[HttT] Please bring ping-ponging back!

[xGhost4000x]

Imagine your army all wounded and tired after a battle, disorganised and without willingness to continue a fight after the slaughter they experienced just a few days back. Then suddenly they see defenders running at them in a surprise attack. They don't know it's just 1000 men, they can imagine it's 1 000 000 and they already have no will to fight whatsoever due to 0 morale after a lost assault...

They all run away or surrender immediately. Are happy they can rest now. After a while they will realize the stupidity of their surrender but it will come way too late to matter.

And on a more real life note, wtf is your cavalry doing not being with your main army? It was a big mistake to send them away. Mistake that would be forgiven in the old system but is punished severely with the new one so you avoid making it ever again.

I seem to remember a reference to a battle in the Art of War in which a outnumbered force attacked the enemy during a sandstorm and won because the enemy thought that they were outnumbered.

 

[Yaromir]

I think Paradox already explored a feature that could improve the "shattering" aspect.

A battle of annihilation could be considered that some X% was destroyed but some Y% simply scattered.

You then get a provincial decision to reform scattered regiments, which would pop up at low strength and weak morale.

This way you could at least start building a new army around that skeleton.
As it is now, once you defeated main army, you just need to whack newly built regiments one at a time.

 

[unmerged(85536)]

your a idoit

 

[unmerged(85536)]

Imagine your army all wounded and tired after a battle, disorganised and without willingness to continue a fight after the slaughter they experienced just a few days back. Then suddenly they see defenders running at them in a surprise attack. They don't know it's just 1000 men, they can imagine it's 1 000 000 and they already have no will to fight whatsoever due to 0 morale after a lost assault...

They all run away or surrender immediately. Are happy they can rest now. After a while they will realize the stupidity of their surrender but it will come way too late to matter.

And on a more real life note, wtf is your cavalry doing not being with your main army? It was a big mistake to send them away. Mistake that would be forgiven in the old system but is punished severely with the new one so you avoid making it ever again.

you are a idoit

 

[Darkrenown]

That's you told, Delra!

 

[sjones25]

you are a idoit

Good to see a nice, logical, well thought out response; complete with misspelling "idiot".

 

[Sunfighter]

It will get taking used to. Its shocking though seeing a 20,000 man army vanish into thin air after one battle. Considering against the AI it is impossible to retreat as they will just dog you to the next provience. So once you lose one battle with an army you might as well consider it destroyed.

 

[Darkrenown]

It's not impossible to retreat, but it is quite hard sometimes. But why should the Ai let you retreat? That would be silly of it.

 

[cwg9]

Actually, retreating is easy. You just manually order your stack to fall back to rendez-vous with your reserve forces in the adjacent province.

You DO have a reserve force, don't you?

 

[Bossemanden]

I must say i find the terrain modifiers a little excessive.
Attack a river province and you are at -5 (-4 terrain, -1 river),

Combined with the less than random rolls that leave you at 0 to 2 most of the time, you have an effective score of negatives very often.... seems like a killer.

1 or maybe 2 i can sorta see for modifier, but 4? No way.

 

[Sunfighter]

It's not impossible to retreat, but it is quite hard sometimes. But why should the Ai let you retreat? That would be silly of it.

Well for one, I just lost an army of 18,000 men vs an army of 4,000 milian that was chasing my ally Naples around all around southern Naples territory, i decide to help Naples and kill off that army, when low and behold they have full morale now and my joining with naples army puts me at half morale since they were beat pretty bad...no worries its now 21,000 vs 4,000. Suddenly milian roles two 9s in a row during land combat, and my army suddenly moraleless breaks, they chase me now to the next provience and I IMMEDIALLY lose my entire army...just poof....gone :wacko:

Sorry but the way land combat is right now is just downright stupid... its not even based on army numbers now, its just who gets the lucky roles with dice...an army of 1,000 can destroy an army of 30,000+ if they role enough 9s. Its stupid beyond belief and needs adjusted.

 

[Olaf the Unsure]

I'll reserve judgment on the new combat system until I've tried it awhile, but I'm encouraged by reports. Ping-ponging armies have always been my single biggest gripe about the EU games and the one factor that has always made them a chore to play. Anything that removes that problem is a big step forward in my view.

 

[unmerged(1823)]

.an army of 1,000 can destroy an army of 30,000+ if they role enough 9s.

It seems you have never played any game in the EU series.

Any army less than 1/10th the size of its enemy has always been eliminated instantly at start of the battle.

Also in Eu3, there is no way for a single regiment unit to get that lucky, as it can only deal damage to one enemy regiment at a time.

 

[Darkrenown]

No, that's not true. For one thing 30k would overrun 1k through the 10-1 rule, so that's just hyperbole. And a low morale army joining you wouldn't put your guys at lower morale. Sure, it'd lower the overall battle morale, but that doesn't affect you. I'm also highly doubtful an army of 4k could beat your 18k in 2 rolls, for one thing rolling 2 9s in a row would be one shock and one fire roll, and the fire role probably did no damage. Even assuming you meant they rolled 9s in 2 shock phases in a row there's no way they could break your entire army, the guys on the wings wouldn't be getting hit and so wouldn't be losing morale.

Edit: well that was for sun, seems i took too long writing

 

[George LeS]

From what I've seen, it is a big improvement. I do think some sort of replacements should be generated from an annihilated army, if only in manpower. But Yaromir's suggestion,

A battle of annihilation could be considered that some X% was destroyed but some Y% simply scattered.

You then get a provincial decision to reform scattered regiments, which would pop up at low strength and weak morale.

would work too.

 

[JoeGiavani]

Seems weird that 100,000 highly-trained volunteers would just as soon give up the fight as a band of native rebels.
But what do i know.

 

[orwell]

It's really made me rethink how I'm playing with the knowledge that now I can be decisively defeated for my errors, where before I would just ping pong and spend as much time chasing and waiting, as playing anything tactfully.

 

[unmerged(57950)]

It is not all that good, I mean my 6k army was destroyed by 1k infantry that was recruited while I attempted to assault a fortress. That is just wrong if you ask me. At least make it so that the attacker most have numerical advantage to do such a thing.

 

[unmerged(150125)]

I like most of the new features with battles and such, but so far the terrain penalties have been getting on my nerves. A -4 and sometimes -5 makes it extremely difficult in some cases to win even with highly superior numbers.

I've been playing Portugal and when rebels pop up in my conquered N. Africa provinces, the terrain penalty makes it to where my 12,000 army can't beat their 3,000 until after a couple retreats, reforms and re-attacks. Each roll at best I can kill 50 of theirs, they kill 400 of mine. When they don't get the -4 or -5 I wipe them out on the first or second shock.

This is probably the intended effect, but I think it's a little overpowered, especially when you're getting -4s in provinces with hills. I understand mountain provinces, but it seems a little extreme for hills or some forests. A -2 or -3 or those would be much better.

Otherwise, the increased penalty does make wars a lot more strategic

 

[Cikomyr]

Seems weird that 100,000 highly-trained volunteers would just as soon give up the fight as a band of native rebels.
But what do i know.

where do you get your "highly trained"? They are green troops.

And it has happened more than a few time in history when an army has defeated an ennemy while being outnumbered 10:1 because of not loosing their nerves, and making the ennemy loose theirs.