Is this a bug with the new patch or just an infuriating game mechanic?

[gsp_rooster]

Ever since the new patch, whenever I declare war on an opponent who is already at war, this new army "attachment" feature allows anybody allied with them in their other wars to march around with them. That's fine. Except for when those same allies, who are NOT also at war with me, contribute their troops to the battle.

Example -

I am Duchy of Salerno, I attack Duchy of Apulia looking to take the County of Benevento. Apulia is at war with the Sicilian Shieks. The Papacy and HRE are helping Appulia against the Shieks, but they do NOT have any indiciation anywhere of also aiding Apulia against me. However, when the battle between my 2,500 men and the army marching around with Apulia ensues (of which Apulia is only contributing 800 men) instead of being in a battle against 800 men, I'm in a guaranteed losing match against all 19,000 of Apulia's, the Pope's and the HRE's troops.

Again, the pope and HRE have NOT pledged to aid apulia against me, only against the shieks, but I still have to fight their troops because they're "attached" to Apulia's army.

This is infuriating and desperately needs to be fixed.

[SlyEcho]

This change is in the patch notes for 1.05d.

[apg]

are the HRE and pope allies with the duke of apulia?

[MasterofMagic]

Ever since the new patch, whenever I declare war on an opponent who is already at war, this new army "attachment" feature allows anybody allied with them in their other wars to march around with them. That's fine. Except for when those same allies, who are NOT also at war with me, contribute their troops to the battle.

Example -

I am Duchy of Salerno, I attack Duchy of Apulia looking to take the County of Benevento. Apulia is at war with the Sicilian Shieks. The Papacy and HRE are helping Appulia against the Shieks, but they do NOT have any indiciation anywhere of also aiding Apulia against me. However, when the battle between my 2,500 men and the army marching around with Apulia ensues (of which Apulia is only contributing 800 men) instead of being in a battle against 800 men, I'm in a guaranteed losing match against all 19,000 of Apulia's, the Pope's and the HRE's troops.

Again, the pope and HRE have NOT pledged to aid apulia against me, only against the shieks, but I still have to fight their troops because they're "attached" to Apulia's army.

This is infuriating and desperately needs to be fixed.

New change says the LEADERof the stack get to decide where the WHOLE stack goes an attacks. WAD you got PUNK'd

[Inochi]

This is a problem we mentioned in many bug threads. If this is WAD then we should at least get a DoW against all enemy armies that helps them. They can't attack us without giving us the chance to retaliate against supporting troops marching to join them again. We can't stop them until they dogpile against us!

[Scottiths]

This is kind of a dumb mechanic and can be abused by mistake. I was at war with a power that the HRE was willing to help me fight. Then I got a war declared on me by france (whome HRE was NOT willing to help me fight because they liked each other too much). I didn't realize why it was happening at the time but now I know. Every fight I had with france I was winning because the HRE had a doom stack following around my little stack of 1,000 men.

Kinda dumb IMO. So I could pull HRE into a war with someone they don't want to fight by declaring war on a nobody they hate and just not ending that war...

[gsp_rooster]

Agreed with Scottiths.

This is a terrible feature. :-( It needs to be reworked.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Again, the pope and HRE have NOT pledged to aid apulia against me, only against the shieks, but I still have to fight their troops because they're "attached" to Apulia's army.

This is infuriating and desperately needs to be fixed.

It may be infuriating, but that certainly doesn't need to be fixed. Think about it.

There they are, the Apulian army joined together with other armies in a common struggle with a common goal... then your army appears on the scene. Do you SERIOUSLY suggest that what should happen in your scenario is that the Apulian allies should take a look at your army, say, this isn't our fight, and move aside to stand by while you slaughter their ally?

You committed a serious mistake and attacked somebody you thought was vulnerable, but who wasn't, because he was engaged in a war together with allies that behaved as allies.

No, fighting those that are marching together is entirely as it should be.


What is considerably more questionable is the way AI's will happily attach and march around in offensive operations unconnected to the war the joined rather than only sticking with the stack in relevant theatres. It can lead to truly absurd situations and abuse of other countries' doomstacks. Then again, setting up nice rules for handling that, which aren't easily abusable by human players, is rather hard, so on the whole I prefer the current solution...for now... and until somebody comes up with a better one.

[Philo32b]

Yes, the AI is abusing it. I had a vassal rebel hide his 350 man army inside a 19,000 doomstack that ravaged my countryside. The 18,650 joined against the Muslims attack on my vassal, but apparently they didn't mind the detour up and down my very Catholic land, assaulting Catholic castles, cities, and churches.

There is a precedent for saying the allies should not fight who they are not at war with, even if that means not defending their ally: if you employ a Holy Order, they will stand by and let another Catholic ruler crush you.

[Garak]

It may be infuriating, but that certainly doesn't need to be fixed. Think about it.

There they are, the Apulian army joined together with other armies in a common struggle with a common goal... then your army appears on the scene. Do you SERIOUSLY suggest that what should happen in your scenario is that the Apulian allies should take a look at your army, say, this isn't our fight, and move aside to stand by while you slaughter their ally?

You committed a serious mistake and attacked somebody you thought was vulnerable, but who wasn't, because he was engaged in a war together with allies that behaved as allies.

No, fighting those that are marching together is entirely as it should be.


What is considerably more questionable is the way AI's will happily attach and march around in offensive operations unconnected to the war the joined rather than only sticking with the stack in relevant theatres. It can lead to truly absurd situations and abuse of other countries' doomstacks. Then again, setting up nice rules for handling that, which aren't easily abusable by human players, is rather hard, so on the whole I prefer the current solution...for now... and until somebody comes up with a better one.

Actually, yes, I kind of think they should. These seems amazingly easy to abuse, effectively trapping players in situations where they're getting attacked and can't defend themselves.

[ryousei]

This fix was for a different situation.

It was when the ALLY (attached army, lets call them B) is at war with a third party (C) and the main army (A) is not. This meant that A would sit there and do nothing while his ally B whose helping him in a war is getting wrecked.

To fix this they should make it so that only A can help B from hostiles to B. But not the other way around.

[SeekayEm]

Just had the same situation myself in a Lets Play I was recording.

Was waiting for the right time to launch a Ducal claim. Opponent then got attacked by Muslims and I decided this would be a good time to try to press the claim against him while he was tied up defending. Instead, his newly enlarged attached armies wiped me out.

Does this mean I should try to get Muslim hordes to attack me and then use any attached armies to batter a non-Muslim opponent? That's a huge turn around in strategy if true.

[31ric]

As i see it.
A and B in ally against some C. Then you D want to attack A. You should get warning that another dude probably will join war against you because they are currently ally in another war (doesnt matter def or off). Why probably, because if you are strong enough or have some relations with B, then B probably will not want to help A or even want to destroy ally against C with white peace or w/e.
But from other side. Lets say you are D and want to attack A, but B dude dont want to help you. Then you start war with C in which B joins you. Then you want to abuse system and attack A. But at this point B should reconsider his position in your war. He dont want to fight A. So i see 2 options here. 1 - you cant start another war if you have ally on your side during current war (or make check for ally opinion). 2 - you can start war, but if ally do not want fight second war, then it will quit current war.

[Inochi]

I proposed the following to give an accurate RP and historical feeling:

We discussed this for pages in another thread and frankly this leads to the fourth crusade all over. The emperor can help a rebel against you to claim your king title because he was attacked by muslims in a holy war.
You can NOT sabotage reinforcements of the helping troops since they are only hostile when they reach the doomstack.

All in all it is a bugged half assed fix for an old AI problem.

Why don't we let the highest ranked commander of a stack take charge? If a duke gets support from a king he leads the war or the emperor himself. The emperor would never accept commands from a duke! That way the doomstack of a duke can't abuse the emperor for his personal rebellion.

Ergo: If I attack the doomstack my army still dies in an obliged alliance battle, but the doomstack now lead by the emperor or king himself will not attack me and my holdings, because I am not his war target. Win-Win! You get your feature and we our realistic peace and punishment for sabotaging the holy war effort.

[Marquis d Blois]

I proposed the following to give an accurate RP and historical feeling:

We discussed this for pages in another thread and frankly this leads to the fourth crusade all over. The emperor can help a rebel against you to claim your king title because he was attacked by muslims in a holy war.
You can NOT sabotage reinforcements of the helping troops since they are only hostile when they reach the doomstack.

All in all it is a bugged half assed fix for an old AI problem.

Why don't we let the highest ranked commander of a stack take charge? If a duke gets support from a king he leads the war or the emperor himself. The emperor would never accept commands from a duke! That way the doomstack of a duke can't abuse the emperor for his personal rebellion.

Ergo: If I attack the doomstack my army still dies in an obliged alliance battle, but the doomstack now lead by the emperor or king himself will not attack me and my holdings, because I am not his war target. Win-Win! You get your feature and we our realistic peace and punishment for sabotaging the holy war effort.

I feel this would be a decent solution. However, I have a single question: what happens when, say, the Emperor decides that he isn't even close to being a decent leader, and instead appoints some count-level, baron-level or landless courtier character to lead the army - solely based on their supreme martial skills?
Because that would mean the Duke outranks all other commanders, and takes command of the Imperial doomstack. Or, should it be implemented so that the commander from the highest-ranking realm is the commander of the entire stack? Mostly that would be OK as usually the higher-ranking realms have more troops. However, it would allow player abuse - raise 100 troops as HRE, combine with several thousands of allied kingdom's troops - punish non-ally enemies.

[DEY123]

I know that the computer "abuses" the army stacking but this did happen in crusades. The prime example is the 4th crusade and the events leading up to the sack of Constantinople. I doubt all of the nobles in the crusade where from countries that declared war on the Byzantines or even agreed with what was happening but they were part of the army that did it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade

[Brucesim2003]

This is sounding like the air stacking rules from HOI1 v1.6 all over again. There, the player has a limit of 4 air units per battle, after which some pretty hefty combat maluses kick in. But the AI don't have these maluses. And boy does the AI exploit that fact.

Cheers


Bruce

[Peter Ebbesen]

This is sounding like the air stacking rules from HOI1 v1.6 all over again. There, the player has a limit of 4 air units per battle, after which some pretty hefty combat maluses kick in. But the AI don't have these maluses. And boy does the AI exploit that fact.

I must disagree. This issue sounds absolutely nothing like the HOI1 airpower issue.

This issue works exactly the same for AI and player alike, the only difference being that the player can bitch when the way it is used hurts him, while the AI cannot.

[gsp_rooster]

Here's the facts from my perspective.

If I were, for the sake of argument, the HRE, and I were called to war by an ally, say, Apulia, who was being attacked by Sicilian Muslims, then I would agree to aid Apulia in their defense against the Muslims. That's the war I'm pledging to aid in.

If, by some opportunist reaction, the Duchy of Salerno decides they will use Apulia's weakened state to try to press claims, then I, as the HRE, would probably feel obliged to aid Apulia ONLY if Salerno became an immediate obstacle to me through one of the following means: Attacking our mobile armies. Deliberately laying siege to a territory in the way of our intended goal (Sicily). Or aiding the Muslims by freeing a city Apulia had previously besieged.

My point is if Salerno's army is in Salerno, I have no reason to go out of my way to go after them when they're not the reason I got into this war in the first place. That's like saying "I pledge to help Taiwan regain Hong Kong!" Then going and stomping on Brazil. It doesn't make any sense.

The way this should work is that sovereignties drawn into an ally's war should have a deliberate goal, and any deviation from that deliberate goal should NOT draw them into conflict. If I, the HRE, say "Yes, I will help you against the Sicilian Muslims." my armies should make a bee line for Sicily, not go skipping off to Apulia for half a year to besiege someone that's neither Sicilian nor Muslim. On the same note, if, in my path to Sicily, I discover my ally, Apulia's city of whatever-land has been occupied by an enemy, I should probably try to retake it because it's in my freakin way and I have somewhere to be, and because I don't have a secure supply line without taking it first. I should not, under any circumstances, however, be bothered to go wage war with powers I have not pledged to help the Apulians defend themselves from when said powers do not lie on route to my promised destination.

He who declares aid to Benghazi against Ghaddaffi does not bomb Egypt. It's really that simple.

[Urfe]

I came to the forum to complain about almost the exact same situation (Salerno attacking Apulia while HRE was defending Apulia against jihad) when I found this thread. The mechanic makes no logical sense--the doomstack doesn't just protect its component units against attack (reasonable), it proactively takes the offensive and invades Christian territory rather than fight the holy war. Why would a faction with no stake interfere in a war between Christian powers?