EU2 wars are without fronts?

[MarkShot]

I am playing some EU2 now after a few weeks back having played HOI (Germany versus the Soviet Union in that cataclismic confrontation).

I just realized that one very big difference about warfare in this game seems to be the absence of fronts. Allies seem to be scattered all over the place along with military access agreements. Provinces don't fall in the blink of an eye and protracted sieges are necessary. You can strike deep into the enemy's interior while his raiders roam through yours. Despite being able to strike deep into a countries interior, relative speed doesn't matter too much, since sieges negate any movement rate affects. Whoever causes the most pain gets the upper hand in the required negotiated settlements. Wars often become messy free for alls.

That's my impression of war in EU2. (It's not total war.) So, is it just the way I play or does anyone actually form extended armed fronts with their enemies?

Thanks.

 

[kucing]

I rarely see fronts and you already stated the reason. Most of the troops are gone in first few months or playing cat and mouse.

But you can speed up your siege by clicking "Assault" during siege.

 

[Kurek]

Of course there is no fronts, waging war back in the medieavel ages was more of a case of gathering a big army, fight a a few battles, maybe lay seige to a castle or two then sorting out some treaty in which territories sometimes changed hands or money exchanged or forcing the defeated lands to pay vassalage to yourself, then you bugger off home, let the soldiers go back to their farms and what not and then repeat next year

 

[unmerged(9146)]

Originally posted by kucing
But you can speed up your siege by clicking "Assault" during siege.

Unless you know what you're doing and how and when it's advisable to use Assault option and when it's not, it's really questionable if clicking it will actually speed up the siege .

 

[kucing]

Originally posted by robin74
Unless you know what you're doing and how and when it's advisable to use Assault option and when it's not, it's really questionable if clicking it will actually speed up the siege .

It does speed up the siege in most occasion. There are three possible scenarios for it:

1. You assault and failed
2. You assault and failed then enemy comes and defeat your low morale troops. This speeds up your siege in negative manner.
3. You win the assault.
   [/list=1]

 

[unmerged(9146)]

Originally posted by kucing
You assault and failed

That's actually two distinct possibilities:
- your assault failed but the siege continues;
- your assault failed and you lost so many troops that the siege stops. Now you have to build new armies, bring them to the province, continue the siege and pray that in the meantime you weakened army is not attacked by the enemy, because then you will have to start the siege anew. That really doesn't help speeding up the siege - you lose several months when you could have continue with the siege. And if you don't know what you're doing and will just assault left and right, you will find yourself in this situation a lot.

This speeds up your siege in negative manner.

The assault will either speed up your siege or speed it up in a negative matter. I must say I really like this approach

 

[unmerged(12680)]

In response to the original poster...

Well, that's how wars were usually fough back then. They didn't have the gigant armies of the 19th/20th century, which required nationalist fueled conscription and industrial arms production, so they had to make do with what they had at hand.

 

[Mork]

In medeival time, very few wars were actually fought. It were more cat/mouse and seige. Even in the renaisance(sp?) the actual fighting were a minimum. It's not until gunpowder weapons are refined and inplemented probably (i.e. Napoleon) that large scale battles were feasible. This, and the lack of good intel, created the situation where fronts (actual lines in the sand we know from WWI and WWII) were rather rare. So I would say that it's somewhat acurate.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Since when was 1800 considered "medeival "? They were a lot further from Columbus than we are from Napoleon.

Warfare in EU2 is not medeival and nor should it be. That's why the infantry are firing guns. And why morale (discipline) is so important.

Anyway, as already pointed out, until you had rifles (i.e., mid 19th century) there was no way to have a concentration of soldiers sufficient to maintain a continuous front more than a few miles long. And until there were ways to process food it was very difficult for even medium sized armies to stay in one place for extended periods of time.

 

[unmerged(21597)]

I found an other cheat to speed up the siege really fast.
Just withdraw your army from the province you are sieging, but then siege it again. Do this several times after eachother (the bigger the fortress, the more you have to repeat this.)
There is one catch. If you withdraw your army and the month changes before you put the army back, you have to start all over again. If it is for example the 27 of august and the province hasn't fallen yet, just keep your army in the province until the first of september and then start again what i described before.
You will see that the city starts burning more and more untill it falls.
With this a averege fotified city can fall within one to two months

 

[Kurek]

Originally posted by Isaac Brock
Since when was 1800 considered "medeival "? They were a lot further from Columbus than we are from Napoleon.

Warfare in EU2 is not medeival and nor should it be. That's why the infantry are firing guns. And why morale (discipline) is so important.

Well in the early stages of the game it is

 

[unmerged(18415)]

How do fronts work in HoI?

 

[kucing]

Originally posted by Hendrik
Just withdraw your army from the province you are sieging, but then siege it again. Do this several times after eachother (the bigger the fortress, the more you have to repeat this.)
There is one catch. If you withdraw your army and the month changes before you put the army back, you have to start all over again. If it is for example the 27 of august and the province hasn't fallen yet, just keep your army in the province until the first of september and then start again what i described before.
You will see that the city starts burning more and more untill it falls.
With this a averege fotified city can fall within one to two months

I never know this. If it really works, then it is a great exploit.

 

[unmerged(2567)]

Originally posted by ro4444
How do fronts work in HoI?

You have to keep troops along a whole frontier (generally) in order to prevent the enemy from outflanking and pocketing your army. Since in EU, armies can't be pocketed (at least not in a grand strategic sense) you just need to lump them together to crush the opposing army.

 

[daedalus]

And of course keeping supply lines in EUII is not that important. In HOI however, and I think victoria too, for an army to be without traceble supply means sure destruction (almost like in EUII is losing a battle in an island, without a navy to retreat).

 

[Orm]

Originally posted by Napoleon_VI
You have to keep troops along a whole frontier (generally) in order to prevent the enemy from outflanking and pocketing your army.

It seems Victoria will work like that too. The WW1 AAR had a very historical looking development of the western front, with a stalemate most of the time.

@Hendrik: what version are you using... I thought that exploit had been removed ages ago...?

 

[MarkShot]

Well, some of the things that makes fronts necessary in HOI:

(1) HOI has land forts, but they only aid in defense if there are actually defenders in the province when attacked. In EU2, forts act as defenders. So, HOI forts unlike EU2 forts cannot stand alone.

(2) In EU2 provinces generally fall after sieges and this can take up to a year or so. In HOI, undefended provinces fall instantly. So, in EU2, an enemy march of province conquest can be very time consuming. Even given the slow rates of movement in EU2, there is plenty of time to reposition your forces to relieve sieges by your enemy. In HOI, a break through the front followed by a fast sweep behind the lines can take control of an entire country in a matter of weeks.

(3) With EU2's peace score system/one province rule, a war of conquest against a sizeable country is limited in what it can achieve despite taking complete control of every province. Additionally, in EU2 unlike HOI, your economy doesn't really gain anything from occuppying provinces (you need ownership as opposed to simply control). Also, in EU2 remaining at war indefinitely has negative consequences where as in HOI, that's the whole point.

So, to summarize fronts are required in HOI as a flood gate against hostile armies which would swamp you. In EU2, fronts are irrelevant as warfare has a limited scope of immediate achievements and is more about who can cause more pain than simply grab territorial control.

 

[Arilou]

1. Fronts in the EU timeframe generally followed the armies. IN early times they had only one army and where that army was there was the front. As time went on you had more and more armies but still no "fronts." per se.

2. Lines of supply were basically non-existent, the armies where supposed to Live of the Land anyways.

 

[Chaingun]

One reason to why you don't see that huge armies clash together in EU2 is that they take too much attrition. The attacker has to be very careful when he selects targets, since his troops will evaporate extremely fast if he exceeds the support limit of the province with a few thousand troops. This also means he generally will have to fight huge enemies armies counter-attacking him, simply because that the attrition alone will kill the attacker but not the defender (the defender always has a greater support limit).

 

[LordLeto]

Originally posted by Hendrik
I found an other cheat to speed up the siege really fast.
Just withdraw your army from the province you are sieging, but then siege it again. Do this several times after eachother (the bigger the fortress, the more you have to repeat this.)
There is one catch. If you withdraw your army and the month changes before you put the army back, you have to start all over again. If it is for example the 27 of august and the province hasn't fallen yet, just keep your army in the province until the first of september and then start again what i described before.
You will see that the city starts burning more and more untill it falls.
With this a averege fotified city can fall within one to two months

That bug has long been removed in the later patches. But if you dont install the patchs it will still work.