Dev diary change to combat

[BeeSew]

Hello, i like playing eu4 mp and the proposed changes in the last dev diary seem like they could break multiplayer playerwars. To summarize, currently in mp you have two kinds of stacks; cannonstacks (full combat width of inf, full combat width of cannons) and reinforcement stacks (only inf). You engage a battle with your cannonstacks, then reinforce with your reinforcement stacks. These are the proposed changes from the dev diary.
"

• Infantry and Cavalry can no longer deploy/reinforce to the backrow.
• Backrow regiments will now retreat when reaching 0% morale (same as frontrow regiments).
• Constant 0.03 morale damage per day is now only applied to reserves, and not to regiments on the battlefield.

I’m sure many of you (just as myself not too long ago) do not understand how this affects the combat meta in practice. Without making this DD much longer than it already is, some important effects are:

• It’s no longer critically important to have a full combat width of artillery in the battle on day 1.
• An army of 2x combat width infantry is now superior to an army of 1x combat width infantry. Previously they were roughly equal.
• You’ll need more artillery than just the combat width to last a long battle."

I don't know yet since i haven't played this yet, but this seems like changes that could potentially break multiplayer.
First of all,
"It’s no longer critically important to have a full combat width of artillery in the battle on day 1."
This is bad becouse what will often happen is that in mp, one player will outmaneuver the other and engage said players reinforcement stack with a cannonstack. If you make it less important to have a full backrow of cannons, these types of plays will be less relevant and therefore it will be harder to overcome a superior foe with better maneuvering.
Secondly,
"An army of 2x combat width infantry is now superior to an army of 1x combat width infantry. Previously they were roughly equal."
This sounds bad becouse it could reduce how much you need or can minmax reinforcements before cannonstacks, this change would make it less punishing to just walk around with 50k infantry pre cannons and run at your enemy.
And lastly,
"You’ll need more artillery than just the combat width to last a long battle."
Don't know how this will play out yet since i have not playtested it but this seems like something that would change how you fight wars alot. Currently, a good player won't let their backrow take damage but retreat before running out of reserves and taking backrow damage. There's probably alot more but in general, these seem like pretty drastic changes and probably wouldn't make a diffrence in singleplayer anyways but could potentially turn the mutliplayer playerwar meta on its head, so being careful with these types of things is for the better.

 

[Retrac910]

"It’s no longer critically important to have a full combat width of artillery in the battle on day 1."
This is bad becouse what will often happen is that in mp, one player will outmaneuver the other and engage said players reinforcement stack with a cannonstack. If you make it less important to have a full backrow of cannons, these types of plays will be less relevant and therefore it will be harder to overcome a superior foe with better maneuvering.

They aren't saying you'll be fine without any cannons, they are saying you won't be handicapped by infantry filling the backrow spots that cannons should go in. Engaging with a 60-20 stack with a 20 stack of cannons on the way will let the cannons reinforce the backrow now, instead of 20k infantry taking up space. It is still important to have a full combat width of artillery, but no longer critically important.

 

[pttaylor]

Basically, instead of having X stacks of 30k Inf and 1 stack with 30k Inf and 30k Artillery, you can now split the artillery up among the different stacks and its doesn't matter which one starts the battle, assuming the others can pile in within a few days

 

[Gethsemani]

As I understand it (and I might be wrong here) the current system reinforces both rows equally, but infantry and cavalry can't attack from the backrow while artillery can. So the ideal is to have a main army that's filled with infantry and artillery up to combat width. That way you will start a battle with a full backrow of artillery blasting away and infantry to protect them. You then reinforce only with infantry because that keeps your front row full. If you're a bit too late and have lost artillery (or your backrow isn't full for any other reason) that infantry might reinforce into the backrow and are effectively wasted. Trying to reinforce with artillery is pretty much always wasted in the current system, as it doesn't prioritize artillery over inf/cav in the backrow and thus makes it a gamble whether reinforcing artillery will actually see the field or if a front row unit will waste a backrow slot.

In the current system having a stack of 60 infantry with 30 CW means you are wasting half your infantry to just stand in the backline all battle, making your double size stack functionally as effective as a 30 stack. In the new system the excess 30 infantry will be reinforcing the front row as your currently engaged infantry breaks, allowing you to force a battle of attrition and not wasting half your stack as observers. If your 60 infantry stack runs into a 30 infantry/30 artillery stack it will still get MurderDeathKilled as it will be getting hit twice for every attack it makes and thus suffer more casualties and break faster.

 

[Distinct]

Your understanding of the how MP warfare is played, and why it is so, is lacking; your conclusions are incorrect.

Let's go point by point:

To summarize, currently in mp you have two kinds of stacks; cannonstacks (full combat width of inf, full combat width of cannons) and reinforcement stacks (only inf). You engage a battle with your cannonstacks, then reinforce with your reinforcement stacks.

No, cannonstacks are not CW of inf + CW of cannons. Those would not be able to practically execute the responsabilities of cannon stacks. The mandatory inf on the cannon stack is variable but averages across all techs closer to 1,5-2 CW, with other context related factors.

This is bad becouse what will often happen is that in mp, one player will outmaneuver the other and engage said players reinforcement stack with a cannonstack. If you make it less important to have a full backrow of cannons, these types of plays will be less relevant and therefore it will be harder to overcome a superior foe with better maneuvering.

The change doesn't make it any less important to have cannon stacks, nor does it remove the option of catching reinforcement stacks.

Greater need for cannons will not remove the cannon stack / reinforcement stack dichotomy (attrition, generals); now there will have to be artillery reinforcement stacks, even more liable to being wiped by a cannon stack.

The greater need for cannons will not make the reinforcement paths less vulnerable by the presence of both infantry & artillery, because reinforcement path(s) ought to already be covered by a cannon stack (the "rearguard" or the "sentinel" going by the 2018 lingo).

Also, while it's no longer CRITICAL for you to begin the fight with a full cannon backrow DAY 1, that 1 to more days of suboptimal casualties is still bad, very much so. Practically speaking, it will still be critical to engage every battle with a cannon stack (the "vanguard").

This sounds bad becouse it could reduce how much you need or can minmax reinforcements before cannonstacks, this change would make it less punishing to just walk around with 50k infantry pre cannons and run at your enemy.

Yes this change reduces the need to keep initial engagement stacks pre-tech 7 at CW, reducing the negative impact of "overstacking". This reduction in skill ceiling, however slight, could be an argument against. But this change should also deal with a plethora of bugs recently introduced that prevented the initial reinforcement CW (the one that went to the backline when they arrived x days before the frontline collapsed) from making it to the frontline if there were no reserves available.

Don't know how this will play out yet since i have not playtested it but this seems like something that would change how you fight wars alot. Currently, a good player won't let their backrow take damage but retreat before running out of reserves and taking backrow damage. There's probably alot more but in general, these seem like pretty drastic changes and probably wouldn't make a diffrence in singleplayer anyways but could potentially turn the mutliplayer playerwar meta on its head, so being careful with these types of things is for the better.

Yes these changes will influence MP warfare, & thus every aspect of MP, from the value of any modifier, to the value of 1 ducat, to how likely people are to gank, etc. That is not an argument for or against.

Those railing against the changes have not demonstrated why the consequences would be negative for MP, most of the predictions found in the dev diary thread don't convince.

This I think we can all stress: Paradox should add a modable define or modifier that regulates the amount of morale casualties the backline takes so that MP communities can decide for themselves whether this novelty is positive or negative.

On a sidenote, from a design perspective I think it would be more elegant if the backrow simply didn't suffer morale casualties given they are also not suffering any kill casualties. I understand the aim is to help the poor SP ai out with its shoddy army compositions, but ye it's not the most elegant of crutches.

 

[st360]

This is bad becouse what will often happen is that in mp, one player will outmaneuver the other and engage said players reinforcement stack with a cannonstack.

This sounds like its terribly exhausting gameplay. Like it de incentivizes players fighting and incentivizes keeping your armies close while simultaneously running away from each other.

 

[MatthewP]

This sounds like its terribly exhausting gameplay. Like it de incentivizes players fighting and incentivizes keeping your armies close while simultaneously running away from each other.

Honestly competitive multiplayer sounds like it takes all the aspects of EU4 I enjoy the least (tactical maneuvering with dozens of armies, endless super optimized dev clicks, long and massive wars of attrition) and makes the whole game about them. But so what? It’s actually pretty awesome that MP folks can enjoy the same game in a totally different way.

 

[st360]

But so what?

So I disagree with forum posts asking for my single player balance patch to be watered down to cater to people who no CB Byzantium on day 1 as Muscovy.

 

[Chazb5046]

Hello, i like playing eu4 mp and the proposed changes in the last dev diary seem like they could break multiplayer playerwars.

Good. The game has had subpar choices made about its development for years now because of how MP would be affected. Would love for this to no longer be the case.

 

[BeeSew]

This sounds like its terribly exhausting gameplay. Like it de incentivizes players fighting and incentivizes keeping your armies close while simultaneously running away from each other.

Try it yourself before casting judgement perhaps? It's more enjoyable than chasing AI stacks backsiegeing you.

 

[BeeSew]

Your understanding of the how MP warfare is played, and why it is so, is lacking; your conclusions are incorrect.

Let's go point by point:



No, cannonstacks are not CW of inf + CW of cannons. Those would not be able to practically execute the responsabilities of cannon stacks. The mandatory inf on the cannon stack is variable but averages across all techs closer to 1,5-2 CW, with other context related factors.



The change doesn't make it any less important to have cannon stacks, nor does it remove the option of catching reinforcement stacks.

Greater need for cannons will not remove the cannon stack / reinforcement stack dichotomy (attrition, generals); now there will have to be artillery reinforcement stacks, even more liable to being wiped by a cannon stack.

The greater need for cannons will not make the reinforcement paths less vulnerable by the presence of both infantry & artillery, because reinforcement path(s) ought to already be covered by a cannon stack (the "rearguard" or the "sentinel" going by the 2018 lingo).

Also, while it's no longer CRITICAL for you to begin the fight with a full cannon backrow DAY 1, that 1 to more days of suboptimal casualties is still bad, very much so. Practically speaking, it will still be critical to engage every battle with a cannon stack (the "vanguard").


Yes this change reduces the need to keep initial engagement stacks pre-tech 7 at CW, reducing the negative impact of "overstacking". This reduction in skill ceiling, however slight, could be an argument against. But this change should also deal with a plethora of bugs recently introduced that prevented the initial reinforcement CW (the one that went to the backline when they arrived x days before the frontline collapsed) from making it to the frontline if there were no reserves available.




Yes these changes will influence MP warfare, & thus every aspect of MP, from the value of any modifier, to the value of 1 ducat, to how likely people are to gank, etc. That is not an argument for or against.

Those railing against the changes have not demonstrated why the consequences would be negative for MP, most of the predictions found in the dev diary thread don't convince.

This I think we can all stress: Paradox should add a modable define or modifier that regulates the amount of morale casualties the backline takes so that MP communities can decide for themselves whether this novelty is positive or negative.

On a sidenote, from a design perspective I think it would be more elegant if the backrow simply didn't suffer morale casualties given they are also not suffering any kill casualties. I understand the aim is to help the poor SP ai out with its shoddy army compositions, but ye it's not the most elegant of crutches.

Why change an already working system and force every mp mod to rebalance things that aren't currently an issue? This change won't make any meaningful difference in SP but ruin mp balance for a few months. And for what end?

 

[currylambchop]

Why change an already working system and force every mp mod to rebalance things that aren't currently an issue? This change won't make any meaningful difference in SP but ruin mp balance for a few months. And for what end?

Now I don’t have to bankrupt myself in SP and can ignore artillery for longer

 

[MatthewP]

I've played the beta a bit now and basically what would happen is that artillery just retreats super fast making it completey worthless earlygame. You wouldn't need equal inf and art becouse only the infantry take the damage, art just take morale damage. But paradox added a define for backrow morale dmg taken so its an easy fix atleast.

Have you tried it with that fix? It seems like one consequence of reducing back row morale damage would be that in most battles the front row retreats, artillery move to the front row (since they still have morale), then they take a ton of damage with no support before retreating. I’m curious how it actually plays out.

 

[BeeSew]

Have you tried it with that fix? It seems like one consequence of reducing back row morale damage would be that in most battles the front row retreats, artillery move to the front row (since they still have morale), then they take a ton of damage with no support before retreating. I’m curious how it actually plays out.

No i don't think that's what would happen, pretty sure art will just stay in the backrow.

 

[MatthewP]

No i don't think that's what would happen, pretty sure art will just stay in the backrow.

So what happens in a battle where the front line retreats (which you’d expect to be how most battles go if artillery lose morale more slowly)?

 

[dD_ShockTrooper]

I've played the beta a bit now and basically what would happen is that artillery just retreats super fast making it completey worthless earlygame. You wouldn't need equal inf and art becouse only the infantry take the damage, art just take morale damage. But paradox added a define for backrow morale dmg taken so its an easy fix atleast.

It's almost like they're trying to represent how cannons weren't useful during battles and were primarily used for sieges in the 15th and 16th century.

 

[Cookiepie]

The change doesn't make it any less important to have cannon stacks, nor does it remove the option of catching reinforcement stacks.

Greater need for cannons will not remove the cannon stack / reinforcement stack dichotomy (attrition, generals); now there will have to be artillery reinforcement stacks, even more liable to being wiped by a cannon stack.

Why would you run pure artillery stacks over simply having every reinforcement stack be an equal number of infantry and artillery, given that infantry and artillery will lose morale and need to be reinforced at exactly the same rate?

 

[ForVictory]

It's almost like they're trying to represent how cannons weren't useful during battles and were primarily used for sieges in the 15th and 16th century.

Well actually that is true. Artillerie weren't usefully on the battlefield untill the mid 16th century.