Dev Diary 9: It's just a flesh wound!

[Groogy]

Hello guys!

So today we will be talking about some changes we have made to make our combat less bloody, which has particularly been an issue since patch 2.4. We have also worked on making the outcome of entire wars not be decided in one stroke by whomever happens to have pissed off Lady Fortuna...

First off, we have adopted the “shattered retreat” from EU4, meaning when an army is defeated it will run back to somewhere relatively safe so that the enemy can’t keep ping-ponging it until it is annihilated. Peasant rabble that rises against your enlightened and glorious rule, however, will immediately disperse on defeat so you don’t have to chase them down. But nobles within your realm that betray you and revolt will try and run for a safe haven.

The second feature we have added is that while your damaged army is at home it will reinforce its levies directly (rather than the Holding garrison), meaning you can choose if you want to employ the garrisoned levies immediately by dismissing and re-raising your levies, or decide it is too risky (since your army will then be split all over your Kingdom and be easy pickings for the enemy) and instead choose to have your army stand back and rest for a while and be slowly refilled with troops instead.

The equation for how losses were calculated has also been changed. Before, it was based on the troops getting damaged by almost exponential amounts. This could, in some cases, cause really ridiculous damage like 2 million casualties, when it was armies of thousands fighting each other. This has been changed, and the associated values tweaked severely to prevent the crazy casualties yet still ensure that enough soldiers die in battles. For math nerds this is how it works now:

Spoiler

Defending means here the unit taking damage, both units will be defending and attacking at the same time and does not denote who initiated the combat. DamagePerMan is a value calculated as a even distribution of the total damage each soldier takes.

((DamagePerMan * AmountOfDefendingTroops) / DefenseValue) * AmountOfDefendingTroops = LossesInTroops

Has been changed to

(DamagePerMan * AmountOfDefendingTroops) / DefenseValue = LossesInTroops

Not a very big change but it does have profound effects on the result.

Beside simple combat mechanic changes there have been some improvements and bug fixes to the AI to give players a better challenge, focusing mostly on making allied AIs coordinate better between themselves. Oh, and the Mongol AI has been given its balls back, making them a lot more aggressive than they ever were before...

You asked for it….

 

[Groogy]

And strong Mongols, I like it.

Not strong, we made them more aggressive, there were various modifiers like "Oh I am getting old so I shouldn't expand" and stuff the AI thinks about. You know pesky problems the Mongols don't have.

 

[Moah]

It is almost certainly the latter, as the former would massively reduce casualties.

Groogy updated his post to show the correct formula.

 

[Moah]

This sounds suspiciously like "the AI will cheat by teleporting its armies away from danger". Does somebody want to persuade me otherwise?

It does not. Both AI and player armies shatter, and noone teleports. They run away and you can follow them.

 

[Moah]

So let me get this straight. Let's say you have an army of 10k and defeat an army of 7k. After the battle you have 7k left and they have 3k. They now split into 3 armies of 1k each and head off into separate directions. Doesn't this just mean that you should now split your 7k into 3 and send each off after a different stack. Doesn't this just mean more chasing down and playing ping pong?

The shattered retreat doesn't mean the army actually splits in several subarmies. Just that it runs away to a relative safe space.

 

[Groogy]

Why does groogy have more icons than me?

Because I am pro.

 

[Groogy]

Can the mongols and other nomads still reinforce anywhere on the map, or will they only be allowed to reinforce in their own territory.

How do you mean? The event troops can't reinforce no matter what and the horde units can only reinforce as long as they are within supply range as any other retinue unit.

 

[Groogy]

To make it extra clear, the nomads/mongols have gotten no bonuses at all. I just told the AI to not be so nice. The Ai is not smarter, the ai don't get any cheats. I just simply changed the modifiers to make it stop being a coward.

 

[Groogy]

Even troops have been reinforcing at least since HL came out. And retinues have never, ever had a supply range limit on reinforcements (and neither have had horde units).

Or are you revealing new features without meaning to?

What event troops reinforce?
Retinues have had a supply range since rajas of India.

 

[Groogy]

It's never prevented them from reinforcing. I was never aware that was even supposed to happen.

It has though prevented them from reinforcing since like a year ago.

 

[Groogy]

All of them. This was reported numerous times during the HL beta. Currently, event troops reinforce.

Event spawned troops don't reinforce unless explicit told to reinforce. Sounds like you are playing with a mod, some specific scenario or just plain old bias.

 

[Groogy]

That is not them reinforcing, that are people complaining the troops are not burned out.

It is definitely intended behavior

 

[Groogy]

They are not reinforcing, that is anecdotal data giving no validity based on the user bias.

 

[Groogy]

For first I didn't say reinforcing troops doesn't exist. Secondly the link you provided at first were anecdotal in the sense that the person reporting it felt it unjust that the enemy army kept persisting to exist after given time having nothing to do with the issue at hand. Event spawned troops that reinforce is an old thing that has existed in CK2 since the beginning that has been phased out over time, Saxons however does not have reinforcing event spawned troops, neither does the mongols.

The second link you provided is also anecdotal from impression as first part of thread says they stopped reinforcing at inheritance(even though that is not an actual thing) but last post says they kept reinforcing upon inheritance. If you have a specific case where event spawned troops reinforce when they shouldn't, then report that specific case.

Also if you are linking random threads to try and strengthen your point, please don¨t, so far they have spoken against what you want to convey. If you have a specific issue you want to detail and make us aware of, make a bug report with specifics and the QA team will be on it like vultures. They love making my day miserable.

 

[Groogy]

One alternative idea would be to literally 'shatter' the defeated army into several groups of differing sizes (which is also realistic given actual warfare). The winning army would then need to strategically decide which units to pursue. The defeated player is still on the back foot because she needs to regather the army, but that is balanced by the extra 'insurance' of some of the shattered army surviving instead of the whole shebang being wiped out, as it happens often currently.

Gameplay goes over realism here, Shattering as in the sense of splitting the army will completely kill your nation, both in EU4 and in CK2 and will not be anything we will even consider adding.

 

[Groogy]

Reinforcement, are they done in owned land only or will controlled be enough albeit with a smaller rate? The reinforcements will stop at what point, the all time max number of troops or the number that were raised, rest is in the holdings? Will they reinforce slower than if deraised? Personally would like the reinforcements to go up to max, so if a war breaks out I can raise my half filled castles and they will reinforce slowly, instead of waiting

It works the same as reinforcing retinues on where/when they will reinforce. They must be within supply.

 

[Groogy]

He was apparently unaware of the 2.4.4 bug where event troops would be flagged to always reinforce, which Captain Gars confirmed. I haven't had a chance to test what he says about retinues but my experience last week was that I had no problem marching my horde troops to the very edge of my diplomatic range and they reinforced the whole time.

I wasn't unaware, I didn't say that the troops have never reinforced, in fact I said this has been a problem before that we do not have anymore and asked you instead to point out any cases where they still are reinforcing. So no I was not wrong or unaware. I was perfectly right in how retinues/hordes reinforce and how event spawned troops reinforce., unless specifically told to be reinforcing the event spawned troops won't be reinforcing.

 

[Groogy]

It will always reinforce at 100% if it is within supply range.

 

[Groogy]

Now this is going to be a nice patch/expansion. I wanted stronger Mongols since Horse Lords.

Yeah we had forgotten that the AI cares about its age so rulers will be more docile when they reach the age of 40-60 and it was also applied on Horde cultures for some reason. Pfff Temujin care about a thing like getting old. There were also a bunch of other small tweaks.

 

[Groogy]

I think it is Italian Unit Pack.

You can check the wiki page for a nice rundown of all the graphical dlcs
http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Graphical_DLC#Unit_Packs