as bug if not bugger than my enemies' and I had prepared accordingly. It was my navy and the allies I had cultivated which carried the day. But it wasn't just a bunch of ready to use stuff which decided the conflict but how well I used it. Because most wars won't be between two sides where one is overwhelmingly superior and leaving it up to what's basically RNG doesn't sit well with me.

3) Now we finally reach point 3. Well, there is not really much to say but point out hoe this is a waste of time. People will always find a way to cheese the game because the mechanics are never going to be realistic enough and because the AI can never be as smart. It is up to the player to cheese or not and a waste of time to try and prevent them from it.

But then again this is only my personal opinion from what I've seen, not exactly an objective criticism. Simply what I would like the most (just like how many who want Vicky3 to be an spreadsheet simulator are in their right to prefer it that way).
 
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Does this mean that multiple generals with an offensive stance have their own "battle counter", so that multiple battles can happen at the same time? What about a general discrepancy (For example, 2 attacking generals vs 1 defending general)?

Probably just the one counter but it fills faster with more attacking generals. Thus a front with 2 attackers vs 1 attacker will have the side with 2 generals initiating the battles more often. If you can afford to mobilise the troops then assigning more armies will give you an advantage (but run the risk a secondary army will end up being picked for the combat)
 
i would consider this dev diary to be a concept version. I personally don't like eg. the choice of artillery research presented, you do move from fixed cannons into more mobile artillery horse drawn teams with eventually more sophisticated ammunition.
Which actually does correctly resemble the major steps of artillery evolution at that time.
What I would like to see and can extract out of the forum feedback is:
- no single frontline which doesn't allow for breakthroughs, although i agree encirclement warfare is not so much the trend in this time of age
- shape direction (schwerpunkt) of attack, to allow for breakthrough again I don't know if at that time there was a huge focus on breaking enemy lines and encirclement
(of course some positions might been avoided to attack but large scale ww2 style encirclement i doubt it)
- might consider looking into ultimate general civil war for artillery mechanics (having different pieces, in case this is to much micro, make an automanage option as such
the depth is hidden but can be folded out and contribute to better gameplay).
- i don't like the 'batallion system' it makes the whole army seem to homogeneous same for the way how ships are counted. i would like my expeditionary forces to be slightly different than those that are crack frontline troops. Especially larger countries.. had plenty of different troops in terms of quality, which would allow them to cost effectively do defense or offensive operations or even allowed them to exist until now. ( i look forward to other names as well if they existed like army groups, divisions and regiments)
- overall i like gui but miss some paradox touch of realism into images like in hoi3 research tree
 
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