The state of warfare

[masteriw]

Incredibly annoying and unhelpful in a thread that highlights a problem that would under no circumstances be solved by moving little army men around, unless you think "solving" it would mean cheesing naval invasions even harder or snake occupations or tedious siege baiting or any of the other dairy-based nonsense that such a system inevitably makes players construct their gameplay around. Begone.

So playing the game is tedious and nonsensical? What's good then? Clicking "ADVANCE FRONT", then watching everything go absolutely bananas because the system doesn't work?

Are you absolutely sure that actually moving the units would "under no circumstances" be able to solve this game's military issues?

I don't know why some people defend this game's war system so much, it's like there's some ideological component to removing control over the army, like it's the future of gaming or something, lol.

The funny part is that, while V3's war system seems to be derived off of Hearts of Iron, that game actually has countries moving hundreds of individual units moving across thousands of tiny provinces. V3 attempted to transform the most micro-intensive war system in the PDX universe into the most simplistic one, with no units on the map, very few provinces, and a myriad of other limitations. It's no wonder it can't work properly. If they wanted an auto-battling system at least they should have based it off the old V2 system and just have one decisive, gigantic battle decide the whole war. In cases where naval warfare is needed they could also have a single decisive naval battle and then the one who loses it, fights the ensuing decisive land battle in their home front and that's it. At least wars would actually end, every now and then I still come across a never-ending Franco-Prussian War that reaches the 1936 end date with no end in sight.

It's also funny how the current system is sometimes very finicky and sometimes very relaxed, they require a minimum amount of ships to transport a certain amount of land troops, but it's the same number, no matter whether they're dreadnoughts or caravels, they can all transport the same amount of land troops, which also "weigh" all the same, peasant levies with pitchforks or fully armored tank divisions. Why bother creating such a restriction if you can't be arsed to make the simplest of calculations?

 

[Prob32]

So playing the game is tedious and nonsensical? What's good then? Clicking "ADVANCE FRONT", then watching everything go absolutely bananas because the system doesn't work?

Are you absolutely sure that actually moving the units would "under no circumstances" be able to solve this game's military issues?

I don't know why some people defend this game's war system so much, it's like there's some ideological component to removing control over the army, like it's the future of gaming or something, lol.

The funny part is that, while V3's war system seems to be derived off of Hearts of Iron, that game actually has countries moving hundreds of individual units moving across thousands of tiny provinces. V3 attempted to transform the most micro-intensive war system in the PDX universe into the most simplistic one, with no units on the map, very few provinces, and a myriad of other limitations. It's no wonder it can't work properly. If they wanted an auto-battling system at least they should have based it off the old V2 system and just have one decisive, gigantic battle decide the whole war. In cases where naval warfare is needed they could also have a single decisive naval battle and then the one who loses it, fights the ensuing decisive land battle in their home front and that's it. At least wars would actually end, every now and then I still come across a never-ending Franco-Prussian War that reaches the 1936 end date with no end in sight.

It's also funny how the current system is sometimes very finicky and sometimes very relaxed, they require a minimum amount of ships to transport a certain amount of land troops, but it's the same number, no matter whether they're dreadnoughts or caravels, they can all transport the same amount of land troops, which also "weigh" all the same, peasant levies with pitchforks or fully armored tank divisions. Why bother creating such a restriction if you can't be arsed to make the simplest of calculations?

I think that a lot of folks see the potential of the current war system, but it lacks agency and flavor at the moment.

The idea of Hoi4 with battle planning only is actually not a bad idea for a game like Victoria but we need it to A) Work well with front splits & B) Give us some of the other hoi4 elements like doctrine trees and army high command. Beyond this there's also opportunity if PDX takes it to have this war system give us new agency and gameplay loops that are novel and fun, perhaps logistics allocations, network building? But if I'm not spending all my time just right clicking an entire war maybe theres something else I can do.

I think that the V2 and Eu4 have some serious issues as well that people are looking at with rose tinted glasses when they just blanket say we should move to that system. Microing little stacks around is annoying and tedious and might make sense when the only way to grow your power is to gain more land but that is not the case for the industrial revolution.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

So playing the game is tedious and nonsensical? What's good then? Clicking "ADVANCE FRONT", then watching everything go absolutely bananas because the system doesn't work?

Are you absolutely sure that actually moving the units would "under no circumstances" be able to solve this game's military issues?

I don't know why some people defend this game's war system so much, it's like there's some ideological component to removing control over the army, like it's the future of gaming or something, lol.

The funny part is that, while V3's war system seems to be derived off of Hearts of Iron, that game actually has countries moving hundreds of individual units moving across thousands of tiny provinces. V3 attempted to transform the most micro-intensive war system in the PDX universe into the most simplistic one, with no units on the map, very few provinces, and a myriad of other limitations. It's no wonder it can't work properly. If they wanted an auto-battling system at least they should have based it off the old V2 system and just have one decisive, gigantic battle decide the whole war. In cases where naval warfare is needed they could also have a single decisive naval battle and then the one who loses it, fights the ensuing decisive land battle in their home front and that's it. At least wars would actually end, every now and then I still come across a never-ending Franco-Prussian War that reaches the 1936 end date with no end in sight.

It's also funny how the current system is sometimes very finicky and sometimes very relaxed, they require a minimum amount of ships to transport a certain amount of land troops, but it's the same number, no matter whether they're dreadnoughts or caravels, they can all transport the same amount of land troops, which also "weigh" all the same, peasant levies with pitchforks or fully armored tank divisions. Why bother creating such a restriction if you can't be arsed to make the simplest of calculations?

Well, moving units personally wouldn’t solve this particular issue assuming the conquered territory was the same with controllable units or not. If there’s any failure on the OP’s strategy was the failure of doing a naval invasion to Washington D.C. in the first place. Which also brings the point that I will agree that naval invasions right now are complete bullshit, both in terms of you as Japan being able to perform a naval invasion from the Home Islands to, say, London to the calculation involved in how the naval invasion battle is performed.

Edit: to the people disagreeing, care to elaborate on what you disagree with? Is it that you guys think naval invasions are fine? Or is it that controlling units directly and controlling the same territory would lead to a different outcome?

 

[VineFynn]

The guy is on record as wanting this game to fail and says the same thing in every thread. Just ignore them.

Edit: they just went through my old posts and downvoted them lol

 

[Superdark33]

What i hope for warfare is for Supply and Convoys to be more punishing, especially when it comes to naval invasions.

It shouldnt be trivial to pack up multiple dozens of thousands of dudes into boats and send them to easily take over a port, and neither should sending them on a walk to the other side of the conteinent.

Large armies should be VERY expansive to handle around, and it could simulate the difficulty of the russian empire to subugate the caucasus or how the british empire lost to the zulu army in battles.

Thats been a big problem for other PDX games as well, with colonizations starting wayyyy ahead of schedule because the logistic issues just arent there.

 

[agonistes]

don’t want to derail the thread but I don’t understand the fascination with stockpiles. Literally the problem stockpiles are being asked for to solve here is that losing a core territory in the middle of a war would be really disruptive to your economy. This isn’t a problem that needs solving. Typically people ask for stockpiles to fix the problem that when they fight a huge war they need to scale out their war industry. This is also a non-problem. At a very low level, ignoring the way the game abstracts them already, stockpiles increase realism, but I’m still waiting for the case that they increase realistic outcomes.

Doesn't an arms shortage give your military a debuff?

Seems to me stockpiles increase realistic outcomes if the mechanics are in place to allow them to so so.

 

[kuba_mar]

What i hope for warfare is for Supply and Convoys to be more punishing, especially when it comes to naval invasions.

It shouldnt be trivial to pack up multiple dozens of thousands of dudes into boats and send them to easily take over a port, and neither should sending them on a walk to the other side of the conteinent.

Large armies should be VERY expansive to handle around, and it could simulate the difficulty of the russian empire to subugate the caucasus or how the british empire lost to the zulu army in battles.

Thats been a big problem for other PDX games as well, with colonizations starting wayyyy ahead of schedule because the logistic issues just arent there.

Ive been thinking about exactly this recently and yeah, these are much needed changes.

Deploying your armies must come at a noticeable requirements and cost, even if its just across the country, railways should be far more important for this than right now, this would make a big difference for two nations in particular, it would severely limit Russian force projection in the east until they establish the trans siberian railway further incentivizing it, and China which would struggle to utilize its big army until they modernize and industrialize.

The other, imo even more important thing is overseas deployments and naval invasions, these need to be much harder and costly, being cut off from supplies also needs to be an actual death sentence for them. We should not be seeing naval invasion rivalling D-Day in China or Russia deploying hundreds of thousands in Central Africa.

TLDR: logistics should win wars.

Though i suppose theres also a case here for the political side of things to go along with this where on top of your limited capacity in a far away conflict your pops might also take more issue with spending and deaths related to such conflicts.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

TLDR: logistics should win wars.

Though i suppose theres also a case here for the political side of things to go along with this where on top of your limited capacity in a far away conflict your pops might also take more issue with spending and deaths related to such conflicts.

Agree on that, also, technically that's where casualties and probable loss of SoL can affect the war support of your population.
I honestly think that a powerful, grateful Armed Forces should decrease your war exhaustion instead of strengthening the troops. It is a militarized society, everyone joins the war effort even if it is just donating their pans for turning into weapons.
If anything, there should be more emphasis on the training of units (and the costs associated in keeping a very large, trained, professional army) during peace time for long periods of time.

 

[agonistes]

I want a ship designer and stuff for my navy to do.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

Seems to me stockpiles increase realistic outcomes if the mechanics are in place to allow them to so so.

France (and Germany, and the UK) blew through their "6-9 month" stockpile in the first month-ish and were only producing ~10,000 shells/month at the start and had to massively ramp up production over the first year because as I and other have been saying, there was no realistic way to stockpile the amount of shells needed in a war by that point. I feel like this is more than covered by how the game does it now, with building reserves and the ability to buy shells even under a shortage, just at much higher cost.

 

[Desseabar]

France (and Germany, and the UK) blew through their "6-9 month" stockpile in the first month-ish and were only producing ~10,000 shells/month at the start and had to massively ramp up production over the first year because as I and other have been saying, there was no realistic way to stockpile the amount of shells needed in a war by that point. I feel like this is more than covered by how the game does it now, with building reserves and the ability to buy shells even under a shortage, just at much higher cost.

WWI is an exceptional case, though; of course you can't stockpile enough for WWI. But mobilizing 10,000 men for a moderate colonial conflict shouldn't immediately result in a shortage.

I think the flipside is that people are saying a military shortage should be devastating, if stockpiles allow greater consumption smoothing.

Th other issue here is that you can't convert existing industry for a total war. Previously you could shift fertilizer->explosive production, but right now there's no way to shift eg an engine factory to product artillery or tanks, so you're stuck waiting several months to build a brand new factory that will just be abandoned at the end of the war.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Th other issue here is that you can't convert existing industry for a total war. Previously you could shift fertilizer->explosive production, but right now there's no way to shift eg an engine factory to product artillery or tanks, so you're stuck waiting several months to build a brand new factory that will just be abandoned at the end of the war.

On that, I 100% agree, it would be nice if we could have more civilian industries that generate a secondary military by-product that can be converted during wartime. The chemical industry flipping from fertilizer to explosives is a good example, and if the conversion of the PM wasn’t automatic but gradual, that would be even better. Then you could have the same thing for engine factories producing tanks/trucks and the steel mills could have a secondary PM to make shells or maybe small arms but at a reduced production compared to a full fledged small arms factory.

 

[Desseabar]

On that, I 100% agree, it would be nice if we could have more civilian industries that generate a secondary military by-product that can be converted during wartime. The chemical industry flipping from fertilizer to explosives is a good example, and if the conversion of the PM wasn’t automatic but gradual, that would be even better. Then you could have the same thing for engine factories producing tanks/trucks and the steel mills could have a secondary PM to make shells or maybe small arms but at a reduced production compared to a full fledged small arms factory.

Honestly, this seems completely possible to mod in; there's lots of examples of people adjusting PMs, and of course balancing becomes a challenge.

I think the bigger challenge is probably deciding what should be able to produce what, realistically. Automotive plants shifting to tanks is a good real world example, but you could theoretically produce basically any wartime good and I imagine it would be very difficult to create a legible UI for that. How do you decide if your cannery should convert to arms, artillery, munitions or a dozen other goods?

The other option would be "brownfield development" where a level of a building can be converted to a new form of industry at reduced cost and time. I like that because it fulfills a few criteria: it's more legible to the player, it adds construction/removed productivity friction to make it more costly, and it allows these emergency conversions.

 

[PerAspera]

View attachment 1122178
I've never been one to go in on the complaints about the warfare system in Victoria 3, I always found it meh, if at times very frustrating. But my latest game I gave Spain a go, with the aim of recapturing the Americas. Its gone pretty well, and I've taken over all of the former Spanish colonies, the sole downside is that I've inherited Mexico's problems with the US. We've had a few wars with mixed results.
So the latest war America has tried to take California and one of the Northern states of New Spain, my war goals are Arizona and New Mexico, then I decide to try and liberate New Africa to try and weaken the US. Fortunately as the defender, Russia and the UK join me, whereas no one joins America, so far so good. Now the screenshot shows the war when its been dragging on, but all looks to be going well, America is absolutely screwed and nearly the whole country is occupied. But you will spy the war score, which is looking decidedly bad for Spain.
Despite America getting completely wrecked, both Russia and Britain quit. Not great but it doesn't matter at this point. Thus we arrive to the time of the screenshot. In a few ticks, I will surrender. Not because I want to, my economy is coping and my military is winning, but just because that's what the game says happens. Despite nearly their whole country being occupied, America has been sat on 0, refusing to even go to -1. Despite the continual defeat of their armies, and the loss of all that territory, apparently this is what losing looks like.
I genuinely don't know what to do here, I like the game, but this is so beyond broken that I dont think its playable in its current state. I cant fathom who thought it would be a good idea to give the player no control over capitulating in a war. I dont know if the DLC is going to make any difference, but I dont want to sink hours into a game, then just get shafted by a terribly designed war system, that makes me give up land even when I've defeated the enemy.
Rant over, thanks for listening!

Wow, that's really a pickle.
I have been trying to decode your situation for a while to see if I can come up with some useful advice but so far I'm drawing blanks, I suspect the issue may be in the wargoals though.
Without seeing the wargoals screen the most I can do is hazard a guess as to what is going on (and probably make a fool out of myself in the process, but whatever).

Regarding warscore against the US: if I am not mistaken warscore can only go negative if you have occupied the enemy capital or if you reached the wargoal objectives for all your primary demands (I think it's just the primary demands, it may well be all of them, I'm not sure on this), so I can can only imagine that the problem may be your attempt to liberate New Africa: if you made that a primary goal (or if you actually need all goals) then you will never push the warscore in the negative unless you fully occupy all the territory belonging to New Africa under control of the US, so you are definitely missing Florida, and possibly some other state in the Dixie area.

Regarding warscore against you: this is much harder to gauge blind. The most obvious idea would be capital occupation, have the US launched naval landings against your mainland? Is your capital free from enemy control? If the answer to these is yes then the cause may be some shenanigan with the target of the wargoals.
I admit I am reaching a lot with this hypothesis, but I think it may work something like this:

• US lauches "return California" diplomatic play on New Spain/Mexico, the wargoal targets NS/Mexico,
• you get dragged into the war as NS suzereign, this does not change the target of the original wargoal to you though,
• seeing you as effectively a cobelligerant the US declares a wargoal against you specifically, this is the only WG actually targeting you,
• the US somehow reaches the wargoal against you, as that's the only wargoal on you specifically your warscore starts ticking negative,
• separate warscore against NS technically still sits at 0 as California is not occupied, but since, as a subject, they can't stay in war after you capitulate, they autoconcede and give up all the demands levied against them as soon as you drop out of the war.

This mechanic would effectively work like secessions/revolutions in subjects work: if you capitulate, the subject autoloses, but if you win you can not enforce demands, because the wargoal doesn't target you, so you have to wait till your subject decides to enforce (which is very annoying BTW). The difference being a secession/rebellion has its demands set automatically, so they can't "force a victory" by enforcing something else on you.

Still this are just assumptions and may well mean nothing, could you perhaps show us if the US has some occupations going and what the stated wargoals are?

Thanks and sorry for the wall of text.

 

[Prob32]

Honestly, this seems completely possible to mod in; there's lots of examples of people adjusting PMs, and of course balancing becomes a challenge.

I think the bigger challenge is probably deciding what should be able to produce what, realistically. Automotive plants shifting to tanks is a good real world example, but you could theoretically produce basically any wartime good and I imagine it would be very difficult to create a legible UI for that. How do you decide if your cannery should convert to arms, artillery, munitions or a dozen other goods?

The other option would be "brownfield development" where a level of a building can be converted to a new form of industry at reduced cost and time. I like that because it fulfills a few criteria: it's more legible to the player, it adds construction/removed productivity friction to make it more costly, and it allows these emergency conversions.

This is why I think that buildings need to be separated from industry. Buildings are multi specific pieces of capital not fixed to a certain good. Instead of just a PM as you suggested. I’ll present two use cases for this.

Use case 1: You’re in a war and you need to increase tank and gun production, you should be able to buy and convert textile and engine plants over to these types of industries.

Use case 2:
You’ve got 90 textile mills in a single state out of a total of 100 factory type buildings in that state. If something happens to an input good, say dye shortage for example those buildings should lose profitability and start to sell off their buildings. This should in-turn cause a drop in the price of new build constructions and then component goods. The net result should be a cascading effect of a “crash” in GDP.

This could also happen if you over speculate in a state and build more buildings than industries can make profitable such that you tank your construction pricing.

This would be a very natural ground up rework of the mechanic I’d love to see

 

[CaesarVincens]

Wow, that's really a pickle.
I have been trying to decode your situation for a while to see if I can come up with some useful advice but so far I'm drawing blanks, I suspect the issue may be in the wargoals though.
Without seeing the wargoals screen the most I can do is hazard a guess as to what is going on (and probably make a fool out of myself in the process, but whatever).

Regarding warscore against the US: if I am not mistaken warscore can only go negative if you have occupied the enemy capital or if you reached the wargoal objectives for all your primary demands (I think it's just the primary demands, it may well be all of them, I'm not sure on this), so I can can only imagine that the problem may be your attempt to liberate New Africa: if you made that a primary goal (or if you actually need all goals) then you will never push the warscore in the negative unless you fully occupy all the territory belonging to New Africa under control of the US, so you are definitely missing Florida, and possibly some other state in the Dixie area.

Regarding warscore against you: this is much harder to gauge blind. The most obvious idea would be capital occupation, have the US launched naval landings against your mainland? Is your capital free from enemy control? If the answer to these is yes then the cause may be some shenanigan with the target of the wargoals.
I admit I am reaching a lot with this hypothesis, but I think it may work something like this:

• US lauches "return California" diplomatic play on New Spain/Mexico, the wargoal targets NS/Mexico,
• you get dragged into the war as NS suzereign, this does not change the target of the original wargoal to you though,
• seeing you as effectively a cobelligerant the US declares a wargoal against you specifically, this is the only WG actually targeting you,
• the US somehow reaches the wargoal against you, as that's the only wargoal on you specifically your warscore starts ticking negative,
• separate warscore against NS technically still sits at 0 as California is not occupied, but since, as a subject, they can't stay in war after you capitulate, they autoconcede and give up all the demands levied against them as soon as you drop out of the war.

This mechanic would effectively work like secessions/revolutions in subjects work: if you capitulate, the subject autoloses, but if you win you can not enforce demands, because the wargoal doesn't target you, so you have to wait till your subject decides to enforce (which is very annoying BTW). The difference being a secession/rebellion has its demands set automatically, so they can't "force a victory" by enforcing something else on you.

Still this are just assumptions and may well mean nothing, could you perhaps show us if the US has some occupations going and what the stated wargoals are?

Thanks and sorry for the wall of text.

For the US's war support, you're on the right track as far as not achieving either capital occupation or wargoal occupation (and it's all demands, not just primary). I'm not sure if liberate requires occupying only the potential capital of the liberated country or all of its potential states, but from the image, I think it's the latter, as Georgia appears to be occupied and that is the capital of New Africa.

As for OP's war support, you're somewhat off the mark. In the OP's case, the only US wargoals are against New Spain, and so the OP as Spain has no wargoals targeting them, since there are no wargoals targeting them, they have no block on war support dropping below 0. The US does not need to occupy any centimeter of Spanish territory, only hold out long enough for their war support to drop. It's also not a matter of waiting for the subject to enforce (which they cannot do as the non-primary participant).

There are also currently some issues with not being able to offer peace before the other side capitulates (due to subject wargoals/subjects targeted by wargoals), but that's typically only in the case of subject revolutions or secessions, not 'regular' wars.

 

[agonistes]

France (and Germany, and the UK) blew through their "6-9 month" stockpile in the first month-ish and were only producing ~10,000 shells/month at the start and had to massively ramp up production over the first year because as I and other have been saying, there was no realistic way to stockpile the amount of shells needed in a war by that point. I feel like this is more than covered by how the game does it now, with building reserves and the ability to buy shells even under a shortage, just at much higher cost.

Realistic and historically accurate are not the same thing.

I'm curious as to what conditions prevented there being a 'realistic way to stockpile' at that point. After all, if they could store some, the capability to store more is implicit.

Or was it just poor planning?

 

[stallins]

The war system is objectively bad, people seem to be clinging onto some golden ideal of what the war system is or trying to achieve but as it exists and is implemented it makes 0 sense, is frustrating and fucks up in irreparable ways.

 

[Prob32]

The war system is objectively bad, people seem to be clinging onto some golden ideal of what the war system is or trying to achieve but as it exists and is implemented it makes 0 sense, is frustrating and fucks up in irreparable ways.

I don’t understand these comments. The devs aren’t going back to stacks of individual units and that system has its own flaws.

Is the current system broken? Sure. Does that mean in its full vision working correctly it will always be bad? No.

 

[masteriw]

I don’t understand these comments. The devs aren’t going back to stacks of individual units and that system has its own flaws.

Is the current system broken? Sure. Does that mean in its full vision working correctly it will always be bad? No.

No, actually this system will always be bad. Do you think HoI4 can work without moving divisions? Because that's what V3 is trying to do.

What's its "full vision" anyway? Auto HOI4 that magically works without units and without enough provinces? Also without supply, logistics, air, production, doctrines?