Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #93 - Military Improvements in Open Beta

[lachek]

The new method of taking states looks like it's probably mechanically more reasonable than the old way, but it reminds me how much I wish there was a way to create split states in peace treaties. I don't know if that's even at the bottom of someone's design doc, but I really wish it was possible to split a partially-occupied state rather than either take the whole thing or white peace out with whatever the previous borders were.

I wouldn't be surprised if creating split states (aside from treaty ports) is something that would particularly cause trouble for the game engine, but I still kinda want it.

Splitting states is not technically hard, but it creates a bunch of weird edge cases so it's not something we like to do a lot right now. But speaking of "bottom of a design document", I have a Partition wargoal I want to implement on some rainy day.

 

[lachek]

With the switch to formations instead of industry for equipping and organizing units, will it now be possible to field a modern/semi-modern force on imports alone?

With mobilization options and different unit types giving you much more control of your military spending, this is more reasonable with this system, yes.

Maybe a recruitment of foreign officer option that allows you to equip units under that officer's command with tech equivalents from the source country?

We're considering some sort of "lend aid" option for Sphere of Influence, and the formation system gives us a nice layer to use here. We will see.

 

[lachek]

Excellent post! Can't wait for some of these changes.

Have you addressed or are planning to address that captured states still provide their full industry and resources to their original owners?

With state-based occupation this is something we can more easily address. Not promising anything here for 1.5 release though, but it's something we want to build on in the future.

 

[lachek]

You've sort of addressed this already, but I thought I'd ask about it in a slightly different way. I know it will not be for this update, but are there plans/thoughts for the future to make the generals more alive as actual characters with desires of their own? Political appointees of course would fall into this, but I'm just thinking that if our role is to manage the war, not to manage the troops, that the primary "job" that entails is managing the generals. I know it can be controversial for games to botch carrying out your orders but if we have the tools at our disposal, I think it makes for interesting and active gameplay, without being overwhelming and micro-managey, to have politically strong but inept generals messing up your wars if you don't find a way to get rid of them. I hate to always bring up the same examples, but the Union army in the US Civil War is a prime example of this in action. This would also be another way to further differentiate government types: obviously the Kaiser in Germany can more easily and freely pick whatever generals he wants--but he might have to worry more about revolutionary or coup-like consequences than Lincoln who is more concerned with losing political power and elections.

I can see some cheesing strategies that would have to be addressed with deliberately tanking your government to get a new one but I still believe there is a nice middle ground between micromanaging all of your armies all over the map and telling your general to attack or defend over an entire front (I know we are getting strategic objectives too already that mitigates some of that).

It's a good point and definitely on-theme for the game! Let's see what we can do here, now or in the future.

 

[lachek]

As a player, I have to say that I am a greedy person.
I am pleased with the modifications to the military system. However, I still hope to see the real air force in the game.

During World War I, the Air Force made the most rapid progress, and within a few years, these aircraft evolved from simple reconnaissance missions to powerful strategic forces.
Unfortunately, the current role of airplanes in games is not even as good as that of VIC2.

We're considering exactly how to implement an airforce. Right now they aren't exactly units, but a mobilization option. We'd like to see them act more like units, but the idea of 1000 guys in an air "battalion" is also weird - so is the idea of them taking casualties (at least to the same degree) as they're being fired on by cannons artillery. Feedback and ideas during Open Beta very much desired!

 

[lachek]

First of all, great DD! This is way more than I was expecting and are all great changes. The only thing I'm utterly confused about is occupation. What does it do exactly? When you have enough occupation then you take a province or maybe it determines how many provinces you get after a battle? Or does it affect war score?

Occupation builds up in a state as a result of battle, and when total occupation reaches 100% the country/front with the most occupation gains the state and the front moves. War score (through War Exhaustion) is affected even before that based on the occupation percentage you have reached, but you have to capture the whole state to make it count as a "captured wargoal" and bring the enemy below 0 War Support.

We intend on working more with this during the Open Beta, and in preparation for that has made War Exhaustion fully scriptable(/moddable) so we can more rapidly react to feedback.

 

[lachek]

Exciting changes! I feel like nitpicking for little moddability things but they seem to be mostly done, so I have only one question:

Will there be proper trenches getting built and connecting from one side of the front to the other in longer/larger late game wars? It's kind of a hope of mine to see the race to the sea happen live as trenches get laid down in Vicky 3 (I know, more complicated than it seems)

It's very complicated and very performance-heavy We're looking into building trenches along the front when suitable units are there, but it might not be along the whole front and they won't remain after the front moves.

 

[lachek]

I'm really and thoroughly impressed, this is exactly what I was hoping for.

Glad you like it!

Is there a reason why every commander simply must belong to an IG? Wouldn't it be also possible to have commanders without any party preference, because they don't like politics?

We like the idea of every character belonging to an IG, so they interface with the political system. "Belonging" in this case might mean they support the IG or the IG supports them. Technically we could have some commanders be more like "I just want to grill" I suppose but I'm not sure if it'd be an improvement.

And also, how hard would it be to make the IG affiliation dynamic? I'm thinking of a general commanding a very bloody battle, only for him to turn his back on the Armed Forces IG, go Catholic Church instead and becoming a pacifist. Just as an example of what I mean.

We can definitely do this with events! And events are also a good way to let the player know something like this happened.

Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, don't re-use the same ship pic for three consecutive ship types.

We will have different icons for every ship type, for sure!

Since we're already talking about ships, how does the new system support battles between several fleets? One problem currently is that only one battle can take place per node. That creates some exploit-y tactics when it especially comes to naval invasions. What if I send three 50 ship strong fleets to make naval invasions and the defender has 100 ships? Will only 50 ships engage, the other 100 wait and then turn back home if the first battle is lost? Or fight three consecutive battles? Or engange all at once?

We're currently revisiting this system so I will have to get back to you on that in a later dev diary.

And while we're talking ships and pathfinding, how about options regarding the Suez and Panamal Canals? They make for great shortcuts, but what if I want to block someone out of using the canals? Similar to how GB denied Russia's Baltic Fleet passage through the canal after they attacked some fishing boats. Didn't lead to war, but still had consequences on the path the entire fleet had to take.

Answered above to some extent. tl;dr probably no special canal access mechanics for 1.5 release, definitely on the roadmap for the future.

 

[lachek]

This was a pleasure of a DD to read. Very excited for the upcoming changes. The increased options for mobilization is something I didn't realize I needed until it was brought up. Would it continue to work as it does now with the raised troops increasing demand for military goods or a could a national stockpile be implemented to cushion some of the pain of having to deal with the increased demand?

Yes, it works like it does currently. Some sort of stockpile system is something we're looking into, hopefully for release sometime 2024 - we have a lot of ideas and see a good number of use cases for it, especially with local pricing.

It was also mentioned that you guys are looking to push the AI into building taller rather than churn out the number of buildings they currently do. Would a building cap per state be possible like in V2? With localized prices implemented it sounds like the modernized version of the throughput bonuses from resource extraction and factory chains. Having a build limit might force us to make more strategic decision about what to build where as well as improving performance.

Total building cap per state would be very hard to scale, unfortunately, since some countries only have a single state so it would artificially penalize them. However, working more with competitive advantage and other mechanics to naturally encourage specializing your states is something we're actively working on in the design team (when we're not otherwise occupied with military, right now).

 

[lachek]

maybe I have overlooked it.
But will it be possible to create army formations especially with conscript units in mind?
So I have a core army of 10K professional troops and in case of war I can activate 50K conscript troops letting this small intervention force swell up to become my main battlegroup

Conscripts are disabled currently, but this is something we'll be reintroducing in later Open Beta updates. Once we do, you can do exactly what you suggested.

 

[lachek]

There has been a significant move toward doing away with Provinces for warfare and replacing them with States, which totally make sense due to the issues of frontlines. There are also talks about tying army speed to local infrastructure.

But in that case, why do you want formations to have free positions? Why not simply tying them to States, and having them move from one to the other, until they arrive where they are needed? That's more or less how ALL the other Paradox games do it, and with good reason : making a graph-based system (the States/provinces and their neighbors) interact with free floating objects (Formations here) would generates an awful lot of painful edge cases.

Formations will always have an on-map location, but we don't want to target formations to specific geography - rather, their targets are game objects like fronts, HQs, sea nodes, or other formations. The reason not to let them target a province or state is because of the babysitting / micro that would enforce, and the complexity that would introduce for the AI. It's certainly possible to write decent AI for a system like that, but it's not trivial and adds a lot of opportunity for cheesing the AI. Or alternately, if we make the AI too good - i.e. the AI knows it can intercept you by splitting its formation in 3 at a moment's notice and cut off your path - we make it so you absolutely always have to be monitoring every formation at once. It's a problem many of our other games don't have, either because they're more strictly wargames and so that's where your attention should always be during war, and/or because they're much more local with countries being smaller and embroiled in smaller conflicts.

 

[KaiserJohan]

Great stuff you have cooking here!

Will there be 3D animations of land and naval formations moving from province to province and node to node before reaching their destination? Or will it just be the formation’s 2D icon moving across the map?

Yes, there will be both 2D icon and 3D models of soldiers and their equivalents moving along roads/sea nodes to their destinations

 

[Wizzington]

Yes, there will be both 2D icon and 3D models of soldiers and their equivalents moving along roads/sea nodes to their destinations

Naturally including armored trains!

 

[lachek]

Lots of good mechanics here! Visually though, state percentage occupation really seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Is it really that hard to have discontiguous front lines, or to fake it by just graphically occupying provinces in the state?

Graphical visualization of occupation will be coming during the beta, both with texture overlay and occupation flag models placed in provinces. I think I mentioned that in the diary, but grateful for the opportunity to clarify!

 

[lachek]

First of all thanks for the answer, but I think I'm even more confused now.

That's entirely how I expected the system to work, but what i *really* don't understand is how the position of the formation is tied to these elements? Is it just a graphics gizmo to see at a glace how far they are from the place you want them to be, with no "real" gameplay impact (which would be an entierly valid functionality in itself)? Or will this floating position it be used to calculate dynamically how fast the army is advancing?

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting *at all* to let either the AI or humans to target states directly, its' just that I don't get how this position is supposed to interact with the gameplay.

Ah, understood! My misunderstanding.

The position is a visual representation of the progress the formation has made towards its target, but we're working - as part of the full travel implementation - to also have the precise nature of the path the formation is currently on have an effect on the speed. For example, rail travel is much faster than traveling between two towns with no road connection between them.

However, their location (currently at least) has no effect beyond that - for example, you can't "meet" an enemy army on the road and do battle with them. This follows from the military access and front system we have, so probably not surprising anyone. As for seeing formations visualized as bordering or targeting specific states though, as opposed to "being everywhere" on a front at once, this is indeed something we're working towards on the level of Generals in a formation.

 

[lachek]

First off kudos to the team this is great!

How to will mobilization goods be accounted for with local prices? Will the consumption cost be accrued at barracks local state price, or the state they are actively assigned to ? Will transport be treated differently than other goods?

All consumption happens at the location of the units' supporting buildings, so where the Barracks/Naval Base/Conscription Center is located. Basically they buy the supplies locally and are considered to be transporting them to the formations they support.

Granted, this makes the rail travel mobilization option a little extra weird, especially with Transportation being a hyperlocal goods in 1.5. Take that into consideration when feedbacking on it after playing with it - if it feels too immersion-breaking we'll have to redesign or remove it.

 

[lachek]

I know this will probably be harder than it seems but couldn't the trenches be part of the devastation visual, that way it would remain in place after a battle but also move if and when the front moves? if the front moves a lot it would be cool to see the sheer destruction of the war. Plus it would naturally fade away after a while and not disappear after the war ends

I'll take it to the environment art team, but my understanding is that devastation is a different type of graphics entity than the frontline meshes, so they might not... mesh

 

[lachek]

It looks like some massive steps in the right direction.

One suggestion for the "front" animations. Up until the late 19th century it would be better to depict parked field armies waiting for battle and only fighting animations once a battle starts. Hopefully the trench warfare explosions all along the front won't be there until late game.

Looking good guys. I am so happy to say that.

Good feedback! We know we have to be a bit sparing with animations on the frontline for performance reasons anyway, and I think something like what you're suggesting is the plan from tech-art's side.

 

[lachek]

It feels that this is a good step in the right direction, however, I cannot help but feel that certain terrains or regions should have special modifiers or technology that need to be overcome for you to be effective. This potentially could allow for some gameplay differentiations, add flavor, and serve as support for unrecognized countries.
I am specifically talking about a few regions and was thinking about how Malaria does not affect countries with main cultures from Africa.
- The Amazon: Now that the war system takes into account environments that are being fought on, the war system should have severe malice for fighting in the Amazon due to increased deaths due to diseases.
- Africa: This historically kept out colonizers due to Malaria, which affected expeditions that attempted to conquer the region prior to Europeans discovering medicines and strategies to deal with it.
- Arabia or North Africa: It would be interesting if you could implement a system where camel/cavalry troops with high mobility or low supply consumption could fight, which would mitigate heavy attrition costs that should be attached to the desert. Especially, as the hit-and-run tactics of the Bedoiun are not reflected in the game and it is too easy for the Ottomans to conquer the region, which did not happen historically.

Finally, A similar argument could be made that a buff should be made to countries that can be colonized, that they should gain as a part of the war system some form of Guerilla warfare that trades the large space and porous borders for additional casualties against the colonizers.

Please bring this up as feedback during the beta! Travel times will of course be affected, but I also hope to have time to tweak e.g. battles according to terrain more, so it's more relevant than it is currently. However, the priority we put on things will be highly influenced by the response we get during the beta, so don't be afraid to let your voice be heard!

 

[lachek]

Question, will there be potential political loyalty for your military formations? One thing I liked about Vic2 is that your military units actually had ideology, so in some cases you couldn't simply suppress a movement with raw military force cause your own soldiers are part of that movement.

I've actually been thinking of exposing this more on the formation level, since they will be a bit more prominent than individual commanders now. Quantifying it as a loyalty score is a cool idea.