Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #145 - Military Improvements

[$ilent_$trider]

That's great and all but are we finally making sure that if a state is occupied by the enemy, the owner finally loses access to its resources and industries?
That's one the of the top 3 issues we had with wars besides front splitting and teleportation...

 

[Geredis]

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.

Question about this don't think you've touched on this quite yet (maybe you have but it's rather unclear to me):

Does this mean that Belgium would be basically entirely untouched in the conflict unless it decided to side with either Germany or France directly? Because it seems like it's a free way for any country to sit out a conflict entirely...why shouldn't France be able to not just invade through the country if Belgium gives access to Germany, but also neutralize Belgium along the way, with or without a proper declaration of war? It seems to me that they should actually by default be fighting against Belgium as soon as the first German troops cross the border. Or at least able to contest every inch of Belgian territory that the Germans move through while not being at war with Belgium; thus making the risk that you turn your country into a corridor of destruction and devastation as the battles swing this way and that through your territory, all without your direct participation.

 

[Muramas]

I think this hits the mark for a lot of my issues with war, but I am concerned about the teleporting units.
Before the units just teleported home so I can slowly move them back to the front but now they are going to slowly move home then slowly to the front?
I feel that I should be able to reroute them to the closest front or automatically route there. Having to go back to a hq is going to be painful.

 

[Bisonmask]

I think there is a way to have both here. If soldiers are recruited in a building (possibly with different PMs for officer rate to a different pool, maybe another for sailors) they can still go into a pool tracked by state and culture. Two issues, particularly since they split soldiers into 3 types, is that they can't swap types and return to the pool without completely rebuilding the barracks, and goods purchases happen at the barracks location not the HQ location. So you end up recruiting all your artillery from a single state where your factories are, not from where you have the best pops for soldiers. Not to mention you can't recruit sailors from inland states. I would just propose splitting those two things apart to let us get the best of both worlds and better reflect how soldiers are actually recruited.

I see, you want to split up the soldiers and their equipment? That makes sense but now you have to create a mechanism through which soldiers can be unequipped/poorly equipped or the simulation makes no sense. I guess this is a spot where you need armouries but how and why would those be unaffected by MAPI or how would the manpower MAPI be strong enough to convince players to build armouries with just barracks instead of combining all three in a single state

 

[SolarSailor19]

Whats the resistance to going back to doscrete controllable units like in Vicky 2 or Eu4. Its the clear the military system isn't as engaging or as functional as intended and is a major drawback on the game.

I get the passion thats gone into this system, if you wanted to keep something like fronts you could always add increasing levels of entrenchement, as tech progresses, the organically lead to static lines of entrenched troops firing at each other.

But the currenr system, with the AI constantly splittinf fronts, pulling troops around randomly and generally being incoherent, means the system just isn't fun. As it removes player agency. No tactical decisions around crossings or terrain, no ability to catch out smaller stackd and defeat an enemy in detail. Just the RNG of will the game decide my 150 men fight the 20 men of my oppenent as 150 coherent men, or will it send 143 halfway round the continent , leaving 7 frontliners to get run over.

Please overhaul the system.

Id love to feel as of my industrial and technological advances in the economic game were meangiful on the battlefield. Remeber the advent of chlorine gas in Vicky 1 and how that meaningfully shifted the calculus of war.

Were how many years on into Vicky 3 now and a large portion of the player base can't even get naval landings to work consistently.


Please take a leaf from the Stellaris devs and accept when a system doesn't work. Re do it.

Vicky 3 is a mint game though, other than the non functional war system. Mint job

 

[Bisonmask]

Whats the resistance to going back to doscrete controllable units like in Vicky 2 or Eu4. Its the clear the military system isn't as engaging or as functional as intended and is a major drawback on the game.

They're worried about me, personally, being upset

If you want to abuse AI movement EU4 is right there. If you want a good army movement system, HOI4 is right there. If you want to win every war CK3 is right there

 

[$ilent_$trider]

I just want to tell my generals what strategic objectives I want and let them handle.
I don’t want to have to worry about tactics or coordinating pincer attacks, I have HoI4 for that already. But I do want to make sure that if I take over an oil producing state, that if I can’t have direct access to it, at least my opponent won’t either.

 

[Metz]

Would you add more goods in the future? If so, consider adding masonry (stone-based goods) for construction which would be helpful for countries that don't have much access to wood. It could also be an advanced pm for art academies (sculptures). Infrastructure upkeep could also be a thing which would tie into stone/wood/steel, etc.

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

The most frequent front spitting issue I run into is fronts not splitting when they should. I've been playing the Ottomans again and it's been infuriating having the border with Russia on opposite sides of the Black Sea be treated as a single front. When the front shifts I'll have armies get up and move from Drobruja all the way to Kars on the opposite side of the sea for no reason.

There's a similar issue with deserts. In Australia fronts on either side of the inaccessible interior are treated as a single front, which can be annoying for the same reason. It doesn't come up that often because wars in Australia itself are pretty rare, but the Black Sea front issue is infuriating because it happens with the default border between two rival great powers.

It sounds like maybe these changes would fix the army repositioning all that way, because it would theoretically stick to the front, but I don't understand why these borders are treated as a single front at all. Fronts are going to be able to bridge a single state, but they should not bridge seas and inaccessible deserts. The game knows that it's not a single front, because it's not drawing the line through the sea, and armies know they have to go around the sea to get to the other side, so it seems like treating the separate borders as a single front is a deliberate choice. If so, it's not a good one. Is that changing at all? Or potentially getting worse?

 

[Cagallo]

Question from an ignorant who hasn't been playing the game in 2 years. If cavalry has 30 offense and 20 defense, and artillery has 30 ofense and 15 defense... why would I need artillery?

 

[Silens]

Question from an ignorant who hasn't been playing the game in 2 years. If cavalry has 30 offense and 20 defense, and artillery has 30 ofense and 15 defense... why would I need artillery?

Artillery adds +x% to kill rate, while cav has +x% occupation per battle.

Since reinforcing losses takes time, piling up kills is a valid strategy to just break the enemy.

 

[adil3tr]

• 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

My issue here is that I often have two wars, one in japan and one in china, and when the army in Japan is done it will teleport home to europe rather than go to China. Making this a damaging attrition march to europe rather than to China doesn't fix the whole problem.

 

[Cagallo]

Artillery adds +x% to kill rate, while cav has +x% occupation per battle.

Since reinforcing losses takes time, piling up kills is a valid strategy to just break the enemy.

My thanks for the clarification

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

Hello
Just asking here a question, or better, trying to understand why a certain situation happens in my games.

When I assign an HQ to one of my Armies the idea is to have them in a certain area for a specific objective. For instance if I am playing as Netherlands, and I am afraid of possible revolts and/or theater of war in Indonesia, I will assign an Army HQ there, in order to immediately enter the theater, without having to wait for them to come back from Europe. That at least is how I interpret the HQ mechanics. However usually after a war, some or part of my HQ reset them self and I have to rearrange them from the beginning. Is this something that will be fixed in 1.9, is it a bug or simply me not understanding this specific mechanics? Thanks in advance

Also pinging @Rudawitz since you mentioned this happens to you too.
Hello, I spoke to to a colleague and they rightfully pointed out I should check in with you to ensure you've actually used the correct function.
Have you used the "Set Home HQ" function or the "Station in an HQ" function? Setting the Home HQ should preserve it even after a war whereas all stationed armies get sent home after a war.
Below an image of where the Set Home HQ function button can be found.