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Hello guys!

So today we will be talking about some changes we have made to make our combat less bloody, which has particularly been an issue since patch 2.4. We have also worked on making the outcome of entire wars not be decided in one stroke by whomever happens to have pissed off Lady Fortuna...

First off, we have adopted the “shattered retreat” from EU4, meaning when an army is defeated it will run back to somewhere relatively safe so that the enemy can’t keep ping-ponging it until it is annihilated. Peasant rabble that rises against your enlightened and glorious rule, however, will immediately disperse on defeat so you don’t have to chase them down. But nobles within your realm that betray you and revolt will try and run for a safe haven.

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The second feature we have added is that while your damaged army is at home it will reinforce its levies directly (rather than the Holding garrison), meaning you can choose if you want to employ the garrisoned levies immediately by dismissing and re-raising your levies, or decide it is too risky (since your army will then be split all over your Kingdom and be easy pickings for the enemy) and instead choose to have your army stand back and rest for a while and be slowly refilled with troops instead.

The equation for how losses were calculated has also been changed. Before, it was based on the troops getting damaged by almost exponential amounts. This could, in some cases, cause really ridiculous damage like 2 million casualties, when it was armies of thousands fighting each other. This has been changed, and the associated values tweaked severely to prevent the crazy casualties yet still ensure that enough soldiers die in battles. For math nerds this is how it works now:

Defending means here the unit taking damage, both units will be defending and attacking at the same time and does not denote who initiated the combat. DamagePerMan is a value calculated as a even distribution of the total damage each soldier takes.
Code:
((DamagePerMan * AmountOfDefendingTroops) / DefenseValue) * AmountOfDefendingTroops = LossesInTroops
Has been changed to
Code:
(DamagePerMan * AmountOfDefendingTroops) / DefenseValue = LossesInTroops
Not a very big change but it does have profound effects on the result.

Beside simple combat mechanic changes there have been some improvements and bug fixes to the AI to give players a better challenge, focusing mostly on making allied AIs coordinate better between themselves. Oh, and the Mongol AI has been given its balls back, making them a lot more aggressive than they ever were before...

You asked for it….
 
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Thats good for the Monqols.

But will Nomads be EASIER to defeat by tribes in the East ex: Rus, Perm, Avaria

And will Magyars stop dieing out so quickly?
 
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We have also worked on making the outcome of entire wars not be decided in one stroke by whomever happens to have pissed off Lady Fortuna...

But...decisiveness of battles has always been one of my favorite aspects of ck2. Granted you've not talked in detail about what you guys are doing, but that deciseiveness and slight unpredictability is what keeps adrenaline rushing in my veins, and it is what gives the AI a little bit of a fighting chance against me.
 
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I'm a fan of shattered retreat. I wasn't a fan when it was introduced in EU4, but then coming back to CK2 I definitely found it obnoxious to lose one fight by a sliver of morale, and have that mean the end of the war as the enemy can just repeatedly crush you province after province. If the warscore from battles remains high, and damage still somewhat relevant, this should be a good change, since you'll still lose a lot of troops and war score for losing a big battle, but you won't insta-die and get dogpiled.

Refilling armies directly from levy, also good. I'm interested to see what the result of both of these changes are with regards to defensive wars. With your army finding it easier to survive and easier to reinforce in home territory, will slightly smaller powers have a bit more of a fighting chance against invasions?
 
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Honestly, I'm disappointed by these changes. The only one that I like is the more aggressive mongols, because right now they are ridiculous.

Shattered retreat and less casualties are bad, because completely destroying an army is usually the only way to win a war against an opponent stronger than you. If you can't do this, they will just keep replenishing their manpower over and over again until you have nothing left, and since the wars will take so long, you'll run out of money way before them, so you won't even be able to win through mercs.

As for armies reinforcing on their own, that sounds like a good change in general, but the problem is that i sometime keep my levies raised during war just in case while letting the warscore go up, but I don't want them reinforcing because it will cost me more money for nothing. If this feature is implemented, could we at least get a "don't reinforce" button for every armies?
 
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Oh, and the Mongol AI has been given its balls back, making them a lot more aggressive than they ever were before...

You asked for it….

Hopefully this means that the Mongols won't somehow lose while carving out land from the dominant nomads. In my current game, it was ridiculous to see the Mongols lose to the Ughyur despite having 3 times the troops.

I saw this coming a few weeks ago and I still hate it. Shattered retreat is annoying as hell, especially since the AI can keep pulling units out of their ass.

In my opinion shattered retreat is better than having to disperse and reraise levies because my force cannot out run my opponents, especially since the AI cannot do it.
 
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It is almost certainly the latter, as the former would massively reduce casualties.

Sorry for the OT and I admit that I am certainly not good enough in mathematics but I thought that parenthesis were pure aesthetics when you had only multiplications and divisions in your formula.
 
This sounds suspiciously like "the AI will cheat by teleporting its armies away from danger". Does somebody want to persuade me otherwise?

In middleages there was a moral code to battling, hence not really any nighttime raids and ambushes (they existed, but was not part of the grand battles). Usually after a day or a few days, the sides meet, exchanged hostages and agreed upon who won the battle and the outcome of it sometimes defining the battle as utter defeat and hostilities would cease under the given terms. They usually also, in the prolonged battles, let nighttime be a safe time to go around the battlefield, checking on wounded and taking them back to camp.

It was rarely done with a great slaughter at the end, and the enemy were allowed to walk away when the battle was lost. Back then it would be hugely morally unaccepted to attack a retreating army when the battle was won (not the same as attacking retreating armies during the battle), so look at it like the historical equivalence to how battles actually were viewed and fought back then :)
 
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Hopefully this means that the Mongols won't somehow lose while carving out land from the dominant nomads. In my current game, it was ridiculous to see the Mongols lose to the Ughyur despite having 3 times the troops.



In my opinion shattered retreat is better than having to disperse and reraise levies because my force cannot out run my opponents, especially since the AI cannot do it.

Fight Abbassids around Jerusalem, shattered retreat all the way to India, if EU IV is any indication of what's going to happen.
 
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In my opinion shattered retreat is better than having to disperse and reraise levies because my force cannot out run my opponents, especially since the AI cannot do it.

The AI use that tactic extensively? They reinforce their armies in ways we as a player can´t do to the massive micromanagement and lessen infoview. They dismiss the smaller armies inside the army, in order to reraise them. They know exactly which have suffered many losses and which have reinforced enough to make a difference.

Fight Abbassids around Jerusalem, shattered retreat all the way to India, if EU IV is any indication of what's going to happen.

And when exactly does this happen in EU4? because it never does that, and usually also depend on morale in general how far they go. Usually they escape to first safe fort or the place furthest away from the enemy if no safe forts are around.
 
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Fight Abbassids around Jerusalem, shattered retreat all the way to India, if EU IV is any indication of what's going to happen.

Maybe when the map was coarse in those areas before 1.8. You're limited to 8 provinces maximum move to through in shattered retreat. You're also limited on where to go. Decrease the limit from 8 to 6 or 4 and I think CK2 would have a nice retreat/breather.
 
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This sounds suspiciously like "the AI will cheat by teleporting its armies away from danger". Does somebody want to persuade me otherwise?
It does not. Both AI and player armies shatter, and noone teleports. They run away and you can follow them.
 
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Sorry for the OT and I admit that I am certainly not good enough in mathematics but I thought that parenthesis were pure aesthetics when you had only multiplications and divisions in your formula.
Almost correct. after a division sign you can use them to avoid having to use more division signs

x*y/z/w=x*y/(z*w) but sicne that is not the case there was nothign wrong with the way they originally write it except they should just have squared the numbers factor instead of multiplying with it twice (in diffrent locations).

But bar from that you read them from left to right and they are only affected by the directly proceeding operator.

x*y/z*w=x*y*w/z
 
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What about adopting movement lock and rebellion/unrest mechanics now? Those AI army dancers and luck based rebels appearing out of thin air are annoying as hell in CK2 if you compare those with much more controllable mechanics of EU4.:cool:

Dislike the control in EU4, not the info that rebels are about to rise. But it´s too easy to manage and control, since you know when they hit 90 % you should prepare for a revolt. They should add some element of surprice to it, while giving you the info that people are mad at you and how mad they are :)
 
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