Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #23 - Fronts and Generals

[lachek]

I'm not sure I follow this. If I have a mountain specialist and I tell them to attack the enemy's forest specialist, do they fight in a mountain, a forest, or neither? (Assuming that all three of these options are present on the front.) Is it dependent on their relative command ability or some other trait/skill?

It's weight-based, not deterministic. But in this case there's a high chance that the battle will take place in either mountain or forest compared to other terrain - because the advancing party will want to fight in mountain, while the defending party will want to fight in forest, so both will try to arrange for the battle to transpire in "their" province.

An important mindset shift here is that it's not that one army is trying to seek out another army to do battle, but rather that the advancing army is trying to capture territory - preferably without a fight, or fighting as small a number as possible - while the defending army is trying to stop that with as large a force as possible. This is a bit different from other PDS games where you usually try to make your stack chase down an enemy stack, with sieging provinces being something you only do after the enemy stack is defeated and before they come back with a larger force.

 

[lachek]

And how many european fronts does a war between Netherlands and Germany versus Belgium, Luxembourg and France has? One continuous front? 4?

Netherlands - Belgium
Germany - Belgium
Germany - Luxembourg
Germany - France

 

[lachek]

So the political power they get from generals depend on how many troops they command?

Yes, indirectly - it depends on their Rank, which affects how many troops they are "owed".

Can we reassign generals so we send problematic generals to minor armies in the colonies instead of keeping them at home with the big army?

Rehoming Generals between Strategic Regions is not part of the system as this would be too fiddly and introduce some unfortunate exploits. However, getting this option as a one-time thing to deal with a problematic General would be a very cool event! I'll ping the appropriate people.

 

[lachek]

This seems very flawed. It makes total sense for factories, and even some sense for administrative buildings, but military deployment doesn't work like that at all. If you recruit some lads from Yorkshire, you can ship them to Singapore tomorrow, whether they like it or not. You don't build a barracks in Singapore and then wait for the lads to take their sweet time to pack up.

You can build Barracks in Yorkshire, recruit your lads, and send your Yorkshire lads to Singapore when there's trouble brewing there if you like.
You can also raise conscripts in Yorkshire and ship 'em out as you need them.

But we're not talking about sending an army for temporary deployment overseas here. If you want a military base in Singapore, that houses, trains, and equips your troops, serves as a military logistics center, and supports their families for multiple generations - your ability to operate it will depend on the local market access, infrastructure, population etc. in Singapore. You can encourage Pops to move there from other parts of your country, certainly, but that's a separate mechanic.

 

[lachek]

Thank you, that's very reassuring. Staying on that example, if I do ship them from Yorkshire to Singapore because trouble is brewing, but I don't have a barracks there, will they all starve? In other words, are barracks your only logistics center?

The Barracks in Yorkshire is still considered their logistics center, so the troops now in Singapore must be supplied via an overseas route (more on that next week) from the Barracks in Yorkshire that handles all their acquisitions.

 

[lachek]

It's past midnight so I'm packing it in for the night now, thanks for the conversation and opportunity to answer some questions folks!
Looking forward to talking boats next week!

 

[DebbieElla]

Thread cleaned up again. Reminder: Do not respond to trolls, report and move on.