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

[lachek]

Wow, that's really promising! I'm very excited to see how it will actually feel gameplay wise.

Two little things, about navies :
First, naval battles right now are just a manpower contest in the ocean, much like land battles; will the basic unit of sea warfare switch to ships with this update?

With the switch to proper unit types, our intent is to implement actual cost in goods and time to both build and upgrade units, in addition to or possibly taking the place of the building construction cost / time. This would mean we could make building, upgrading, and repairing ships take much longer than battalions, instead of the workaround with low recruitment speed currently applied to Naval Bases.

In terms of changes to how battle mechanics work on land and at sea, that's sadly unlikely to happen in time for 1.5 release, but I really would love to add differentiation (different stats and behavior etc) for naval battles in the future.

Second, historically, many "naval invasions" were just marines landing from their ship to fight on land. Would it be possible to give the player the ability to either invade without any army attached, using the fleet (or ships) manpower, or if it's impossible, to make some specific specializations for small land formations to be especially effective as marines, and maybe be permanently attached to a fleet? For the latter case, I was thinking of a Mobilization Option that gets rid of the difficult landing modifier, gives a generous bonus to morale, consumes ships, and makes recruitment slower (like naval bases) and scaling with naval doctrine techs.

A mobilization option to make a formation a special Marine invasion force is a fantastic idea and should be quite easy to do! Thank you for that.

 

[lachek]

A question for clarification: since we now more or less directly recruit units into formations, around which the infrastructure is built accordingly, and since the goods are consumed at where the infrastructure is standing, what influence do we have on the location of the barracks? Furthermore, is the old limit of 100 barracks per province still standing?

You still choose the state you want the unit to be "built" in. Underneath the hood it's still the same "construct building" interaction, it's just initiated from the formation the unit will be going into.

Regarding the barrack building limit level, I think it still applies for the same reason it used to.

 

[lachek]

Please be so kind and remind me of that reason, which seems to have slipped my mind... is it balance, so that China doesn't become too powerful? Or do you hate Belgium and don't want them to have too many troops?

I honestly don't know the actual reason.

Yeah, it's a rather artificial limitation to make it so really populous countries can't recruit 100 million soldiers, particularly through conscription. It's one of those "this makes no sense in theory but makes the game feel more correct in practice" kind of mechanics.

But with the changes to conscription we're envisioning, maybe the 100-level max cap is less relevant. I'll give it some thought, thanks!

 

[lachek]

Does this mean that Transportation is even more localized than other goods within a market? The ability to stack transportation, electricity and services in particular in your core territories and have it affect your worldwide empire always felt extra weird. If I'm reading this right it should go a really long way to encouraging the colocation of industry and resources with population centers.

Yeah, in 1.5 those goods have no market price at all, they are ONLY produced and consumed locally. This comes with a bunch of rebalancing to ensure there's always both supply and demand for Services, usually supply for Transportation, and (eventually) limitations for Electricity use.

 

[lachek]

I'm extremely excited for these changes (seems like they'll solve most of my current gripes with the game), but I'm a little disappointed that (if I'm interpreting this correctly) the visual feedback of your occupation crawling over a state, a few provinces at a time, will be gone. I totally get why you'd want to model occupation on the state-level in the backend (e.g., it opens up the very exciting possibility of economically exploiting occupied states), but I feel like it feel a bit underwhelming to see an invasion move across the map only in these large chunks of territory.

So, I'd like to suggest that the occupation % could also be visually represented on the map as control of provinces (maybe with some provinces being "contested" instead of being controlled by either side). So, if a state was 68% occupied by you, you'd control ~68% of the provinces (or, perhaps, ~68% of "province value", however you'd estimate that).

Also, how do split states work with regards to occupation? Are they considered completely separate places with completely separate occupation values?

We're going to do exactly what you suggest, a visual representation of percentage occupied without moving the actual front. That was mentioned but easily missed in the diary, apologies.

Split states are just treated as distinct states, no special handling.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Once you order a new army, how do you build the new recruitment centres? Say you need another 40 barracks, do they just auto assign as you plop them anywhere, or do you need to build them first to fill up a surplus pool?

You create new barracks directly from a formation's panel. So if you want to add 40 barracks to your "2nd Dutch Dike Army" you go into the army's panel, choose the kind of units you want to add and queue 40 barracks in the state(s) you've selected. This will create empty combat units which are assigned to that formation which then fill over time as recruitment happens in the barracks.
The interaction of building the barracks is the same as before, but the path to access it is a different one.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

There is something that I still do not understand, are generic barracks that are used or differentiated Cavalry/Mobile Artillery/Line Infantry barracks

Before building the barracks, you choose which type the units should have, e.g. if they should be Lancers, Line Infantry or Mobile Artillery on the formation panel.
The building is the same for any of these. No separate building types.

Other than that they have thought about adding fortifications (I made a non-serving unit under generals with a lot of defense in a personal mod) because it could be interesting alongside some kind of naval bombardment and partisan/back-front uprising/military occupation mechanics. (Useful for staking the revolutions)

Fortifications is something we have on our list of things to take a look at, but no concrete plans if and when to do that yet.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Great Dev Diary here!
Just a question: With the way occupation now works, does this call for more state regions throughout the game?

We don't have plans to increase the number of state regions as of right now.
For that kind of decision there's a bunch of things to consider. An important one among them is performance for example.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Good, good, good!

Just one question, sorry if I missed it: are there plans for 3D representations of navies moving through the map like in Vic2/EU4?

It's a small detail but I think it makes the world feel more alive.

We will represent fleets on the 3D map, yes. For the time being, we will have to apply a thick layer of abstraction though, e.g. always showing exactly 3 ships that don't exactly match the composition of your fleet, not differentiating between different fleet orders in animation (we have another way planned to signal that) and so on. We're not exactly sure at this point what we can end up with, but it's definitely on our plate of things to look at.
Also it's not coming with the first release of the beta, but at a later stage.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Wohooo. Best news ever, just kidding, best news ever would be the implementation of the Cabinet but this is huge. Thanks.


Will there be some sort of repercussions if the physical location of an HQ is overrun.

In addition how will my 1st Dresden Fusiliers feel if their Homearea is under occupation by the evil Austrians while they are fighting the English in Africa?

If supply is short or cut in their barracks' location, it is going to affect their combat ability, yes. Same as before if I'm not mistaken.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

These look good.

Will the progress in guns /rifles technologies be taken into account (mobilisation options maybe)?

Changing to rifles and then to breech loaded was had a big impact on the Battlefield back then... Not so much in the current version.
Any changes planned?

Well you still have different unit types in Infantry for example that you unlock via tech, which arguably have a pretty significant impact.
Upgrading from Line to Skirmish Infantry with higher combat stats for example is still going to be a thing.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

So if at pne point I want to replace the 1st Bückeburg Lancers with tanks I can do this? No new barracks needed. I just dissolve the Lancers and reestablish them as 1st Tanks or I could give the command to upgrade the Lancers into Tanks?

If a unit can be upgraded into another one, then they will be able to keep the barracks, e.g. from Line to Skirmish Infantry.
In the case of Lancers to Tanks that would not work in the future because you won't be able to upgrade them. So you'd have to dissolve the Lancers and create a new barracks for the Tanks.
We will need to investigate how we can make sidewards changes of units better. Right now you go through the cavalry types in a line for example, but we would like all types of cavalry to have a more distinct role going forward so we'll need to investigate how to replace a type with another one that's not an upgrade, but a sidestep.
A similar thing then might be applied to the cavalry to tank battalion switch. But we'll need to design that properly.
So expect some weirdness for the initial beta release on that front as well, which we'll address going forward.

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

This is a good direction of development, it would be nice if new methods of fighting on the frontline were added, such as a careful, slow, planned offensive that would reduce, for example, casualties and slow down the army's rate of advance, possibly give a better chance of getting random battle tactics, or avoiding surprise or counterattack. Or a defensive combat order focused on counter-attacks, traps, where the army retreats faster, loses more territory on defeat but has a chance to inflict more losses on the enemy or to fight a more equal battle thanks to the cavalry's mobility. I think 5, 6, 7 available tactics would be optimal. I would also reduce war losses resulting from exhaustion at least during border fights, with good supplies, infrastructure or general, they should be reduced or with the development of technology. Currently, it looks like the losses from exhaustion of the army often significantly exceed the war losses of the side during the fight

We're actually looking at a system that would work similarly to this tactics system you describe, where different generals would apply different tactics based on your selection.
We're not 100% sure when we can actually get around to implementing it, but it should be coming sometime during the beta. When it's there we do encourage everybody to provide feedback on it though!

 

[Wizzington]

Well, currently I guess Skirmish is rifled/minié guns + early breech loaders (chassepots, dreyse, Martini Henry).

This is somewhat debatable as each gun development was a huge step (in both fire rate & range) from the previous one.
Something like this could do :

- Line infantry = 18th century/napoleonic infantry with muskets. -> current requirements
- Skirmish = rifle infantry (still fighting in lines, btw)... US civil war like; -> rifling
- ???? non existing tier = early breech loaders; -> bolt action/repeating
- "trench" = modern magazine fed + machine guns; -> automatic guns
- "modern" infantry = combined squad+motorized; - something later

IMO, it currently does not feel that rewarding to be ahead in terms of gun techs in the 1840-1880.

One of the persistent issues with balancing military tech advantages in a historical strategy game is that in real history, Austria didn't know ahead of time that they'd lose the Brothers' War if they didn't invest in the latest rifles while the Prussians did. A player of Victoria 3 however, very much knows this and can fully utilize that foreknowledge to a degree that their advantage can become insurmountable if it's balanced in a way that's 'too' representative of history.

 

[KaiserJohan]

Looks massive.
If I start a game with this open beta at launch, should I expect to be able to keep playing this saved game through the three beta updates and the final launch?
Of course I'm not asking for an absolute guarantee that it will work, and even less that it should work smoothly, but how likely is to be reasonably doable? How much effort will you put into making this save-compatible?

We try not to break saves throughout the beta releases but no hard guarantee. If it requires too much work then that time will be better spent on the new features instead.