Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #77 - Military Improvements

[Al-Khalidi]

Just teleporting in general, really. There should be some logical connection between fronts, and possibly an on-map indicator of just where the army is while moving.

Maybe, but teleporting invading army is especially bad asits very difficult to mitigate and can make some wars almost unwinnable (western country invading china for example)

 

[andrew.rosa]

The troops under the command of the general are also taken into account. If one general has more modern troops as their base PM then that general and thus those units will also have a higher chance of being selected for the battle.

Something isn't not entirely clear: does this feature takes into account differences of specialization PM?

Given how HQs and battalion assignment works, we don't have much control which general gets what specialization. That matters for machine guns (which is more defensive) vs the other, more offensive PMs. If this new troop selection understands troop statistics (beyond "this is more advanced"), I see how mixing specializations under a single general can actually become useful ("pick machine gun for defense, infiltrator for offense").

 

[GnoSIS]

Nice on paper, but we need to see more being done.

Also armies/generals need some map staying power. You can't just change a front or objective and have them travel all the way say back to England from Chnina only to redeploy in a nearby front in China again. If you wont implement land/sea detailed movement, at least implement a high level abstract/logistical sense of a location for general and its army. Let the player grab that map tooltip/icon and issue or change orders.

 

[Svenska Super]

Nice on paper, but we need to see more being done.

Also armies/generals need some map staying power. You can't just change a front or objective and have them travel all the way say back to England from Chnina only to redeploy in a nearby front in China again. If you wont implement land/sea detailed movement, at least implement a high level abstract/logistical sense of a location for general and its army. Let the player grab that map tooltip/icon and issue or change orders.

i agree, and also if it's not there already defense and offensive penalties when having switched type of army like from peasant to professional military (if this already not exists). For me it starts really to get interesting if stockpiling is introduced.
Having a stalemate by endlessly flowing in troops should be no problem, i see as a challenge to give like with hoi4 troops a veterancy rating.
This way you pay a price if your foe has prepared by fire drills, bayonet drills and even deploys crack troops towards you. What is brilliant indeed is the logistics effect,
as when done properly it should limit a player to e.g. conduct a large front artillery operation as it consumes a lot of munition which is heavy to transport (this is not so unknown anymore knowadays ).

What i also find hard to fathom is that everything is changed to a certain primary troop type. I really think a further porting of dumbed down features from HOI4 are warranted.

For large countries a mixture out of peasantry, militia and soldiers and the odd elite units should be a goal to aim for in your roadmap. Also changing the gui and instead of these massive blocks pro battallion i would prefer a slick HOI4 army list with it's bataillons and similar icons like veterancy and indicators of equipment sufficiency and or manpower sufficiency, incl. entrenchment status.

 

[Soranya]

What about Front splitting and too many/to few fronts (and in context teh "one battle per front" rule?

 

[BrotherJonathan]

I basically like the new war system they introduced with Vic III, but I will admit that sometimes it feels so obfuscated and random that it's almost like battles are being decided by dice roll and all you can do is send in your guys and hope for the best.
These changes should make things clearer and give players more agency without adding micro.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

I basically like the new war system they introduced with Vic III, but I will admit that sometimes it feels so obfuscated and random that it's almost like battles are being decided by dice roll and all you can do is send in your guys and hope for the best.
These changes should make things clearer and give players more agency without adding micro.

To be fair, all battles in all Paradox games are resolved by dice roll. The trick is to make sure the dice are biased towards you

 

[Fantasy295]

Please solve: the problem that all naval invasions are 50 days; the problem that even the navies of the world's most backward countries can land on enemy territory cross half the globe; the problem that each node can only have one naval battle at the same time; the problem that each province can only have one landing battle at the same time.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

To be fair, all battles in all Paradox games are resolved by dice roll. The trick is to make sure the dice are biased towards you

True, but I kind of meant the term more metaphorically in this case Like sometimes it feels like the player has so little knowledge or control that the outcome might as well be totally random.

 

[Dr. Helios]

I appreciate that while the absolute commitment to removing all tactics (thinking of military from a perspective of strategy > operations > tactics) from the players remains, there has been effort to have our control over operations be more realistic. Most governmental bodies don't have direct control over the tactics, but the selection of generals who *do* have that control is paramount. I'm glad that wise operations (getting correct generals and correct troops to correct places) have greater, more reliable, impact on how the battle turns out, and that we now have the key operations-level control over front.

 

[DragonAtma]

Improvements are mostly good, but I still have some requests.

(1) Other people said this before, but if a border is long enough (e.g. the US civil war) we really should have multiple fronts.
(2) I play Every State Independent, so "target a state" doesn't work too well, as my enemies usually have exactly one state. "Target a specific spot" (or suggestions like "split enemy in two") would work better.
(3) If an AI's dumb enough to ally with the minor culture that's trying to secede from me, adding a conquest on the interloper should be an option. After all, if I outnumber both of them thirty to one, I would have no problem conquering both of them at once. Alternately, adjust the AI so they don't make such suicidal supports!
(4) The AI doesn't always have generals available to command their troops; it would nice to tell my weaker generals that they should only attack leaderless soldiers, as they're normally just there to give my better generals more soldiers.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Also, can we, for the love of all that is holy (and even unholy), let leaderless fleet and armies keep their current operation even if at a penalty? Or at least allow us to fire every general or admiral above 60+ years old without the IGs getting pissed at me?
Naval invasions although infinite distances, take forever and then have a general or admiral die while doing the operation to have everything reset costs a freaking ton of money…

 

[FleetingRain]

Another change we did was to the amount of information given to the player when there is an ongoing battle. Now in the Battle Tab, next to the Start of Battle number of soldiers, there is now an information icon that allows you to see how the size of the battle is being determined.

View attachment 952062
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Man, I really dislike this tooltip. First of all, the information icon is off-center. It also looks really generic so I hope it's just a placeholder.

But the tooltip itself is worse because it's kinda confusing. It starts with 140 Battalions (ok), then it's decreased by 18 (because ???), then a 0.6 and 50 reduce it by 103 (???), and finally another modifier increases it by 11 (???). I have no idea of how those modifiers impacted it. It irks me even more because, if I only saw the modifiers and not their results, I'd be positively sure that only combat width and infrastructure matter because would you look at that, 0.6 * 50 = 30, the number of battalions in battle!

So yeah, I think it needs fixing.

Total battalions on front: +140.00
X% density due to only Y battalions for a Z-wide front: -18.00 (seriously what a weird modifier, and why is this before and not after the hard cap?)
Limited by 0.6 Combat Width: -A.00
Limited by 50 Infrastructure: -B.00
Numeric advantage of C% on front: +11.00

At least with this I can understand what goes where and how is everything interacting.

 

[Leoreth]

Is the strategic objective arrow placeholder art or the intended final design? Its colour is too flat and the light blue looks out of place, same for the overlaid white arrows. It doesn't really match the overall aesthetic and look and feel of the game.

I know it's a beta, and usually I wouldn't ask, but we've had cases before release where screenshots were shared and everyone assumed it would be redone during further development but then it ended up being declared the intentional appearance all along.

 

[dgcross]

Just teleporting in general, really. There should be some logical connection between fronts, and possibly an on-map indicator of just where the army is while moving.

or maybe, selecting a front you want to strengthen, a list of possible reinforcements with troop number and "time to the front" displayed

 

[dgcross]

Please solve: the problem that all naval invasions are 50 days; the problem that even the navies of the world's most backward countries can land on enemy territory cross half the globe; the problem that each node can only have one naval battle at the same time; the problem that each province can only have one landing battle at the same time.

To mitigate the problem of teleporting generals I usually naval invade with more than one fleet. If you do that, there will be more than a battle.
What I can't understand is how the defender numbers are decided, and how can I estimate them when I'm planning a naval invasion

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Another thing. Can we please, pretty please with maple syrup on top, allow naval invasion plans to be done during the escalation phase of the diplomatic play? Why can’t my generals have the operation planned and figured beforehand? Why do I have to wait for DoW to start planning it?

 

[styroler]

A nice first step towards fixing war indeed. Please adress NAVAL INVASIONS, cuz rn it's a total mess, and can be abused so much in MP!!

The moment I tried using naval invasions I just found the mechanics so stupid. As soon as you have some obsolete Napoleonic era Navy you can Naval Invade anywhere across the world in the same amount of time it would take you to cross the English Channel, but at the same time if you dont have enough ships your troops get anhialated even if they're up against a unrecognized nation without a single ship. Worst of all, you cant even plan them until the war begins meaning your stuck waiting to pause the moment the war starts and finally set up your Naval Invasions. Naval invasion capabilities should scale with production methods, so a country with a modern navy should have alot easier (and require alot fewer ships) carrying out a naval invasion with battleships than they should with Man o Wars, they should have some sort of concept of naval range, having unopposed naval supremacy should mean something outside of just the naval battle (if I can sink their entire navy in a day my troops can land wherever they want, while if they have a navy close to the size of mine then yeah my navy is gonna have a bad day even if I can technically win that battle), and most importantly needing to wait for a war to start is ridiculous, if you can keep attack orders from executing you can keep naval invasions from executing too (stop giving us a dozen tasks to do the moment the war starts in PDX games like hoi4 does with naval mines Paradox!!!).

 

[Sebastián Machado]

These improvements look great, the war part is a lot of fun.

 

[Traslogan]

Unfortunately it's just a band-aid to a flesh wound. I do have to wonder what Paradox had as evidence that this system was to any serious majority of their fan's liking when they decided to go with it.

Warfare didn't work with frontlines like this until just before WW1, for the majority of the game's time period this doesn't make sense as it was still the age of individual armies sallying forth to one another and single battles deciding the de-facto control of large areas.