Combat width must be reverted from the 1.19

[TheMeInTeam]

Good.

You almost always want it to be defender favored.

However you don't want it so defender favored that positioning mistakes don't matter.

 

[Nutcracker]

Really poor change.

Some more thought should have gone into it, there were plenty of other options that arent just blanket removal.

For example, I would have preferred to see something like leader maneuver affecting combat width reduction.

 

[Atlantians]

Very bad change; very poor design decision.

I have been telling @Johan this repeatedly. @DDRJake, how could you let this happen?

 

[Chaingun]

Tying mechanics like combat width to technology normally makes a lot of sense. But in this case not sure whether it would. What they could do instead would be to revert combat width to how it used to be in terms of terrain effects and instead add having full combat width or at least an increased amount as an idea to one of the idea groups rather than tech.

Because if anything, technology later on brought the necessity of actual supply chains thanks to larger numbers of infantry and artillery as well as ammunition and equipment needs. Tying the aforementioned bonus to an idea instead, also perhaps giving it as a national idea to certain nations (hills, mountains: Switzerland, Austria; marshes: the Dutch and English?; jungles: Indian and Malay countries?; woods, forests, etc. You get the idea)

What I am suggesting is essentially this:

Mountains: -50% Combat Width
Hills, Highlands, Marshes, Jungles: -25% Combat Width
Woods, Forests: -20% Combat Width

An Idea or Idea Group Finisher: Half Combat Width Penalty from Terrain
National Ideas for Certain Countries: No Combat Width Penalty from One Type of Terrain Befitting the Country (Swiss Alpine Training: No malus on mountains for instance; or mountains and hills. Use that to balance it out, that's your job Paradox.)

This way you also add more flavour to the countries.

Somewhat of a tangent, but what always irked me about the combat width model is that it's an absolute number rather than relative to force sizes. Meaning that if you have an 8 times as large army, almost any battle is going to look like Thermopylae (but only if the smaller army is large enough to fill the width!) Frequently happened late game with WW1 battles ensuing between large armies that lasted for months or even years.

Combat width would make more sense as a reduction percentage of the superiority in number of front line regiments, so that bringing a bigger army always gives a least a bit more of an advantage (this advantage could then be reduced in difficult terrain accordingly). However, this does not fit the user interface as it is, so it's the hypothetical but not useful category. (Keep in mind I'm no longer part of EU4 team so I'm allowed to debate irrationally like any other player now. )

 

[durvas]

I see what Paradox wants to fix. Big battles in mountain provinces always took way, way too long. Also, forts as an game abstraction along with the their mechanics meant positioning and maneuvering stats were not very important. But as with most people here, I don't think ignoring combat width is the answer. In battle attrition should happen at various rates based on province terrain. The morale loss of non-deployed units should increase with length of battle. As for making maneuver matter again, other people in the thread have good suggestions for buffing the maneuver stat. For forts, defenders can effectively force fights into their favor every single time because of how the war system works. You have to take the forts. You can't just go marauding around the countryside and then send demands. Relieving forts under siege should not put reliever on defense, it should just cancel out any roll bonuses that may go against the relievers.

 

[Nutcracker]

99% of battles don't take place in Mountains, so it's taking a sledgehammer to "fix" the 1% that do.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Somewhat of a tangent, but what always irked me about the combat width model is that it's an absolute number rather than relative to force sizes. Meaning that if you have an 8 times as large army, almost any battle is going to look like Thermopylae (but only if the smaller army is large enough to fill the width!) Frequently happened late game with WW1 battles ensuing between large armies that lasted for months or even years.

Combat width would make more sense as a reduction percentage of the superiority in number of front line regiments, so that bringing a bigger army always gives a least a bit more of an advantage (this advantage could then be reduced in difficult terrain accordingly). However, this does not fit the user interface as it is, so it's the hypothetical but not useful category. (Keep in mind I'm no longer part of EU4 team so I'm allowed to debate irrationally like any other player now. )

The design seems to have intentionally pushed for more quality over numbers. If it wasn't they wouldn't have implemented the morale hit on manual retreats for example. Previously that was a way to rotate bodies to force your opponent to either retreat himself or get on-spot stackwiped, and was a way for more plentiful but less quality troops to win if they had enough bodies. The morale boost made that still possible, but much more costly to execute and less dangerous to the opponent. You can see pieces of that with similar changes to combat over the patches.

In contrast to other design choices I'm on the fence wrt that one. I'm disappointed that troop control has been so de-emphasized since early patches, but I can understand trying to tune the game so that big #'s aren't insta-lock guaranteed wins.

It's that trend that makes this change surprising. Maybe they just didn't like how battles got extended in these terrains?

 

[Arrowkill]

In all fairness, unless you are attacking in an enclosed mountain pass, you can spread out across a mountainous terrain in a large width and fight. It may not be best, but it is possible. Same principle in the forest.

 

[Ulec]

In all fairness, unless you are attacking in an enclosed mountain pass, you can spread out across a mountainous terrain in a large width and fight. It may not be best, but it is possible. Same principle in the forest.

This is actually true. Then the enemy would do the same. Perhaps they could make it so that half of each of the armies would engage the opposing half? Would probably need too much of a change in the code to do so though.