Battle honours and unit history

[Faulty]

In Vicky, I find it pretty immersive to give my divisions battle honours after wars. I'll append the name of the war if they engaged enemy units, and give it a star if it did especially well. For example, in my USA game right now I have a unit that looks like this sitting on the Canadian border:

1st Div (Texas Mex)
2nd Div (Texas Mex)
9th Div (Mex*)

When I look at that unit, I remember my role in the Texan Revolution, when I sent my ally two infantry units as an expeditionary force, who arrived in the nick of time to beat off the enemy at Austin, causing Mexico to sue for peace earlier. I remember the Mexican war, when I sent 3 divisions down the coast deep into their territory, fighting viciously to capture the enemy capital and end the stalemate in the West.

Wouldn't it be cool to have a feature to do that for us? I'm thinking something very similar to HoI's "sunk ships" feature which shows you how many kills your ship has had.
It might be simple: a list of wars the unit has been involved in, or perhaps large scale battles which the unit won. It could go into some detail, mimicking the style of regimental colours and unit citations actually in use.
To really shine, I think showing battle honours and aiguillettes on the in-game soldier models would be fantastic.





Something like this being carried by a soldier in each of my divisions on the map would be perfect

 

[unmerged(47160)]

Seems like that would be a LOT of work for Paradox.

 

[Faulty]

What, the coding or the graphics?
EU3 already records wars (including the participents, aggressor, name, duration, territorial changes, even casualties!) so it wouldn't be that difficult to extend it to record which units were involved and how many actions they took individually.
Making on-the-fly changes to units appearences already happens in games with persistent battle damage. Hell, you can change your coat of arms in Mount&Blade and have it reflected on the tabards of your soldiers in first person mode.

 

[Kaiserschmarrn]

Sounds pretty cool!

 

[MannheimCouncil]

That would be a nifty immersive feature. I seem to recall that there was something like this in some of the Panzer General games.

Of course, it might be a real drain on the computing resources and the savegames would be even bigger. Maybe limiting it to divisions that gained X experience in a war would be better.

 

[Karri]

Should be possible, and nice too...a morale and experience bonus too, as a (near)hundred year old division was bound to have some honour issues before retreating from a battle.

 

[Autonomous]

HoI's "sunk ships" feature which shows you how many kills your ship has had

Did that not get dropped from 3?

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

HoI does this but with generals rather than division, doesn't it?

 

[Taylor]

The statistics thing sounds easy to implement IMO, and could be a really nice flavour thing.

About changing the graphics on the fly: even if it is possible in mount & blade (don't know that game) that doesn't mean that it's easy to implement. I'd rather have paradox spend time on making it possible for unit sprites to change their appearance with increasing tech. Those sprites would then be pre-designed, not generated in-game, so that's a little easier I imagine.

 

[Faulty]

Really, all it would mean would be slotting together some pre-made background banners with some fancy looking text. I'm guessing the Clausewitz engine was written with an object oriented programming language so it shouldn't be a problem to do, it would just require some creativity

 

[HMS Enterprize]

Do Battle honours record victories or simply participation in a campaign- even if it didnt go particualrly well?

 

[Faulty]

Maybe both could be recorded separately?
An in-depth list of campaigns the units has fought in described when the unit is selected, and the 10 most glorious battles displayed proudly on the regimental colours on the map!

 

[Taylor]

Hmm, well maybe it's not that hard. And another thing they could use the same technique on: colony/satellite flags. You know, for example the flags of the colonies of the uk had the union jack in the corner. It would be nice if this could be done by the engine instead of with pre-designed flags, so that ahistorical colonies/satellites are possible. Thread about this is here.

 

[Bezborg]

I'm definitely for something like this, a way to track the unit's good work but not exclusively through experience; but not in the way you're proposing, with all due respect I think that is overly complicated and detail-oriented. Rather an automatic mechanism that gives units certain attributes (in form of a decoration segment in the unit information window, or whatever, simply decorative) that are assigned in relation to their performance (losses, victories etc...) and with respect to the enemy in a particular war... For instance a unit might have a listing of their victories, and if a certain enemy appears frequently (let's say an Austrian unit might fight Ottoman forces all the time) it may be given a nickname to show that fact and eve give them a wee bonus against the frequent enemy's tactics... Or something like that, in all cases I agree that it would increase immersion and would add a nice element to the game

 

[Minodrin]

And wouldn't individual histories for the thousands of divisions mean a lot longer and slower save-files?

 

[unmerged(91061)]

And wouldn't individual histories for the thousands of divisions mean a lot longer and slower save-files?

Quoted for truth
Having individual character histories slowed the end game down something chronic. I shudder to think of such a think in Vicky2.

 

[Bezborg]

Perhaps a prestigious rating system? The more impressive victory takes the place of a lesser (the rating of the victory itself being a simple enough mathematical mechanism of odds)? Limit the number of recognized accomplishments to let's say 3? Or something like that, there are many conceivable compromises

 

[the_hdk]

That definitely would be awesome. Something like history for Generals in Rome. Where are past battles are stored.

 

[Prinz Wilhelm]

A limit on experience would be nice, showing the division that really succeeded. And it would cut down from thousands to few divisions.

Limit on experience = minimum experience required for display of the history.

 

[unmerged(180470)]

generals / unit names

I fully appreciate that there's only so much you can squeeze into a single game, but I have a few ideas in this area:

- have "pre-made" land units with names (rather than "2nd Regulars Division, have a few famous units automatically named), much like Vicky already does with ships. It's not a big deal, as we can already change the name of divisions and ships, but it would add a little historical background... as long as it didn't gum up the game system, or cause any programmers to lose sleep)

- Some kind of "experience" for generals, perhaps in the form of small combat bonuses to be added after a certain number of victories? (or even subtracted, for generals with a lot of defeats!)

- Some kind of experience bonus for naval units? Again, not a big deal...