Brigades disappearing randomly?

[ChrisJ]

Has anyone else noticed you'll lose brigades randomly? I'll have armies of 30k men each, then while I'm at peace, I'll notice that some armies will lose a brigade, which lowers them to 27k. No attrition, full military spending, less than 50% taxes...

Whats going on? I remember in Vicky 1 the divisions would rise up, but not just disappear.

 

[unmerged(231219)]

Strange I've never seen this but it sounds like a bug to me.

 

[Mutineer]

No, not a bug. Remember, brigades linked to population. If you mouse over it will tell you where it was recruited and what population supported it.
All looses, from combat and attrition recovered from that population. In the same time, population can increase or decrease by normal game means, like moving to other country/state, colonial migration, changing jobs, changing religion and assimulating.

The moment that population gone - your unit gone.

 

[unmerged(231219)]

Hmmm I suppose that does make sense. Though I dont know if soldiers were allowed to migrate to other lands, at least without mutinying that is

 

[Foxbyte]

Sometimes brigades will rebel, especially if their pop is part of a Jacobin or Anarco-Liberal rebellion. When these rebellions occur they can fire off in multiple provinces, so if a brigade does join the rebellion it can be difficult to tell at a glance.

 

[unmerged(113842)]

I get this aswell. It's really annoying since Im a bit OCD in that if I have to have nice 30K stacks, 6 brigades inf, 2 cav and 2 art. Anything else just bugs me. Then every couple of years a brigade sometimes dissappears. Really annoying. It would be helpful if there was a warning mechanism when a pop that is supporting a brigade starts getting near the threshold where it can no longer support said pop, giving you time to get the national focus onto the relevant state.

 

[ChrisJ]

Is there any way to disable this? Its really very annoying for us with a little bit of OCD that, like saga said... like their armies all nice and tidy. I dont mind losses from combat, but from peacetime :/?

 

[Ivir Baggins]

Which nation are you playing as?

 

[von Todkopf]

Not a bug. Soldier populations linked to rebellious and seditious groups result in that manpower joining the rebellion when it erupts, which accounts for your "missing" brigades. Deal with it, nobody said being a tyrant (or whatever you choose to call your leader figure, no need for semantic nuances here) is easy.

Personally, I love this touch. Goes to show how interconnected everything is and an expert at pulling the puppets' string though you may be, your always a finger to short to pull that last string. Easy to blame it on the bugs when you don't have the patience to savour the scope of this game, man.

 

[unmerged(113842)]

No, the thing is this happens even without rebellions. I was playing a game as Prussia/North German Fed/Germany and there was a period of about 15 years when I had no wars, no revolts, but about every 18 months or so I'd see one of my nice 30K stacks suddenly loses a brigade. When I checked my pop screen I was losing about 30 soldiers a (day/month?). Considering I had max defence spending and low poor taxes the army should have been able to sustain enough manpower.

 

[Puritan]

Interesting. I've never lost a single brigade, except to rebellion.

Perhaps your totalitarian policies are causing pops to emigrate? But I've fielded regiments that didn't have enough soldier's to reinforce without any problems.

 

[Mutineer]

Most likely it was minority pop that got accumulated, this is realistic too. Personally I do not understand what complain is about, it is not that expensive to rehire a brand new one.

It is good thin that armies do not live for ever, additional good mechanism to prevent creating supper experience armies.

 

[Naselus]

If you had maximum military spending and low poor taxes, then the soldiers will promote, becoming farmers and officers faster than they are recruited. The optimum military spending for army growth is actually siomewhere around 60-70%; you're looking to prevent them from getting 70% of more everyday needs.

It's not a bug as such; more a quirk of the way the universal promotion mechanics work in conjuction with the slider spending.

 

[ow592]

Not a bug. Soldier populations linked to rebellious and seditious groups result in that manpower joining the rebellion when it erupts, which accounts for your "missing" brigades. Deal with it, nobody said being a tyrant (or whatever you choose to call your leader figure, no need for semantic nuances here) is easy.

Personally, I love this touch. Goes to show how interconnected everything is and an expert at pulling the puppets' string though you may be, your always a finger to short to pull that last string. Easy to blame it on the bugs when you don't have the patience to savour the scope of this game, man.

at the moment it is a bug. it is that f*#!$ unrealistic.

The officer says to the general: Sir, the art-brig of parma and the cav-brig of milano want not be soldiers any more, but we have more than enough men in venice who wants to be soldiers. What shall I do???

The general says: Ok. Let the men of parma and milano be farmers. Kill the horses, throw the cannons in the river and make a firework with the ammo! If the King wants two brigades of venice he has to build two new brigades.

Do you really think that this is realistic?

If you had maximum military spending and low poor taxes, then the soldiers will promote, becoming farmers and officers faster than they are recruited. The optimum military spending for army growth is actually siomewhere around 60-70%; you're looking to prevent them from getting 70% of more everyday needs.

There should be two sliders. One for soldiers and one for officers. if creating a slider is too complicated => a rule that there can be max 1 officer for 100 (or 50?) soldiers. No army in the world would pay more officers then it needs if there are not enough soldiers.

 

[Naselus]

tbh, one slider is fine, so long as it's balanced right to prevent mass-promotion at the high end. It currently isn't.

And the unit disbanding thing could really be fixed by either having soldiers state-capital only, or else making units state-scope rather than province-scope. After all, when a farmer in Ptrovsk decides to join the army, it's not like the army sets up the 1st Ptrovsk battalion with 25 men in it; They assign him to the nearest battilion, instead.

 

[von Todkopf]

at the moment it is a bug. it is that f*#!$ unrealistic.

*schnip schnapp und ein Trotermayer

Do you really think that this is realistic?

I apologise for speaking out of turn. Having encountered what I believed to be loss of brigades to erupting rebellions, I was not familiar with the other case described. I should have known better than to try and participate: as you may infer from my daily posts ratio I have been quite successful in refraining from posting - up until this moment; sadly, I was moved to act under the spell of present-moment enthusiasm with which the game has bewitched me.
This shall be no more. That is all.

 

[ow592]

the think with the rebellions is ok in the game. perhaps there could be less rebellions, but this is an other point.

state scoped would be nice, but one problem would still exist: if you are very successfull in assimilationg other cultures you have the same problem. let´s say that austria is recruiting an italian brigade in venice. it can happen that you assimilate so much italians that there are not enough to keep the brigade alive. but the soldiers are still in venice as austrian soldiers => bug not feature!

there should be three things done in recruiting:
1. state-scoped instead of province-scoped
2. if it still happens that you lose a brigade because of this issue => there should be a brigade with 0 soldiers (weapons and such things still exist - not the big problem with infantry but think about tanks)
3. a button "change recruiting area"

 

[ow592]

I hope that it will be better with 1.3 or 1.4

 

[brifbates]

The only times I've really had problems with this are some of the starting units don't seem to have a pop assosciated with them. This makes it rather dangerous to even try to use them as any sort of attrition will melt them away. I seem to recall several Persian units doing this if someone wants to investigate further...

 

[delra]

Sometimes POPs convert religion or culture slowly becoming another POP. During that conversion they create two smaller groups and can't build a unit.

You should do your best to be on top of this things and try to know what POPs your armies come from. It's also best to not go to a bigger war without Medicine and inventions associated with it. It might ruin your manpower pool for the entire game if you manage to get majority of your soldier POPs killed right away.

When in doubt, NF on Soldiers.