Madness reached - Sun Tzu Reborn - Thoughts/observations/Mini-guide

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Zwirbaum

(Formerly known as Zwireq)
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Jun 2, 2011
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Yesterday I decided to go for some quick testing of some mechanics as Sinkiang, and then I decided to just go and continue playing (damn you HoI IV). While playing as Sinkiang, then turning into PRoC, I've decided to go and try to grab that Sun Tzu Reborn achievement. And lo' and behold here it is - Sun Tzu Reborn is here.

2LvSY8k.png


@podcat , @shultays - I'm tagging you, because I have some weird observations with the new XP system, they'll be in the last paragraph of the text - If you don't want to read it all, just skip to the 'last' part.

Here is our brave Field Marshal who became new Sun Tzu, writing Art of War 2: Electric Boogaloo

6witm8b.png


Price of the achievement?

zHiSYzQ.png

(Spain and Romania ruined my stats, by being splinter civil wars from Commintern members). Anyways, I would say it's quite decent trade, 2.83 M against ~67M.

After securing China and Japan as Sinkiang (ez-pz) I decided to pull the trigger on both Allies and Commintern (Axis was long dead, though weirdly enough they retained few states as German Reich who then flipped into Socialist Republic of Germany) and Slovakia. Bonus points for weirdness: East Germany and West Germany also existed, Poland ended up owning Ostpreussen and Danzig, while Former German Reich had Munich and parts of the Poland proper. In this three way conflict, Commintern started pouncing on allies pretty hard, and sudden civil war in USA (Communist one) basically was a final nail to the coffin for allies. Allies soon capitulated and Commintern become leading power - at this point war remained between me, world lead by Commintern and Allies, consisting of capitulated West Germany and Ireland. So I did procced to go and deal with Commintern. After some 67 M dead, achievement was earned.

Now let's look for the Field Marshal and his army stats

dTVVgkw.png


Notice how I said army? I decided to go for FM leading army route. Also light tank divisions are still in style, and screw you - medium, modern, heavy tanks :p. Why leading army? Because this way you accumulate normal amount of experience from eliminating pockets,encirclements, instead of getting only quarter of it. (Field Marshals leading army group earn 25% of the experience their generals get) - and that will be prime amount of the experience to level up. Grinding experience through head-on attacks is just futile attempt to get level 9. (Unless I guess you'll setup yourself across the maginot line, press attack and then just go AFK watch Band of Brothers for sixteenth time - there is however chance you'll end up in Paris with barely any progress in XP bar).

Now observations and couple suggestions/advice:

1) Whenever you want to eliminate pocket, do it with all the divisions in the army, weirdly enough - XP scales for eliminating enemy divisions in encirclements, with both the number of their divisions AND yours participating in combat. As a test you can for example place all the Red Army starting divisions in one province and then destroy them. If you'll use 1 division, you will gain 40 XP or so, while using 24 divisions will net you much, much more XP.

2) If you want to drink all the delicious XP, do not use other leaders divisions in the process of eliminating of pocket (or at least the final mop-up battle), otherwise XP gained is SHARED. You don't want to share, right?

3) Leader while he is still 'reassigning' despite not providing any benefits, will still drink up XP gained from the fight, so if you don't want/can't spare certain army to go towards the target you want, you can just go and reassign the leader to the army that can mop-up the encirclement.

4) Be flexible, if you're for example under heavy enemy attack everywhere in certain army group, don't be afraid to assign FM to lead that army group for now, with 5 armies under constant attack he will get up to 1.25/1.75 single army general would earn (depending if you picked Army Delegator FM trait). XP gained from regular combat after a certain point is rather small compared to what you need, but you can still get more of it.

5) Try as much as possible to get Skilled Staffer ASAP - it gives extra 6 divisions - and as such you'll get more XP per each hour of combat

Now TL:DR - For @podcat and @shultays (if I should tag someone else, please let me know)

1) It's weird that you gain more experience from eliminating pocket with more your divisions participating in combat. If I will use 1 division to eliminate enemy 138 divisions I will gain miniscule amount of experience, compared to what I would get if I would use 24 divisions. And by that I mean divisions participating in combat, so you want always eliminate pockets with 24 divisions in current system. No matter if 19 or so divisions will be in reserve or so :p

2) There is also weird behaviour with XP/traits system sometimes - For example if I will use 24 divisions to eliminate that said 138 division pocket. If I will attack across the river, from only one direction (more divisions in the reserve) I will get for example 801 XP towards Infantry Leader (some are gained from 4 hour-fighting window).

However if I'll attack from several directions, with more divisions in the actual combat, I'll get 725 XP toward Infantry Leader.

When I'll atack from one direction, but not across the river, I'm getting 849 XP toward Infantry Leader.

That's why:

3) Please, can you share the exact formula, how it should be calculated/work? I'm either having for the first time problem with simple numbers, or missing something obvious (or famous PDX math in action) - anyways, I'm lost in how exact XP numbers are generated. Whenever I seem to (based on defines and observations) to get the exact amount of XP in one case, there shows another case where it doesn't match at all.

I'll also upload the test save where you can test the encirclements - don't forget to turn off AI with console just in case :)


And that's it for now. If I'll remember something, I'll add to it.
 

Attachments

  • EXPERIENCE TEST 3.hoi4
    5,7 MB · Views: 93
Holy shell casings batman . . . I didn't even KNOW there was a freain' leader traits pane :p
 
My answers for TLDR part

1) Yeah, that was a bug. I am fixing it atm. It will give 30 xp per unit that has been killed in encirclement (shared between leaders if there are multiple)

2) There are a few factors on how you gain XP. How long a combat lasts and how much damage you do compared to enemy. I imagine the different values you get are caused by this

3) I will do that later, but summary is you get a xp per hour of combat for every unit that has been fighting. this xp is calculated by duration of combat and relative damage you are dealing. if there are multiple units in combat with different leader they split xp.

other than that, we have a special case for overruns and encircled/killed units. in that case you should get constant xp
 
My answers for TLDR part

1) Yeah, that was a bug. I am fixing it atm. It will give 30 xp per unit that has been killed in encirclement (shared between leaders if there are multiple)

2) There are a few factors on how you gain XP. How long a combat lasts and how much damage you do compared to enemy. I imagine the different values you get are caused by this

3) I will do that later, but summary is you get a xp per hour of combat for every unit that has been fighting. this xp is calculated by duration of combat and relative damage you are dealing. if there are multiple units in combat with different leader they split xp.

other than that, we have a special case for overruns and encircled/killed units. in that case you should get constant xp

1) Good to know that it was a bug :)

2) In every case there was the same amount of 'fighting' - 4 hours minimal combat time, because enemy is completely out of organization and as such no one was ready to fight - that's why I'm puzzled by the various results of the XP gain, where all what was changed was more or less spread out position around that unit (more attack directions).

3) In general (short summary) I'm aware of how it works. With fixed overruns/encircled units bug giving constant XP my sanity should restored (that was the case that was bugging me out, and it was driving me nuts everytime - because it didn't want to follow logic or calculations :D).

Anyways, I will be grateful for exact formula shared later and I greatly appreciate your response, cheers! :)
 
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Does that exp depend on combat width of unit destroyed?

Well, I would guess no, and the defines would point out at flat XP per division no matter the combat width.
 
Hmm, I am playing as PRC at the moment. Lovely, I can get the achievement before it gets fixed! :D

Well, if you want to grind it more than necessary, feel free to do so :D

(Considering that right now, from eliminating that 138 division pocket you're getting around ~980 general XP, and after the change you'll get 4140 XP points...)

OTOH you'll be able to brag about doing 'pre-nerf' Sun Tzu Reborn. Hm, maybe I should put this in my signature 'Proud owner of Pre-Nerf Sun Tzu Reborn Achievement' :D
 
So the quickest way to level a field marshal is to level it as a general? That's a bit counter-intuitive, but why not.
 
So the quickest way to level a field marshal is to level it as a general? That's a bit counter-intuitive, but why not.

Oh that is good to know. So it is non-optimal to, say, promote Guderian to Field Marshal when he is still like Skill level 4? How long should one wait? Level 7, 8, 9??
 
Oh that is good to know. So it is non-optimal to, say, promote Guderian to Field Marshal when he is still like Skill level 4? How long should one wait? Level 7, 8, 9??
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but assuming 1) It is optimal to have a field marshal lead a single army, 2) field marshal and general gain xp at the same rate with all else equal, and 3) you gain xp faster when you deal more damage than you take, then it comes down to stacking as many bonuses as possible on Sun-Tzu-wannabe. That means being a general to gain traits, plus a good field marshal on top of him.

If all of the above is correct, you can promote when you have all general traits you want, including terrain.
 
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but assuming 1) It is optimal to have a field marshal lead a single army, 2) field marshal and general gain xp at the same rate with all else equal, and 3) you gain xp faster when you deal more damage than you take, then it comes down to stacking as many bonuses as possible on Sun-Tzu-wannabe. That means being a general to gain traits, plus a good field marshal on top of him.

If all of the above is correct, you can promote when you have all general traits you want, including terrain.

Can a Field Marshal command five other field marshals?
 
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but assuming 1) It is optimal to have a field marshal lead a single army, 2) field marshal and general gain xp at the same rate with all else equal, and 3) you gain xp faster when you deal more damage than you take, then it comes down to stacking as many bonuses as possible on Sun-Tzu-wannabe. That means being a general to gain traits, plus a good field marshal on top of him.

If all of the above is correct, you can promote when you have all general traits you want, including terrain.

you should promote at least 100 days befor the war due to the timed debuff "recently promoted"
since a FM can get the same traits as the general, there is no need to keep your guy in charge as general, and FM gets 1 free traitslot, so more traits, including general, can be assinged, earned/background traits dont count to this number
the FM traits are just a bonus you can give only to FM and dont work when in command of army, only in command of armygroup. so no -40% supply with double logistic
and the EXP a armygroup FM is always a quarter of the total exp all armys under him get, so 1FM commanding armygroup of 1 army gets a quarter of the army commander

Can a Field Marshal command five other field marshals?
by default yes if each FM has a army
if you get skilled staffer and the FM trait ater that he could command 7 FM with 7 Armies
 
you should promote at least 100 days befor the war due to the timed debuff "recently promoted"
since a FM can get the same traits as the general, there is no need to keep your guy in charge as general, and FM gets 1 free traitslot, so more traits, including general, can be assinged, earned/background traits dont count to this number
Oh, can he? I assumed the General trait required being general-ranked. Why not promoting every general you have then?
 
just promote everyone you think you need 100 days befor war breaks out
and those that dont get an armygroup just dont give them the FM traits, as those on work when commanding army group

and yes there is no downside beside using 30 commandpower and 100 days of -1 to all stats
after these 100 days he is exactly what he was befor the promotion just with 1 extra asingable trait, which can be a general trait even