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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #145 - Military Improvements

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Hello Victorians,

I’m Lino, Game Design Lead on Victoria 3 and I welcome you all to another Dev Diary and wish you a happy Thursday!
Today we’re looking at some Military changes that are arriving with the free 1.9 Update, coming to you on June 17, the same day our Mechanics Pack “Charters of Commerce” releases.

Before we begin: As always, any values, texts, designs, graphics etc. are work in progress and are subject to change!

So, obviously warfare has some issues, which we want to address. To repeat what we have stated before: The ambition for 1.9 is not to majorly expand on warfare, but rather to fix the most egregious persistent issues.
The main areas we had identified before embarking on this quest to improve warfare were:
  1. Too many front splits, which results in having to micro too much
  2. Shuffling of units along a front (usually when two fronts merge), leading to them not being defended while the units were travelling
  3. Formations teleporting home when they don’t have a valid route to get there

There are of course other issues, e.g. our user experience and interface could certainly be improved in some areas, supply should matter more etc., but these three are the cause of most of the warfare feedback posts we see on our forums, discord and other social platforms.
We have read through all your posts and decided on addressing the three points above (and more), based on your extensive feedback. First up is addressing frontlines and their splitting.

Frontline generation​

Faced with the problem of having to micro after front-splitting, we sat down to talk about some requirements and possible options.
We knew that it’s impossible to fully avoid front-splitting from happening in general. But that’s okay, that was never our goal. We cared about addressing the resulting issues.
One use-case we really wanted to improve was India. Well, fronts in India. Once the princely states decide they’ve had enough and declare war, we get an insane amount of frontlines generated all across the subcontinent.
This is due to the algorithm of how frontlines are created. It looks at continuous pieces of land that are connected to another continuous piece of land that is owned by your enemy and then spawns a frontline between the two basically.
Well, in the case of India, this will often lead to having 10-15 fronts because the princely states aren’t always located next to each other.

But what if we had a different algorithm? One that resulted in fewer fronts.
Let me introduce our patented “Why not jump?” front generation algorithm:
Instead of requiring fronts to be along a continuous piece of land, we are now telling it to jump for some distance if it would reach another front which it can merge with.
In the current version we have internally, we are looking at covering one state region of a gap. We will be experimenting with a version that instead looks at a specified distance in pixels to cover some of the weirder edge-cases where a state is either very small or very large.

We are quite happy with the results when you apply it to actual use-cases, for example the case of the Indian revolt that I mentioned earlier.

No longer will we have to endure 13 fronts
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Now it’s just two instead
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This is the biggest visible improvement we have done for this Warfare improvement cycle, but we have a lot more to cover. Next up is the shuffling of army positions.

Front camps​

So, we’ve probably all seen armies march to the other end of a front they were assigned to, seemingly just because they felt like it.
Well, in reality this is because armies are assigned to front camps, specific positions along a front to spread them out.
When two fronts merged or a front split, we would re-evaluate the front camps and the armies in them were assigned a new valid front camp. That could mean their new camp was on the other end of the front, meaning they’d pack up their things and start marching.
So we have taken a look at this algorithm as well and made some seemingly small changes which should result in a much smoother gameplay experience though.
We now make it so that as long as an army is positioned in a front camp, which is still valid after a front change, they stay there. The armies were spread out evenly before, so the same distribution should make sense after a split/merge too. This can still lead to armies starting to move, e.g. because it was their front camp that was invalidated (because it’s no longer part of the front for example), but that is a logical reason to move.
It’s hard to showcase this behaviour change in images, but internal test results have been positive about this and we hope you’ll feel the same. There’s much less unintentional shuffling of armies along a front which was the main point of this change.

Next up is another big frustration point.

Teleporting Armies​

“Beam me up Scotty!” General Wolseley exclaimed when he found himself unable to attach to a front in India. And sure enough, two minutes later he was drinking tea with the Queen in Buckingham Palace.
At least that is how it sometimes worked out in our game. Until now!

The issue of teleporting armies comes to be when there’s no valid front available for a formation to go to. This can happen for example when a formation is isolated by neutral territory or the front they were moving towards being pushed into unavailable space.
We’ve always had some fallbacks for missing spline connections for example, which allowed armies to simply march through terrain though there wasn’t really a path defined.
And teleportation was our fallback solution for the worse cases.
But now we are refining this particular one into more of an actual feature, which should make it possible for armies to not teleport home again. What we’re doing is to take a lesson from our other titles and implement an exiled army status.
Once an army finds itself in a situation where they would have previously beamed home, now they’ll enter exiled status and have to walk (or ship) home.

Exiled armies have a few special rules:
  • They can march through neutral and enemy territory
  • They are not able to attach themselves to a front, they need to regroup in a friendly HQ first. They will automatically target the nearest HQ (ignoring landlocked HQs unless it’s their home HQ) and go there.
  • They suffer from attrition as if they were present at a front (more attrition in enemy territory than in neutral)
  • Their organization value will drift towards 0 over time

Once an exiled army reaches their target HQ, they lose the exiled status and act like a regular formation again.

As this feature is still in development, I can’t show you too much yet, but here’s a teaser for the icon which will be used across all interface screens to visualize the exiled state
DD145_03.png

That’s the big three out of the way, but I have more to show today.
Since I just mentioned the army organization value, I think this would be a good time to briefly mention some changes on that front (ha!) before coming back to juicier additions.

Organization, Supply and Morale​

Right now, organization is a value whose limit is determined by the commanders in the formation and used by your units. If there are sufficient commanders, it always is at the maximum value and if there suddenly isn’t (because an unfortunate accident happened), well then the organization will drop immediately to the new target value, leaving the army shattered.

What we’re doing now instead is making organization a drifting value, meaning that when an important commander dies, the target is set to say 40 but it will take a while to go down from 100. Enough time for you to hire or promote a new general in their place.

Organization drifting from 100 towards 0 at a rate of 5 per day because the army is exiled (and has too many special units)
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Negative effects from low organization also scale a bit differently now. When you have full organization, you suffer no consequences of course. If you go down to 0 you’ll suffer 100% of the penalties. Previously this was set to 25, but it’s working better with 0 and the drifting value.
Another small change we’re doing alongside this is that we’re adding a base command limit of 10. That means that small formations (max 10 units) do not require a commander to have full organization anymore.

Lean, mean killer machine
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With regards to supply, we are making some small, but impactful changes too.
Previously supply impacted morale, instead it now affects it via organization. It does so by multiplying the organization target. So if the organization target of a formation is currently 100, but the formation’s supply is only at 50%, the organization target will be set to 50 instead.
This gives supply a lot more teeth than the previously rather harmless effects.


Here we can see the impact of a small supply penalty
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Alright, so much for our little tour around these values.
Let’s get back to some meaty stuff again that I’m sure will excite many people.

Military Access​

Military Access has been on our wishlist for a long time. It has proven tricky in our military system to define what exactly it actually means and how we can make it work in a way that makes sense for us.
I don’t think I need to explain that much why having a military access system in the game is a good idea, but let’s just say it should allow a lot more countries to conduct war without a naval invasion.
The way this is set up is via a diplomatic pact that two countries establish. It’s one-sided, so for example Belgium could grant military access to Prussia without being granted the same. Additionally, having an alliance with another country will inherently also provide military access.
Note that the example of Prussia marching through Belgium is incidental and not a reference to any particular historical conflict which involved German soldiers marching through Belgium.

Small relevant spoiler for our next Dev Diary :eek:
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What I should explain though is how Prussia can actually make use of the military access rights they just secured.
Let’s imagine we play as Prussia and find ourselves at war with France (silly example I know). Now we’d like to open a second front with them using a route through neutral Belgium’s territory into Champage to get to Paris.
Well, with the press of a few buttons, we’re able to do so.

Incorrectly found in the Navy tab currently. This will be adjusted before release.
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Once you press the plan invasion button, you’ll see an interface you may know from Naval Invasions already, which shows all potential invasion targets, via the sea, but also via land.

Note the extra options for states Champagne and Lorraine which are accessible through the military access to Belgium.
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When we select Champagne, we see the panel where you select your armies. Once selected, they’ll prepare for a while.

While the 2. Armee defends, the 1. Armee shall advance through Belgium!
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These invasions via land will work almost like naval invasions, minus the boats. While preparations are ongoing, a new front is already spawned at the point of invasion so that the defender also has the time to react and send forces to defend. Once prepared, the Prussian attackers will be able to start advancing the new front.

Again, the invasion icon will be fixed before release
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France on the other hand will only be able to defend this front and cannot push into Belgium. The conditions to see this front disappear are the same as for naval invasions, so after 3 failed attempts, the front disappears and the attackers return to their HQ.

But what if France wants to fight back and take the fight into Prussia? Well, they can also open a second front via Belgium. When any country uses their military access via a neutral country to invade another country, their enemies will also gain military access to the neutral country.
So keep that in mind when you go around securing these rights.

Next up, some interface improvements we’re doing.

UI Improvements​

We have done a number of changes to the UI surrounding military and warfare which I’d like to present to you in this section.

First up, we now use the more compact Mobilization window layout for formations by default. Previously the long list was very ineffective for how much space it was using and required a lot of scrolling.

Lots of small buttons, making better use of the space
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We have updated the formation tooltip. It now shows which units are in said formation. Additionally we now expose Offense and Defense stats of units in fitting places.

Updated formation tooltip, including its units and offense/defense value in them
DD145_13.png


Default unit selection
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Also, the cost of war needed to be highlighted a bit more as it’s a pretty important number.
So in the Military tab, you’ll find a summary of your Military expenses now.

“4.56K for Iron bars?! Who approved this?”
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Another change we’re doing is to stack all allied/enemy formation markers that are on the same front. This drastically reduces the amount of clutter you see on screen when you’re at war. Your own formations are not affected by this. Hovering over the stack allows you to still see the individual groups that are summed up in it.

Before: Chaos!
DD145_16.png


After: So fresh, so clean
DD145_17.png


Showing what’s in a stack
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Alright, I have one last feature outlook I want to mention today.
This feature is still very actively in development, but we want to let you know that we are currently working on implementing the possibility to edit mobilization options for your formations in bulk.
This will work by multi selecting any formations you want this to apply to and then have a central editing process which will apply the mobilization options to all selected formations.

Here’s a little outlook (all very much WIP), you can see 3 armies selected, the blue and yellow lines indicating that at least one army has selected the option
DD145_19.png

Closing thoughts​

We are very happy with this set of improvements which ended up a bit bigger than originally expected and we look forward to hearing your feedback once you get your hands on it.
I can’t stress enough that this is not marking the end of military improvements. We will continue addressing issues that aren’t up to par in free updates as we have always done.
We also would like to come back to the naval improvements we have previously teased, but these changes are much larger in scope so we can’t tell you exactly when they are coming at this point.

Also, before I leave you, here's an outlook of further Dev Diaries up until release of the 1.9 Update and Charters of Commerce, which releases June 17th:
  • May 1st: Diplomatic Treaties
  • May 15th: Company Charters
  • May 29th: Prestige Goods
  • June 5th: Other changes
  • June 12th: Changelog

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We will be back with Alex who will walk you through the very exciting Diplomatic Treaties feature in the next Dev Diary on the 1st of May.
Have a good day and see you in the comment section!
 
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andseanfor said:
Still no proper supply rework? Yes, now supply shortages are slightly more punishing, but the problem was that France could send a 500,000 man doomstack to Ubangi-Shari and still be at full supply somehow.

Also, why not make supply affect both morale and organization? I honestly think supply shortages should be as brutal as possible considering how hard it is to shoot a gun without ammunition or when you're a skeleton who starved to death.
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I’d like to boost this question, it’s one of the last remaining critical issues I have with the military in this game. There needs to be more done to stop this. If a country did this maneuver, most of them would die, and the government would be held responsible.
 
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Thanks for the dev diary.

One of the ways I found out when my generals died was because I'd get a notification on top of my screen sayin that an army was low on organization. Now that the organization will change over time, have you thought about reworking that icon? Maybe it should trigger when the organization target is below 50% instead of the actual organization value?
 
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realCuervo said:
I assumed there would be two trade DDs. So I can now suppose that strategic trade will be like the old trade system that doesn't need a seperate DD for its own?
Click to expand...
If by strategic trade you're referring to trading goods between two countries directly, we will talk about that.
The trade system itself will not have another dedicated Dev Diary. Anything we still want to communicate to the public will be done in the other Dev Diaries where relevant.
 
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Would an army without a commander be able to fight? I don't suppose they can attack since a commander needs to be ordered to attack to generate advancement. But how about defending?

Overall I find it counterintuitive how commanders work. For army, each commander is assigned a state and can only attack from that state. For navy, each commander splits the fleet into their share and can't lend others' ships for a naval battle.

Would the new front line generation system mean that when naval invading Sinai, 1 front is generated instead of 2?
 
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WombatOverlord said:
How is supply of armies determined? Is it just the prices in the barrack's provinces or is there a component of supply reaching the front. Mostly asking because I believe blockades were previously mentioned and wondering if they may effect an army that is deployed overseas.
Click to expand...
Blockades will absolutely be able to affect supply lines. We are also looking into increasing the overall supply use of armies deployed overseas (based on sea node distance) to make it harder to logistically support huge deployments far away.
 
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realCuervo said:
I assumed there would be two trade DDs. So I can now suppose that strategic trade will be like the old trade system that doesn't need a seperate DD for its own?
Click to expand...
This part will be covered in the next dev diary about diplomatic treaties.
 
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PDX_H4n1baL said:
The trade system itself will not have another dedicated Dev Diary. Anything we still want to communicate to the public will be done in the other Dev Diaries where relevant.
Click to expand...
I know this isn't about the military system specifically, but since you've said trade won't have another DD I have another trade question: has comparative advantage been touched on in any way? One of the biggest issues with the trade system was that there just wasn't enough comparative advantage from geographic throughput bonuses or other features. Even if the trade system itself has been improved, it's not as potent if there isn't enough actual comparative advantage that pushes nations to build export economies
 
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spencerRead said:
In the example of Germany invading France through Belgium, if Germany wished to invade through French low countries, would they get an option between naval or land invasion?
Also these changes look really cool.
Click to expand...
Yes, they get the option to navally invade or through Belgium.
If you send a fleet along the army you selected, it will be a naval invasion. If you don't, they'll use the land route.
 
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Maybe stupid question, but what's exactly the point of going through Belgium in this game for Prussia/Germany?

The historical reason for the Schlieffen Plan was to spearhead to Paris and circumvent the defenses in Lorraine, then circle back and hit the fortified French positions along the front from the rear, to completely encircle the defenders there and force their surrender. Hammer and anvil.

But if the invasion feature works anything like naval invasions, the entirety of upper France is just part of the France HQ. All present armies/free generals will simply defend automatically against any attempt to "land" into France HQ from any direction. Let alone that the game has no forts or fortifications that need to be circumvented, nor does the game support encirclements to take out entire armies.

To me it seems that this feature tries to give the player historical options, while the game itself doesn't support the historical reality of warfare. Please, tell me, what am I missing here?
 
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If I understood correctly Belgium and Germany are allies, that means that Germany gets military access through Belgium in a war with France (where Belgium is not a participant). In this case why would France get military access through Belgium to attack Germany?
 
Katakras said:
If I understood correctly Belgium and Germany are allies, that means that Germany gets military access through Belgium in a war with France (where Belgium is not a participant). In this case why would France get military access through Belgium to attack Germany?
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I guess because the front will be there? As otherwise if they pushed you back at the start your armies would instantly become exiled and have to march back to your HQ which would be frustrating.
 
Lots of really interesting changes! It seems like these resolve a lot of issues which is great.

A few questions:
  • It's great that home bases are more static, but I'd still worry about when they move, and joining the home base. E.g., if the US fights Canada, and the home base is on the Pacific, do we still end up with troops from the East coast hiking all the way over there before joining the fight? Or do they just march to the nearest border?
  • When the frontlines move and the home base is no longer valid, will the new home base be the closest possible one? Taking US vs Mexico, when the frontline moves we don't want the home base to go from Texas to Baja California to Veracruz.
  • For an invasion via eg Belgium, would that be a 1-state wide front, or would the front be along the entire Belgian border?
  • I think the "no generals for 10 unit armies" is great especially for AI, but does this incentivize hundreds of 10-unit armies instead of one bigger army?
 
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Nice to see that improvements are being made to the game: I think Victoria is excellent. My only feeling of discomfort is with this whole ‘front’ notion: it is fine from probably the RJW, but armies operated in a Napoleonic manner during the c19th; ‘fronts’ just don’t feel right for that period.
 
I got to say it's simply not enough. Victoria 3's warfare just really needs a step back in its design and rethinking the whole thing, instead of constant bandaid solutions.

A while back I talked about just using Strategic Regions as the main tool for managing armies. Talking about how that would massively cut down on cheese, micromanagement and provide a much more solid foundation, to replace the frontline system. Maybe we could still use the frontlines, see them move, and occupy states the same way, but drawing armies from the pool from a Strategic Region HQ. It would mean we wouldn't suddenly have a problem, where a front splits and there's no army to defend it - an army in HQ defends all the local fronts. It would mean invasions wouldn't feel detached from the rest of the war, as sending armies to HQ would be totally normal.

The fact we are still getting just more and more tweaks to a frontline based system, which just doesn't work... it's disappointing. It's like there's not even an effort into making the warfare system work well, and just a big insistence on this system being actually great, and next time for real, next patch it will be amazing, just one more patch bro.

I am tired of seeing constant Development time being dedicated into perfecting a flawed system, instead of just changing it into something better.

EDIT: Just few days ago I watched a Vic3 video, and just look at this war. It's completely absurd, and feels... well it would feel terrible and made the player ragequit, if not for the fact he was the one winning. It's because the frontline system has armies chasing it - something that is not addressed at all in this patch. Maybe in a few months we will have another bandaid patch saying "army can't travel more than 150% of the predicted time towards its frontline, and will teleport there after trying for too long". Or maybe we will have some sensible view and a final decision, that no, it's not working, let's actually try something different.
 
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Silens said:
Maybe stupid question, but what's exactly the point of going through Belgium in this game for Prussia/Germany?

The historical reason for the Schlieffen Plan was to spearhead to Paris and circumvent the defenses in Lorraine, then circle back and hit the fortified French positions along the front from the rear, to completely encircle the defenders there and force their surrender. Hammer and anvil.

But if the invasion feature works anything like naval invasions, the entirety of upper France is just part of the France HQ. All present armies/free generals will simply defend automatically against any attempt to "land" into France HQ from any direction. Let alone that the game has no forts or fortifications that need to be circumvented, nor does the game support encirclements to take out entire armies.

To me it seems that this feature tries to give the player historical options, while the game itself doesn't support the historical reality of warfare. Please, tell me, what am I missing here?
Click to expand...
Yeah, from the defender's perspective: you say that France gets some time to prepare, but does that mean France has to divert troops to defend that frontline? I'm assuming we'll get more clarification on the naval rework how that defense might work.

Separately: can we plan an invasion before the war for any surprise attack, or does the planning only begin on the war's start?
 
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SteppeStepper said:
>They can march through neutral and enemy territory

Why do they gain the ability to march through enemy territory when they got to the point that they have to become exiled by the action of the enemy force? What should happen is that they should be erased from existence in that instance(flavor could be either killed or turned into PoW) like in HoI4 encirclement, just getting some extra attrition while marching through a territory of a state that is actively trying to kill you seems silly.
Click to expand...

I have to agree. Armies that have to retreat thorugh enemy land should be wiped. Not their structure, but their manpower and equipment. Loss of equipment can be simulated with very high modifiers for army goods consumption once the army starts to reorganize.

Armies that have to retreat through neutral land keep the bodies but also lose their equipment and have to rearm after reaching the next HQ. This would at least ensure that there a large economic toll attached if things go wrong.
 
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Would you concider using a Beta for this? It is one of the fixes that might be hard to get all the edge cases out of. And it is quite a critical fix if it does work as intended.
 
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It is time to add the same AI feature of armies from CK3 that you just released on the new update into VIC3. Let the AI handle the military when you want it, then you wouldn’t have to care about splitting lines or whatever. Give the player that option, cause now on CK3 most of my wars are handled by AI and then I can manage other stuff, at least for me that’s funnier.
 
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