Combat rebalance mod

[Palleon]

This is a quick and simple mod which tries to address the issue of late game battles falling into tedium due to massive defense and inability to do real damage. Essentially, I've given the machine gun tech a +10 to attack in addition to the +5 to defense, and also double the attack bonus of every level of artillery increase. This should drastically increase attack values across the board, and make late game combat extremely deadly.

I have not had the time to extensively test this, as it is just myself, so if you download it, and have any comments on whether it's too much, or not enough, please feel free to post here and let me know. I'd love to know before and after values of attacks if you happen to load my mod in the middle of a save game with a battle going, as it will provide me with a lot of feedback.

I've attached the rar file to this post, feel free to visit my webpage for the mod as well, which also contains a general bugfix mod. You can extract the rar directly to your main directory, I've included backups of the files changed, so there will be no issue with overwriting files, and you don't have to backup the files yourself.

Edit: Did some more testing, found out that it didn't make a big difference, so I also drastically lowered military tactics gained per level, and that seems to have done the trick, combat is a lot more decisive now.

http://sites.google.com/site/palleon/victoria-2-mods

[quetzilla]

Not to take away from your work, but I had the feeling that the way late-game combat was working was intentional... that was the time of WWI and trench warfare.

[Dagda]

Not to take away from your work, but I had the feeling that the way late-game combat was working was intentional... that was the time of WWI and trench warfare.

Extremely long battles with minimal casualties is a horrendous way of representing trench warfare.

Intentional or not vanilla battles suck all the fun out of the game.

[Palleon]

Not to take away from your work, but I had the feeling that the way late-game combat was working was intentional... that was the time of WWI and trench warfare.

Trench warfare was slow and grinding because of massive casualties, not because of everyone being bulletproof. I know that's what Paradox was trying to represent, but I think they did a poor job of it and it makes for a bad game. But to each their own.

[KonradRichtmark]

Edit: Did some more testing, found out that it didn't make a big difference, so I also drastically lowered military tactics gained per level, and that seems to have done the trick, combat is a lot more decisive now.

http://sites.google.com/site/palleon/victoria-2-mods

Was thinking of doing this myself. Not only did military tactics cause battles to be slow and tedious, it also made having one higher tech level ludicrously decisive. How much did you reduce the military tactics gain to per level? I thought I would go for 25%, but haven't tested anything.

[Palleon]

Was thinking of doing this myself. Not only did military tactics cause battles to be slow and tedious, it also made having one higher tech level ludicrously decisive. How much did you reduce the military tactics gain to per level? I thought I would go for 25%, but haven't tested anything.

I went with 25% per level. Not sure that's the ideal way to do it, or if it should even be consistent for each level, but that's what I went with for the test case to start, will probably adjust it and the other attack/defense values as I get more feedback about what works and what doesn't.

From the people who have gotten back to me so far, it sounds like technologically advanced nations (ie, machine guns) vs less technologically advanced ones (no machine guns) have a much bigger advantage than they used to, they'll take more damage than before, but they'll also dish out a lot more damage than before. But if two nations with machine gun tech and semi-modern artillery tech go at each other, you'll be looking at casualties in the hundreds of thousands or millions.

[KonradRichtmark]

Trench warfare was slow and grinding because of massive casualties, not because of everyone being bulletproof. I know that's what Paradox was trying to represent, but I think they did a poor job of it and it makes for a bad game. But to each their own.

This. Trench warfare was slow not because people wouldn't die in battle, but because the defender had such massive advantages that assaults would seldom be launched in the first place. When attacks were actually made, the results were horrendous. 200 000 out of 400 000 British fell casualty during a few days during the 2nd Battle of Ypres.

[Panchito]

Nice mod, casualties are much more realistic and gameplay isn't broken anymore.

[Meothar]

I will test that.

[KonradRichtmark]

Is it possible to actually add a static multiplier to casualties inflicted with a tech, like the opposite of military tactics? I notice discipline is in as a variable in the unit type files.

Adding 25% military tactics each level still leads to a net difference of 1.25^5 = 3 over the course of the game (assuming that everyone of significance has the first level of the six from the start).

If possible, I'd rather have each level add (say) 10% military tactics and 10% discipline. In that way, armies on the same level would fight identically regardless of what that level is, but each level of difference would be significant (though not overwhelmingly so).

[Palleon]

Is it possible to actually add a static multiplier to casualties inflicted with a tech, like the opposite of military tactics? I notice discipline is in as a variable in the unit type files.

Adding 25% military tactics each level still leads to a net difference of 1.25^5 = 3 over the course of the game (assuming that everyone of significance has the first level of the six from the start).

If possible, I'd rather have each level add (say) 10% military tactics and 10% discipline. In that way, armies on the same level would fight identically regardless of what that level is, but each level of difference would be significant (though not overwhelmingly so).

Maybe? Not sure, I don't really know how all the variables work (and I'm hoping I don't have to, with any luck the 1.2 patch will obviate the need for this mod, I'm hoping that this is just a stopgap patch that won't be needed for long). In EU3, discipline did what military tactics seem to do in this game, so maybe it's just a redundant feature?

[KonradRichtmark]

Well, HTTT had both discipline for killing more stuff, and military tactics for getting killed less, so potential to do both should be in the newest version of the Clausewitz engine. I'll have to snoop around when I get the time, I have a few other modding priorities first.

[Sovetskysoyuz]

Well, HTTT had both discipline for killing more stuff, and military tactics for getting killed less, so potential to do both should be in the newest version of the Clausewitz engine. I'll have to snoop around when I get the time, I have a few other modding priorities first.

Discipline is in there somewhere; Irregulars have lower discipline than other units.

[safferli]

Discipline is in there somewhere; Irregulars have lower discipline than other units.

Yep. I think that's it, it was mainly added for modders, probably.

[Palleon]

I feel like I probably need to balance military tactics a bit more, I feel that in the early game, combat is almost too bloody. I may let the first rank or two of military tactics be 100% or 50%, and make the gains slow down from there. Playing as Prussia in a new game, combat was getting resolved really quickly, within a month 50,000 dead on each side (Prussia vs Austria), and that seems a little extreme for the time period, so a tweaking is probably in order. I'm happy with the late-game balance, but now gotta try to get the early game balance down.

[Naselus]

I feel like I probably need to balance military tactics a bit more, I feel that in the early game, combat is almost too bloody. I may let the first rank or two of military tactics be 100% or 50%, and make the gains slow down from there. Playing as Prussia in a new game, combat was getting resolved really quickly, within a month 50,000 dead on each side (Prussia vs Austria), and that seems a little extreme for the time period, so a tweaking is probably in order. I'm happy with the late-game balance, but now gotta try to get the early game balance down.

Gradual reduction of Military tactics values as warfare becomes increasinly about digging big holes and sitting in them with machine guns.

I'd suggest start at 100% increase, then 80%, then 60%, then 40%, then 20% and finally 10%.

That'll also mean that fighting the uncivilized and backward nations will work well, while running into another equal-tech nation will be a bloodbath.



Incidently, I really like the work you've been doing, and I'd love to include it in the POPDemand mod - with full credit given, obviously. Would that be ok?

[Palleon]

Gradual reduction of Military tactics values as warfare becomes increasinly about digging big holes and sitting in them with machine guns.

I'd suggest start at 100% increase, then 80%, then 60%, then 40%, then 20% and finally 10%.

That'll also mean that fighting the uncivilized and backward nations will work well, while running into another equal-tech nation will be a bloodbath.



Incidently, I really like the work you've been doing, and I'd love to include it in the POPDemand mod - with full credit given, obviously. Would that be ok?

Go nuts, it's nothing too complicated, anyone who wants to use it is welcome to use it, or use it and change it some more, whatever makes you happy.