Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #145 - Military Improvements

[Amina144]

I swear each update has a dev diary about military improvements lmao

 

[SMD115]

Why can't both first aid and field hospital be effective? why first aid and field hospital can‘t both effect？

 

[lukesilveira]

Since I'm not sure which part exactly you're referring to with your question "For 1.9?":
- Blockades are introduced with 1.9
- We're looking to see if we can get the supply cost scaling in for 1.9, but can't guarantee it right now. I'm gonna say it's likely it makes it, but not 100%

On HQ vs. Barracks distance: I'm not sure there's crazy amounts of value for making it Barracks based, which is a lot more work because it requires general passes over the whole system and also should be a lot more computation heavy than checking the HQ. But who knows, I'm not a programmer, maybe one of our guys has a smart idea for it

I think the HQ as a hub concept works well. Perhaps maintain the supply lines from HQ to the front, but add a less compute-intensive abstraction from the distance of barracks to HQ. This could include time modifiers to simulate travel, logistics, and other factors. Maybe add a small but scalable cost in bureaucracy and/or transport resources as well?

This would address the problem the original poster highlighted while incentivizing players to position their HQ near their barracks. It would also make HQ placement more strategically significant, rather than just relocating them whenever convenient.

Additionally, moving an HQ should require a settlement period - perhaps x weeks based on distance traveled plus a fixed number y of weeks, with a gradually diminishing organization penalty.

Regardless, thanks for engaging with us and considering our suggestions and questions!

 

[bergasm]

Why don't you offer opt-in betas, where current systems can be tested, before working on a half-baked system like this >again< and gather feedback BEFORE announcing a DLC with such features and free patches that are again, only just half-baked?
I honestly can't believe that you are actually interested in feedback or "fixing" the game, if your management really does not give you the time to tune and test features with the community - the people that buy your Game.
Instead you'll push out DLC after DLC that'll get negative reviews. And on top of that, DLC's that aren't really needed yet if core-mechanics don't work.

Don't get me wrong, I love most of your games, like Darkest Hour, HoI4, EU4, CK and so on but EU4 is the best example of you releasing games that aren't ready to be released, that need years to fix and become turly good. Why is this your business practice?

 

[Witherman]

letsss gooooooo

 

[AlexNereča]

why first aid and field hospital can‘t both effect？

Field Hospitals are a direct upgrade to First Aid, unless your point is that it would benefit the game to have a +60% recovery rate modifier from the sum of both?

 

[lukesilveira]

Because it wouldn't feel good to just sit at the border as France, waiting for the attackers to come without having any agency to counter it.

While not ideal, this situation has happened repeatedly throughout history! it wasn't good and when it happened not rarely the country being invaded would either suffer it or drag the country giving access to the war (specially in the napoleonoc wars, just shy of the game timeperiod). That's why Wizzington's counter suggestion (allowing the invaded country to violate the territory of access-granting nations with minimal diplomatic consequences) is so important.

Besides that, the current proposition (ie, country being invaded having access to the territory of countri giving access to the invading force) becomes particularly unintuitive when the power difference between the access-granting country and the combatants is significant.

Consider this scenario: Paraguay and Bolivia are at war. Bolivia maintains friendly relations with Brazil, while Brazil dislikes but doesn't actively antagonize Paraguay. If Bolivia requests and receives military access through Brazil, under the current proposal, Paraguay would automatically gain access to Brazilian territory too - which isn't a particularly good representation of how this kind of thing happened. Brazil vastly outmatches both Bolivia and Paraguay militarily and would view any Paraguayan incursion as a direct violation of sovereignty, mobilizing its forces accordingly. (This more or less happened during

Instead, with the 'semi-free border violation', Paraguay could choose to enter Brazilian territory despite the risks, dragging Brazil into the conflict. Alternatively, Paraguay might decide to maintain peace with Brazil despite the strategic disadvantage. Sometimes it's better to accept a tactical setback than face an additional, much more powerful enemy.

Point being, going to the other country should be an active choice for the defendant, and said choice should have severe repercussions. Violate sovereignty with diminished diplomatic costs seems perfect for that, and would give further considerstion for any country willing to give mulitary access.

 

[kingsword]

The teleporting issue is terrible not after the war ends but when it's still ongoing, hopefully the exiled armies will be re-routable towards another front while journeying back. Otherwise it'll turn out to be worse.

Invasion through access while an inelegant solution, was direly needed. Hopefully the game will get a true warfare rework while it still receives updates so it won't be about "green number: everyone attack - red number: everyone defend" till Vic4.

 

[J0k3rzW!ld]

So... The long awaited naval rework remains awaited?

Is this a guarantee, like have the Devs said they'll implement a rework in the future? I see a lot of people talking about a naval rework but I also noticed that the Devs haven't responded to this comment and its the second comment on this thread. Yikes.

Would be nice to get a confirmation, military improvements doesn't outright mean naval improvements down the line.

 

[monksimus]

I think the HQ as a hub concept works well. Perhaps maintain the supply lines from HQ to the front, but add a less compute-intensive abstraction from the distance of barracks to HQ. This could include time modifiers to simulate travel, logistics, and other factors. Maybe add a small but scalable cost in bureaucracy and/or transport resources as well?

This would address the problem the original poster highlighted while incentivizing players to position their HQ near their barracks. It would also make HQ placement more strategically significant, rather than just relocating them whenever convenient.

Additionally, moving an HQ should require a settlement period - perhaps x weeks based on distance traveled plus a fixed number y of weeks, with a gradually diminishing organization penalty.

Regardless, thanks for engaging with us and considering our suggestions and questions!

I think they need to break apart the recruitment of soldiers from where they are stationed and supplied. Having a “recruiting office” building that employs the soldiers to add to a manpower pool would allow naval and land units to be created from anywhere. Then I would like to see barracks and naval bases placed to form the HQ and supply of units. Armies would draw their supply there and get increasing costs/penalties from the distance to their base location. This could also function as a naval range, so Britain could raise a large navy from recruitment centers at home, but in order to deploy them effectively in Asia would have to build a large naval base in Singapore. Discrete ships would help with that but it could be a first step. These bases would still need to employ pops, but fewer as they would be the logistics staff and consume military goods.

 

[Askorti]

Because it wouldn't feel good to just sit at the border as France, waiting for the attackers to come without having any agency to counter it.

In such a situation you should, you know, use the diplomacy system that the game touts as one of its pillars to also get the right to cross the Belgian Border.
Getting that permission automatically makes zero sense.
I think what should happen is that if you get invaded via neutral territory, you should at best get a bonus to convincing said neutral nation to give you the same permission too.

 

[SMD115]

Field Hospitals are a direct upgrade to First Aid, unless your point is that it would benefit the game to have a +60% recovery rate modifier from the sum of both?

But in the real world， cloth and alcohol are very important to medical treatment，so we should not abandon them。and we can balance modifier。

 

[Nowor_Never]

Regarding the military UI, could you please add a way for us to quickly select a unit fron certain state?

 

[kingsword]

I think they need to break apart the recruitment of soldiers from where they are stationed and supplied. Having a “recruiting office” building that employs the soldiers to add to a manpower pool would allow naval and land units to be created from anywhere. Then I would like to see barracks and naval bases placed to form the HQ and supply of units. Armies would draw their supply there and get increasing costs/penalties from the distance to their base location. This could also function as a naval range, so Britain could raise a large navy from recruitment centers at home, but in order to deploy them effectively in Asia would have to build a large naval base in Singapore. Discrete ships would help with that but it could be a first step. These bases would still need to employ pops, but fewer as they would be the logistics staff and consume military goods.

Moreover officer cadre should have a separate building from soldier barracks. As it is, you cannot field very true-to-the-era armies recruited from colonies or minorities because there aren't enough officers of accepted culture due to new discrimination rules. Whereas most nations just had their officers from their capitals sent to command units comprised of those they didn't seem fit to employ as officers. The issue just ramps up as new methods require more and more officers and so many conscripted cultures stay immune to conscription.

 

[Desseabar]

Thinking through the updates here, it feels like it's very optimized for resolving issues with Prussia/Germany.

If we're going through and making supply more impactful, can we look at this for mountainous or underdeveloped regions as well?
E.g., Russia steamrolls Circassia and Central Asia, or the US has zero issues fighting on its frontier. Right now, those wars are resolved immediately because 'bigger number wins' but in real life lasted decades.

Either that or adjusting the occupation logic to be much slower, so 1-4 battles don't automatically take over the entire state.

 

[DoktorSchulz]

I do think that giving both sides military access is not really immersive. Instead I suggest that the side, which doesn’t have military access and is being invaded through the neutral country, gets the opportunity to use the „ threaten sovereignty“ CB against the said neutral party granting the military access. This will overwrite pre-existing peace treaties and come with a massive infamy reduction, let’s say 50%-65%, maybe even more. In the ensuing diplo play the wargoal „revoke military access ( of party xy)“ will be added as primary demand and further wargoals can be added. If this is refused the neutral party is forced into the war with the additional wargoals. If this goes beyond the scope of this update, the part with the diploplay could be scrapped and the neutral part could be forced into the war directly. This would be still more immersive than the presented solution in my opinion.

 

[lukesilveira]

I do think that giving both sides military access is not really immersive. Instead I suggest that the side, which doesn’t have military access and is being invaded through the neutral country, gets the opportunity to use the „ threaten sovereignty“ CB against the said neutral party granting the military access. This will overwrite pre-existing peace treaties and come with a massive infamy reduction, let’s say 50%-65%, maybe even more. In the ensuing diplo play the wargoal „revoke military access ( of party xy)“ will be added as primary demand.

Devs already answered aomething similar

Something we could potentially do is allow violate sovereignty on any country granting access to the enemy and make the AI much less likely to intervene to defend them, since they're not really being neutral.

Post in thread 'Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #145 - Military Improvements' https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...5-military-improvements.1735642/post-30295348

 

[Water Fever]

Could we have additional statistics related to manpower?

1. Display the number of reservists(populations available for recruitment by barracks) that an army or barracks can access. For example, an army might have 60,000 manpower and 134,000 reservists. useful to know how much more men you have to throw at your enemies.
2. On the building tab of an army, each barracks should display its individual reservists count separately.
3. Display the replenishment rate and speed: how quickly reservists are recruited, trained, and deployed to the front lines. This could be represented as X weeks required to replace fallen units or a replenishment rate of Y manpower per week. A numerical statistic to help the player decide whether to attack or defend, use recruitment decrees on states, and ultimately determine if continuing the war is feasible.
   
   
   

 

[Water Fever]

I'm somewhat concerned about how front prioritization will be handled. Currently, the game allows players to independently assign a front to either attack or defend(in a very cumbersome way), providing strategic flexibility and player agency. However, with the proposed changes, this level of control may no longer be possible. While I don’t necessarily prefer the existing system, having this degree of strategic granularity would be beneficial.

To address this, I suggest introducing a new map mode. When selecting a combined front, players would enter a 'strategic' map mode where each front that was combined is displayed individually with options to advance or defend from it, allowing them to decide whether that specific front advances or defends while keeping the benefits.

 

[AlexNereča]

But in the real world， cloth and alcohol are very important to medical treatment，so we should not abandon them。and we can balance modifier。

i'm not sure if the best way to balance would be to reduce the total bonus, or to keep the mutual exclusivity as-is and include cloth/alcohol (representing ethanol?) in the Field Hospitals option and buff it to compensate for the increased cost - I don't suppose anyone who actually metagames the warfare system could come into the conversation and weigh in on the consequences of increasing the potential recovery rate modifier above +40%?