Artillery is Weird and I Don't Like It >:(

[SacremPyrobolum]

I hate that Artillery is treated as just an Infantry unit with higher attack and lower defense.

For those who don't know, your general will prioritize sending Artillery and nothing but Artillery to offensive battles because they typically have the highest attack stat. Obviously, this is silly. It leads to optimal Attack armies just being 50 Inf/50 Art and defense armies just 100% Inf. And it means if your always attacking all your casualties are going to be absorbed by your Artillery.

It would be best if they went back to EU4's system where Artillery could provide support without being on the frontline of combat but will fold if they are. I'd love seeing Vicky 3 battles use Eu4's little boxes to represent ongoing battles. Always found those so satisfying...

Honestly the more I think about it it reveals everything wrong with combat just being solely a contest between the attacker's Attack value vs the defender's Defense value. Units should be using BOTH of those values to represent how much damage they can do vs how much damage they can mitigate. Then you could have super-lethal Artillery that needs proper Infantry screening to be effective.

Failing this, I honestly think it would be more beneficial to go back to the days when artillery and cavalry were just Barrack's Production Methods. It would still be better than the current system, and easier to manage too.

I hope the game isn't too far gone that we can't see an overhaul of combat in the future....

EDIT: Actually, it might be better for Cavalry and Artillery to be Mobilization options for Armies instead. Reason is that during the period Cavalry and Artillery were all allocated at the Division level and were not native parts of Regiments. So having the Army itself hold all the Artillery and Cavalry instead of the Regiment makes more sense.

 

[Froonk]

Best would be if they just went back to cavalry and artillery being PMs instead of this discrete unit system that has zero positives and adds nothing but micromanagement busywork and actually detracts from proper army compositions in terms of costs.

 

[47pik]

I think it might make sense to have some artillery on defense because of the increased kill rate, but I'm not sure, although obviously not a 50/50 situation.

 

[strattonthebard]

Best would be if they just went back to cavalry and artillery being PMs instead of this discrete unit system that has zero positives and adds nothing but micromanagement busywork and actually detracts from proper army compositions in terms of costs.

I do like being able to change units without hunting down the barracks they're from and changing the PMs but I do think having cavalry and artillery be attributes of units similar to mobilization options would probably be better than having them be separate units

 

[Amina144]

There were already plenty of threads about this issue, but I dont think devs have really said anything about it. I think it pretty much means it is here to stay. Maybe the big 2.0 there will be something?

 

[Nickoteen]

Yes ita time for Military rework

 

[Meanmanturbo]

EDIT: Actually, it might be better for Cavalry and Artillery to be Mobilization options for Armies instead. Reason is that during the period Cavalry and Artillery were all allocated at the Division level and were not native parts of Regiments. So having the Army itself hold all the Artillery and Cavalry instead of the Regiment makes more sense.

As you said with barracks production, the combat system was only ever built for frontline units with optional extras, so all units have to be treated like frontline units unless you rebuild the entire thing from skratch.

 

[Imp0815]

The whole system is far too obscure and intransparent to deduce anything concrete for feedback or suggestions from my end. I just had an event with Zeppelins that gave a flat +30 offense to armies, and it was hilariously broken — engagements with 76 offense in 1906 were instantly won, no matter the rolls.

Overall, I think I’m okay with the system as it is, as long as I don’t read anything that makes more sense in terms of what the game wants to be.

On second thought, here are some things I think could work, or at least be looked at:

Army deployment and composition is mostly dependent on market prices and the amount of money a government has. So warfare is far more about “how much does it cost?” than how tactical or strategic your composition is. Mobilization methods are the main area where you can choose to buff your army with more money.

With the new trade system, it’s even less important to produce everything at home as long as you have money. The automated private construction system removes any planning or thought, as it just adjusts itself when you need more goods. Same goes for trade. So as long as the green number is going up or your treasury is large enough to sustain a -100k income for years, nothing truly matters. The only real bottleneck I encounter — and can't fix — is manpower.

And because manpower can't be bought, you can only work with things like open borders, multiculturalism, and putting greener grass in every province with barracks. Then you just wait and hope. And your SoL should be higher than the world average, of course.

What could be done to improve armies within this system?

Military goods could be more heavily regulated, meaning you can’t trade them on the open market. Countries would need to build every bullet themselves, and if they run out, the army has nothing to shoot. Alternatively, military goods could only be traded via state-to-state treaties, making treaties a more strategic part of war prep.

This would make artillery more impactful, and artillery units more valuable.

We could also reuse the prestige goods system for rifles. Each production method level in small arms factories could have its own prestige good — so better guns would have more impact, and country-specific versions could be even better than the standard. The same could apply to artillery.

Horses could be a trade-restricted good (since shipping live animals is hard), but cavalry could be a powerful early-to-midgame counter to artillery. So countries would choose whether to go for more artillery or boost horse production for stronger cavalry units.

Infantry would remain the backbone, supported by better small arms and prestige variants. Ammunition could also improve and have prestige levels.

All this would make army composition deeper. Players would aim to maintain a strong arms industry, prepare for wars with relevant treaties, and make strategic economic decisions that influence military performance — going beyond just throwing money at the problem.

 

[Prob32]

It would be best if they went back to EU4's system where Artillery could provide support without being on the frontline of combat but will fold if they are. I'd love seeing Vicky 3 battles use Eu4's little boxes to represent ongoing battles. Always found those so satisfying...

Personally I'd prefer some level of "Designer" type mechanic from HoI vs EU4 where you can adjust ratio of artillery balanced entire unit formations goto battle instead of just Battalions. I think it's probably more accurate to think of formations entering battles than individual units for a game of this scale and time period.

I'm not sure why HoI4 designer type mechanics get a bad rep as easy to cheese either - sure there are meta templates, but the idea is there's compelling trade offs between supply and manpower abundant countries and countries that have more representative governance by higher technology.

Example:

Russia should absolutely be able to manpower blob under Peasant levies and Absolute Monarchy - fighting on its home territory it should get benefits from supply. It's war support should be relative insular to casualties and more based around whether the Landowners are losing power.

Conversely, Great Britain fighting Russia in crimea should have more expensive unit compositions that are better, require much more supply to keep in the fight and casualties including attrition should most definitely hurt war support.

 

[Zander]

Best would be if they just went back to cavalry and artillery being PMs instead of this discrete unit system that has zero positives and adds nothing but micromanagement busywork and actually detracts from proper army compositions in terms of costs.

This is of course the core of the problem. The change introduced many problems, and literally zero benefits, and everyone knows that.

 

[Kipsta]

Or they let us raise actual formations like Shadow Empires instead of this battalion stuff and make these formations use actual discrete weapons (that are still replaced/maintained by constant by orders) and we can build our armies out of these formations and so on.

 

[kingsword]

Anything related to warfare including troop buildings, frontlines, diploplays, peace settlements etc should be rebuilt from the ground up. There's a lot of not entertaining tedium involved. If they want to automate, the automated systems should still be much better systems. These intertwining systems are dragging the entire game down.

 

[Prob32]

Or they let us raise actual formations like Shadow Empires instead of this battalion stuff and make these formations use actual discrete weapons (that are still replaced/maintained by constant by orders) and we can build our armies out of these formations and so on.

One of the stated goals of the Naval update is to make ships discrete objects that can be sunk and take time to build. I'm not sure how that will work for the Army side of things. If its performance friendly enough conceivably we could get a similar system of discrete objects for the army which would be nice since there's alot that can be done with this type of mechanics, especially with bi-directional agreements.

 

[Hopciu]

This is of course the core of the problem. The change introduced many problems, and literally zero benefits, and everyone knows that.

This change, along with Power Blocs, are two biggest elephants in the room, that Devs refuse to acknowledge, for some reason.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Personally I'd prefer some level of "Designer" type mechanic from HoI vs EU4 where you can adjust ratio of artillery balanced entire unit formations goto battle instead of just Battalions. I think it's probably more accurate to think of formations entering battles than individual units for a game of this scale and time period.

I've fantasized about having a Victorian division builder myself but I don't think it'd be worth the effort. 99% of all divisions for the vast majority of the game would be INF and ART with maybe some support companies sprinkled in if your feeling exotic. There's just not enough unit variety to justify its existence IMO.

From my research, 'specialist' units like artillery, cavalry, and even machine guns were all controlled at the Corps level, which is why I think such things should be dictated by the player at the Formation level.

I could see there being both options to control what tech level of Arty and Horsy you want as well as options for how much so you can further fine-tune your consumption. These options would not only increase the resources needed to support them but also increase the manpower consumed by barracks in that army.

 

[Prob32]

I've fantasized about having a Victorian division builder myself but I don't think it'd be worth the effort. 99% of all divisions for the vast majority of the game would be INF and ART with maybe some support companies sprinkled in if your feeling exotic. There's just not enough unit variety to justify its existence IMO.

From my research, 'specialist' units like artillery, cavalry, and even machine guns were all controlled at the Corps level, which is why I think such things should be dictated by the player at the Formation level.

I could see there being both options to control what tech level of Arty and Horsy you want as well as options for how much so you can further fine-tune your consumption. These options would not only increase the resources needed to support them but also increase the manpower consumed by barracks in that army.

I agree with what you’re saying about variation of unit type. Though I do think a corp designer would be interesting way to balance mechanics related to organization and supply. Throughout the Victoria era formation sizes consistently trended smaller as it became easier to wheeled more smaller units. Conversely smaller distinct organization had less organic supply.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

I agree with what you’re saying about variation of unit type. Though I do think a corp designer would be interesting way to balance mechanics related to organization and supply. Throughout the Victoria era formation sizes consistently trended smaller as it became easier to wheeled more smaller units. Conversely smaller distinct organization had less organic supply.

What do you mean by Corps Designer? You can already customize the size of your military formations and what support they get with existing mechanics.

 

[Prob32]

Battalions are absolutely the wrong size unit to be building and constructing with in a game with V3’s focus. For reference you don’t even play around with battalions in HoiI4 you build around divisions which are almost always 10-15 battalions.

The idea is to have a similar function with V3 where you raise corps from templates instead of individual barracks to per battalion. Corps would lighten the load of micro as well because you could more easily deploy entire corps to fronts instead of transferring individual battalions. Then you move the mobilization options over to support companies. Final step is make it so that early game you have larger corps for organization and smaller corps becoming divisions in the late game

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Battalions are absolutely the wrong size unit to be building and constructing with in a game with V3’s focus. For reference you don’t even play around with battalions in HoiI4 you build around divisions which are almost always 10-15 battalions.

The idea is to have a similar function with V3 where you raise corps from templates instead of individual barracks to per battalion. Corps would lighten the load of micro as well because you could more easily deploy entire corps to fronts instead of transferring individual battalions. Then you move the mobilization options over to support companies. Final step is make it so that early game you have larger corps for organization and smaller corps becoming divisions in the late game

I get battalions being small and annoying to manage, but I think the reason they're the smallest unit you can build is to not constrict nations with smaller populations.

The 1000 man locally-raised regiment/battalion of the time was also both the smallest 'independent' unit that could theoretically be deployed on its own while also being the largest 'cohesive' unit which would always fight together.

Side-take but its also important that ground regiments are raised and associated with their states since regiments at the time were strongly associated with said states. Look at the 20th Maine or the numerous WWI regiment memorials in British towns as an example.

 

[psvoid]

Where can I get 75% discipline here?