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Combat outcomes. Numbers seem to be the only thing that counts.

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Lol at all the people claiming numbers aren't the only factor that matter...It's not an opinion at this point. It's fact. Even a 5-10% numbers advantage will trump three 20+ generals fighting three low teens generals.

I've seen many battles where army A has three 20+ generals and is sitting on hills. They get attacked by army B with three generals in the 10-12 range but army B has about 15% more men so they win, and not just win but in the end the losers have a couple hundred men left and the army lead by Mayor Bumblefart, Bishop Tripsydoo, and Count Lostmyhat has suffered bout 10% losses.

Those fights are the norm by far. Anybody who read what's 'supposed to happen' or what's 'intended' in the files and/or marketing material then piped up to claim "it's not just numbers" is pretty lost.
 
I think a significant contributor to the problem is that the skirmish phase lasts too long. My battles seem to be just about decided already by the time the melee phase starts. And of course it's the skirmish phase where the "basic" troops (light infantry and archers) shine against the better troop types, which perhaps is part of why lesser armies do so well.

Also I'm not 100% sure of this and others may disagree, but the "single flank" forces seem to have a fairly significant advantage over three-flank ones; for equal-sized armies they can send one-third of the enemy into retreat very quickly and the extra damage from the flanks doesn't seem to cause enough morale/manpower loss to counterbalance this so the second third of the army is quickly driven into retreat too. I think this is perhaps another reason why the peasant armies do so well.
Seems like the opposite should be the case, really.
 
OdinTGE said:
Lol at all the people claiming numbers aren't the only factor that matter...It's not an opinion at this point. It's fact. Even a 5-10% numbers advantage will trump three 20+ generals fighting three low teens generals.

I've seen many battles where army A has three 20+ generals and is sitting on hills. They get attacked by army B with three generals in the 10-12 range but army B has about 15% more men so they win, and not just win but in the end the losers have a couple hundred men left and the army lead by Mayor Bumblefart, Bishop Tripsydoo, and Count Lostmyhat has suffered bout 10% losses.

Those fights are the norm by far. Anybody who read what's 'supposed to happen' or what's 'intended' in the files and/or marketing material then piped up to claim "it's not just numbers" is pretty lost.
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It´s arguably much harder to balance than that.

Through from my experience indeed larger armies have the advantage most of the time even with martial and terrain not on their side, let´s analyze that closer.

1- If terrain effect is increased, it will be easier for the player to exploit the AI. "Come get here me on the hills after that river, dude!"
2- Another option would be making martial stronger. OK, not that bad actually. However, it will ONLY work if the distribution of traits is better. For example, a huge country like the Byzantines or the HRE will have a MUCH larger chance of fielding lots of Martial 20+ generals than say, an Emir or a polish king, making the blobs even stronger than they are. Therefore the only way to not make larger countries overpowered is giving cultures modifiers or making some traits more common is some cultures than in others.

In the end, all evidence apoints to the fact that eventually Paradox will have to make changes to make countries play differently from others. Since we don´t have National Ideas or Sliders like EU 3 has, the only possible thing is making traits or attributes more common in some cultures than others.
 
Polycrates said:
I think a significant contributor to the problem is that the skirmish phase lasts too long. My battles seem to be just about decided already by the time the melee phase starts. And of course it's the skirmish phase where the "basic" troops (light infantry and archers) shine against the better troop types, which perhaps is part of why lesser armies do so well.

Also I'm not 100% sure of this and others may disagree, but the "single flank" forces seem to have a fairly significant advantage over three-flank ones; for equal-sized armies they can send one-third of the enemy into retreat very quickly and the extra damage from the flanks doesn't seem to cause enough morale/manpower loss to counterbalance this so the second third of the army is quickly driven into retreat too. I think this is perhaps another reason why the peasant armies do so well.
Seems like the opposite should be the case, really.
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I agree with this. Surely the 1-flank mercs are 'surrounded' and being pincered? Isn't that a school boy error in terms of battlefield strategy? I might try changing the flank bonus as described on the other page.
 
Poddster said:
I agree with this. Surely the 1-flank mercs are 'surrounded' and being pincered? Isn't that a school boy error in terms of battlefield strategy? I might try changing the flank bonus as described on the other page.
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Seems fairly plausible that the mercs would win IMO. If they get bogged down they would get surrounded and cut apart but if they break through they mostly won already. Depends if the enemy is disciplined enough to hold together. Im not sure levies would be levelheaded enough to manage to win they loose a flank. Veterans might but there arent any veterans in the game.

Actually we really need veterans in the game now that i think about it. Maybe something like battle readiness as well.
 
Based on previous observation and my recent 7 year war with Muslims in northern Spain, the number of troops is less important than some other factor. I was attacked by 14,000 troops and had only 7,000 or so. I ended with 3k, they ended with 5k, but they broke and fled the province. I watched that pattern repeat throughout the war.
 
Certainly there is a significant flaw on the current battle system in CKII. Numbers are important, but it does not determine everything particularly in pre-modern society where each cultures had remarkably different tactics/strategies and concepts on warfare. I really want the dev. teams to seriously consider about this issue, but it would hardly happen until they make out a huge DLC or expansion kit.

BTW, I think it is not the matter of stats of generals or troops. The problem is every single culture in the game are sharing almost similar types of build-tech, which eventually made all the realms to pump out similar types of armies. Something should be done to correct this issue.
 
machine_parts said:
BTW, I think it is not the matter of stats of generals or troops. The problem is every single culture in the game are sharing almost similar types of build-tech, which eventually made all the realms to pump out similar types of armies. Something should be done to correct this issue.
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I believe you are right and will starting a thread local flavor. Don't get me wrong i enjoy the game tremendously but i think a future patch or expansion would be wonderful with this in mind.
 
Marfig said:
This is very true. Especially because European history is chockful of exactly the opposite. About every single of our countries has stories like this that we learn in school. Great battles won against all odds, due to terrain, troop composition and placement, and especially the skill of their leader.

I too am a bit disappointed at how battles outcomes in CKII are so easy to predict. I certainly don't expect to see miracle outcomes every 20 or 30 or even 100 battles. But it has at least become very clear after looking at many surviving stacks of two large armies after their fought, that troop numbers are having too much weight in the current algorithms.
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The reason you learn about them in school because those are by far the exception not the rule, in general something happened in this battle that made them noteworthy and worth studying most famously like Agincourt. Here's an interesting challenge write down every famous battle you know say pre 1800, get a number and then so some research into the numbers of wars in Western Europe and Northern Europe during the time of this game, I'm willing to bet most people will find the numbers of wars will be double or triple the number of famous non modern battle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe is a good place to start, and those mostly are the note worthy wars, there were 1000's of conflicts during this period on a small scale that weren't even worth a note in the history books of the time(well I should say records) i.e. in a game context this would be the conflict between counties. In a play thru when forces are equal (Now numbers within say 10% and I'm just pulling a number out of my ass) that's where skill and set up should come into play, but 999 times out of 1000 an army of 10K or 12K should always loose to the Army of 15K. There really should only be a couple miracle battles in a play thru.
 
I feel less able to deal with the King of England in CK2 than in CK1, playing as Ireland. This is because:
- Size of troops does seem to matter more now, and the English can field more than me at any given time, even with most of Scotland in tow.
- Attrition seems anaemic compared to CK1, and travel between realms is faster now, especially on boats.
- Ducal rebellions and succession wars seem to last a lot shorter than before, to the point that I often cannot nibble away at counties from rebelling English lords before their disagreement with their current King is over (my war ends 'inconclusively')
 
Seeing this thread reminds me of my CK1 days with El Cid as my marshal. Even troops 2x the size was no problem what so ever :).

Back to thread, I do agree that numbers are important in CK2. Martial skill appears now to just lessen your casualties some what a little.
 
Numbers are indeed the greatest predictor of battle results. Oftentimes if I see an enemy army with only a few hundred (of several thousand) more troops than I have, I will hire mercenaries because I recognize how likely I am to lose to a slightly larger army. I've also found that terrain is basically inconsequential in this game. I can even attack over rivers without too much difficulty, which is something I'd never do in previous Paradox titles.

Someone mentioned that if terrain were made more of a factor in battles, that players would simply exploit the AI. I fail to see how utilizing common sense combat bonuses is an exploit, and I'd hope the developers would take responsibility of programming an AI that chooses not to make foolish choices instead of simply making combat require no choices at all.

EU3 was vastly superior in terms of combat. There was more choice in regards to troop composition, more diversity in units, leaders were more valuable, terrain utilization was necessary, and attrition could play a major role in the outcome of a war. On that last note, I remember the first time I watched my army march all the way from France to Turkey without suffering any attrition; I was flabbergasted because this would never have been possible in other games, and rightfully so.
 
Numbers are pretty much it.

Being a thousand troops up just about guarantees victory for almost any battle. And the winner almost always suffers a tiny fraction of the loser's casualties.

Quality troops are nice, if your 13,000 regular troops can beat 12,000 troops, suffering 3,000 casualties to their 8,000... then your 13,000 elite troops can dish out the same but still have maybe 11,500 left -- letting you go charge the next 10k stack you find.

But your 13,000 elite troops will die just as readily to 15,000 men as your 13,000 regular troops.
 
I must admitt that I have no idea where this comes from. Sure - 1.5 advantage almost guarantees you a victory, but if you really lose while having 1k less troops, superior leaders and defending the river, then I guess you must be either broke or not very advanced in tech. I have never lost in such circumstances - in fact, I've often won against stronger armies Granted - most of the time it has to be small difference, though once I was caught by the enemy, and my around 7.3k troops have beaten 12k stack - though I have to admitt that it was early in the game and my enemy's provinces were all 0 or 1 military tech, while mine were 7-9.

I realise system isn't perfect and could be significantly improved BUT - it's defo better than EU 3 (opposite to what some of you say). If I have to chose between numbers being the biggest factor and the dice, I chose the numbers.
 
thezirk said:
On that last note, I remember the first time I watched my army march all the way from France to Turkey without suffering any attrition; I was flabbergasted because this would never have been possible in other games, and rightfully so.
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Yes, the attrition does feel odd in this game. Absolutely zero up to quite a large-sized army (lowest I saw was 5k, and that was in the desert), and then suddenly kicks in with an enormous punch (I was maybe 2k over the limit at one point and was getting hit with 13% attrition!). Particularly frustrating when crusading and some other idiot on the same side drives over your army with his 8k stack, knocking both of you out in droves.
I would expect attrition to be a much bigger factor in this game, especially given the timeframe and the fact that you're dealing with levies rather than professional armies.
 
What you guys don't see is that number is the primary factor only in some specific case.
First, you have to have the same technology. If one army has +1 in all military tech, he'll be able to win a 7k vs 10k without too much trouble.

Second, the roll dice is still here, a little hidden, but it's in the tactics selection. And I already saw a 5k vs 10k same technology, no terrain bonus lost because the tactics was the wrong one considering the army (let's make a spear wall with our 10 pikemen...). If you look at the bonuses and maluses of the tactics, you can see that it's pretty huge...

Third, the buildings can have a huge impact. Above all is the training ground granting a nice moral boost. And because battle are lots over moral when big numbers are in, this has a huge effect in them. There is also some specific culture buildings granting bonuses to some troops. Those seems quite nice but force you to focus on one type of units.

The type of units create a huge difference. Of course, at game start all army are the same which brings this element to 0. But if you go only toward archers, you might end up with some problems in fight or if you have enough, beat them in skirmish phase.
 
Zarine said:
What you guys don't see is that number is the primary factor only in some specific case.
First, you have to have the same technology. If one army has +1 in all military tech, he'll be able to win a 7k vs 10k without too much trouble.

Second, the roll dice is still here, a little hidden, but it's in the tactics selection. And I already saw a 5k vs 10k same technology, no terrain bonus lost because the tactics was the wrong one considering the army (let's make a spear wall with our 10 pikemen...). If you look at the bonuses and maluses of the tactics, you can see that it's pretty huge...

Third, the buildings can have a huge impact. Above all is the training ground granting a nice moral boost. And because battle are lots over moral when big numbers are in, this has a huge effect in them. There is also some specific culture buildings granting bonuses to some troops. Those seems quite nice but force you to focus on one type of units.

The type of units create a huge difference. Of course, at game start all army are the same which brings this element to 0. But if you go only toward archers, you might end up with some problems in fight or if you have enough, beat them in skirmish phase.
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But the army with the biggest stack still wins because all of the above is generally mitigated by proliferation of tech and structures and the spread between worst and best being pretty slim in the majority of the active western european gamespace. In fact its even possible to kill more troops than the AI in a battle and lose. I am very sorry for Pi on the battle system as it was a great idea and still could be with a few re-thinks and tweaks, but right now its not any more dynamic or exciting than the CK1 system. Which seems like a lot of effort and code to reproduce the same predictable results. :)
 
One thing that would help a lot:

Make Martial influence the TIME that each phase lasts. For example if your general is much better and you have much more archers, make the skirmish phase last LONGER. That way, it would simulate a bit better the fact that he used surprise and terrain preparation to it´s maximum effect, like in Poitiers. On the other hand if he had lots of heavy cavalry the effect would be opposite, shorter skirmish phase but longer melee, to simulate that he chose plains and therefore closed faster with the enemy. Just a bonus of +1 or +2 days in each phase would make a difference.

However, my previous point still stands, if distribution of Martial is the same as it is now the blobs will be even stronger. So this will have to be adressed before any buff to Martial is done.
 
I think it would be nice if not only the skills of your martial mattered more, but also the state martial ability of your ruler. As it is now, this is pretty much the weakest of all your ruler stats. Diplomacy and stewardship are useful all around for every ruler. Intrigue is strong defensively and offensively. Learning increases all tech growth, which is a bit underwhelming. Martial increase tech growth on only 1/3 of your tech and doesn't appear to have any other benefit. I don't think it should work directly into flank bonus directly like the commander does, but perhaps something overall that affects the skill of your military like morale and levy size.
 
I would be more concerned about the fact that a 9k army can won easily versus 10k if you put them all on the same flank but would loose if you put them across all 3 flanks because the moral of each flank is completly separated.

And when you'll experience 10k loosing to 5k because of the bad tactics of the army leader, you won't say that only number matter...
It's just that so far it was rather even for you, like it was for most battle during that period. There are still some "omg what happen with this battle" that create what you're waiting for.
 
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