Handling WW I

[unmerged(1196)]

WW I really was a radically different conflict from any other in the time period. I think one of the strengths of the HoI engine is that it tries to model a world that doesn't change too radically in terms of international and domestic politics and warfare, whereas one of the weaknesses of the EU 2 engine is that it tries to model everything from feudalism and the Hundred Years War to liberalism and the Napeolonic Wars without fundamentally changing how the game plays.

Is the time period of Victoria too ambitious?

 

[Mutton]

I have a bad feeling about that too. Hopefully they have thought of something.

 

[unmerged(7027)]

That was my first thought when I heard the time frame. I'm curious to see how they will use the same combat system to simulate both the quick campaigns of the Franco-Prussian war and the trech warfare of WW1.

 

[unmerged(5367)]

I have a feeling the great war wont happen in 95% of all great campaigns.. just how often have you seen napoleon in eu2?

OTOH maybe crimwar or some such get kind of outofhand instead

 

[unmerged(3970)]

There will probably be a huge dug in bonus or something for troops along with a highly unbalanced attack and defence ratio.

 

[unmerged(12699)]

WWI was pretty static.Many battles were fought with massive losses to gain a few kilmeters of terrain.Trenches,barbed wires,bunkers,strongpoints and fortifications were all over the place.It was bloody,slow,repetitious and very hard.A noman's land lay between the two opposing lines and the landscape in that small and narrow stretch of land was completely shot to pieces making it look like a moonlandscape.

My worries are that battles in Victoria will be handled like in HOI and EUII:win the battle,get the province.
Germany didn't overran France,Germany never annexed Belgium and Austria-Hungary and Italy kept fighting in the mountains and valleys in northern Italy.

So I really hope combat will be approached a bit differently,making blizkrieg immpossible or at least very hard.

 

[jacob-Lundgren]

i would think allowing, at some point a trench build, like land forts to happen. but swift, easy with high defense values. so armies will battle a lot..............then suddenly tech allows for trenchs to be built and BAM!!!!!!! insta high defense

 

[unmerged(8303)]

I'm sure it can be done. Just have some of the WWIish stuff available at higher technology levels.

The problem with EU2 is that warfare changes so much from 1419 to 1820. Some cases its not just technology changes, but tactics used.

but if they make the game with this in mind and as a key point, no reason in the world why they can't do it.

 

[unmerged(12699)]

Points well taken,tech could help alot.

But : 'win the battle,get the province' just didn't happen in WWI,or very rarely.

At least it makes sense to make the provinces alot smaller.

 

[unmerged(4486)]

Originally posted by Jaron
I'm sure it can be done. Just have some of the WWIish stuff available at higher technology levels.

The problem with EU2 is that warfare changes so much from 1419 to 1820. Some cases its not just technology changes, but tactics used.

but if they make the game with this in mind and as a key point, no reason in the world why they can't do it.

But the problem is the nature of warfare IS different between 1835 and 1914. You just can't have armies quickly sweeping over provinces like in Eu2. Even as early as the US Civil War there periods of static stalemate. The battle system of "Two armies enter provinces" just isn't accurate.

On another issue, is the engine based on Eu2 or HoI?

 

[unmerged(7027)]

Originally posted by The camel
I have a feeling the great war wont happen in 95% of all great campaigns.. just how often have you seen napoleon in eu2?

OTOH maybe crimwar or some such get kind of outofhand instead

That's true, but it would be a glaring omission if there wasn't a Great War scenario, and great power warfare in the last few decades of the game should look like WW1 even if the circumstances or participants are different.

 

[unmerged(5664)]

Originally posted by StJaba
On another issue, is the engine based on Eu2 or HoI?

There are elements that look pretty HOIish in the screen shot (the font used, for example).

 

[unmerged(7027)]

I'm thinking they could design the tech tree in such a way that defense becomes much easier than offense as technology advances.

The problem is that with the province system that EU2 had, it would just mean the attacking army that advances into a province would be decimated, leaving the defending army free to advance without any resistance

 

[unmerged(9563)]

Actually, the Great War was province-grabbing, for the first 6 months. After that, it became a war without flanks, and it settled down. I think something related to tech could be done easily.... (IE, give the attacker the advantage earlier but then the defense gains it back, thought the defense did have a distinct advantage in the American Civil War, and many mistakes there were repeated in WWI.) Maybe something like front options... where one option would be better than the other at certain techs...

 

[unmerged(8303)]

In game terms, I'd think the civil war battles would be high weapon technology ( infantry/calvary/artillery ) without a matched tactics to use it. Using 19th century rifles in square formations was not a good thing, no no no.

 

[unmerged(12699)]

Maybe something like front options... where one option would be better than the other at certain techs...

mmm... walking into a province could maybe bring up an option menu giving the player certain choices (like in HOI) that what consider various approaches (artillery barrage at xxx hours,infantry advance at xxx hours,withdrawal if losses at xxx and so forth).
If a provinces you own gets invaded the same box with defenders options.
Very long,long battles.

any thoughts?

 

[unmerged(7027)]

Originally posted by kurt88
mmm... walking into a province could maybe bring up an option menu giving the player certain choices (like in HOI) that what consider various approaches (artillery barrage at xxx hours,infantry advance at xxx hours,withdrawal if losses at xxx and so forth).
If a provinces you own gets invaded the same box with defenders options.
Very long,long battles.

any thoughts?

Long battles were only appropriate for the end of the Victoria timeframe though, not the beginning. So how do you make that system work for wars like the Austria-Prussia war that only lasted a few weeks?

 

[unmerged(11129)]

The biggest key is to keep the mobility down. I think unit balancing would make the battles last longer, which would in turn help eliminate the sweeping "province grabbing" attacks of HOI. The battle system could work the same (i.e. attacks from multiple directions, rudimentary amphibious assaults, use of probing attacks, etc) but at a slower pace. That way, if you had two forces of roughly equal strength opposing one another, they would be engaged in battle in a province for months or years with only minimal gains. It would take the discovery of certain technologies (motorized infantry, tanks, air support) to break the stalemate in these provinces.

 

[unmerged(12699)]

q: why was it over in only a few weeks?

Maybe the answer could be found in the reason for the war only lasting a few weeks.

But you're right I suppose,and so I'm really curious how Paradox is going to approach this.

 

[Rundris]

The battles outside of Richmond at the end of the cival war were very very similar to the Western front in WW1, so its not like WW1 will be completely different from the rest of the game, but ya, I'm worried about the massive task. I have been wanting to see a good WW1 game for ages (plus a good cival war game too!)

I wonder if they will include "docterines" in the tech tree like in HoI.

For intstance, it wasn't really until early 1917 that the allied got good at rolling artillery, where you would gradually increase the range of the artillery barage and have the infantry walk in behind it. Before that, you would shoot artillery, stop, and then send in infantry.

The earlier example of massing troops in formations designed for musket battles not realizing you couldn't do that if everyone had rifles is another example of docterine being behind technology.