Battle Condition Changes
Where to start? I guess the first place would probably be Battle Condition Rerolls. During battles there is now a chance that Battle Conditions will be rerolled multiple times throughout the course of the battle. When a Battle Condition is rerolled, there is a 10 day waiting period before the chance for it to reroll again. After the 10 days, each tick will increase the chance of the Battle Condition changing by 2%. This will repeat until the battle is over.
Command Script Changes
One of the biggest quality of life changes made was the amount of changes to what we refer to as the command scripts, a series of scripted values that decides how a war will progress. The goal of these changes is to remove as much randomness as possible when it comes to which general is picked to lead the battle, the amount of troops being allocated to said battle, and selection of the provinces when the battle is to take place.
Firstly, when it comes to the selection of generals (as previously brought up in the Game Jam Part 1 dev diary) there are now more factors in consideration for selecting the general who will lead the battle when the advancement bar goes up. Generals that have specialized defensive or offensive traits now have an increased chance of being selected. This will make it less likely that a general with the Expert Defensive Strategist Trait will lead an offensive battle while your Experienced Offensive Planner Trait general is left behind twiddling his thumbs. The troops under the command of the general are also taken into account. If one general has more modern troops as their base PM then that general and thus those units will also have a higher chance of being selected for the battle.
The size of battles used to be determined mainly by the infrastructure of a state. After that, it would compare the average offensive and defensive values of both sides, potentially boosting the numerical advantage of the side with inferior troops to compensate. These were the main determining factors for bringing more troops to a battle. We have now revamped the script to make it so these checks feel more impactful for having more troops.
After the province is selected, the script will go through the following checks to determine the size of the battle:
- Start with the total number of battalions on the front
- Subtract a random number of battalions proportional to the length of the front
- Cap by a force limit determined by the battle province's infrastructure and combat width
- Increase the side with the most battalions by a random value proportional to their relative numeric advantage
The final big change is the province selection. For this we have implemented additional checks and Strategic Objectives, which we will talk about in the following section. We have added a more reliable way of measuring the distance to either the closest Strategic Objective or the closest Wargoal, and scoring provinces higher the closer they are. When choosing a battle location, a few of the highest scoring provinces will be picked out and then the battle will be selected to take place at one of them. The group of provinces will be selected based on whether an active Strategic Objective applies to that front or not. If no Strategic Objective is placed then it will default to the closest Wargoal.
Strategic Objectives
Now for the big addition to the military system for 1.2, Strategic Objectives. I hinted at it a little before but we will go through it now. Strategic objectives are a way for the player to more control the direction in which a front advances. The player can now target a state per theater for their generals to attack towards. The Strategic Objective will not be removed until after the war is concluded or if the state is conquered by another nation. This is to allow you to keep the state targeted so if control is lost in that state, subsequent battles will target it again automatically. As stated in the last section, not selecting a strategic objective won't prevent a specific push in a direction. The generals will still go after the closest wargoals.
War Exhaustion Changes
The next change is to War Exhaustion. Some of these changes have been brought up in Dev Diary 75, go and check that one out again if you want additional information. War exhaustion wasn’t working in a way that we enjoyed. Taking a small amount of land holding it until the war was over is all that was required to get enough of a ticking war exhaustion and waiting till the end. We wanted to shift this so casualties will have a higher impact on the war itself. To this end we increased the impact on War Exhaustion for casualties, and decreased the amount of exhaustion for taking a small amount of land. However, the amount of exhaustion will now scale based on the amount of land that is occupied, the more land you occupy the more the exhaustion will scale up instead of being a percentage of a fixed value that correlates to the amount of land occupied.
It’s time to move on to the Quality of Life changes. These are the changes to the Equipment Adjustment modifier for military buildings, better information regarding selection of units and stopping reinforcements from joining during active battles.
Let's start with the changes to the Equipment Adjustment Modifier for military buildings when switching Production methods. The modifier has been increased from 75% to 80%, however there is now a second modifier for all the secondary Production method groups. This modifier is only a 20% reduction in the offense and defense of your units. If you swap out both a primary and secondary Production Method at the same time, it will combine to a 100%. Swapping out Artillery, Reconnaissance or Specialist Companies will not reset the primary modifier like it did previously.
Another change we did was to the amount of information given to the player when there is an ongoing battle. Now in the Battle Tab, next to the Start of Battle number of soldiers, there is now an information icon that allows you to see how the size of the battle is being determined.
Finally the last change we have added to the battles is that battalions currently engaged in battle will never be reinforced by their barracks hiring new soldiers. New manpower generated from the new servicemen will join the battalions only after they have detached from the battle. This could frequently lead to battles lasting forever as both sides would just keep cycling in more and more troops effectively making the front unable to move.
That’s all from me. Thank you again to all of you who participated in the Open Beta. I will see you all again next time for the 1.2 Patchnotes.
