A small gripe about the ol' "shattered retreat"

[Palatinus Germanicus]

Simply put: You can't shatter retreat your way through being encircled/trapped. In EU3 (here I go again), a defeated army could only retreat into a province where there weren't enemy units sitting there waiting for it.

Surround the enemy. Win the battle. They're done. -That was the ideal, otherwise just follow them to the next province & wipe them. But you can't do it anymore. If they CAN retreat... if there is a path open for them, fine -- shatter 500 miles back to where it's 'safe'.

But if I've got the enemy surrounded, it's total lunacy that he can just 'retreat' his way right past us. Say I'm at war with the Pope, we have a big battle in Rome, and I beat his main army. Now I've got troops stationed all across the Italian peninsula, to the north... his only line of escape. Those guys should have nowhere to run. One last battle -- fight to the death? OK, fine. But this idea that they can just run right past us, over into France somewhere... seriously?

 

[EmagDrolBot]

You'd need some restriction on it, like the blocking army has to outnumber the retreating army to stop them, otherwise people would just leave 1k stacks everywhere.

I don't think the current retreat situation is that bad. The only time I get irritated is when enemies can retreat into Ming's territory to Bejing or something when you're a tributary fighting another tributary and Ming isn't in the war. Just makes for stupid long chases.

 

[durbal]

Why would you want to bring back a system that makes the AI a complete pushover? The concept of provinces and such is arbitrary, so the idea that you're 'surrounding' the pope's army in Rome just because you have armies in Abruzzi, Siena, etc. is a bit silly. Those provinces cover thousands of square kilometers of varying terrain.

 

[Palatinus Germanicus]

Why would you want to bring back a system that makes the AI a complete pushover? The concept of provinces and such is arbitrary, so the idea that you're 'surrounding' the pope's army in Rome just because you have armies in Abruzzi, Siena, etc. is a bit silly. Those provinces cover thousands of square kilometers of varying terrain.

"Silly", you say? Imagine I'm besieging the coastal province of ... Provence, and that same Papal army runs right by us (through us), on it's shattered forced march to south-central France.

"Look, here they come."

"Ohh, whups. There they go. Wheeee!"

I'm having trouble imaging that scene playing out in reality. Not only did they 'slip through' ~60k men that had a choke hold one the breadth of northern Italy, they also then just jogged by my considerable force that was sieging the coastal areas. They didn't even stop for a snack. I would've given them some... daily bread? Some baguettes, from the local shops perhaps? I'm not inhumane, you know. But nah, they were full-on Forrest Gump mode... not stopping for anything.

"Run, Pope, Run!!"

 

[durbal]

"Silly", you say? Imagine I'm besieging the coastal province of ... Provence, and that same Papal army runs right by us (through us), on it's shattered forced march to south-central France.

"Look, here they come."

"Ohh, whups. There they go. Wheeee!"

I'm having trouble imaging that scene playing out in reality. Not only did they 'slip through' ~60k men that had a choke hold one the breadth of northern Italy, they also then just jogged by my considerable force that was sieging the coastal areas. They didn't even stop for a snack. I would've given them some... daily bread? Some baguettes, from the local shops perhaps? I'm not inhumane, you know. But nah, they were full-on Forrest Gump mode... not stopping for anything.

"Run, Pope, Run!!"

Since shattered retreat isn't even controllable I don't know why you're trying to take abstract game mechanics and rationalize them as if they're concrete. You're talking about reworking a huge part of the strategic war system to justify what you (erroneously) think is occurring at a tactical level based on abstracted game visuals -- all for zero or negative actual gameplay benefit.

 

[Palatinus Germanicus]

Since shattered retreat isn't even controllable I don't know why you're trying to take abstract game mechanics and rationalize them as if they're concrete. You're talking about reworking a huge part of the strategic war system to justify what you (erroneously) think is occurring at a tactical level based on abstracted game visuals -- all for zero or negative actual gameplay benefit.

Well, I could be wrong (b/c I never played HoI 3), but to my knowledge, the first Paradox game to introduce the shattered retreat was Vic 2. And from the beginning, the whole purpose of it was to force the player into more of a 'war of attrition'. It's an anti-blobbing feature, plain & simple. The more manpower you're forced to lose, the less conquering you can do, over time. And now with the 'shatter behind the forts' approach, you're really going to have to bleed the enemy dry, more often than not (and yourself to some extent).

To me, it just makes sense that you shouldn't be able to escape, if you're surrounded. That aspect of warfare was built into EU3. And it wasn't always easy to execute, but it was always the goal.

EU3:
Step 1: Locate enemy army. Wipe it.
Step 2: Carpet siege.

EU4:
Step 1: Avoid combat. Siege down all enemy forts. (yeah it's basically a race)
Step 2: Now he can't hide anywhere. Engage & destroy enemy. Minimal loss of manpower. Next war.

I don't know if any of that is realistic. But I just can't take it seriously when an enemy army shatters for 500 miles, passing right rough my own forces on multiple occasions.
I mean why fight the enemy at all? It's obviously just a manpower-wasting trap, right? Unless you can pull off that fabled stackwipe within the magic 10 days, it was all for nothing.

Encircle and destroy? Kesselschlacht? (Battle of encirclement & annihilation?) Nah, we don't do that, son. We. Don't. Do. That.




Unless you can do it within 10 days.

 

[Zander]

The number of historical wars that involved a large nation's army being completely destroyed in one battle is vanishingly small. And even when you "wipe" an army, realistically at least half of the force should be added back to the manpower pool.

This is obviously a matter of taste, but to me the system is working pretty well currently. Large battles generally *do* have a big effect on the war - they just don't immediately end it (for large wars).

 

[EmagDrolBot]

"Silly", you say? Imagine I'm besieging the coastal province of ... Provence, and that same Papal army runs right by us (through us), on it's shattered forced march to south-central France.

"Look, here they come."

"Ohh, whups. There they go. Wheeee!"

I'm having trouble imaging that scene playing out in reality. Not only did they 'slip through' ~60k men that had a choke hold one the breadth of northern Italy, they also then just jogged by my considerable force that was sieging the coastal areas. They didn't even stop for a snack. I would've given them some... daily bread? Some baguettes, from the local shops perhaps? I'm not inhumane, you know. But nah, they were full-on Forrest Gump mode... not stopping for anything.

"Run, Pope, Run!!"

60k men can't "choke" northern Italy. At its thinnest point, Italy north of Rome is ~230km across, or 142 miles. If you spaced your men out in a single line, with 3.8 meters (~12 feet) between each of them, then you'd technically cover it, I guess.

It's not remotely difficult to imagine that a retreating army could get past unnoticed, or not noticed in time to do anything about it.

 

[durbal]

Well, I could be wrong (b/c I never played HoI 3), but to my knowledge, the first Paradox game to introduce the shattered retreat was Vic 2. And from the beginning, the whole purpose of it was to force the player into more of a 'war of attrition'. It's an anti-blobbing feature, plain & simple. The more manpower you're forced to lose, the less conquering you can do, over time. And now with the 'shatter behind the forts' approach, you're really going to have to bleed the enemy dry, more often than not (and yourself to some extent).

To me, it just makes sense that you shouldn't be able to escape, if you're surrounded. That aspect of warfare was built into EU3. And it wasn't always easy to execute, but it was always the goal.

EU3:
Step 1: Locate enemy army. Wipe it.
Step 2: Carpet siege.

EU4:
Step 1: Avoid combat. Siege down all enemy forts. (yeah it's basically a race)
Step 2: Now he can't hide anywhere. Engage & destroy enemy. Minimal loss of manpower. Next war.

I don't know if any of that is realistic. But I just can't take it seriously when an enemy army shatters for 500 miles, passing right rough my own forces on multiple occasions.
I mean why fight the enemy at all? It's obviously just a manpower-wasting trap, right? Unless you can pull off that fabled stackwipe within the magic 10 days, it was all for nothing.

Encircle and destroy? Kesselschlacht? (Battle of encirclement & annihilation?) Nah, we don't do that, son. We. Don't. Do. That.




Unless you can do it within 10 days.

You just stated exactly the reason it was changed from EU3.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

When it works it's okay, but it doesn't always work. Sometimes the game will still pretend forts exist that don't and do same-province shatters.

 

[Palatinus Germanicus]

The number of historical wars that involved a large nation's army being completely destroyed in one battle is vanishingly small. And even when you "wipe" an army, realistically at least half of the force should be added back to the manpower pool.

This is obviously a matter of taste, but to me the system is working pretty well currently. Large battles generally *do* have a big effect on the war - they just don't immediately end it (for large wars).

Um, not sure what you mean by that. The game starts the day after the Battle of Varna. That was effectively a stack-wipe of the crusading forces.

The Ottomans won, and they didn't even have to siege down all of Poland & Hungary for about 2+ years! I guess that's why they didn't gain a bunch of land, though.

Battle of Agincourt... France got stack-wiped, son. Heck yeah, these things happened. Of course, in EU4, it doesn't matter if you wipe the enemy army -- he'll just go make another one within a few weeks. No big deal. Last time I fought Hungary, I stack-wiped an army of ~41k, THREE separate times (initial battle). No matter... they'll just go make another one, again & again. In EU3, when a nation's army got wiped, they didn't just bounce back from it. Merc's were terribly expensive, and loans were to be avoided like the plague. And the 'debasing' feature was slow and not terribly impactful. You couldn't just hit a button 10 times, and replace your entire army within a few weeks. And then again. And then again...

Whatever, I'm just gonna go play the game. Nobody here understands what I'm trying to say.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

While there were long wars in reality they were exceptional, most wars were shorter than the game allows...as were most truces. Army wipes happened but they were certainly not the rule.

I'm not sure how you'd want to model these kinds of things in-game though. War score + peace interactions are rough approximations, the AI's "length of war" modifiers is a complete joke, and the logistics/truce length/war outcomes are too removed from reality to easily implement only a piece of reality without reworking the whole thing.

If I had to pick one thing to fix it would be to replace length of war with something that works better honestly, that modifier causes a tremendous amount of AI self-harm, globally.

 

[Zander]

Agreed that "length of war" has many strange effects. I do understand the desire for it, to avoid lightning wars that take advantage of AI failures, but would like to imagine that there's a better solution.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Agreed that "length of war" has many strange effects. I do understand the desire for it, to avoid lightning wars that take advantage of AI failures, but would like to imagine that there's a better solution.

Right now, if you remove it the AI will just white peace out super fast. It's an important stopgap, but it remains a stopgap. Whatever replaces it needs to accurately reflect the state of the war, probably with non-linear scaling resistance as war score demands increase (though if you string someone out enough or occupy them a bunch they still accept at/near 100%).

 

[makaramus]

show some mercy to AI too sometimes pls there is no way that AI gonna notice what you doing before its too late :/

 

[AP85]

It's pretty bonkers when a shattered army is retreating back across 8-10 provinces. They should retreat to the nearest maintained fort, and if there isn't one, sayonara.

 

[Palatinus Germanicus]

show some mercy to AI too sometimes pls there is no way that AI gonna notice what you doing before its too late :/

Yeah, that's the whole premise for the other side of the argument: "show some mercy to the poor A.I."

The whole thing is just aggravating. This isn't how warfighting is supposed to be.


(there is no 'mercy' -- LOL)


And btw, you say, "there is no way that AI gonna notice what you doing"... but actually the A.I. is omniscient. If he's sieging some mountains, and you start to move your troops (through your territory) over to that sector to wipe him out, he'll leave before you get there. He's like Santa Claus... he sees you, and knows what you're doing. -Even though there's no way he should know what you're planning. I wish I could get my hands on that kind of Intel.


"Sire, there's two armies totaling 84k troops heading directly towards our siege! They're 7 provinces deep in enemy territory, and they're coming right for us!"

"OK, thanks. Very helpful".

 

[durbal]

Length of war = you haven't slaughtered me enough to totally dumpster me to the point of unreversible damage.

 

[AAV]

EU3:
Step 1: Locate enemy army. Wipe it.
Step 2: Carpet siege.

You realize how incredibly unrealistic that is, right?

 

[oros]

Length of war = you haven't slaughtered me enough to totally dumpster me to the point of unreversible damage.

Don't forget the :
"Oh you have occupied all my lands, but I have an ally far away that can't join us. Until you didn't kill him, or waited him to die from boredom, I still have a chance"