Combat is as irritating as ever

[hazxan]

And the craziness continues! My army of 3,500 defeats an enemy of 800. Reduces them to 200 or so. The war is over and I have won conclusively, for sure? Well, no. My war score creeps from 45% to an unimpressive 47%!. :blink: The enemy is totally smashed, they have no chance of winning, all i need do is chase them and wipe them out. Maybe then the war score will be .... 49%. They have no army, is their score down to the myriad of huge fortress-churches and "iron dome" defences that CK2 seems to think filled Ireland in 1150? You have to see the funny side...

 

[Anthropoid]

I agree that the small war score values of battles is frustrating. However, battles like Hastings were the exceptions not the rule as far as I know. Agincourt is a good example of this point. While it was a terribly one-sided English victory, achieved via tactical genius that a player would be hard pressed to simulate in the game, it could be possible for a smaller elite force of mostly archers to win (with really great Generals) in a defensive terrain being attacked by a 4 to 5 times larger but poorly led and trained/equipped group that included too many heavy cav and vritually no skirmishers, or light cav.

The outcome of the battle is perhaps not as 'decisive' as you might guess:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt#Aftermath

Aftermath

Due to a lack of reliable sources it is impossible to give a precise figure for the French and English casualties. However, it is clear that though the English were outnumbered, their losses were far lower than those of the French. The French sources all give 4,000–10,000 French dead, with up to 1,600 English dead. The lowest ratio in these French sources has the French losing six times more men than the English. The English sources vary between about 1,500 and 11,000 for the French dead, with English dead put at no more than 100.[51]

Barker identifies from the available records "at least" 112 Englishmen who died in the fighting (including Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, a grandson of Edward III),[52] but this excludes the wounded. One widely used estimate puts the English casualties at 450, not an insignificant number in an army of about 8,500, but far fewer than the thousands the French lost, nearly all of whom were killed or captured. Using the lowest French estimate of their own dead of 4,000 would imply a ratio of nearly 9 to 1 in favour of the English, or over 10 to 1 if the prisoners are included.

The French suffered heavily. Three dukes, at least eight counts, a viscount and an archbishop died, along with numerous other nobles. Of the great royal office holders, France lost her Constable, Admiral, Master of the Crossbowmen and prévôt of the marshals.[53] The baillis of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle "cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society in Artois, Ponthieu, Normandy, Picardy." [54] Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the Duke of Orléans (the famous poet Charles d'Orléans) and Jean Le Maingre (known as Boucicault) Marshal of France.[55] Almost all these prisoners would have been nobles, as the less valuable prisoners were slaughtered.

Although the victory had been militarily decisive, its impact was complex. It did not lead to further English conquests immediately as Henry's priority was to return to England, which he did on 16 November, to be received in triumph in London on the 23rd.[56] Henry returned a conquering hero, in the eyes of his subjects and European powers outside of France, blessed by God. It established the legitimacy of the Lancastrian monarchy and the future campaigns of Henry to pursue his "rights and privileges" in France.[57] Other benefits to the English were longer term. Very quickly after the battle, the fragile truce between the Armagnac and Burgundian factions broke down. The brunt of the battle had fallen on the Armagnacs and it was they who suffered the majority of senior casualties and carried the blame for the defeat. The Burgundians seized on the opportunity and within 10 days of the battle had mustered their armies and marched on Paris.[58] This lack of unity in France would allow Henry eighteen months to prepare militarily and politically for a renewed campaign. When that campaign took place, it was made easier by the damage done to the political and military structures of Normandy by the battle.[59]

It took several years' more campaigning, but Henry was eventually able to fulfil all his objectives. He was recognised by the French in the Treaty of Troyes (1420) as the regent and heir to the French throne. This was cemented by his marriage to Catherine of Valois, the daughter of King Charles VI.

Agincourt was probably one of the most asymmetrical wins by an outnumbered force since the fight of the 300 Spartans and until those Brits held off the thousands of Zulu down in South AFrica in the 1800s; a real watershed in terms of sheer devastating battlefield domination by the underdog force.

Nonetheless, the effect was not to provoke a hasty surrender, but simply to transform the direction and speed of the following events in the war, which continued on for another more years.

That is the dynamic that this game seeks to represent, and which it does do a decent job at. Winning wars in this era (and indeed throughout much of the ancient era too) was about weeks and months and years spent campaigning with the occasional field battle every few weeks or morely likely every few months, and the rest of the action being either (a) trying to isolate and besieige enemy fortifications and settlements; or (b) mobilizing siege relief forces to impose more delays and costs to the attackers.

Raids and ambushes were important too, but generally smaller scale and arguably wrapped up in the enge as it is. Set piece battles in wihch one side had most of its available troops devastated leading to a surrender almost never happened. If memory serves, even William teh Conqueror still had to travel around England to acquire oaths of fealty from vaious lords and in some cases they made him fight for it. It is true that after Hastings there were not more LARGE battles, but there were still some battles and true control of the Kingdom was not achieved until a few years (maybe even a decade) later, I cannot recall for certain.

The thing with your 3500 beats 800 down to 200 that you have to keep in mind is: those 800 were their most recent levies. There are more levies that will be ready to raise in a few months. Maybe not 800 but some hundreds. Also, the holdings in each County have garrisons in them, and these seem to be treated as completely separte from the field armies; and as they should based on my understanding of the period.

If you think about every castle, town and Bishophric that the enemy has left, and estimate that he has 800 or more troops set up and ready to defend each of those holdings to the best of their ability, and that defending them in that way was the norm of the period, then maybe his loss of his maybe only 800 man field force doesn't seem so devastating after all.

So what if you beat his field force. You haven't taken control of his "bases" to use a more modern day term. Until you muster enough money, time and meny to whittle all of his 'bases' down to a point that victory becomes a foregone conclusion, it is in his best interest to hold out and refuse to surrender to terms.

Medieval warfare was a bit like WWI warfare in that respect, except obviously without the massive continuous frontage of trenchworks. Rather, earth and stone and trench works centered on population and resource centers or strategic defense points.

 

[tnick0225]

Well for better or worse doomstacks will always exist and gamey fake unrealistic wars will always rage in games such as this, just because there is no actual way for a computer that bases outcomes off set equations to realistically create the chaotic nature of battle.

Trust me when your in a battle, all bets are off and planning no longer exists its kill or be killed, and thats why throughout history there are so may bizarre otherworldly results when battles were waged.

And its something a programmer will never understand nor be able to program. So sorry guys, not to squash yalls hopes no matter what in any game overwhelming numbers will = win all the time.

But I have seen some come from behind victories since the latest patch which used to never happen

 

[Resurr3ction]

I guess it may be a deliberate design element to slow the human player down against the AI, as with a realistic battle/siege mechanic, the human could probably waltz the map in a few decades.

Try playing as USA in their scenario in EU3 for an example of how to do it better. If AI can do the same to you it is far more difficult to "waltz" through the map and white peace is something that looks like a pretty sweet deal.

In my opinion warring in Pdox titles could be vastly and very easily improved. Consider absolutely minor change of giving battles 10 times more weight so instead of huge battle giving you 8 % you would get 80 % almost winning the war... I myself wonder too why Pdox chooses so bad design when it comes to warfare in pretty much all its titles though (and I have not my hopes up for EU4 in this regard).

 

[Talq]

CK2 is a) a tad enthusiastic about all holdings being garrisoned and fortified. Take constantinople - ok the walls were good, but you didn't actually need to take the city, the palace, the church and a few suburbs. It gets worse going to places like Russia, where every province still has its mandatory 3 or more fortifications when in practice fortifications, let alone strong fortifications, were uncommon at best. (As an aside, kings were not great fans of fortifications outside of borderlands, as they fully realised what a pain they could be if the owner rebelled against them). Technically this is gotten around by undeveloped holdings being poorly fortified, but then the advancement systems kicks in and every town gets treated like its Paris or London. Also before people jump in, a fair few places liked fortified towers, monasteries or other such to deter raids. In practice a lot of these either could not stop a large army, were of no value once the land around was taken or both.

b) sieges tended to be short in part because once a nations (read: kingdom, duchy etc) field army was destroyed, there was no possibility of relief for the defenders who then tended to capitulate quickly. The few sieges that went for years were frequently defenders waiting for relief to arrive (as well as attackers not having enough siege equipment, and/or being large enough to fully blockade a city (this was part of the reason why Antioch at the start of the first crusade took so long). Also the game seems to treat sieges as starving them out & actively taking down the walls as an assault (sort of ok), but uses mechanics of 'it only takes a few days to get into a position for an assault to succeed' which is not really true.

That said the game does have a problem in that it does want to allow the player to succeed in situations where realisticly they shouldn't. Letting it all fall on a couple of field battles is problematic if you are taking on the HRE (especially as you have no real control over your army). Its where they let impossible situations drag on there is an issue.

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

Huh? I feel this is the only Paradox game with combat that isn't horrible. Its very much based on numbers, but you can still outwit the AI with minimal effort, using rivers and hills. Bouncing armies isn't a problem in this at all. Got 63 guys running away? Its foolish to chase them rather than seiging provinces. Sorry, but in real life, sometimes 63 guys ran away and 11000 people didn't chase them 50 miles.

Later on, though, it does become a pain when every other holding has 3000 men garrisoned. I take it this is because of a few things. Its ambitious to model advancement over 400 years. Most players will only see the first 200 years, so development is focused on that area. Paradox doesn't always have the opportunity to test for 100 hours to get to the late game.

With warscore, the player can easily abuse the warscore system to in order to seldom loose any war. Don't want to give up? Don't. Just wait for your levies to recharge, then send them at the enemy again. Eventually their king will die (battle, assassination, misc) or be captured and you'll be free to carry on. You might even turn the tide. Right now, the game would have to be redisgned quite a lot to make capitulation over lost battles seem reasonable. Consider, too, that there's usually a lot at stake in wars. Its not just a county title, but a duchie, or the throne. I think, historically, kings were less inclined to submit to war demands when their title was at stake by a pretender (and usually the point when they were assassinated by people tired of the war dragging on).

 

[Anthropoid]

You make good points Talq. Especially with respect to say, the first couple hundred years, and/or large sections of Europe.

Agree that the 'attrition war' model shouldn't apply by default. But then on the other hand, take away the attrition model of war and what would happen? Many players would blitzkrieg Europe in the early 1100s!

So there has got to be some mechanisms that make rapid expansion difficult if not just inherently slowed down.

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

You make good points Talq. Especially with respect to say, the first couple hundred years, and/or large sections of Europe.

Agree that the 'attrition war' model shouldn't apply by default. But then on the other hand, take away the attrition model of war and what would happen? Many players would blitzkrieg Europe in the early 1100s!

So there has got to be some mechanisms that make rapid expansion difficult if not just inherently slowed down.

It would involve modeling the real scenarios. Give actual troop numbers, potential for loss based on tactical/strategic situation and low tier command decisions, further fleshed out diplomacy, realm intrigue, and decentralization. Decentralization is the big thing. Regardless of your crown law or your vassals, you currently have ultimate control of your vassals and demesne, and there's no one checking your hand, aside from bi-centennial vassal revolts. No wonder some people conquer Europe with minimal difficulty.

 

[Alsn]

Agincourt was probably one of the most asymmetrical wins by an outnumbered force since the fight of the 300 Spartans and until those Brits held off the thousands of Zulu down in South AFrica in the 1800s; a real watershed in terms of sheer devastating battlefield domination by the underdog force.

I just had to step in here and correct you. I know it doesn't even apply to the time period in question but the battle of Narva in 1700 between Sweden and Russia is about as asymmetrical as it gets. Having a blizzard in your back and straight into your opponents face definitely helps!

Sorry, quite off topic, but I needed to show some patriotism for once!

 

[MartinSWE]

Having finally caved and got the game in the last Steam sale, I'm surprised by how irritating and "unfinished" the actual combat is. Especially as CK2 has received much praise as being the "best yet" by Paradox. Despite that, the combat problems that were in EU1 (released about 422 years ago) are still present, with a whole lot more besides! In summary:

The "Bouncing" army problem. A miniscule army of < 100 retreats into *your* county. You chase it with your > 1,000 army. Smash the enemy down to 50 ....and they now run back to the first county. Rinse and repeat.. (or should it be "Rinse and Retreat"?). I thought this was fixed in HOI & Vic, odd to see it worse than ever here. Simply, if an army is less that 100, it is NOT an army and should just disappear into the hills. And retreats should always be AWAY from your territory.

Even worse, when the enemy is outnumbered, say I have 2000, they have 200. Clicking to move into their county, they immediately start running towards one of mine. When I stop, they stop too. Again, this repeats like some sort of slapstick comedy routine. Is this meant to represent some "tactical challenge"? If so, I think it inappropriate at the level of geography in the game. If they fear me that much - and at odds of 10 to 1, they should - they too should just disappear into the hills. The larger army wins. The end.

Sieging. A couple of problems. Firstly, they take far too long considering the level of fort. I just saw 3,000 besieging a Bishopric consisting of a "low wall" for 3 months! I doubt if a church with a low wall would have lasted 3 days, let alone 3 months. I have no problem with a siege of a huge castle taking several months, but it seems silly that this is applied to every barony. Especially when the strength of a basic ditch and pallisade are grossly overestimated.

Other problem related to AI continually nipping into my county, realising they are not large enough to siege, then nipping back home home again. Again, repeated and repeated. As a developer myself, I just can't see it being complicated to prevent attempted siege if you're army is smaller than the garrison.

In general, historically, wars often began and ended with one climactic battle from which the loser did not recover. Surely that's not so hard to implement in the game, instead of these micromanaged, almost RTS click frenzies as the enemy gets whittled away slowly. This is the erra of Hastings (a kingdom won in 1 battle) , not the Somme!

I don't think any of this would require much dev effort, as it is really adjustments. I'm surprised there are no other comments on these issues, maybe I'm just playing it wrong? Running a 0.9 version masquerading as the latest patch. The rest of the game seems so well put together, it does seem odd that one of the basics in every EU-type game seems to have regressed.

If the enemies stack have been whittled down enough to not being able to siege your province it´s better to leave them and focus on sieging his province(s) since the change in warscore from beating a small force of enemies is close to zero.

 

[grommile]

I agree that the small war score values of battles is frustrating. However, battles like Hastings were the exceptions not the rule as far as I know. Agincourt is a good example of this point. While it was a terribly one-sided English victory, achieved via tactical genius

*cough* This Englishman believes that Agincourt owes less to any real or imagined brilliance of Henry V, and much more to the gibbering stupidity of the French commanders. "I know, lads, let's make a frontal assault across a sea of mud on a prepared defensive position packed with missile troops!"

 

[MartinSWE]

*cough* This Englishman believes that Agincourt owes less to any real or imagined brilliance of Henry V, and much more to the gibbering stupidity of the French commanders. "I know, lads, let's make a frontal assault across a sea of mud on a prepared defensive position packed with missile troops!"

Indeed the french commanders where very eager to earn personal glory from the battle and they let this interfere with common sense. The english chose the best possible place and did everything they could do right but it was not 'genius' on their half just what any 'sensible' commander would have done in the situation.

 

[onyxja]

Well it doesn't actually do a bad job at representing how wars were fought in medieval Europe, the problems is that wars in medieval Europe especially battles and sieges were boring.

 

[Gnostiko]

Agree, agree, agree, wholeheartedly. Superbly irritating how smaller forces try to exit a province when you attempt to enter with a larger army, yet sit still when you quit the move action. I can understand how smaller forces might be able to outmanoeuvre a larger one, but I think movement speed between provinces should be more randomised: historically, whilst guerilla armies might have been able to outmanoeuvre larger, unwieldy armies, we also have historical examples of smaller, or equal sized, armies catching their opponents by surprise.

 

[hazxan]

Well it doesn't actually do a bad job at representing how wars were fought in medieval Europe, the problems is that wars in medieval Europe especially battles and sieges were boring.

Totally agree that sieges were boring! Should be rule #1 of game design: sieges are boring, don't use them where you don't need them. If some of the values are moddable, I might even change them to something I prefer. eg church walls & pallisades at level 0.1. not 0.5, increase the cost etc. Of course this might not ultimately change much.

I think the Paradox combat engine works best with HOI and gets worse as you go back in time, with CK being the worst of the lot. Can't see how anyone can defend "a siege per holding per county" as even remotely historical. And it's not fun, offers no strategic challenge so shouldn't be there.

I agree that warfare was slow and tedious in those times, but from my even small knowledge of history, there just wasn'y that many sieges. And while some did take months, many were over in days and sometimes the defenders gave up instantly. So something else was causing the slow pace. I notice weather isn't modelled in CH, which seems odd given that I thought that campaigning just didn't take place in winter months. As well as the effect of weather on engagements like Agincourt! Attrition also seems to have gone missing. Didn't armies decay at quite a rate back then, merely by sitting still? Especially in enemy territory, attrition would be a significant effect.

For combat, it would be good if armies could co-exist in a county without necessarily engaging. After all, a 100 mile square county is 100,000 square miles! 5,000 men can easily fit in half a square mile, so that's a lot of land to hide in. Finding the enemy should not be an "instant" freebie given away. It's a shame that Paradox have never developed the combat in the past 10 years as all the ingredients are there: different unit types, land types, weather (in all the other games...), leader ratings. movement rates etc

At the moment we get 2 results: whittling down and long sieges. More varied outcomes should be possible: combat could end with a large army escaping unscathed, or it could get wiped out totally, both sides could suffer hugely, a specific leader or unit type could lead a smaller force to victory, a county could surrender instantly or a castle could be sieged for months, both sides could avoid each other totally etc etc. And i haven't even tried naval combat yet....

 

[hazxan]

Hey, just looking at the Project Balance mod, sounds like they are making changes that sound just like what I'm asking for! I'll definitely be trying this when I complete my current game. As well as loads of other fixes/changes, in the "combat" section:

(quoted from their change list)
Sieges are 25% shorter
Reduced ratio needed to overrun armies to 15 (from 25)
Increased warscore gained from battles by 20%.
Tweaked movement times, reducing movetimes in most terrain by about 30%

 

[unmerged(47028)]

Why movement time reduced? I thought it should be increased, especially sea travel.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

I agree that warfare was slow and tedious in those times, but from my even small knowledge of history, there just wasn'y that many sieges.

"Small knowledge" is right. Medieval warfare was dominated by the siege. All those thousands of castle ruins you see in Western Europe today? They weren't built for show. Pitched battles were relatively rare, because medieval rulers knew that to lose a pitched battle meant you could potentially lose everything, whereas waiting out your opponent in a series of protracted sieges meant they would lose blood and treasure for the more modest gain of a few keeps.

 

[Anthropoid]

I just had to step in here and correct you. I know it doesn't even apply to the time period in question but the battle of Narva in 1700 between Sweden and Russia is about as asymmetrical as it gets. Having a blizzard in your back and straight into your opponents face definitely helps!

Sorry, quite off topic, but I needed to show some patriotism for once!

13203 Swedes vs. 40,000 Russians is 3.02 to 1 force size ratio

1914 (killed and wounded) Swedish casualties vs. 32,000 Russian casualties (killed wounded, captured) is 16.7 to 1 casualty ratio . . . WOW!

I think that might actually beat the The Battle of Rorke's Drift, the one I was thinking about as the most asymmetrical win in the last thousand years or so . . . lets do the maths for that one too.

150 Redcoats vs 4000 Zulus is 26.7 to 1 force strengths ratios

32 Redcoats killed or wounded vs. 851 Zulu killed or wounded is 26.6 to 1 casualty ratios . . . so yeah, I think the Brits still had you beat


For the Battle of Thermopylae we get different estimates for force sizes for different authors:
Total
5,200+ (Herodotus)
7,400+ (Diodorus)
11,200 (Pausanias)
7933 Average

Total
2,600,000 (Herodotus)[3]
~800,000 (Ctesias)[4]
70,000–300,000 (modern estimates)

We'll just take 300,000 based on the high-end of the modern estimates

That is a 37.8 to one force size ratio.

Casualties are estimated as: 4,000 for Greeks ~20,000 for Persians, so 5 to 1 casualty ratio.

ADDIT: Hey Calanctus. I did know that sieges were very common in the era, and indeed throughout the ancient era, though large pitched battles were certainly quite common at various points in ancient times in the West too . . . Couple questions for you:

1. Do you see the fortifications of the towns and Bishoprics, separately from the castles as being historically questionable?

I've visited a couple of castles, but they generallly seemed to be either (a) way out in the middle of nowhere, or (b) smack in the middle of a town/city. I don't get why they built castles out in the countryside. Wouldn't you want your castle 'within range' of your villages and wouldn't the bishopric be associated with the settlement too?

2. What about the numbers in the garrisons at each place? The starting numbers for about the first 40 or even 70 years of the game seem pretty reasonable: castles with ~500 ish garrisons, towns and Bishoprics with ~300. But once everyone starts to build them up, each county has easily 1000 or more garrison troops PER holding. And those troops just seem to come out of thin air when you conquest a settlement!?

3. I would guess that the time it takes to besiege the castles is about right? But that it is too slow for the towns and Bishoprics? Indeed, it would seem to me that: if the Castle already fell, then the AI should do some calculations. If the force beseiging the next holding is more than 1.5 times the total in the garrison of the single holding, then there should be an additional calculation: how many weeks can the enemy lord afford to pay for his current troop strength? If it is in excess of the current staying power of the holding, then there should immediately be a 50% chance they surrender. If they don't surrender then at each subsequent morale reduction there should be additional chances of surrender that are comparably high but modified by the disparity in force sizes.

 

[hazxan]

"Small knowledge" is right. Medieval warfare was dominated by the siege. All those thousands of castle ruins you see in Western Europe today? They weren't built for show. Pitched battles were relatively rare, because medieval rulers knew that to lose a pitched battle meant you could potentially lose everything, whereas waiting out your opponent in a series of protracted sieges meant they would lose blood and treasure for the more modest gain of a few keeps.

The Wikipedia list of sieges I linked to earlier must have missed many of them out then, as that has nowhere near that many sieges. We can be objective about this. How many sieges per year were there from 1066 to 1453? Compare the real life number to those in the game. My rough count says 79 sieges in real life. That's in the whole of Europe. During the same period, Wikipedia lists well over 200 battles, I gave up counting at that point! Where are you getting your 'history' from when you say there were more sieges than pitched battles as given these figures, this doesn't sound right at all? While a "series of protracted sieges" may have occurred occasionally, no way does it occur in every single war, like in the game. This isn't my "small knowledge" or opinion, just the raw data.

You can argue that some of the sieges were too small that they aren't listed. (The list itself says it's incomplete, presumably listing the major ones) But that is exactly what I am saying, that their are too many major sieges and the length of them is way too long in the game, both number and duration has been seriously overstated.

Looks to me like the facts are suggesting that: a) there are too many battles in the game b) there are too many sieges c) the sieges are too long