• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
In my opinion ViC2 has easily the most potential to be Paradox's greatest game but one thing that is holding it back is the inadequate, poorly designed and unrealistic military system.

I could go on at some length on the problems that the military aspect of the game faces but in short I do believe it needs a large overhaul. There needs to be some imaginative, out of the box thinking about how to redesign the military element not a cut and paste job or another layer upon a weak foundation. The Naval game in particular simply doesn't appear capable of producing a recognizable naval campaign that reflects the evolving operational, strategic and industrial aspects of the time frame.

A couple of thoughts:

Consider reducing the number of naval areas. There is a major disconnect in your model and the number of naval areas compounds the challenges that you face in building an accurate model and AI.

Don't simply add yet more units. Get the basics right first and expand from that point, simple but working will always be better than a large and implausible model. Justify why you have the military units you have already amongst yourselves to sanity check it.

Overhaul the base combat system. Do some research and brief one another on what changes over the time frame, why, how and the implications of those changes. I feel that some of the errors in the original model would not have occurred if this had been presented to a group for discussion.

Appreciate the operational level land challenge that occurs at the end of the 19th century, read around the topic and learn that its not a tactical obstacle but an operational maneuver obstacle and build this into your model. Your current model is more akin to that wonderful program Blackadder goes Forth rather than any professionally understood reality. Understand the operational and strategic challenges that occur prior and after this time frame. The model currently fails to understand the difference and weighting between the "break in" and the "break out".
 
Last edited:
To invalidate your entire point you pusillanimous twerp- (the OP)

7 September 1939 to 10 September 1939, A Polish force of 720 men with mortars, 42 machine guns, forts, pillboxes, and only 2 anti-tank rifles with more balls than any of us have here held off as I stated for three days against a German force of 42,200 men, 350 tanks, 657 mortars, guns and howitzers and aerial support... that's 59-1 in terms of German strength to Polish... I'm sorry but forts do help :p
 
To invalidate your entire point you pusillanimous twerp- (the OP)

7 September 1939 to 10 September 1939, A Polish force of 720 men with mortars, 42 machine guns, forts, pillboxes, and only 2 anti-tank rifles with more balls than any of us have here held off as I stated for three days against a German force of 42,200 men, 350 tanks, 657 mortars, guns and howitzers and aerial support... that's 59-1 in terms of German strength to Polish... I'm sorry but forts do help :p

Do not insult other posters, even if you use Stephen Fry-esque language to do it.
 
Well, it IS a bit odd that CK2 is more capable of blitzkrieg than 1840 Europe. Sure, trenches made things slow, but when those were not built most areas seem to have fallen fairly quickly once local armies were defeated (a 10 days campaign by the Dutch suppressed much of the Belgian rebellion, before going back home due to the threat of intervention/armies and having satisfied some egos).
Once the Russian frontlines fell apart in WW1 the Germans officially advanced fairly quickly also, and while they didn't control the countryside whereever no troops were around, it's hard to consider that control when supplies and reinforcements could probably pass fairly well and most countries would likely consider the region officially occupied.


My suggestion (though I don't have AHD) would be to give fortresses an official garrison or such, a small one, and then keep military bonuses. So a fort being attacked is strong and always defended, a LINE of forts keeps an enemy out.
However, once such a line of forts is broken, I think control should be much more rapid. Fighting through trenches was hard, but empty trenches are just empty space.
 
That's because castles in CK2 are too easy to assault.
 
Minor changes I wouldn't mind seeing:


Taking empty provinces should be easier with time/tech, especially with huge armies.

Attrition should go up over time very gradually due to changes in the system. Later Vic2 era most warfare was away from the large baggage trains of the past and supplies simply moved very fast from rear areas to the front. However a large army in 1800 is either not that large and more able to live off the land or it is the/A main army of the nation but in late Vic2 times that was no longer true. (made up number time) If I have a limit of 30k in enemy territory and have 80k troops there in 1850 that army likely has a lot of supply with it as it is a more self contained army. If I do the same in 1900ish or beyond it is far more likely just some random corps of mine with a few days rations and expecting resupply from the rear. If it goes well ahead and has no connection with a friendly territory or at the coast it will likely very quickly run out of supplies. Trains/trucks don't work so well through enemy territory. :D



Now the ai would have to adjust a bit of course but the end result is a large front of troops can push much faster than 1-3 doom stacks and some small siege armies but I would have to pause chasing retreating troops due to supply issues if they run too fast or are already into their unseized territory. So an enemy can pull out from the front more easily later on but if the front collapses as a result it will be chased down much quicker and the whack a mole wont be as big an issue since the country will be overrun very fast if no troops are left at the front. Maybe also remove the rule of no retreat if the province has 3 or fewer enemy units also so pockets require an actual force?? :unsure:
 
To be honest I never thought the military system was bad apart from facts like amies in 1870 magically get machine guns (it should be a separate unit at the start, IMO and then only latter the defensive value should be added to the standard brigade) and that units should be divided into brigades AND divisions. Both the huge unit size of Victoria 1 and tiny brigade of Vicky 2 have their problems. For large wars = divisions with attachments, for small campaigns = brigades.
 
What usually comes up in these threads is that the combat system should be deeper; personally I think it should be less interesting. Victoria II is supposed to be a game of politics and economies, but a big war takes up way more attention than half a century of Pop-managing does. I'd rather see that the outcome of a war is determined by your political and economical policies before and during a war than by how well you manage 300 individual brigades.

Thaaaaat said, I seriously doubt Paradox would actually remove features, but I honestly think it would be for the best if war in the game was more abstract than it is now.
 
In the same way there is a feature to chase rebels maybe there could be a feature that with a selection of the box an army will automatically go to the nearest not besieged-empty-enemy province and siege it until it falls, then wash rinse repeat?
 
What usually comes up in these threads is that the combat system should be deeper; personally I think it should be less interesting. Victoria II is supposed to be a game of politics and economies, but a big war takes up way more attention than half a century of Pop-managing does. I'd rather see that the outcome of a war is determined by your political and economical policies before and during a war than by how well you manage 300 individual brigades.

Thaaaaat said, I seriously doubt Paradox would actually remove features, but I honestly think it would be for the best if war in the game was more abstract than it is now.

To be honest, the politics and economics parts are much less interesting than the military aspect, and I suspect most players agree with this.
 
To be honest, the politics and economics parts are much less interesting than the military aspect, and I suspect most players agree with this.

Yet game is primarily about politics and economics.

Having said that the military aspect is of great interest to a number of people.

Currently the model doesn't have fun realistic game play which, if what you say is correct, might point to why the game forum activity is lower than one would expect.
 
Last edited:
Yet game is primarily about politics and economics.

Having said that the military aspect is of great interest to a number of people.

Currently the model doesn't have fun realistic game play which, if what you say is correct, might point to why the game forum activity is lower than one would expect.

Sure, but those are usually automated and in the background.
 
So if I build level 5 forts on every single piece of land in my Empire I have a permanent combat bonus in my lands... overpowered ?

Nah. If your army has been wiped out, forts just turn the war into a time sink. It might take two-three years to occupy you, but if I put 2 brigades in every single province, you won't be able to build new units while I take my sweet time occupying the country.

In fact, the irony is that the more Vic2 I play, the more focused I get on maneuver warfare even when defensive bonuses are stacking up due to tech. I haven't bothered with building forts in most of my recent games.

In my opinion ViC2 has easily the most potential to be Paradox's greatest game but one thing that is holding it back is the inadequate, poorly designed and unrealistic military system.

I could go on at some length on the problems that the military aspect of the game faces but in short I do believe it needs a large overhaul. There needs to be some imaginative, out of the box thinking about how to redesign the military element not a cut and paste job or another layer upon a weak foundation. The Naval game in particular simply doesn't appear capable of producing a recognizable naval campaign that reflects the evolving operational, strategic and industrial aspects of the time frame.

A couple of thoughts:

Consider reducing the number of naval areas. There is a major disconnect in your model and the number of naval areas compounds the challenges that you face in building an accurate model and AI.

I think it also means that, since there is no convoy raiding ala HOI3, most of the empty sea zones are pointless. This is one of those times that more abstraction is better.

Don't simply add yet more units. Get the basics right first and expand from that point, simple but working will always be better than a large and implausible model. Justify why you have the military units you have already amongst yourselves to sanity check it.

Well, I don't see them adding any new units in a future expansion unless they add WWII to the game, which I'm 99.99999% sure they won't, since they already have a little known franchise of WWII games. :D


Appreciate the operational level land challenge that occurs at the end of the 19th century, read around the topic and learn that its not a tactical obstacle but an operational maneuver obstacle and build this into your model. Your current model is more akin to that wonderful program Blackadder goes Forth rather than any professionally understood reality. Understand the operational and strategic challenges that occur prior and after this time frame. The model currently fails to understand the difference and weighting between the "break in" and the "break out".

Eh, I'd settle for something relatively different. I just want the AI to stop overstacking brigades in a province. I fought a battle this weekend where I annihilated perhaps 1.5 million Chinese troops because the AI sent them all into the meatgrinder in Mongolia. The defeat was so bad that it literally dropped 2,000 points from China's military score, turning them from a GP to #52 on the score ranking. (After they were civilized!) Because of width, 90% of those brigades did nothing for most of the 24 months it took to fight that battle, while I quietly rotated out armies and kept the armies I had in combat about 20% bigger than width while the others just rested. Even worse, my ally the UK occupied 85% of China, from Tibet to Beijing to Hong Kong during this time because the vast majority of the Chinese army was stuck in combat. The AI simply should not send in more than 2x the number of brigades width allows into battle without pulling some out. That would make wars more interesting.
 
Did we? I guess I will stick with that then:
Forts do give a defensive bonus, the fact that you don't know that invalidates all your other points. LOL.

Also, the idea that because we (apparently) disagreed with some critics means we can never change anything is absurd. I'm not sure why you bring that up at all, it's a strange point to make and only detracts from the main point of your post. If you actually want serious replies you should probably stick to just your main question/points without trying to "score points" over people, otherwise they get annoyed and address your provocations instead. Like this.

I didn't mean to be snide. My friend used to post here and years ago he suggested the current great war system that you've just implemented and he was mocked by one of the devs and they told him that the great war system in V2 was fine. Again, I'm sorry if I came across as rude but I don't feel I should have to hold back my opinions.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear what you think of the combat system and my suggestions as well as the other peoples.


—V
 
I still think that tech should negate forts but I also think that conquering territory that does NOT have a fort should be instantaneous. Despite me thinking this, I see the issue that the ai likes to make units and just send them at at the minimum they can go and try and take every bit of territory they can, avoiding fighting at all and with this system it would be an insanely tedious thing...

Now, I'm always making complaints and comments but thats because I have played this darned game enough to have these nit picks.

the main issue with the combat system is what people have already said, the tactics change over that period from Napoleonic style to modern warfare.

Hoi style which it would work for the end would not work for the beginning, what we have now, a EUIII style works great for the beginning but on that same note it does not work well for uncivilized nations...

I think that bits from Hoi and bits from UE3 needs to be taken and combined to create something new and something... elastic, as in, something that can be stretched and manipulated to fit the time frame. A system that in the beginning feels like a EUIII but by the end feels like a Hoi.

now, I may be completely wrong about this, and if I am, please correct me, but as time went on and tech got better the size of units got smaller and smaller, from needs just overwhelming numbers in the dark ages to modern day where a squad of 6 or 8 special forces can end a war before it even starts. Now Vic isn't that big of a change but from needing mass cannon and artillery in the early game to do significant damage to middle and late game with indirect fire, and explosive and incendiary rounds is a fairly big difference. I mean, a battery of Civil war era cannon compared to a self propelled howitzer is a massive difference.

Personally, to cover that big of a divide and change due to technology the game should get smaller as tech increases. More tech = smaller armies able to be raised for quicker, though more expensive for more advanced equipment like artillery. The smaller armies' tech would make them comparable to larger armies their size but allow them to move quicker...
but I might be talking about my butt, I dont know anymore
 
To be honest, the politics and economics parts are much less interesting than the military aspect, and I suspect most players agree with this.

Sad but true. Lack of events = lack of feel of accomplishment. Since there aren´t critical events and most of the economy is automated, in the end the only goal is becoming number 1, and since that WILL involve war, if the war aspect of the game is subpar, then the whole experience will be damaged. There´s too few difference between trying to play the liberal, education-focused and the conservative absolutist country. Not that Vicky 1 was perfect, but considering this game is released 5 years later, I´d expect improvements. Through on paper the game is about politics and economy, any improvement to the war system WILL be interesting.

And it can be changed so that the economic and military aspects are more interdependant. Bring back the mobilization size concept of Vicky 1. Make railroads more important for mobilization size and mobilization speed, and eliminate the instantaneous mobilization. Replace the random general system with something else - create a war readiness variable that rewards countries that fight and win wars and go jingoistic instead of anti-military.