Battles shouldn't last more than a month

[Peter Ebbesen]

If a battle has to last for ingame-weeks (instead of at most a few ingame-days), so that the player has enough real-time to react, then it's obvious, that the ingame-movement-speed of armies has to be lowered accordingly^^

This is not obvious at all. Lowered compared to what? None of us know how fast armies will move in I:R yet.

Are you trying to do some zen thing here, wanting to lower I:R army movement speed below what is currently implemented in the alpha that none of us have seen, based on the assumption that if PDS follows the same design paradigms they have so far, it will in the released game be faster than you believe you will prefer?

In every PDS game the movement speed of armies is the result of balancing several competing factors. Some that argue in favour of faster movement, some slower. I expect the same to be the case for I:R, and that there's nothing obvious dictating what the speed should be.

 

[Esben_DRK]

Two rather famous battles of Caesar's Civil War were Ilerda and Pharsalus, both of which consisted of months of maneouvre around either one (Pharsalus) or a few (Ilerda) days of battle. Same goes for Caesar's Gallic Wars, with the Battle of Alesia taking a month, but only a few of those days were pitched fighting. As mentioned before, Hannibals battles were also days or weeks of maneouvre, with just one day of fighting. Crassus' defeat at Carrhae followed the same style. To the best of my knowledge, the same general trends were true in other large wars, such as the Socii War, the Mithridatic Wars and the wars of Alexander the Great.
However, these battles and campaigns were the result of organised states committed to a war. I don't know if other battles were either drawn out, or contained little maneouvre. To be historically accurate, any combat simulator should be able to have battles like the ones we know from history - but Paradox has had a longtime policy that historical accuracy is secondary to what they perceive as good gameplay. I'm pretty sure the combat mechanic is one such decision.

Edit: Fixed spelling mistakes.

 

[SecretBismarck]

from what i understand in imperator rome they plan to make battles more player driven by adding stances and more detailed maps we dont know how long battles will last in imperator rome but battles warent all out clashes from the start thare was skirmishing and fleeing and encamping but on the scale of imperator rome i think devs will make battles last enough time for all troops in immediate area to be influenchal in it
from what i can guess distance between cities is more or less 20 km witch can be passed in a day so evan if battles would last for more days player would have a lot of influance

 

[Vohen]

Greetings everyone.

In Imperator, I feel like battles lasting 2 to 3 weeks is the way to go. Beyond that could be an overkill. Even though I think that should have been the case in EU4 too; I understand that they had to do it due to both balance and late-game logic reasons, since 18th century was almost Napoleonic Era and battles were more complicated during that era.

But in CK2, I think the battles should have been a little shorter. I understand that they represent a mechanic of both Scouting, Fighting and Pursuing; but even that lasting months doesn't make sense most of the time. Most of the "actual battles" were about a few days at best. But I also understand the reason they did it this way. If it wouldn't be this way, there could be no meaning to split the army, since there would be no way for a backup army to catch the fight. But now, they have a chance to "arrive at the dawn." Making more tactics available.

Yet, we don't need this anymore since there are extreme amount of provinces. Now the backup army can catch the fight in a week, which is enough to justify a battle lasting a few weeks at most. Above that could really be unnecessary. Also, there will be in-game tactics which compensates for the long battles.

One other argument against shorter battles is that this is a game, not a simulation; so fun should come first. But I believe that this argument will not work in Imperator due to it being a war-oriented game, whereas EU4 was more about a balanced approach. You can just compare Eu4 and Ck2 to understand what I meant.

This is my opinion, after all.

Thanks for reading.

That is an interesting topic I haven't put much thought in PDX games.
While realistically short battles aren't feasible and, as said before, gameplay should always come first, there could still be a way to work this into the flow of combat.
I think a way to go about it would be for battles to have a "preparation" or "maneuvering" phase that lasted a while before going for the actual combat.
Some morale damage could be taken, as well as a very small amount of casualties.
The dice rolls in this phase could add up until reaching a treshold, and that's when the battle would transition to open combat, with the army that got the higher number on the sum of their rolls holding a proportional boost, up to a cap.
Also, reinforcing armies would give a maneuver penalty to their side for a while to represent the time needed to organize themselves in which the adversary could exploit to win in detail.
In EU4 this could even give new meaning to the least useful general pip, maneuver.

 

[Torma25]

Why should a battle last for weeks? its total unrealistic, in the battle of Cannae where Hanibal killed 86000 Romans, historians says it took about 6 hours with 30-40000 men.

This is what i hate about the paradox games, the battles takes to long.

My opinion

it's impossible to have a 6 hour battle though. Except if you also want the whole game to run on an hourly basis, which would make a game of this timescale extremely long and boring. Long battles exist only for gameplay reasons.

 

[AureliusBob]

it's impossible to have a 6 hour battle though. Except if you also want the whole game to run on an hourly basis, which would make a game of this timescale extremely long and boring. Long battles exist only for gameplay reasons.

That's the dilemma for pdox. Balancing gameplay is near impossible between strategy/tactical warfare. Pdox excels in the former at expense of the latter. Total War the opposite (although even their tactical gameplay is questionable)

 

[Råttan]

Well. Cant they just do all calculations 24 times faster? Instead of a unit getting 1 attack per day, it gets 24. Then all battles would go faster.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Well. Cant they just do all calculations 24 times faster? Instead of a unit getting 1 attack per day, it gets 24. Then all battles would go faster.

Yes, they could, but that is irrelevant. The speed of calculations has little to do with the design decision to have long battles.

See my post earlier in this thread if you don't understand why battles in previous PDS games takes weeks and even months to complete when the force disparity isn't so great it is an instant wipeout.

 

[Rocknocker]

Two rather famous battles of Caesar's Civil War were Ilerda and Pharsalus, both of which consisted of months of manouver around either one (Pharsalus) or a few (Ilerda) days of battle. Same goes for Caesar's Gallic Wars, with the Battle of Alesia taking a month, but only a few of those days were pitched fighting. As mentioned before, Hannibals battles were also days or weeks of manouver, with just one day of fighting. Crassus' defeat at Carrhae followed the same style. To the best of my knowledge, the same general trends were true in other large wars, such as the Socii War, the Mithridatic Wars and the wars of Alexander the Great.
However, these battles and campaigns were the result of organised states committed to a war. I don't know if other battles were either drawn out, or contained little manoeuver. To be historically accurate, any combat simulator should be able to have battles like the ones we know from history - but Paradox has had a longtime policy that historical accuracy is secondary to what they perceive as good gameplay. I'm pretty sure the combat mechanic is one such decision.

Maybe that is a way to go? When armies clash, make inter alia the manoeuver ability of each general influence when and under which circumstances the battle actually starts. In doing so, good generals with an advantageous position could initiate a fight early while good generals in a bad position may try to postpone the fight in order to wait for other friendly troops. If the fight than actually starts, it can be over much faster, thus being more realistic.

 

[roug1234]

it's impossible to have a 6 hour battle though. Except if you also want the whole game to run on an hourly basis, which would make a game of this timescale extremely long and boring. Long battles exist only for gameplay reasons.

I understand this, but i think weeks or months for killing 2000 men is to long, it would be better if the fight lastet 1 day, they could just pause the speed and give you options of manuver ect and then battle 1 day and then you get the resault, if they dont i dont care it would just be more fun (for me) but i am not sure if this game is going to be good, the AI for HOI4 still sucks

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I understand this, but i think weeks or months for killing 2000 men is to long, it would be better if the fight lastet 1 day, they could just pause the speed and give you options of manuver ect and then battle 1 day and then you get the resault, if they dont i dont care it would just be more fun (for me) but i am not sure if this game is going to be good, the AI for HOI4 still sucks

No, no, and no. It would not be better. It would be stupid given the fundamental design of PDS games.

They cannot just "pause the speed". I already told you why back in post #9, but if you need repetition to understand, so be it.

This is a game designed as an n-player realtime multiplayer game for continuous playing without pausing, with optional pausing in reaction to game events in singleplayer. This is not merely my personal opinion I'm stating here, it is part of the fundamental design of every single PDS grand strategy game.

Automatically pausing the game for every player whenever a battle occurred for any player would destroy the game's multiplayer, so PDS is not going to do that, just like they don't implement any other regular game mechanic that requires pausing the game. Full stop.

What you are suggesting would work in a singleplayer game without multiplayer or a singleplayer with a multiplayer nobody but the most masochistic would play, but PDS does not develop such games.

 

[Vohen]

You guys are too stuck on the idea that only a few tweaks like shortening the length of combat would solve the issue, but I think this is a problem that requires a little of thinking outside of the box to work out.
Imo, instead of just tweaking numbers, a more fundamental change is required, I believe the idea I posted to add a completely new phase to an encounter that portrays something other than a full scale battle, changing the very basics of combat, is a good way to go, but far from the only answer possible.
I'm not gonna act like a know-all here, and this is only my opinion of course, but I believe I can speak for most that exercising creativity in problem solving is always a good thing.

No, no, and no. It would not be better. It would be stupid given the fundamental design of PDS games.

They cannot just "pause the speed". I already told you why back in post #9, but if you need repetition to understand, so be it.

This is a game designed as an n-player realtime multiplayer game for continuous playing without pausing, with optional pausing in reaction to game events in singleplayer. This is not merely my personal opinion I'm stating here, it is part of the fundamental design of every single PDS grand strategy game.

Automatically pausing the game for every player whenever a battle occurred for any player would destroy the game's multiplayer, so PDS is not going to do that, just like they don't implement any other regular game mechanic that requires pausing the game. Full stop.

What you are suggesting would work in a singleplayer game without multiplayer or a singleplayer with a multiplayer nobody but the most masochistic would play, but PDS does not develop such games.

I agree with you, but the aggressiveness here isn't very helpful.

And pausing the game (edit: not only pausing, but simply shortening combat altogether) isn't a problem only for multiplayer, but in singleplayer as well.
As one day is one tick, you could only have a single dice roll per day at most, and damage values would have to be ramped way up as well to keep the same casuality numbers.
Those two factors together pose a serious problem, because it will skew the the damage numbers way up towards the early dice rolls.
So a bad roll on the first day could already settle the entire encounter, which isn't unrealistic per se, but it serves absolutely no purpose gameplay wise, as it just leaves too much in the hands of Lady luck.

 

[Daniel1312]

And if battles are too short, how will players be able to react? Especially in multiplayer...
PDS games are not TW. So, it would be extremely difficult (in my opinion) to add some depth in terms of military and battles without destroying other spheres of gameplay.

 

[Kayden_II]

Honestly, the idea, that 2 armies don't fight a battle immediately as some sort of a maneuver-phase isn't that bad ...

Let me have an army, which has entered a province with an enemy-one ...
Instead, that a battle starts immediately, both armies would be in some sort of a stand-by-modus, which represents this maneuver-phase, but each passed ingame-day increases the chance of the start of the actual battle, which hasn't to last that long (aka ingame-weeks or even ingame-months) anymore ...
If the actual battle would finally start then it would happen as usual aka with the terrain-bonus for the defending army etc. pp, but this maneuver-phase would also offer additional possibilities for the player like the one of a forced retreat (to leave this province without a battle, but with some sort of a disadvantage) or the one of a forced attack (to speed up the start of the actual battle, but with some sort of a disadvantage, too) ...
This behaviour (normal battle-modus, forced retreat, forced attack) could also be pre-adjusted like the different stances for the ships in Stellaris.

 

[Esben_DRK]

Maybe that is a way to go? When armies clash, make inter alia the manoeuver ability of each general influence when and under which circumstances the battle actually starts. In doing so, good generals with an advantageous position could initiate a fight early while good generals in a bad position may try to postpone the fight in order to wait for other friendly troops. If the fight than actually starts, it can be over much faster, thus being more realistic.

I am personally into the more historically plausible aspects of the games, so insofar that such a change would simulate the behaviour of the armies of the ancient world better, I am all for it. I don't know enough about tribal or small-scale warfare, for example the early Roman Republic, pre-Roman Gallic or internal Greek wars and battles to know whether such a system is representative of smaller battles. There were also some noteworthy exceptions to the general rule. As I recall, the battle of Nola during the Socii Wars was rare because it wasn't preceded by any maneouvre, just Sulla and his legions encountering an Italian army and proceeding to murder without too much of a fuss or intervention by nearby Italian armies.
I think a design move towards a lengthy maneouvre phase is historically accurate for large-scale wars (With a random factor to simulate armies just happening upon one another) with the battles themselves being short (A few days at most). The battle length would be changed slightly since reinforcements would only join during the maneouvre phase, which would make the month-long pitched reinforcement-battles of CK2 and EU4 impossible. That would still make single- and multiplayer maneouvre possible, and would not force a pause on a player anymore than battle results do in other PDX games currently, IMO.
I don't think PDX would necessarily see this kind of historical accuracy as a gameplay improvement though, so I won't hold my breath.
(Also I'm not a Classicist historian, so my impression of what is historically accurate may be off.)

 

[Vohen]

I am personally into the more historically plausible aspects of the games, so insofar that such a change would simulate the behaviour of the armies of the ancient world better, I am all for it. I don't know enough about tribal or small-scale warfare, for example the early Roman Republic, pre-Roman Gallic or internal Greek wars and battles to know whether such a system is representative of smaller battles. There were also some noteworthy exceptions to the general rule. As I recall, the battle of Nola during the Socii Wars was rare because it wasn't preceded by any maneouvre, just Sulla and his legions encountering an Italian army and proceeding to murder without too much of a fuss or intervention by nearby Italian armies.
I think a design move towards a lengthy maneouvre phase is historically accurate for large-scale wars (With a random factor to simulate armies just happening upon one another) with the battles themselves being short (A few days at most). The battle length would be changed slightly since reinforcements would only join during the maneouvre phase, which would make the month-long pitched reinforcement-battles of CK2 and EU4 impossible. That would still make single- and multiplayer maneouvre possible, and would not force a pause on a player anymore than battle results do in other PDX games currently, IMO.
I don't think PDX would necessarily see this kind of historical accuracy as a gameplay improvement though, so I won't hold my breath.
(Also I'm not a Classicist historian, so my impression of what is historically accurate may be off.)

Well, even if they wouldn't do it themselves in their games, I would love to see at least the ability to mod it in by ourselves.
I understand that this is a bit more niche and too close to a game's core mechanics, but it doesn't sound impossible or even absurdly hard to implement.

 

[Daniel1312]

Well, even if they wouldn't do it themselves in their games, I would love to see at least the ability to mod it in by ourselves.
I understand that this is a bit more niche and too close to a game's core mechanics, but it doesn't sound impossible or even absurdly hard to implement.

I would say it does. How would you add such a thing?

 

[Vohen]

I would say it does. How would you add such a thing? Events?

I meant for them to implement a way for us to mod combat.
I don't think there's a way to do that currently in any PDX game, but having the battle script laid open for us, giving the ability of adding more phases, with diverse modifiers, manipulation of dice rolls, custom length, and maybe even a battle scope for variables and such doesn't sound like something impossible to ask for.

 

[Cheexsta]

I like the idea of adding a manouver phase that lasts several days, with a timer that estimates when the battle should start - but make it imprecise, representing the difficulty in predicting the ebb and flow of war.

During the manouver phase, each side will inflict a small number of casualties with skirmishers and cavalry, representing scouts and foragers clashing. One of the armies may gain a terrain bonus, depending on who is attacking whom and which general has the higher Finesse value. An army can attempt to disengage from the battle, at a % chance per day during the manouver phase.

Then, if both armies are still in the same territory, the battle happens. Instead of having a battle last a couple of weeks, rolling one dice every couple of days, the battle lasts a single day but with a dozen or so dice rolled at the same time.

This gives the player a chance to react to battle (but without being able to perfectly calculate when it will happen), and stops the battle being decided by a single dice roll.

 

[Holmes]

it's impossible to have a 6 hour battle though. Except if you also want the whole game to run on an hourly basis, which would make a game of this timescale extremely long and boring. Long battles exist only for gameplay reasons.

Is it?. Look at differently, its not about changing any game mechanic at all but increasing the outcome being reached before anyone marches in from different provinces.

Battles were fought in the ancient world was by mutual consent, its technically very difficult to force an enemy to commit to battle if he chooses to avoid it, equally separate formations marching to each other aid from 100s of miles away, and arriving to intervene in ongoing combat, was almost unheard off, and combat longer than a day was also rather rare, most outcomes being reached quickly.

Marching to the sound of the arrows, could be limited in a number of ways, initiating combat each day, becomes a % chance when both sides are present, ( ends when if side has reached half way to next province and cannot turn back) joining an existing combat could become a % chance per day when arriving in a province with a combat occurring with forces of your side, that % could be a base number ( say half that of the base initiate combat value), based on stance ( seeking combat/evading( seeking to quit the province, ends the combat when half way movement is reached)/reinforcing combat one increasing the % roll, one decreasing it, one seeking to find and join existing combat, and modified by national mil policies/terrain type etc.

example;
2 forces in a province (AB), one seeking one evading combat.Adjacent province one force (A)has a second army marching into the province.
A % chance of forcing combat per day 20% from base, modified by own stance(+10%)/terrain(open +10%)/enemy stance(-15%) policies ( own aggressive minus others defensive policies(+5%) is 30% per day, and when arriving the second A force has 15%chance per day of joining thecombat.

If both are in aggressive stance there are two forces, 45% and 40% per day to activate combat. Sooner the combat strats, the deadlier it will be before anyone else marches to the province.