Forts, forts, forts, combat and a few suggestions

[Rinion]

Hi all,

Having played close to 150 hours on the new patch, I have come to the conclusion that this time, the cure is definitely worse than the original disease. While I greatly appreciate efforts to make the AI “smarter”, forts in almost every single province are certainly not the solution. Early game becomes incredibly tedious as soon as every 5 dev OPM has a fort in their mountain capital. As mercenaries are at this stage an option only for a few wealthy countries, sieging those forts is a constant drain on your manpower since you lack any means of doing something about this. In late game, most of your allies sign a white peace before you even come into sight of any large country’s capital and accumulated -25% war score with imperialism due to level 8 forts in two out of three provinces blocking any meaningful advance. Again, if you’re not playing as any major power from day 1, you can’t even siege more than two or three forts at the same time, given that the enemy still has most of their country to amass new troops. Thus, major wars in late game have become a constant source of frustration. Another side effect thereof is that in regions with a lot of small nations, nothing happens at all since nobody even has the force limit to conquer a neighboring province. For example, I very much liked that the formation of Kitara brought some dynamic to the Great Lakes and Congo areas, but now it’s stalemate for 400 years all over again. Taken together, I have a few suggestions to do some about this (in my opinion) untenable situation:

• Tune down the AI’s likelihood of constructing forts to maybe 2/3 of 1.33 as compared to 1.32
• Make sure that mothballed capital forts actually count as a level 1 fort if sieged within the first month of the war. It’s absolutely annoying that a fort labeled as mothballed suddenly turns into a fully defensive level 9 one as said OPMs often can’t even afford the maintenance of what they build.
• Allow for looting a certain amount of money (10-20%) from buildings destroyed after seizing an enemy province. This would allow for some compensation for the mercs you need so early so desperately.
• Come up with something like hordes’ razing mechanic for occupied forts. To me, it seems plausible that after occupying a fort for several months and placing a substantial army in the province should enable them to tear down the respective fort.

This issue seems all the more pressing to for two other reasons. The first is the change to the role of morale in combat. Now, you sometimes have to defeat a fully destroyed army several times within the same month before they finally disband. I don’t see a reason, why you shouldn’t be able to stackwipe a much weaker army that is fleeing only to the neighboring province. This issue becomes less severe towards end game. Then, however, the differences between unit groups become even more pronounced making your African units lose to European ones although both (changeable) quality and quantity of yours are superior. Another point here is that the improvements of the AI with budget and mana generation now increase development once again to hilarious levels (who doesn’t like 66 in the steppes of Tyn or 47 in the mountains of Uzkend around 1700?) I quite appreciated the average levels of development in 1.32. Now, however, your conquest is slowed down even more than only by the years spent wasting your men on forts.

What are your thoughts and experiences on this? I simply do not get why large-scale conquest is being made so much more tedious and frustrating. I mean, none of these changes tests your skills, only your patience with horribly prolonged wars of attrition.

Having said that, I’ll be reverting to 1.32 although I am in principle very fond of some other new features and balancing activities, but right now things are unplayable to me.

 

[holyvigil]

As someone who enjoys playing the game post absolutism I agree with this.

Nothing says Napoleonic wars like slow sieges and indecisive battles.

At the very least siege ability should be increased to keep the same speed as previous patches.

It makes sense to me that later forts took more men to siege but it does not make sense to me that they require more cannons as cannons got better in technology. Around the same siege weapons are needed. The siege of the walls themselves takes about 5 seconds with modern artillery. its men dug in ditches that takes awhile to hammer down in modern warfare.


The thing that makes fort spam seem as not too big of a problem to the lower level of players is that they don't play to the age of revolutions. While the thing that makes the higher level players not think it's such a bad thing is the same reason but because they do WCs before it becomes an issue. If however you casually get the age of revolutions sieging forts is so slow.

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

I tried to post this on Reddit but just got blasted with 'you expletive delusional loser, just get gud'.

Glad to see someone else thinks the way I do.

The new changes do not make the game harder, they just make the game a lot more tedious. I would strongly propose that siege ability is increased, the building of level 2/3 forts is toned down and that combat is sped up. Battles lasted hours to a day, not weeks or months in this timeframe.

 

[Slow Bathroom]

I think it's a good thing that you can't just walk directly to the enemy capital and take it at the start of a war. Do you not want the AI to try to hinder you from conquering it?

 

[Nostalgium]

I don't mind the fortification (it's perhaps a bit excessive, but it's better than the no-fort everywhere we saw before), but I agree with the sentiment of @holyvigil that siege ability needs to keep pace. Perhaps this would be a good time to introduce a % siege ability into military tech, like development, trade and admin eff. for other techs.

 

[FrogCrusher]

As I proposed in another thread, we could also increase siege ability based on siege progress when above 0. It seems odd that à 68% siege take another month to roll dice (at the same rate a -45% siege) whereas moral and food in the city should be very low by that time.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

The AI building forts is good. No sure if it's intentional but I think they are even prioritizing provinces with defensive terrain. That's exactly what a human player would do.

Some of the ideas for improving sieges are quite interesting and that's probably the area paradox should focus on.

 

[Rinion]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I generally agree that it's a good thing that the AI is capable of building forts now. Yet, if your allies sign a white peace even if they did not get attacked themselves and have little to no war contribution, it becomes too much. So toning down on the excessiveness and thinking about some unwarranted side effects of the patch would help a lot. There is certainly a middle ground between the current and the previous state, which should even be closer to 1.33, but as things stand now, the balance between fun and frustration no longer exists.

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

The way I see it, they ended up reducing province warscore cost and AE to keep up with the increased amount of provinces and development in the game.

By the same token, they could increase siege ability to keep up with the AI building more forts. At that point it balances out.

I do maintain however that battles should be sped up a lot. Even if this is just because the AI is retreating (to avoid an excess of stack wipes making blobbing a lot easier).