[Megathread] Warfare Discussion

[Alsadius]

I’ve said this in another thread but it fits here too.

If you watch videos on YouTube about what people wanted from a Victoria III, which people made before even the announcement, you’d see almost every video basically says a simplified HOI4 system when it comes to war.

All they had to do was simplify an already existing system.

I am very, very glad that they didn't do that. HOI4 was totally unplayable, as far as I'm concerned - I liked the industrial/political side, but on both my playthroughs, I closed the game within the first week of the war starting. It was just an unmanageable catastrophe (and I say that as someone who got to be okay with the HOI1 tech system over time).

 

[letarsier]

I'm sorry but, several European countries already knew how to fight with many of these "modern" systems. Several military advisors and observers had arrived in America to witness what else was evolving...only to become bewildered and laugh at the American's incompetence of sending troops against one another with little rhyme or reason for doing so that caused those massive casualties.

As for military tactics? Excluding military fortifications, tactics and strategies remained the same. The movement of troops in massive lines when advancing and suppressive artillery targeting enemy troops still remained the same.

If anything, just look at the various wars in Europe from the same time period that show more competent militaries going toe to toe with each other and suffering far fewer losses as a result.

The first time this Napoleonic era of warfare was seriously challenged was during the Russo-Japanese war where trench warfare caused unspeakable casualties for the Japanese

Well, the weapons range and fire rate had already forced tactical evolutions, as well as deep changes in logistics and transport, and first rank armies could be outdated in a matter of years. First exemple was in Crimea, where the French got praise (while the Brits were still stuck in Napoleonic era at the beginning), were lucky enough to fight the Austrians in Italy who happened to be even more incompetents than them in the 1860's, only to be smashed in 1870 when they faced a better armed and prepared Prussian army. 1854-1870, only 15 years to be completely outclassed.

 

[SecretiveCody]

I am very, very glad that they didn't do that. HOI4 was totally unplayable, as far as I'm concerned - I liked the industrial/political side, but on both my playthroughs, I closed the game within the first week of the war starting. It was just an unmanageable catastrophe (and I say that as someone who got to be okay with the HOI1 tech system over time).

I don't get this. Politics in HOI4 totally lacked flavor, Industry was alright, but the part of HOI4 you hated was warfare? I pre-ordered HOI4 and at launch I loved it. I only got tired of it eventually and stopped playing for a few years, but that's honestly surprising. What about warfare made it unmanagabeable? I found it a lot easier to understand management compared to HOI3, though to be fair, HOI4 lacked Field Marshals. If they were to bring HOI4 frontlines to V3, it'd be nice if they made a proper general staff system, which could play into them automating the system more. Currently there's no real representation of a general staff at all in V3... warfare just has so little depth.

 

[Alsadius]

I don't get this. Politics in HOI4 totally lacked flavor, Industry was alright, but the part of HOI4 you hated was warfare? I pre-ordered HOI4 and at launch I loved it. I only got tired of it eventually and stopped playing for a few years, but that's honestly surprising. What about warfare made it unmanagabeable? I found it a lot easier to understand management compared to HOI3, though to be fair, HOI4 lacked Field Marshals. If they were to bring HOI4 frontlines to V3, it'd be nice if they made a proper general staff system, which could play into them automating the system more. Currently there's no real representation of a general staff at all in V3... warfare just has so little depth.

It's been years since I played it (I also got it at launch, and I wrote it off shortly thereafter). But what I remember most was an appalling interface. It seemed like there was eight million battles, and no way to have any overall view of what was happening. I couldn't track battles unless I zoomed to each one individually, and WW2 is far too big for that to be practical. An improved outliner might have saved it for me, but if I can't track the battles, I can't play a wargame.

TBH, I feel like I should maybe go find some HOI4 Youtubers and see what it looks like when they play. Maybe it's been improved, or maybe I just didn't understand how to make the UI work. But I did give it a couple tries, and it just felt hatefully bad to me.

Edit: Pulled up some Youtube. I literally do not know how they are playing this game - it looks more like obsessive actions-per-minute Starcraft than a proper strategy game to me. Battles don't exist unless you happen to be looking at that part of the front, and you can't have any sense of more than one battle at a time - it's just spastic clicking.

Edit 2: Found a HOI3 screenshot that shows what I'm thinking of. That box in the top right was missing from HOI4, and it was literally unplayable for me as a result. (And no, that's not a meme - I actually mean it.) https://i946.photobucket.com/albums/ad308/CptEasy/Blitz Carnage/13.jpg

 

[Shady_Steps]

It's been years since I played it (I also got it at launch, and I wrote it off shortly thereafter). But what I remember most was an appalling interface. It seemed like there was eight million battles, and no way to have any overall view of what was happening. I couldn't track battles unless I zoomed to each one individually, and WW2 is far too big for that to be practical. An improved outliner might have saved it for me, but if I can't track the battles, I can't play a wargame.

TBH, I feel like I should maybe go find some HOI4 Youtubers and see what it looks like when they play. Maybe it's been improved, or maybe I just didn't understand how to make the UI work. But I did give it a couple tries, and it just felt hatefully bad to me.

Edit: Pulled up some Youtube. I literally do not know how they are playing this game - it looks more like obsessive actions-per-minute Starcraft than a proper strategy game to me. Battles don't exist unless you happen to be looking at that part of the front, and you can't have any sense of more than one battle at a time - it's just spastic clicking.

Edit 2: Found a HOI3 screenshot that shows what I'm thinking of. That box in the top right was missing from HOI4, and it was literally unplayable for me as a result. (And no, that's not a meme - I actually mean it.) https://i946.photobucket.com/albums/ad308/CptEasy/Blitz Carnage/13.jpg

I don't want to be rude but this does seem like a personal lack of comprehension on your part. There are UI elements (On the top right even) that break down the effectiveness of a given army or battlefront. What you are describing is utterly divorced from my experience.

 

[Alsadius]

I don't want to be rude but this does seem like a personal lack of comprehension on your part. There are UI elements (On the top right even) that break down the effectiveness of a given army or battlefront. What you are describing is utterly divorced from my experience.

Given how popular the game is, I assume this is my problem and not the game's. But still, I've tried, and it doesn't work for me personally.

And because it doesn't work for me personally, I'm glad V3 didn't copy the HOI4 combat system. Others are free to disagree with me (indeed, it seems like most people do). Such is life - I've been in the minority on quite a lot of topics over the years.

I should probably be a bit clearer that when I say "unplayable, as far as I'm concerned", the last part isn't a verbal tic, or a statement that I think it was unplayable in general. It was just unplayable for me.

 

[Zymes]

Can someone explain to me why I am losing against tribes in indonesia when:

1. I have 44 offense
2. They have 10 defense
3. I have a general and they don't

Yet I can't beat this spear dude in any battles.

 

[FluffayOne]

Can someone explain to me why I am losing against tribes in indonesia when:

1. I have 44 offense
2. They have 10 defense
3. I have a general and they don't

Yet I can't beat this spear dude in any battles.

Drop a screenshot, I want to see this one.

 

[Shady_Steps]

Can someone explain to me why I am losing against tribes in indonesia when:

1. I have 44 offense
2. They have 10 defense
3. I have a general and they don't

Yet I can't beat this spear dude in any battles.

Clearly the AI is mountain tile cheesing you.

 

[Jays298]

It's been years since I played it (I also got it at launch, and I wrote it off shortly thereafter). But what I remember most was an appalling interface. It seemed like there was eight million battles, and no way to have any overall view of what was happening. I couldn't track battles unless I zoomed to each one individually, and WW2 is far too big for that to be practical. An improved outliner might have saved it for me, but if I can't track the battles, I can't play a wargame.

TBH, I feel like I should maybe go find some HOI4 Youtubers and see what it looks like when they play. Maybe it's been improved, or maybe I just didn't understand how to make the UI work. But I did give it a couple tries, and it just felt hatefully bad to me.

Edit: Pulled up some Youtube. I literally do not know how they are playing this game - it looks more like obsessive actions-per-minute Starcraft than a proper strategy game to me. Battles don't exist unless you happen to be looking at that part of the front, and you can't have any sense of more than one battle at a time - it's just spastic clicking.

Edit 2: Found a HOI3 screenshot that shows what I'm thinking of. That box in the top right was missing from HOI4, and it was literally unplayable for me as a result. (And no, that's not a meme - I actually mean it.) https://i946.photobucket.com/albums/ad308/CptEasy/Blitz Carnage/13.jpg

You click the red or green bubbles on the individual battles if you want to know more about the individual battle. But since there are a hundreds of battles ongoing it doesn't matter unless you want to know if the tanks are getting pierced etc.

But from a HOI players POV I don't usually care. All I care about is red or green, and movement. Creating encirclements or taking specific tiles.

Individual battles are insignificant except for attrition or territorial importance.

Yes multiplayer favors micro control.

In single player you can just tell your armies to advance. Like you can put 24 divisions in eastern Germany and 12 in East Prussia, give advancement orders, and watch them waltz into Warsaw no problem.

In MP they are trying to extract every advantage, attack one stack with three stacks from three different tiles , etc. The Schwerpunt in action basically.

As I've said before, Bewegungskrieg.

The more I think about this and Victoria the more I think that Imperator Rome system of basically big stack combat with tic-tac-toe style unit tactics would have been more appropriate for the early stage of the war game then later on have wide fronts for world war I.

 

[marat271]

Can someone explain to me why I am losing against tribes in indonesia when:

1. I have 44 offense
2. They have 10 defense
3. I have a general and they don't

Yet I can't beat this spear dude in any battles.

You're probably out of supplies. Check the needed convoys, and the morale of your army. They're probably rock bottom.

 

[The Goldfinch]

Dear god, I was not expecting much from warfare but this is beyond parody: as Germany my 300k troops with better PMs attacking russian front guarded by 20k men, we move provinve by province, taking months till dach battle of 8 vs 10 ends; what the living hell? What is the rest doing? Is this some sort of Thermopilae between Ostpreusen and Silesia? Wars are frustrating nightmare, with microing and multiclicking those ridiculous generals instead of normal division system, also mobilization is terrible. 2/10

 

[CthulhuTactical]

It's just crazy to me that HoI4 has a perfectly good system, and if you hated micro they could just make frontline automation mandatory and yet they threw it away for this.

This is a recurring issue with great mechanics with years of work on them abandoned in other games.

If Victoria 3 had HoI4 front mechanics, the HoI4 wouldn't sell after someone would had made conversion mod for Victoria 3. Paradox deliberately does not place certain features in their games, so other titles from their franchises can sell. There needs to be unique distinction between games.

 

[Maldazar]

I waited to play (and put some hours into the game) before posting on this thread, but now that I have played for a while I can say with conviction: Warfare is by far the worst part of the game.

It literally lowers the fun of the game, it's not even a 'neutral' system, but it just lowers a lot the overall experience from playing the game. There is no strategy in war, only weird randomness where numbers don't matter, where having more man is irrelevant because battles just start with random amount of troops and where you have no influence and no strategic impact.

Imho it would have been a better system to just add some 'auto resolve', like Total War games have, where the entire war would just be instant resolved based on the initial numbers, it would be more logical/predictable and more fun.

Honestly, the game itself is good, but war is ruining the experience.

 

[CthulhuTactical]

People play games because they like to have agency. The system will be fine if it allows more agency from player. Moreso, it should incorporate player skill in some way -HoI4 despite its simplesness of fronts, still allow for a player skill in multiplayer.

 

[ButcherOfTorfan]

Really trying to give this game a chance. Playing as the Cape Colony, mobilised for a war against a tribe in the Northern Cape. War's over ... but the Opium War is still ongoing so I can't demobilise and my economy is grinding to a halt. To add insult to injury, I don't have enough convoys to transport my army to Asia even if I wanted to.

Was stuff like this just not caught in QA, or do the developers just not care?

 

[Zombie_Freak115]

I don't mean to be *too* much of an asshole, but to all the war system defenders who shot down harsh criticism of it pre-launch:

I told you so

 

[Atey]

I don't mean to be *too* much of an asshole, but to all the war system defenders who shot down harsh criticism of it pre-launch:

I told you so

I don't accept this. The idea is fine and I stand behind it; it's the implementation that needs work.

 

[Zombie_Freak115]

I don't accept this. The idea is fine and I stand behind it; it's the implementation that needs work.

Maybe if paradox wants to show how much better their new system is, they shouldn't have released it as a pile of dicks despite the plentiful amount of criticism from me and other community members?

 

[ero_sk]

I don't accept this. The idea is fine and I stand behind it; it's the implementation that needs work.

That's what most of the pre-release criticism was about, despite some loud group trying to pretend that they're on a crusade against micro fanatics- the latter are in clear minority.