I didnt see anything in the dev diary wich even suggests a non major can do anything against a major in war and just has to pray his allies are competent.
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Victoria 3 isnt focused in war and it hurts
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I'm sure there are many things minors can do. Most involve losing.
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Personally I love the idea of this new war system, it sounds like a great step forward to me. By that same coin, I can also understand why a lot of people are "moaning" about it. After all, I like it because it's a bold, different direction to take the war system in. The equal and opposite way to make that same statement is that it's a foolish, unfaithful direction to take the war system in. These are entirely compatible interpretations, based on what you yourself want from the game.
It is absolutely valid to criticize something that isn't out yet, though. You don't have to taste a dogturd sandwich to know it smells bad, and there are some noticeable fecal smells emanating from this new war system, like its inability to properly model very large fronts, or the seeming total lack of control once a war breaks out, or the seeming inability to permanently station troops of one culture in a state of another to garrison it. There's lots of valid criticisms that can be made without having to firsthand experience how bad those things are. It's not just about whether it's "not for you" or whatever, it's also about whether it's a good implementation of what it is supposed to be. And to be frank, I even understand the complaints from people who the entire idea really is just "not for them", because this is a sequel, and they are not wrong to feel it should resemble its predecessor in core ways.
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I enjoy the diplomatic aspects of warfare, and the buildup to the conflict as countries add demands, seek allies, or back down. I personally don't mind that warfare isn't the main focus, as much of my fun in Victoria comes from developing my nation.
However, I do share concerns about the warfare system. If there's too little player agency, it can make the entire situation feel arbitrary and frustrating. The fact that fronts can't be split is also a bit worrying, as I'd like to be able to direct where my army groups are moving across a front, especially for ones as big as the US Civil War front.
However, I do share concerns about the warfare system. If there's too little player agency, it can make the entire situation feel arbitrary and frustrating. The fact that fronts can't be split is also a bit worrying, as I'd like to be able to direct where my army groups are moving across a front, especially for ones as big as the US Civil War front.
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Then you didn’t read it very well. There’s tons of things a minor power can do. First of all, like you say, a smaller power can attract allies.
Second, the DD says deploying troops far from home takes a huge navy and tons of convoy ships to supply the front line. If you have a navy you can set it to convoy raid in a particular trade node, which will disrupt the enemy’s supplies and decrease their fighting ability on your frontline.
Third, you can design your units to be strong on the defensive and hire generals that excel in defensive warfare and set your armies to defend, thereby making it very costly for the enemy to advance the frontline, so they may decide it’s not worth it to complete the war goal and peace out instead.
As I said in a different thread, if you’re a small nation next to a huge nation (Belgium vs France for example) and you have no allies on your side when you’re attacked, you should never win that war.
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To be honest, the warfare system has been a huge disappointment for me and, if I buy the game, I already know there are a lot of nations I will never play because of it. The lack of player's agency in war just make nations like Greece or Serbia completely unappealing to me. You will spend your entire game either waiting for the Ottoman to implode or waiting for Russia to do all the heavy lifting for you, and since you will have no way to make those situations happened, you will just have to get lucky I guess. I'm rather skeptical about the possibility for one of those nations to gather allies against the Ottoman, if the diplomatic system isn't completely broken, you shouldn't be able to put it off. As either Greece or Serbia you won't be generating a lot of influence so your ability to conduct diplomatic actions is going to be severely limited, you simply won't have the influence to start increasing your relation with many Great Powers, same for any diplomatic play, as a Great power the Ottoman is going to have far more sway than you, you won't win the diplomatic game except if the AI is completely mismanaging it and you are exploiting this weakness. By taking out of player's hands the armies, the devs have also taken out most of the player's ability to influence events while playing those nations. You will more than likely be a simple spectator of the events with little to no impact on it and that just doesn't sound fun to play like that.
In Victoria 2, I almost never played Prussia because I thought it was kinda boring, once you have united the northern german states into the NGF, and it wasn't hard to achieve, you could easily steamrolled Austria and France to finish the unification of Germany and then no one could really stand against you militarily. But in Victoria 3 ? Where warfare is almost entirely out of player's hands, playing a nation that possesses such a military might that it will stack the deck in the player's favour seems to be the only option to not end up in frustrating situations where you just have to cross your fingers and hope that your AI controlled generals do a better job that the enemy AI controlled generals because both sides are close in military strength or worse, your side is actually weaker and you can't do anything to compensate that since you don't control your armies. You could argue that I should have been "smarter" in the diplomatic game then, but that would be a rather short-sighted way to look at the situation, because while I can gather allies around me, I can't stop other nations from doing the same. So if we end up in an Entente vs Central Powers kind of situation why would I ever want to go to war when I know I will be able to do very little to influence its progress and will only be able to watch and hope that this abstracted system decided that I won. And in the meantime what I can actually control, the economy, is negatively impacted by this war because now that my population is being slaughtered in the trenches I have a workforce shortage in my factories, so why would I want to be part of something that will be mostly out of my control and negatively affect my gameplay ? The entire system seems to be design to push players off war, the problem is that personally it will also push me off playing quite a number of nations because their success as nations is way too connected to winning wars, and I really don't want to "play" a nation whose future will be decided by a warfare system I have so little control over. Why would I want to play as Bavaria for example ? I had a lot of fun doing it in Victoria 2 but I know it will inevitably pit me against Prussia's ambition to unify Germany and military wise I won't be able to compete against them except by being ridiculously lucky with the rng.
I really don't see myself putting as many hours in Victoria 3 as I did in Victoria 2 because when you are limited at nations that can reasonably hope to never be at war during the entirety of the game or nations that are in a position of complete military domination so you don't get rob of your win by the AI once the war starts, you don't have a lot of options as to what to play. It's really a shame because in Victoria 2 I had the most fun by playing the underdog and by trying to make them slowly rose to power but here it look like it will be headache-inducing.
In Victoria 2, I almost never played Prussia because I thought it was kinda boring, once you have united the northern german states into the NGF, and it wasn't hard to achieve, you could easily steamrolled Austria and France to finish the unification of Germany and then no one could really stand against you militarily. But in Victoria 3 ? Where warfare is almost entirely out of player's hands, playing a nation that possesses such a military might that it will stack the deck in the player's favour seems to be the only option to not end up in frustrating situations where you just have to cross your fingers and hope that your AI controlled generals do a better job that the enemy AI controlled generals because both sides are close in military strength or worse, your side is actually weaker and you can't do anything to compensate that since you don't control your armies. You could argue that I should have been "smarter" in the diplomatic game then, but that would be a rather short-sighted way to look at the situation, because while I can gather allies around me, I can't stop other nations from doing the same. So if we end up in an Entente vs Central Powers kind of situation why would I ever want to go to war when I know I will be able to do very little to influence its progress and will only be able to watch and hope that this abstracted system decided that I won. And in the meantime what I can actually control, the economy, is negatively impacted by this war because now that my population is being slaughtered in the trenches I have a workforce shortage in my factories, so why would I want to be part of something that will be mostly out of my control and negatively affect my gameplay ? The entire system seems to be design to push players off war, the problem is that personally it will also push me off playing quite a number of nations because their success as nations is way too connected to winning wars, and I really don't want to "play" a nation whose future will be decided by a warfare system I have so little control over. Why would I want to play as Bavaria for example ? I had a lot of fun doing it in Victoria 2 but I know it will inevitably pit me against Prussia's ambition to unify Germany and military wise I won't be able to compete against them except by being ridiculously lucky with the rng.
I really don't see myself putting as many hours in Victoria 3 as I did in Victoria 2 because when you are limited at nations that can reasonably hope to never be at war during the entirety of the game or nations that are in a position of complete military domination so you don't get rob of your win by the AI once the war starts, you don't have a lot of options as to what to play. It's really a shame because in Victoria 2 I had the most fun by playing the underdog and by trying to make them slowly rose to power but here it look like it will be headache-inducing.
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The only reason this wasn't the case in Vicky 2 was that the military AI was completely gormless.
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When you think about it, there is something deeply ironic about Victoria 3 de-emphazing so much warfare in the only time period when meme like world conquest actually happened in real life. Likewise it is a shame to make it such a sideline affair as the timeframe includes the largest and most devestating wars up to then (Franco-Prussian war, WW1 obviously ...)
Please someone correct me if I am wrong but afaik the system does not allow states to back down. They can only up the stacks until a WW1 style conflagration.
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I think if the system was that basic to the point that only numbers matter, Russia would be the go to Nation. I think there are more to the system than they let us know, for the good or for the bad/ugly. At that, I do think they want you to outmaneuver the enemy before war, not during it, considering the way AI usually works in paradox games, if you know that war is coming, it's because there might be a chance that the AI is as strong as you. If they think they will not have an advantage, will fold the play. Hopefully the AI can be a bit more maleable in this regard for more world instability.
But you were only winning against the Ottomans because you were cheesing the AI, how fun is that? There’s going to be plenty of countries that hate the Ottomans, and they’re kind of a decaying great power. You can definitely find allies there. And who says that wars are completely hands-off? They’re not. You have to manage the war economy, the generals, barracks, etc.
Also, as far as war strategy goes, I can imagine a scenario in which you strike while the ottomans are busy fighting the rebellion in Egypt and instruct your hand-picked generals to push as quickly as they can into Greek lands before the ottomans can organize a response. Maybe you can even use the manpower there because they sympathize with your government to recruit them into your armies, or at least start some kind of guerrilla resistance. At the same time, you’ve developed diplomatic relations with Serbia and the Romanian nations so they rise up in rebellion at the same time. And then when you all link up in the Balkans, you switch your stance so your armies defend in the mountains, and the Ottomans have to fight a bloody war of attrition to regain their territories. They might decide it’s cheaper for them to just give you your land than to fight you for them. Maybe after an exhausting campaign in Syria, their finances are spent, their manpower is low, maybe their standard of living deceased because all the money was spent on war so now they have tons of rebellious pops all over Turkey.
I mean, there’s still so much more to war if you open your mind to it.
Also, as far as war strategy goes, I can imagine a scenario in which you strike while the ottomans are busy fighting the rebellion in Egypt and instruct your hand-picked generals to push as quickly as they can into Greek lands before the ottomans can organize a response. Maybe you can even use the manpower there because they sympathize with your government to recruit them into your armies, or at least start some kind of guerrilla resistance. At the same time, you’ve developed diplomatic relations with Serbia and the Romanian nations so they rise up in rebellion at the same time. And then when you all link up in the Balkans, you switch your stance so your armies defend in the mountains, and the Ottomans have to fight a bloody war of attrition to regain their territories. They might decide it’s cheaper for them to just give you your land than to fight you for them. Maybe after an exhausting campaign in Syria, their finances are spent, their manpower is low, maybe their standard of living deceased because all the money was spent on war so now they have tons of rebellious pops all over Turkey.
I mean, there’s still so much more to war if you open your mind to it.
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Either of the initial parties to a Diplomatic Play can back down at any time before war is triggered. If they do so, the Diplomatic Play ends and the other side gets their Primary Demand (and only their Primary Demand).
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It was more fun than watching the AI play the game in my place will be.
I really don't understand why people keep mentioning generals as if it was going to be some incredibly deep system. From what have been revealed so far, you will just look at the kind of terrain the fight you will have no control over is likely to happen and pick the general with the correct terrain related trait to have an advantage if said general isn't from an interest group that support you and you can't afford to antagonize the ones that support your government you will have to take another one. And finally you will have the choice to tell your general to either attack or defend and that's it, once it's done you go back to manage your economy because why would you do something war related during a war ? That would be silly.
The only place where the player has some agency is in the preparation phase of the war, when you can build factories that will produced military goods, barracks to recruit soldiers and infrastructures to have them move faster to the frontline. But when the preparation phase is over and the war actually starts, the player will have very little control over the progress of the war and have to rely heavily on the AI to manage it for you. I don't see the appeal in that at all.
It doesn't contradict what I said in my previous comment, a Greece player will just have to hope for the Ottoman Empire to collapse for one reason or another to have a chance to do something. And if that opportunity never appears, I guess you can just start a new game and hope you will get luckier this time. And sure it's realistic because Greece could have never hope to defeat the Ottoman Empire on its own but it also make playing Greece uniteresting.
It's not about being close minded, it's about calling this system what it is : aka being extremely automated.
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Delegating combat will make majors playable again, and if done right, still challenging for even a veteran player to come out on top. First priority should be making a great UK, France, Prussia and Russia experience straight out of the box.
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Exactly, the people that keep saying "have faith in what Paradox is doing" without accepting the reservations of other is off putting to me.
Like, I really hope War will be interesting, but from what we gathered from the Dev Diaries and answers from the DEV team so far, does not give me much hope.
Take the American Civil War, for instance, technically, its "front" went almost from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In practice, most of the fight happened on the Atlantic Coast and the Mississippi river. How are we, as players, tell our generals to focus on the Mississippi, for instance?
I for one don't want to command stacks and gather how many units, join them and send to siege a province. What I do want is to tell Sherman to march to the sea and burn everything along the way.
Or, for that matter, tell von Moltke to crush the French Army first and then send my army to siege Paris.
I want to give my generals strategic objectives in order to accomplish my goal.
Say, as Prussia, I want to bring Bavaria and the other German minors into the fold.
For that my strategic objectives are:
1- Destroy French offensive capacity.
2- Starve the French (or at least Paris)
We can't do that with the current system. We just assign von Moltke to an Army group from a state region and tell him to attack and hope he is better than MacMahon.
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Unless you have used von Moltke before you shouldn't know if he is better. One advantage to pixels over cardboard is it is easier to have stats hidden until combat reveals them.
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Imperator allows both microing and delegating armies, common strategies to deal with major powers is to control big stacks manually for important battles while automating smaller armies and this works quite well generally. Microing doesn't mean playing big nations are a pain. Delegating combat is not an innovation with this new oversimplified and automated war system. You can even play hoi4 without microing a single unit and use only battle plans and still be effective against the ai. What the current war system offers right now is simply a downgrade from hoi4. Can't setup frontlines in any way you can, nor setup offensive and defensive lines, spearheads, literally can only press attack, defend or do nothing.
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