Does Victoria work in big wars?

[unmerged(14284)]

I'm a HoI veteran who's played a few games of Vic. I like detail and micromanagement and politics (my real-life job) and wargames, so I'm a prime customer for the game. I've not played enough to really master the economic and political side, but I can well believe it's good.
However, with a friend (playing MP 1.02) I tried the 1861 scenario as USA and CSA, then the WW1 scenario with Germany and France, then let it run itself in a WW1 scenario. We found a lot of things that seemed to us strange:

- In both MP games, the winner (Germany and USA) amassed a huge stack and went around stomping opposition. Unlike HoI there seemed no leadership control limits or logisrical reasons not to do this. Historically it wouldn't have worked - the ACW/WW1 armies were too sophisticated for the sort of mass Braveheart-style charge of older eras, but lacked the command control expertise and gear of later times.

- Battles were incredibly bloody, with the AI willing to fight almost to the last man unless the player intervened. This seems atypical of the ACW at least.

- There was no sign of the edge in leadership that most people give the CSA early in the war. Meade smashed Lee on Southern territory with only a slight edge in troops, several times.

- Panzer tactics, driving far into enemy territory even without a supply line, worked just fine.

- Capitals fell with no particular effect visible. The CSA took Washington and still lost. Germany took Paris while France besieged Berlin. The victim suffered no effect on war weariness. The capital's gone, so what?

- The only way to stay competitive appeared to be to mobilise troops by going into populous provinces, grabbing a population group like 50,000 Catholic farmers, and telling them they were all soldiers. These would then instantly be available as replacements. No dissent, no training needed, and fiddly since one had to do it province by province.

- During the intense battles, even at slowest speed, it was completely impossible to take our eyes off the front for more than a moment, for fear that the AI would bleed an army to death if one glanced away to look at the economy, politics, or anything else.

- There appeared to be no way in MP to force peace, and no penalty in war weariness or anything else for refusing it. Even with Paris and half of France gone, France could cheerfully decline offers to settle, knowing that Russia woujld distract Germany in due course.

- In the AI-run-through with no player intervention, Germany rapidly invaded France and took Paris, then was driven back by BEF intervention. No other significant activity occurred on any front right through to 1919, when peace was declared. For long periods, the German-Russian front was unmanned on both sides even though they were at war, and the German-French front was sporadically manned as units ambled around in the homelands in a sort of Brownian movement with no obvious purpose.

Now we are both newish to the game so may well be missing important points, and we hope we are, since we really want to like the game. But it seems to us that the system doesn't really work for the big wars (we're sure it's fine for colonial skirmishes), and the AI is massively less effective than in HoI, where it's not perfect but still packs a mean offensive punch when it's playing Germany or the Soviet Union.

What are we overlooking?

Nick Palmer

 

[JScott991]

I won't comment on the rest of your post, but I will point out that two armies fighting that have Jominian attitude v. Clauswitzian attitude will fight to the death. There are no retreats between two armies with high morale.

This is something that should be looked at, especially since a human player can manually withdraw his forces in a losing battle before divisions start to die while an AI player will just let his divisions disintegrate.

 

[unmerged(14249)]

Troops didn't seem to get enough of a bonus for being dug-in and so you didn't get the trench line stalemates which were typical of ACW and WW1. The best protection for an army seemed to be safety in numbers and so the trend was towards the killer stack.

Large countries typically started these scenarios with negative manpower, e.g. Germany had -573 when I first looked. And the CSA got most of its troops from events - 10 divisions from a Conscription Act and 1 division from gaining Kentucky. I have the impression that these features were tricks to keep the scenarios on historical lines. Presumably without them, Germany/USA manpower would overwhelm the other side immediately.

Movement seemed a bit off. On the one hand, troops seemed to be able to march across whole US states in a few days. But on the other there was no strategic movement utilising the railways which were such a feature of the era. So, to get troops from Texas to West Virginia, they were just told to walk there. Which they did.

Andrew

 

[unmerged(9621)]

I've played several games involving lots of fighting and think Nick summarizes nicely the main problems with the Vic land combat system. 1.02 really fixed the naval (if the AI would only build modern ships), so maybe 1.03 can address some of the land combat issues. However, one of the main central problems is that units don't need to worry to much about keeping a line of communications to home base, and the other problems tend to arise from this. Any fix on that issue would involve fixing the AI so that it worried about supply lines. I still enjoy the game as a whole, and even the wars, but it would be nice if it had a more realistic and strategic feel to it.

"- In both MP games, the winner (Germany and USA) amassed a huge stack and went around stomping opposition. Unlike HoI there seemed no leadership control limits or logisrical reasons not to do this. Historically it wouldn't have worked - the ACW/WW1 armies were too sophisticated for the sort of mass Braveheart-style charge of older eras, but lacked the command control expertise and gear of later times."

I don't find the one-stack problem exactly, but there is a tendency to overstack armies, and not to much of building fronts. The one factor mandating against it is the bonus for attacking from multiple provinces (which makes it better to have a front). If there were a need to maintain supply lines, you would want to maintain a front to keep the enemy from getting around you.


"- Battles were incredibly bloody, with the AI willing to fight almost to the last man unless the player intervened. This seems atypical of the ACW at least."

This seems to me be an AI issue, combined with the lack of a need to maintain a supply line (which would force you to retreat if you were about to be surrounded).

"- There was no sign of the edge in leadership that most people give the CSA early in the war. Meade smashed Lee on Southern territory with only a slight edge in troops, several times."

Seems like this is factored into various parts of the army tech and brigade additions, as well as leaders per se. Problem is the US and CSA start with the same techs (I think - never played them)

"- Panzer tactics, driving far into enemy territory even without a supply line, worked just fine."

I've suffered badly for doing just this - but only because I was forced to retreat. It should be very difficult to do something like this with a large army.

"- Capitals fell with no particular effect visible. The CSA took Washington and still lost. Germany took Paris while France besieged Berlin. The victim suffered no effect on war weariness. The capital's gone, so what?"

There should be war exhuastian and other penalities for this, although not crippling necessarily.

"- The only way to stay competitive appeared to be to mobilise troops by going into populous provinces, grabbing a population group like 50,000 Catholic farmers, and telling them they were all soldiers. These would then instantly be available as replacements. No dissent, no training needed, and fiddly since one had to do it province by province."

Mobilization works OK to get around this fiddly stuff and is a good systme, but there should be some choices related to conscription and army recruitment policy - the Vic model seems flawed here. What would be ideal (although I don't imagine we'll see this in a patch), would be policy choices about whether to draft, who to draft, and how long to keep them. Army maintainence and pop ideology would determine how many volunteers sign up (jingoism to pacifism for example), and it could even see a burst during wars, depending on some measure of cassus belli. The draft might cause militancy to rise and so on.


"- During the intense battles, even at slowest speed, it was completely impossible to take our eyes off the front for more than a moment, for fear that the AI would bleed an army to death if one glanced away to look at the economy, politics, or anything else. "

That's what "pause" is for - but isn't so good in MP

"- There appeared to be no way in MP to force peace, and no penalty in war weariness or anything else for refusing it. Even with Paris and half of France gone, France could cheerfully decline offers to settle, knowing that Russia woujld distract Germany in due course."

EU had this - so maybe Vic could too.

"- In the AI-run-through with no player intervention, Germany rapidly invaded France and took Paris, then was driven back by BEF intervention. No other significant activity occurred on any front right through to 1919, when peace was declared. For long periods, the German-Russian front was unmanned on both sides even though they were at war, and the German-French front was sporadically manned as units ambled around in the homelands in a sort of Brownian movement with no obvious purpose."

I've seen some wierd AI war behavior too - like playing as France in the Franco-Prussian, I took over all the little bits of Prussia spread around Germany (about 1/3 of the country), but they wouldn't take a white peace. I tried to get into Prussia proper by sea (no one would give me military access), and lost 20 divisions through stupidity.

For some reason, though they had military access and a big enough army to take me on, they didn't come after me at all, and I spent about 5 or 6 years stamping out paritisans, since I didn't want to disrupt my whole economy putting together a new army to beat them. They would never accept a white peace, but eventually offered me a couple of provinces, which I, of course was delighted to take.

The AI needs to have war aims that they are working to attain - and if these are completely unattainable, or if the AI just doesn't want to try, they should start offering and accepting white peace. If the units are wandering around in the homeland because the AI can't work out a plan to get them to the enemy, fight battles and capture something, the AI should just make peace. In many cases, I've seen a focused and determined AI, but sometimes it doesn't seem to know what it wants.

 

[Darkrenown]

Movement seemed a bit off. On the one hand, troops seemed to be able to march across whole US states in a few days. But on the other there was no strategic movement utilising the railways which were such a feature of the era. So, to get troops from Texas to West Virginia, they were just told to walk there. Which they did.

The level of RR affects movement speed. They don't really walk there unless there really are no railways.

 

[Ehrenbourg]

suicidal AI

I won't comment on the rest of your post, but I will point out that two armies fighting that have Jominian attitude v. Clauswitzian attitude will fight to the death. There are no retreats between two armies with high morale.

This is something that should be looked at, especially since a human player can manually withdraw his forces in a losing battle before divisions start to die while an AI player will just let his divisions disintegrate.

confirm it - slaughtered the whole of Prussian and Austrian armies before satellizing em (was fed up with BB wars initially caused by Khiva liberties defenders world uproar - fairly, add the one province remaining georgia) - and took Manchuria and Vladivostok too (plus won Crimea war), to be honest

...which leaves China and Ottoman as independant neighbours ..not quite eager to try for a 9 million men standing army of my half billion population 1900 1.01b monster Russia

interesting educational experiment, 1.01b Russia...started from dunno anything - if not lazy, will take my 40 pages notes and write an AAR - but version is obsolete now

agree with what was written in different posts

 

[Ehrenbourg]

The AI needs to have war aims that they are working to attain - and if these are completely unattainable, or if the AI just doesn't want to try, they should start offering and accepting white peace. If the units are wandering around in the homeland because the AI can't work out a plan to get them to the enemy, fight battles and capture something, the AI should just make peace. In many cases, I've seen a focused and determined AI, but sometimes it doesn't seem to know what it wants.

agree, but take alliances into account too (one should want to keep being seen as reliable)

while I don't feel like that as player when invading China, seems to me attrition should be a bit tad increased from a realism point of view

also perhaps a system to decrease progressively huge stacks efficiency could work well (was used in last patches of HOI for naval, no ?) ..of course, it heavily depend on what economic sytem allows to field effectively