battles are beyond ridiculous now

[kuroiya88]

For the love of god, this simple numbers bug isnt a break. IT DOES NOT CAUSE A CRASH TO DESKTOP. IT DOES NOT MAKE COMBAT DO NOTHING. It is very easily worked with and even used to your own advantage if you are smarter than a brick.

^This. Broken? Are you kidding me? That word has become meaningless.

Here's your solution: Don't engage in the darn mountains! When I get in that situation I accept the loss and pull out to fight another day in better conditions. You should not be rewarded for dumping thousands of troops in horrible terrain, throwing all strategy out the window. The OP is complaining about something that is perfectly WAD.

 

[hauptman]

actually instead of throwing all your weight into the mountains, throw just enough. then use your remainder to do something else, like take Ile de france while frances 110 regiments are nickel and diming your 20k stack in bearn.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

For the love of god, this simple numbers bug isnt a break. IT DOES NOT CAUSE A CRASH TO DESKTOP. IT DOES NOT MAKE COMBAT DO NOTHING. It is very easily worked with and even used to your own advantage if you are smarter than a brick.

By that same logic patching Quake 3 so the machine gun (your starting weapon) did 1mil damage per bullet would be A-ok, because it wouldn't make the game crash, and someone would still be able to win games.
That such a change would eliminate all aspects of strategy & tactical diversity is unimportant?!

It's precisely the same with 1.2.2's combat; it eliminates all the tactics of war, and trivialises victory into a 2 step process:

1) bait AI into attacking your troops in mountains.
2) reinforce until you win.

Doesn't matter if you don't have enough troops; you have time to build more.
Doesn't matter that your troops are poorly positioned; you've got time to circumnavigate the globe to bring them home.
Doesn't matter that you're massively outnumbered; every battle will be stacked in your favour thanks to terrain modifiers.

In short, it's broken.

 

[hauptman]

By that same logic patching Quake 3 so the machine gun (your starting weapon) did 1mil damage per bullet would be A-ok, because it wouldn't make the game crash, and someone would still be able to win games.
That such a change would eliminate all aspects of strategy & tactical diversity is unimportant?!

It's precisely the same with 1.2.2's combat; it eliminates all the tactics of war, and trivialises victory into a 2 step process:

1) bait AI into attacking your troops in mountains.
2) reinforce until you win.

Doesn't matter if you don't have enough troops; you have time to build more.
Doesn't matter that your troops are poorly positioned; you've got time to circumnavigate the globe to bring them home.
Doesn't matter that you're massively outnumbered; every battle will be stacked in your favour thanks to terrain modifiers.

In short, it's broken.

This is in fact the strategy taken straight from eu3. What exactly is broken? If the combat NEVER resolved, because casualty numbers were ALWAYS zero, then I'd concur, broken. It simply takes a long time to kill 300k troops with a frontage of 5 regiments. Changing the numbers back to where they should be is not going to change this.

 

[HansBaer]

^This. Broken? Are you kidding me? That word has become meaningless.

This

People love to exaggerate, it's as simple as that, just ask the ladies

Yeah, the combat system is bugged and not wad. Did i play anyway and got some fun out of it? Yes! Will it be fixed? Yes!
It's always the same with every patch in every game. OMZG ZERGKLING KILLED DRAGOON IN 5 ZECONDS, RAGE QUIT BROKEN BLIZZARD SUCK DICKS IN HELL!=!°"=)

 

[TheBloke]

Maybe we should avoid the word 'broken' seeing as it seems to be overloaded with different connotations by different people, and its use appears to be contributing to disagreement and flaming etc.

There is a very significant bug in the combat mechanics, which has had a large impact on any game that starts or reaches 'late' period. Can we all agree on that?

Now that we know what the bug is, it can be worked around and even be beneficial to the player - for some value of 'beneficial', specifically that you can win more battles, not necessarily meaning that that's preferable (the AI doesn't know how to work around it so arguably this is unbalancing.)

That doesn't change the fact that it's a significant bug that should, and will, be fixed by Paradox.

So I agree with hauptman (and others) that, now we understand the bug, it's not really a reason to not play. I also agree that it doesn't NOW 'break' the whole game, because now we know how the game is working. But clearly it needs to be fixed and I'm sure will be soon, and let's hope it turns out that it was a recent 1.2.x bug and that not too much game balance is expectant of it.

 

[QuestGAV]

I think it is reasonable to say a strategy game is not working as intended if you can simply bait a much larger AI force into a particular situation that leaves them incapable of responding to you.

 

[lember]

Doesn't matter if you don't have enough troops; you have time to build more.
Doesn't matter that your troops are poorly positioned; you've got time to circumnavigate the globe to bring them home.
Doesn't matter that you're massively outnumbered; every battle will be stacked in your favour thanks to terrain modifiers.

In short, it's broken.

your first 2 points are basiclly the same battles take to long in mountains thats true but there are enough provinces without mountains to work around it until it is fixed.
and your 3rd point is wad. mountain battles are supposed to be advantageous to the defender you are basiclly trying to attack a narrow mountainpass with a massive army what do you think the effect will be?
so going as far as saying the game is broken because mountainbattles take to long is a bit far fetched in my eyes, however it could use some balancing.
and just because you can exploit something doesn't mean you have to exploit it.

 

[DarkThug]

It's hardly one feature that is "bugged". It's been pointed out time and again that the coalition system works too well as an anti-blob measure -- to name just one problem, the Aztecs and Cherokee in North America should not be able to join England and other European countries in a coalition war against Spain in the 16th century, especially if the American nations only discovered Portugal and Castile due to first contact, while the other countries are still Terra Incognita to them.

And that, my friend, is your opinion. That is how you think the game should work. I do respect it. Just don't go around think it's fact or say something like "I point out the obvious why Paradox don't care !!" while half the forum disagree with you.

Problem: "perfectly playable" does very much imply "everything is working perfectly", even if it's not the only possible meaning for the phrase. You cannot really blame people for confusing the too when enough people use the first phrase to mean the second phrase that the implied equivalence become ingrained in the public consciousness despite its incorrectness.

I agree. My statement actually directed to both side. They shouldn't use the term loosely as it will confuse others. Same as the term "Broken".

I think it is reasonable to say a strategy game is not working as intended if you can simply bait a much larger AI force into a particular situation that leaves them incapable of responding to you.

I certainly agree with this. That's why we need to discuss what should be fixed/tuned.
Crying "Wahhh, combat is broken, the game is broken" certainly not help.

Is it mountain battle in particular that need to be toned down ?
Is it less bloody battle in general that need to be tuned back up ?
Is it AI that actually need to be improvement so it can handle this situation ?
Like don't pile up all its troop in a single mountain or able to rotate troops in and out so they can recover morale (I actually surprise so few players know how to do this)

Now that we know it is actually combat modifiers that is broken (That is how broken suppose to be)
I very nuch hope Paradox will fix it and see how it goes before messing with everything else.

 

[gianlucad]

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.

Then the game should simply rename them to campaigns then, because I've never seen pre-modern age battles take as long as they do in EU4.

 

[geckoman1011]

Then the game should simply rename them to campaigns then, because I've never seen pre-modern age battles take as long as they do in EU4.

If they do want to consider the battles more like campaigns I would like to see a withdraw function that doesnt destroy morale (as far as i can tell, manually removing your army mid-battle applies a morale hit). tactically withdrawing would be nice to have in a campaign and would be a nice option to have in a strategy game.

 

[DarkThug]

If they do want to consider the battles more like campaigns I would like to see a withdraw function that doesnt destroy morale (as far as i can tell, manually removing your army mid-battle applies a morale hit). tactically withdrawing would be nice to have in a campaign and would be a nice option to have in a strategy game.

Tactical or not, withdrawing army take some morale hit sound logical to me realistic-wise and gameplay-wise (and I don't even notice it is there)
An ability to select retreat destination when manually remove your troops (You don't need to select province next door) sound tactical enough to me.

 

[Lakedaimon]

And there you go, the combat system isn't "broken" it has a "bug".

I don't think anyone here is actually defending a bugged system, they aren't even defending the system. All people here are saying is that a bug does not automatically mean that a system is "broken".

 

[Saladin Osmanli]

And that, my friend, is your opinion. That is how you think the game should work. I do respect it. Just don't go around think it's fact or say something like "I point out the obvious why Paradox don't care !!" while half the forum disagree with you.

Perhaps I should've clarified: My "opinion" is firmly rooted in the hard facts that are the vast logisitical hurdles that the two nations that I named (Aztecs and Cherokee) face with regards to communicating with anyone on the other side of the Atlantic during the time frame (no radios, remember?) -- hurdles that are practically impossible to overcome for them without them undergoing technological modernization, and even after that the sheer distances involved should delay any communication attempts by several months to a whole year or so (double the time if it requires bilateral communication).

And then there's the paradox of New World nations being perfectly willing to forget all past grievances and work hand in hand with a colonizer (hell, they'd be willing to have him be their warleader!) who had recently conquered a lot of provinces from them, slaughtered countless numbers of their people/troops, and is pretty much dead-set on blobbing them, just because they are all members of the same Coalition against another colonizer. A much more logical situation would have said New World nations united in a separate Coalition from the one that the first colonizer is a member of, and be free to DOW the second colonizer at any time they see fit, and end their coaliton war under terms that are completely independent from that of the European-based coalition.

 

[clykke]

All people here are saying is that a bug does not automatically mean that a system is "broken".

If my car only fired on two cylinders, I'd be able to drive it, but I'd most certainly call it broken. The combat system is not working as intended, and even though it is able to simulate battles/campaigns, you do not get the outcome the developers intended.

 

[unmerged(652342)]

I certainly agree with this. That's why we need to discuss what should be fixed/tuned.
Crying "Wahhh, combat is broken, the game is broken" certainly not help.

- defending with a fanatical passion clearly broken mechanics provides even less help, and in the matter of fact it only does worse.

 

[unmerged(94417)]

Broken, 'nuff said.

 

[lember]

- defending with a fanatical passion clearly broken mechanics provides even less help, and in the matter of fact it only does worse.

so crying something is broken will help the developers but trying to have a discussion on what should be fixed won't?
as aid before the problem is probably a bug in the wapon modifiers but as long as you avoid fighting to much in the mountains you can make due until they get it fixed what will probably happen in 1.3
I'd like to see a fix to the papal influence loss on forming a new nation but that doesn't mean I think the whole system is broken

 

[Shushen]

Well in the Austria game i just finished i had a war with the Ottomans in the years just after 1800. At one point my doomstack engaged his doomstack. They stood there firing at each other for over a year before "battle" was finally over. Due to reinforcements that kept entering the battle i think i was at 300k versus his 250k

And of course his stack came running back shortly after retreat when it had regained morale.

But having learned my lesson i split my army in two and let his army get stuck fighting my halfstack. With his entire army stuck in this "battle" my other forces split up and besieged everything west of Bosporos. They had time to finish their sieges and join up with 150k holding off his 250k and win the fight in plenty of time.

Yeah this is broken.

 

[Lakedaimon]

If my car only fired on two cylinders, I'd be able to drive it, but I'd most certainly call it broken. The combat system is not working as intended, and even though it is able to simulate battles/campaigns, you do not get the outcome the developers intended.

Except the engine would only be a good comparison if we were talking about something like the speed of the game. Weapons modifiers are hardly as essential to the game as the functioning of the engine is to a car. Not only do people use overexagerated terms, we are now also using overexagerated metaphores.

Aside from that the proof that weapons modifiers are bugged has just been countered by a dev. Shows why data should be provided with claims because then we can either confirm or counter the conclusion. But we all know hardly anyone will anyway.