battles are beyond ridiculous now

[Cattlehunter]

I don't even understand how this was considered acceptable.

My 40k stack attacks 9k guys in a mountain, with the enemy army on the other side of france. Wow, guess I shouldn't have done that! TWO MONTHS of fighting later, they get reinforced, then I get reinforced, then they get reinforced, then I get reinforced, and A FUCKING YEAR LATER we STILL have the same battle going on, except now it's 300k guys fighting each other in this mountain, in a never-ending battle between over a quarter of a million people that see massive casualties in the DOZENS every day. Dozens!

This has become just a joke now.

In another phase of the war, a huge french army attacks my much smaller army in some mountainous province of mine; I see them coming and queue a dozen mercenaries in the province they're attacking. Then I queue mercenaries in all the nearby provinces as more mercenaries spawn. The french army eventually loses, in spite of constant reinforcements of its own, because I was able to recruit mercenaries much faster than its much larger army could kill my soldiers! What? I thought these battles happening on the campaign map were supposed to represent actual battles, not freaking abstractions of grand campaigns that take years to complete... I shouldn't turn the game speed up to max, and still have to sit there for a good minute or so for one battle to end.

SIEGES take SIGNIFICANTLY LESS TIME than these battles do.

It's just... ?????

 

[toniagree]

I agree

 

[lickitysplit]

Seems totally reasonable to me, both from a gameplay perspective and historical one. Many 'battles' were protracted into never-ending wars of attrition in mountains where the defenders could dig in.

 

[Mr. Methyl]

Seems totally reasonable to me, both from a gameplay perspective and historical one. Many 'battles' were protracted into never-ending wars of attrition in mountains where the defenders could dig in.

Right, but as has been said, not every single battle is Verdun or Stalingrad, and the current system seems to trend more toward that end. Massive armies met each other during this period, true, and I can see your point as to representing campaigns, but even factoring the jockeying for position, movement, and politics, it is the incredibly rare campaign that lasted multiple years in one province, historically, to the point that ones that did were remarkable. The longest part of campaigns were sieges, which are already represented in a separate way in-game.

That has all been said before. My opinion? Find a way to split the difference, and make siege modifiers much more crucial, as well as battle rolls, though this has problems too vis a vis awesome AI generals.

 

[Ixtli613]

Wow, guess I shouldn't have done that! TWO MONTHS of fighting later, they get reinforced, then I get reinforced, then they get reinforced, then I get reinforced, and A FUCKING YEAR LATER we STILL have the same battle going on, except now it's 300k guys fighting each other in this mountain, in a never-ending battle between over a quarter of a million people that see massive casualties in the DOZENS every day. Dozens!

In the grim darkness of the near past, there is only war.

 

[McHinery]

I haven't experienced this...

If anything battles will last a few days; if things become protracted I'll manually order a retreat.

Now, the damn attrition is ridiculous! But hey, it probably should be as supply chains sucked back then.

 

[geckoman1011]

My favorite is when my full morale army hits a nearly moraleless enemy only to see the full morale army get cut down to nothing. The battle system is beyond broken. same with the diplomacy. same with coalition peace deals. same with trade...about the only thing that isnt broken in this game is the graphics.

 

[Iduakil]

Had similar situation as OP in my Austrian game, was fighting France and allies versus me and half of HRE in mountains in Switzerland. Lured the french army, then kept on reinforcing my army with mercenaries till my bank was almost zero. It lasted for almost a whole year ...... seriously, the 50% casualties nerf is wrong in my humble opinion.

 

[Lakedaimon]

My favorite is when my full morale army hits a nearly moraleless enemy only to see the full morale army get cut down to nothing. The battle system is beyond broken. same with the diplomacy. same with coalition peace deals. same with trade...about the only thing that isnt broken in this game is the graphics.

Except they aren't broken. Stop exagerating, the game is perfectly playable, and for me still very much enjoyable. You can say you don't like certain things but don't say everything is broken just because you don't like it.

 

[LemonMonk]

The Battle of Agincourt and The Battle of Alesia are other real world examples of a much smaller army beating a larger one. I think that some battles should end up with much lower numbers winning, it is historical however rare. I think the frequency of them should be lowered, but it is understandable that an army in the mountains of far lower numbers can defeat a much larger army. Arminius slaughtered many Romans in the Germanic forests with fewer units historically too. It happens.

 

[SweetHalcyHS]

The real problem seems to be here as to what the OP is talking about is the problem is retreated regiments who do nothing but add to the numbers and don't actually fight. This makes up for ridiculous situations where the battle looks huge on paper (300k vs. 300k) but in reality, there's probably only one or two regiments fighting each other making out for the minimal casualties the OP has witnessed.

Either battles need to be more bloodier again, or else the retreated regiments mechanic seems to be reworked somehow because it plainly isn't working out as is currently; at least make armies retreat if their morale is depleted (this would prevent the currently ridiculous 300k vs. 300k battles, but it may allow abusive cases where people can retreat the majority of their armies at little to no cost) or so that retreated regiments regain morale over the course of the battle and cycle back into the reserve - like how a real campaign would work - since these month long events aren't simply battles anymore.

 

[EbonMane]

I like the long battles, especially in the mountains. I can hold enemy deathstacks in place for awhile and jockey for better positioning or pick off their smaller armies. Had a situation in my Ottoman game in a war against most of Europe (France, HRE, Poland, Lithuania, minors) where there were three simultaneous battles over 100k within a few provinces of each other because I had flanked their doomstacks from both ends of the Black Sea. My northern army had been overwhelmed in Greece and retreated to Anatolia before my eastern armies could march back from steamrolling the Timurids. I blocked the crossing from Constantinople and they tried to go around to the north, leaving ~30k in various Greek sieges. I parked my Eastern stacks in the mountains between the Black and Caspian seas and when the bulk of their army was at the northern tip of the Black, I crossed my northern army back from Anatolia into Greece and force-marched straight over the stacks they had left sieging. They split to send the bulk of their forces back to Greece and I caught their main stack in some hills in southern Poland with my northern army (about half as many troops as their main stack) while my eastern armies force marched over to slaughter a medium size stack and intercept some reinforcements from Lithuania (thanks, forced march!). Both of those battles ended quickly because I made sure to fight them on plains, and I retreated my northern army from the battle against their main stack while the other two managed to pull it into position on some plains with a bit of position jockeying and attacked it there, resulting in a relatively even battle except that I had just gotten one of the military techs that gives artillery +2 fire, they were all behind me in tech, and I had a 6 fire general, so I pounded them to the tune of thousands of casualties every fire round. Those four battles alone netted me something like 20 warscore (superiority goal), so I was able to get a quick concession out of France before his doomstack had done more than siege a few Greek provinces of mine.

I was inferior numerically, but the nuance of terrain and combat width allowed me to make extremely advantageous choices, and what should have been an even match became a rout in my favor. It's strategic depth like that that makes this a GRAND strategy game. The only complaint I have is that most of that depth is not reflected in the manual; I had to read the wiki to get a good understanding of the combat system.

My favorite is when my full morale army hits a nearly moraleless enemy only to see the full morale army get cut down to nothing.

Non-consolidated stacks? Morale increases a lot faster than you're able to reinforce, and a regiment of 250 men only does 25% damage.

 

[Lakedaimon]

Exactly, the thing one person dislikes about the game may be the thing that the other person likes about the game, or it may be that someone else understands the game better and therefor knows how to deal with it. That's why making claims like "it is beyond broken" are best not made at all. The only thing that you should claim is either "I don't understand it" or "I don't like it".

 

[Illanair]

I haven't experienced this...

Me neither - Battles are always (too) fast for me to reinforce my front lines if the AI makes good use of the FOW.

 

[geckoman1011]

Except they aren't broken. Stop exagerating, the game is perfectly playable, and for me still very much enjoyable. You can say you don't like certain things but don't say everything is broken just because you don't like it.

Yes, because battles that last years, bi-polar AI diplomacy (within a month span), nations in coalitions who arent war goal or war leader cant be touched in peace deals, static trade routes that unnecessarily favors europe are all just fine. i would hate to see your definition of something broken...

 

[AxiomaticTruth]

I don't even understand how this was considered acceptable.

My 40k stack attacks 9k guys in a mountain, with the enemy army on the other side of france. Wow, guess I shouldn't have done that! TWO MONTHS of fighting later, they get reinforced, then I get reinforced, then they get reinforced, then I get reinforced, and A FUCKING YEAR LATER we STILL have the same battle going on, except now it's 300k guys fighting each other in this mountain, in a never-ending battle between over a quarter of a million people that see massive casualties in the DOZENS every day. Dozens!

Why didn't you manually retreat? It's only like 0.1 warscore if you do it earlier, and next time you can bait them to attacking YOU at a -3 modifier and I bet you won't be complaining about that.

 

[zodium]

Why didn't you manually retreat? It's only like 0.1 warscore if you do it earlier, and next time you can bait them to attacking YOU at a -3 modifier and I bet you won't be complaining about that.

Why waste such a valuable opportunity to carpet siege everything they own? You're not losing much anyway, so it's no hurry.

 

[neaiskink]

in my burgundy game i had a stack of 10 units (5 arty, 5 infantry) slugging it our with 40 units of austrians while my remaining troops were killing the french.
Once I was done with the french and ready to deal with the austrians, I retreated the 10 units ("Thanks. Here's a medal or two for you, guys") and killed off the Austrians with the main forces.
Had the Austrians been able to reinforce the french, I think I would have lost the war. Now, being delayed, the 2 superpowers were defeated in detail.
All of that thanks to those 10k brave men, short combat width and a great general (last tourney champion fellow, he was good)

 

[DarkThug]

I thought these battles happening on the campaign map were supposed to represent actual battles, not freaking abstractions of grand campaigns that take years to complete...

From now on think of it as grand campaign for whole province then. It may make you feel better :laugh:

On serious note, the only battle that take excessively long to conclude is mountain battles. Plain battles still finish considerably fast.
It need to be fixed indeed but not because it suck for players, because it give human players HUGE advantage over AI.
It's a concept called "troop rotation" and AI is done for.

Paradox need to either tune mountain battle duration or improve AI so it can do the same.
However I foresee river of tear if that is the case.

 

[DCyDe]

Points to consider:
- defending armies have a battle modifier in their favour
- fighting in mountains or hills reduces the combat width, so it doesnt mather if you have a bigger army, all your units simply can't fight in that terrain at the same time
- leaders play a significant role
- dice-rolls, it's random, nothing to do there instead of hoping to get lucky