this works right up until the point that your border with another nation straddles several strategic regions.
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[Megathread] Warfare Discussion
- Thread starter gekp78
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(Thanks for the in depth answer! I'll try to answer a few points.) Logistics is the reason why I brought up that I don't know where my troops physically are. It hightlights the underlying issue that it doesn't really matter where my troops are, outside of overseas supply, in addition to making it really hard to understand why troops are attacking somewhere instead of somewhere else. It's a transparency issue.
I was thinking about the large-scale impacts, WW1 style artillery bombardment, not in detail province-by-province bombardment. Where you would need to supply a few more million shells to the frontlines, which might reduce munitions supplies to other part of the front or put extra strain on your economy. Something similar would go for gas attacks, which would require additional expenses with the chemical industry. Similarly with entrenchment, I wasn't thinking of the tactical level entrenchment which happens anyway, but ordering a front to fortify the whole line, which could again take months. Granted, most of this is lategame stuff, but mostly I'm trying to come up with high level stuff for the player to do to influence the military.
Regarding concentration of forces, I was thinking about being able to concentrate soldiers on certain parts of the frontlines to make an offensive there more likely to succeed, while at the same time exposing the rest of the frontline to attacks more. Or something along those lines.
Oh, in case it wasn't clear, I'm neither arguing for Victoria 2 style micro, nor am I saying anything along the lines of "Victoria 2 had X, therefore ..." On the contrary, I'm trying to work with the Vicky3 system on its own terms and try to come up with stuff which can be done in the new system. In the case of Generals deciding on their own, that was exactly what I had in mind. Not that the player suddenly loses control of stacks, but that a front, despite being said to "defend", advances since the General decides he knows better than the player. The conflict would be resolved completely by interacting with that General and other Generals/Interest groups.
Sorry, my phrasing was misleading. I meant that if the war system gets rid of unit micro, there needs to be some form of replacement to allow the player to interact with his military, concentrating more on the diplomatic and political level. In this case the distinction is probably not needed, since it's internal. The need to convince your generals to do what you want them to do, offering ways to incentivise certain tactics, setting up goals the Generals need to fulfill, etc. I'm not sure what of that is even feasible, I'm just throwing around ideas.
And yeah, it's true, you sometimes have to switch from defence to offence, which is still very limited interaction but not zero. My main point in that last paragraph was that it doesn't really feel like war requires my attention or is something to worry about. As to how much attention it required: I think the most involved I'd been in wars was one as Prussia where I fought on three fronts, against Russia, France and Austria (trying to unify). I set the France and Russia fronts to defend and the Austria front to Advance. Then I waited. Once Austria fell, I set the Russia front to advance, to get some land so that their warscore would tick down, and waited some more. Then, once they were willing to white peace me, I capitulated to France since they had no wargoal against me. The other war was as Brunei against the Dutch East Indies, with I think Italy on my side and the Netherlands on the Dutch side. The Dutch East Indies (DEI) owned a few provinces on Borneo I wanted to take, two fronts. I split my army in three, set them all to defend to wait out the time until Italy send their troops over. Once they did, I naval invaded the now vacated DEI mainland, again to make their War Support tick down faster. That war did require more attention since I had to initiate Naval Invasions whenever they were off-cooldown, but was also only one due to cheesing the AI which left their mainland totally undefended. It also highlighted how much less there is to do when there's no Navy involvement possible.
That said, now that I have read that shared reddit post on army micro: that sounds pretty insane, honestly ... and is exactly not the kind of micro I want to do. What I want is more akin to ... Take Distant Worlds: Universe. In that game, you build your military ships, and assign them to fleets. Those fleets can be automated. You can tell them the area they're supposed to operate in (star system, sector, half their max range, etc), and the purpose they're supposed to fulfill: attack every enemy on sight, capture enemy ground, protect convoys, whether or not they're supposed to act offensively or defensively. So for example, you can, in preparation to war, set a few fleets as attacker fleets and give them goals they're supposed to go for, while another set of fleets performs defensive operations. The system is super buggy and doesn't work, but in principle, it's really really nice, since you can set up your military on a high level, automate them to do what you want them to do, and then just sit back and watch them do their thing, only requiring player input if the situation changes drastically, since good planning should result in them automatically reacting to changing situations. Basically the same as Victoria 3: set up the military AI to succeed on your behalf by giving it the tools it needs and broad goals to achieve. And yes, that would require *some* finer control like being able to shift divisions around from one general to another (which is something I feel would be totally in line with the big-picture approach Vicky takes - shifting soldiers from one front to another is a political decision, or at the very least one taken at the highest level of the General Staff) but I think it'd be less finicky, annoying and gamey than what we currently have.
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I really hated the vic2 system, but at this point I wish they brought back a similar system with a bit of frontline mechanic from hoi4. At least there you were able to see your units, and what they were doing exactly. Hell if you don't want players able to micro just make it like the battle plan system, but don't let us order units directly. They already have a working AI and system developed for that, and it would be a step up from the current system of teleporting armies and navies, and no representation on the map other then some ugly flags pasted on the enemy country when your units advence a random number of provinces after an RNG battle.
An other idea would be to compeltely take off warfare from the map. When you go to war tell your generals where to go, and let the war be fought in a seperate window, and you get a weekly status report from the general each week.
"We are fighting the Siameese army with 25450 soldiers and 50 cannons, the enemy has 18700 from Siam, and an other 2500 from their tributaries. We won 2 battles, an avarage supply situation, the fleet bringing in reinforcements and supplies in a 90% efficiency because of naval raiding. We currently occupy 20% of the country. At our current situation we can force an other decisive battle in 3 weeks"
At least that way generals wouldn't randomly teleport home after a successful landing becausethe frontlines split for some reason.
They wanted to get rid of micro, but that's the only thing they didn't get rid with this new system.
An other idea would be to compeltely take off warfare from the map. When you go to war tell your generals where to go, and let the war be fought in a seperate window, and you get a weekly status report from the general each week.
"We are fighting the Siameese army with 25450 soldiers and 50 cannons, the enemy has 18700 from Siam, and an other 2500 from their tributaries. We won 2 battles, an avarage supply situation, the fleet bringing in reinforcements and supplies in a 90% efficiency because of naval raiding. We currently occupy 20% of the country. At our current situation we can force an other decisive battle in 3 weeks"
At least that way generals wouldn't randomly teleport home after a successful landing becausethe frontlines split for some reason.
They wanted to get rid of micro, but that's the only thing they didn't get rid with this new system.
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Outside of other considerations, the Vic2 system (or really any other PDX system) had a few benefits. Mainly visual feedback. You could tell when one of your stacks was in danger. You knew why you were making advances in certain parts of the front. There was even some tension when you saw twenty Russian stacks numbering a million people in total marching up to your border, and when suddenly the red numbers grew really large on your side. Similarly, since you recruited soldiers from pops directly, there was a connection between you and your pops. Sure, you can send those guys to die in a meatgrinder for very little gain, but you know that those guys come from St. Petersburg, and you know that they've got family there, and you know that if they get stackwiped, you suddenly reduced the population of that province, so do you *really* want to throw away your peoples lives and see them disappear in real time? It doesn't feel good to look at your armies and see half of the divisions in red because the pops supporting them have been bled dry. Or maybe you are a really spiteful person, and hey, didn't the Poles rebell against you recently? Well, guess who gets sent to the meatgrinder in the next war.
Vic3 does away with all that. Batallions are never lost. They get replenished from some opague population pool, but there's no easy way to tell where they come from or how many eligible pops are left. The pops are supposed to be the most important thing in Vicky3, but I find myself not caring about them at all. There's no tension either because it almost never happens that the outcome of a battle changes. If the bar moves one direction at the start, it will continue to move that direction until the battle is won or lost. You don't sit there, anxiously waiting for reinforcements to arrive while the ongoing battle rages, wondering if hey can hold out for enough ticks. There's no satisfaction in seeing your troops advance on the whole frontline, breaking through the enemies defenses with ease, crushing any opposition as they swarm your enemy's country, nor are there tense moments where your whole line depends on that one army holding out, because all your troops are bound up in fights and once that army breaks, the enemy can swarm your whole country.
Like you said, it might as well be a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet giving you clear information might actually be more engaging ... It's just so baffling. Why have 14000 provinces to enable the frontline visually moving and then not have any meaningful visuals for the frontline at all? Apparently the game does track which troops are in which province, according to some youtube videos, so why not represent that? Nothing fancy, just a stack of icons or whatever, but *something* to tell you where your troops are and what they're doing? We get more provinces than HOI4, and then reduce the front to two icons per frontline? Huh? Why was development time spent on creating all those provinces in the first place? It feels completely wasted. Especially since HoI already proves that there's a much, much better way to do completely automated hands-off warfare.
Again, I'm not saying that we should return to a Vicky2 system, or that "Vicky2 was the best system ever", or the current system is doomed to fail or anything even remotely close to that. The idea of frontline warfare is great, but it really needs a much, much better implementation. And I think the devs are aware of that, since in one of the pre-release streams, I think the Mexico one, the person playing literally set his generals to advance the front and avoided looking at the war against the rebellious states until the war was over. That felt a little weird at the time, but now I kinda get it. I'm sorry if I come off as overly negative. I'm not hating on the game, I'm just trying to explain why the system doesn't work for me and hopefully help the devs come up with something which does work better.
Vic3 does away with all that. Batallions are never lost. They get replenished from some opague population pool, but there's no easy way to tell where they come from or how many eligible pops are left. The pops are supposed to be the most important thing in Vicky3, but I find myself not caring about them at all. There's no tension either because it almost never happens that the outcome of a battle changes. If the bar moves one direction at the start, it will continue to move that direction until the battle is won or lost. You don't sit there, anxiously waiting for reinforcements to arrive while the ongoing battle rages, wondering if hey can hold out for enough ticks. There's no satisfaction in seeing your troops advance on the whole frontline, breaking through the enemies defenses with ease, crushing any opposition as they swarm your enemy's country, nor are there tense moments where your whole line depends on that one army holding out, because all your troops are bound up in fights and once that army breaks, the enemy can swarm your whole country.
Like you said, it might as well be a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet giving you clear information might actually be more engaging ... It's just so baffling. Why have 14000 provinces to enable the frontline visually moving and then not have any meaningful visuals for the frontline at all? Apparently the game does track which troops are in which province, according to some youtube videos, so why not represent that? Nothing fancy, just a stack of icons or whatever, but *something* to tell you where your troops are and what they're doing? We get more provinces than HOI4, and then reduce the front to two icons per frontline? Huh? Why was development time spent on creating all those provinces in the first place? It feels completely wasted. Especially since HoI already proves that there's a much, much better way to do completely automated hands-off warfare.
Again, I'm not saying that we should return to a Vicky2 system, or that "Vicky2 was the best system ever", or the current system is doomed to fail or anything even remotely close to that. The idea of frontline warfare is great, but it really needs a much, much better implementation. And I think the devs are aware of that, since in one of the pre-release streams, I think the Mexico one, the person playing literally set his generals to advance the front and avoided looking at the war against the rebellious states until the war was over. That felt a little weird at the time, but now I kinda get it. I'm sorry if I come off as overly negative. I'm not hating on the game, I'm just trying to explain why the system doesn't work for me and hopefully help the devs come up with something which does work better.
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Personally, outside the consensus that we need more, clearer information on battles, my main issue is one of proportionality - neither the player nor the AI should mobilize their whole army unless absolutely necessary, especially as a Great Power.
It should both absolutely ring alarm bells with foreign chancelleries and be economically crippling if, say, Russia fully mobilize.
It should both absolutely ring alarm bells with foreign chancelleries and be economically crippling if, say, Russia fully mobilize.
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So warfare... I hear complaints about the game most focused on that aspect.
As for sides I am not against the Victoria3 warfare system. I've got hundreds and thousands of hours in EU4 and CK3 respectively (a couple thousand in CK2 too but I'm focusing on current Paradox games). I'm familiar with the individual unit/state warfare of CK and EU. I'd never played Victoria1/2 so meeting the Victoria3 front system was fresh. I like it and I think I prefer it to all the EU/CK warfare micromanagement. Now approaching 200 hours of Victoria3 though I see where it needs a lot of work and as the player I need more information to know what is going on and make decisions on those fronts.
I guess the first bit I am not sure about is what determines where the fronts appear? Why at some borders and not at others? I'd love to know more but really it's not a huge issue. Right now the bigger issue is not knowing what is going on on the fronts.
Firstly while not a front issue itself war support is pretty important. I do not understand war support at all. In my USA game the UK attacked me for the Liberia puppet. I have it and they want it. I didn't have a lot of African units so even defending they overran Liberia. I was focusing on my Canadian fronts anyway as I didn't want the US invaded. So they occupy one-state Liberia. Sad and demoralizing for those Liberians, but why should US war support be hit? We're defending against an aggressor at our home borders. They've not occupied any US soil. We're pressing them back and occupying their crown colonies. Surely their market is taking a hit without Canada's production. Why is their war support greater than mine?
Okay so that's one issue but pretty big as war support seems to determine war outcomes. My other game going is the Japanese Shogunate. My first declared interest outside of Japan was Indochina. I colonized Celebes and after I'd modernized my military some I decided to vassalize Tidore. So my diplomatic play wasn't too bad. Sulu and The Dutch East Indies jumped on Tidore's side while Bali and Portugal supported me. In response I added the war goal to vassalize Sulu as well. War began and for the longest time we had no fronts at all. I'd try a naval invasion and might be lucky if I see any information on it. So nothing was happening save my deaths and injuries from the failed invasions.
Then a front opened in Tidore. I'm not sure how or why but I think they were attacking? Idk. I'm lost over half the time still warring in Victoria3. So I quickly sent my armies to secure the beachhead but must have been pushed back into the sea as the front disappeared. So no fronts again. I'd better my troops as I was researching military with my Samurais' +10% support to military research from their loyalty. Each time I'd give them better weapons and ammunition and try another naval invasion without success. There needs to be some sort of feedback or presentation of what calculations the game is making. Right now I have no idea what is going on. Maybe the info is there but if so it's hiding from me.
Anyway the war went on kind of stalemated. The Dutch and Portuguese both peaced out and it was just me and Bali against Sulu and Tidore until Bali peaced out. So Tidore's front losses must have demoralized them as they conceded the vassalization. That left me and Sulu fighting a Tidore war they were no longer part of. So Sulu-- they have three states to their country. There is Sulu, Sulu North Borneo, and Sulu Luzon. I tried invading each. I have seen some slight feedback if I recall about a malus to a difficult landing. Makes sense, but how can I tell when I am choosing a location for my landing? So of my generals, one is a "Woodland Combat Expert" and the other an "Open Terrain Commander." Where do I see the terrain for the state I am choosing for my naval invasion?
Now Japan also starts out in isolation with very few ports and convoys as they don't need them for trade. I am sure I heard something about supply lines related to the military, but the impact is not clear. While getting my arms and munition industry going to support my troops as I upgraded barracks I also was building ports to increase convoys. Obviously not enough as I couldn't get a beachhead and new front going with every naval invasion attempt stymied. With my losses attempting these invasions pushing down my war support I ended up forced to peace. So I achieved my primary war goal but wasn't able to punish Sulu as I wished for their impudence in siding with my conquest.
So these warfare experiences leave a lot to be desired and many questions:
Where do I see the terrain for the state I am choosing for my naval invasion?
Where can I see numbers showing me the bonus/malus of those generals' terrain attributes?
Where can I see how supply is affecting my armies? (Like I think lack of supply is what is making my battalion of 40 at a front only send 2 or 3 out at a time to battle but I'm not sure)
How do I see other countries level of military development? I want to choose opponents with outdated technology and units compared to mine. Like Russia is on the radar at some point. They rapidly and fully colonized Sakhalin and Hokkaido and I want it but I have no idea how we'd compare militarily. I mean they will always have the numbers advantage but if I have a professional army with the most advanced tech in the world fighting their completely undeveloped and so unsupplied eastern frontier then I would think the advantage would be mine...
I'd think that would work but Idk. So much makes no sense right now. So in that Japanese game one of the undeveloped tribes had an uprising or whatever those are where your war goal is set to annex. The UK decided to back them for whatever reason. Now I've got rifles, percussion caps, and ammunition heading towards machine guns. So I send troops to our one front to defend as it's the UK. They have more men at the front but my general has defense traits and their advantage seems slight. So a battle happens. Looking at the battle I'm on defense. My defense number is greater than their offense number. Their unit size is 1 and mine is 3. It even notes the terrain is mountainous. So I have more men, better defense than their offense, and the upper ground but they are killing me in the battle. Why?
As for sides I am not against the Victoria3 warfare system. I've got hundreds and thousands of hours in EU4 and CK3 respectively (a couple thousand in CK2 too but I'm focusing on current Paradox games). I'm familiar with the individual unit/state warfare of CK and EU. I'd never played Victoria1/2 so meeting the Victoria3 front system was fresh. I like it and I think I prefer it to all the EU/CK warfare micromanagement. Now approaching 200 hours of Victoria3 though I see where it needs a lot of work and as the player I need more information to know what is going on and make decisions on those fronts.
I guess the first bit I am not sure about is what determines where the fronts appear? Why at some borders and not at others? I'd love to know more but really it's not a huge issue. Right now the bigger issue is not knowing what is going on on the fronts.
Firstly while not a front issue itself war support is pretty important. I do not understand war support at all. In my USA game the UK attacked me for the Liberia puppet. I have it and they want it. I didn't have a lot of African units so even defending they overran Liberia. I was focusing on my Canadian fronts anyway as I didn't want the US invaded. So they occupy one-state Liberia. Sad and demoralizing for those Liberians, but why should US war support be hit? We're defending against an aggressor at our home borders. They've not occupied any US soil. We're pressing them back and occupying their crown colonies. Surely their market is taking a hit without Canada's production. Why is their war support greater than mine?
Okay so that's one issue but pretty big as war support seems to determine war outcomes. My other game going is the Japanese Shogunate. My first declared interest outside of Japan was Indochina. I colonized Celebes and after I'd modernized my military some I decided to vassalize Tidore. So my diplomatic play wasn't too bad. Sulu and The Dutch East Indies jumped on Tidore's side while Bali and Portugal supported me. In response I added the war goal to vassalize Sulu as well. War began and for the longest time we had no fronts at all. I'd try a naval invasion and might be lucky if I see any information on it. So nothing was happening save my deaths and injuries from the failed invasions.
Then a front opened in Tidore. I'm not sure how or why but I think they were attacking? Idk. I'm lost over half the time still warring in Victoria3. So I quickly sent my armies to secure the beachhead but must have been pushed back into the sea as the front disappeared. So no fronts again. I'd better my troops as I was researching military with my Samurais' +10% support to military research from their loyalty. Each time I'd give them better weapons and ammunition and try another naval invasion without success. There needs to be some sort of feedback or presentation of what calculations the game is making. Right now I have no idea what is going on. Maybe the info is there but if so it's hiding from me.
Anyway the war went on kind of stalemated. The Dutch and Portuguese both peaced out and it was just me and Bali against Sulu and Tidore until Bali peaced out. So Tidore's front losses must have demoralized them as they conceded the vassalization. That left me and Sulu fighting a Tidore war they were no longer part of. So Sulu-- they have three states to their country. There is Sulu, Sulu North Borneo, and Sulu Luzon. I tried invading each. I have seen some slight feedback if I recall about a malus to a difficult landing. Makes sense, but how can I tell when I am choosing a location for my landing? So of my generals, one is a "Woodland Combat Expert" and the other an "Open Terrain Commander." Where do I see the terrain for the state I am choosing for my naval invasion?
Now Japan also starts out in isolation with very few ports and convoys as they don't need them for trade. I am sure I heard something about supply lines related to the military, but the impact is not clear. While getting my arms and munition industry going to support my troops as I upgraded barracks I also was building ports to increase convoys. Obviously not enough as I couldn't get a beachhead and new front going with every naval invasion attempt stymied. With my losses attempting these invasions pushing down my war support I ended up forced to peace. So I achieved my primary war goal but wasn't able to punish Sulu as I wished for their impudence in siding with my conquest.
So these warfare experiences leave a lot to be desired and many questions:
Where do I see the terrain for the state I am choosing for my naval invasion?
Where can I see numbers showing me the bonus/malus of those generals' terrain attributes?
Where can I see how supply is affecting my armies? (Like I think lack of supply is what is making my battalion of 40 at a front only send 2 or 3 out at a time to battle but I'm not sure)
How do I see other countries level of military development? I want to choose opponents with outdated technology and units compared to mine. Like Russia is on the radar at some point. They rapidly and fully colonized Sakhalin and Hokkaido and I want it but I have no idea how we'd compare militarily. I mean they will always have the numbers advantage but if I have a professional army with the most advanced tech in the world fighting their completely undeveloped and so unsupplied eastern frontier then I would think the advantage would be mine...
I'd think that would work but Idk. So much makes no sense right now. So in that Japanese game one of the undeveloped tribes had an uprising or whatever those are where your war goal is set to annex. The UK decided to back them for whatever reason. Now I've got rifles, percussion caps, and ammunition heading towards machine guns. So I send troops to our one front to defend as it's the UK. They have more men at the front but my general has defense traits and their advantage seems slight. So a battle happens. Looking at the battle I'm on defense. My defense number is greater than their offense number. Their unit size is 1 and mine is 3. It even notes the terrain is mountainous. So I have more men, better defense than their offense, and the upper ground but they are killing me in the battle. Why?
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This should help explain how combat works : (165) The battle system and why you are losing battles despite having an advantage on the front | Paradox Interactive Forums
The detail page provides more info, unfortunately theres no strength bar for generals, you have to manually check that your units are not undermanned.
Try this mod for combat changes : https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/52798/Any/
The detail page provides more info, unfortunately theres no strength bar for generals, you have to manually check that your units are not undermanned.
Try this mod for combat changes : https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/mods/52798/Any/
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Thanks for the link. I did check it out but math. As for mods I'm the sort who only dips into them after I've gotten all I can out of a vanilla experience but wants more. The game only slightly over two weeks old, it's far too early for modding imo.
I am still pained by Victoria3 warfare but as there is much else to do I try to avoid it and go the diplomatic path. Of course sometimes the plays fail and you're in war. I'm still in war with the UK over Liberian puppetry. Its still 1846 and we've been warring all year. Again they've not taken a bit of US soil while I occupy Quebec, a big chunk of Columbia District, and some small inroads into Ontario and a more contested New Brunswick. I've completely been tediously micromanaging the fronts moving troops between them where advantage is too low and going back and forth between offense and defense. It's a pain to do honestly and while I make territory gains and they don't for some reason my war support has been steadily decreasing while theirs holds. WTF! Warfare needs clarity! Right now its a black hole.
Please Paradox, make warfare more transparent and intuitive!
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War Support is heavily affected by controlling your war goal, and/or the enemy capital.
If the British war goal was Liberia, and they took it, that will give them an advantage in War Support. You should have chosen a war goal too, and you should go after it, or London, if you want to win.
If the British war goal was Liberia, and they took it, that will give them an advantage in War Support. You should have chosen a war goal too, and you should go after it, or London, if you want to win.
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"Why does it say the US is losing the war in Afghanistan? Sure, the Taliban completely control Afghanistan which is bad for a few Afghans but like we still control DC and have way more troops so ??"
If the war is over Liberia and you don't control Liberia you're losing the war, I think this makes a lot of sense. Why would the American people keep sending their sons to die in Canada when the only reason for the war (Liberia) has already been lost? Absolutely wild question to ask.
Also, get out of the EU4 mindset where casus belli is just the excuse to start the war and losing means the enemy can completely tear you apart at the negotiation table. The wargoals are the wargoals, if you don't care/can't reconquer liberia just give it to them and peace out.
I have a lot more sympathy for your Japan situation, I had an extremely similar sequence of events in my own Japan game. What I found is that you want to open the military tab, go to navy, watch the invasion timer tick down, then go to that spot on the map and a battle should pop up so that you can see the details of the invasion. A huge issue I had was that my armies were way larger than my navies, giving an insurmountable "insufficient naval support" malus. You need to go through the frustrating and unintuitive process of making a general who has fewer battalions than your invading navy's flotillas (and that army and navy need to be operating out of the same HQ). The other thing that stands out to me is that if you rush new equipment to your armies you have to wait a while for the changed equipment malus to wear off, or you're just making them weaker.
The entire UX is a horrible mess for this process, the naval game in general is something that desperately needs a pass in the first patches.
If the war is over Liberia and you don't control Liberia you're losing the war, I think this makes a lot of sense. Why would the American people keep sending their sons to die in Canada when the only reason for the war (Liberia) has already been lost? Absolutely wild question to ask.
Also, get out of the EU4 mindset where casus belli is just the excuse to start the war and losing means the enemy can completely tear you apart at the negotiation table. The wargoals are the wargoals, if you don't care/can't reconquer liberia just give it to them and peace out.
I have a lot more sympathy for your Japan situation, I had an extremely similar sequence of events in my own Japan game. What I found is that you want to open the military tab, go to navy, watch the invasion timer tick down, then go to that spot on the map and a battle should pop up so that you can see the details of the invasion. A huge issue I had was that my armies were way larger than my navies, giving an insurmountable "insufficient naval support" malus. You need to go through the frustrating and unintuitive process of making a general who has fewer battalions than your invading navy's flotillas (and that army and navy need to be operating out of the same HQ). The other thing that stands out to me is that if you rush new equipment to your armies you have to wait a while for the changed equipment malus to wear off, or you're just making them weaker.
The entire UX is a horrible mess for this process, the naval game in general is something that desperately needs a pass in the first patches.
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Well the mod fixes the combat width problem, if you dont want to use mods, you are going to have to wait a long time for paradox to fix it.
Valid argument. I get that, but the game explicitly gives us two different war goals. The simple conquer the state I concede they've achieved long ago as they occupy the one state piddling undeveloped nation of Liberia. That said their war goal was never to conquer the state of Liberia. Their war goal is to replace my colonial administration or whatever administration is in control of a puppet state with their own.
So I'll concede there is no Liberian front and as a one state undeveloped nation with little to contribute is itself nothing more than a pawn with no value. It only exists to create this war between the US and the UK.
I get what you're saying about sending US boys off to die on that Canadian front as being irksome to a certain percentage at home. However you need to reverse that too as what is the UK thought about all their troops dying and their crown colonies occupied and unproductive?
Again Liberia contributes nothing to my US economy and the UK has not damaged it one bit in occupying forces anywhere of value or anywhere at all for that matter. Meanwhile the more production rich Quebec and Atlantic provinces along with the Northwest ones way more valuable than Liberia are occupied and hurting that UK economy I can only assume.
Besides that this is the US defending itself against an aggressor on their own doorstep. It would seem like they'd have much more morale when it came to war support as by all measures they are winning against this aggression. It's the UK fighting across an ocean and losing if map painting is any measure with the flags of my US forces all along the Atlantic and Pacific provinces.
So if you're going to mention what do the home front think about the war front then perhaps it needs to be which IG versus which IG. For the US this war front IS the home front. The US lost no troops in Liberia and only along these Canadian fronts.
I mean I'm thinking US industrialists aren't affected yet because nothing is occupied and given we've occupied territory on a scale of 50 to 1 maybe against the UK I would think our warhawks IG are ecstatic-- our industrialists might even be slightly happy because of the increased war production as munitions, small arms, and artillery are all way up, and everybody else unaffected really save those war losses I guess injuries and deaths whatever effect conscription has on morale. Though with a national militia or whatever it's called I'm not in front of the game right now it's the best conscription law that I could see as far as morale with the most IGs.
So I can speculate and you can speculate and we can wonder why war support might be, but what we really need is for Paradox to pull back the curtain and show everything affecting their war support calculations in a clear way.
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Agreed about the UI not being great. This should be improved over the months to come, according to the devs.
Regarding the war support, you can hover over the war support number and it will show you why it's decreasing. It's capped at 0 if you still control all your enemy's war goals, and goes down to -100 (where you will capitulate) if your enemy has taken one of their war goals. The basic idea is that you need to hold the war goals (note that they don't need the control all of Liberia, just a single piece of it, for the war support to go down to -100 over time), or you lose the war. This can lead to strange situations, like with Liberia (where, as you note, you don't really care about Liberia but the game forces you to consider it of the greatest strategic importance) but it also stops enemies from stubbornly refusing peace even though you hold the war goal.
If you had a war goal in Canada (say, "Liberate Canada" or "Annex Vancouver") then you'd end up with a war support race to the bottom where whichever side loses war support fastest would be forced to give up. This is influenced by the number of radicals in your country, casualties, and other factors that you can probably see by hovering over the war support number.
Regarding the war support, you can hover over the war support number and it will show you why it's decreasing. It's capped at 0 if you still control all your enemy's war goals, and goes down to -100 (where you will capitulate) if your enemy has taken one of their war goals. The basic idea is that you need to hold the war goals (note that they don't need the control all of Liberia, just a single piece of it, for the war support to go down to -100 over time), or you lose the war. This can lead to strange situations, like with Liberia (where, as you note, you don't really care about Liberia but the game forces you to consider it of the greatest strategic importance) but it also stops enemies from stubbornly refusing peace even though you hold the war goal.
If you had a war goal in Canada (say, "Liberate Canada" or "Annex Vancouver") then you'd end up with a war support race to the bottom where whichever side loses war support fastest would be forced to give up. This is influenced by the number of radicals in your country, casualties, and other factors that you can probably see by hovering over the war support number.
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Thanks for clearing it up a bit for me why it might be low. If there is no difference between outright conquest or forcing as in this case transfer of a puppet then there shouldn't be two differing war goals. There seems to me though a huge difference between the two and why there are two different goal options. The problem is that the game is treating them exactly the same. I won't go into great detail how as I already did but the two different goals should have two very different measurement criteria for war goals. To conquer Liberia it is a no-brainer that you occupy and sit on it. To replace my puppet overlord administration with a UK one then shouldn't they need to occupy that administration-- i.e. Washington D.C.?
Devs tried something else, it didn't work out, it happens. I will not repeat the arguments that have already been made about why warfare is completely broken and why you win/lose battles etc. I hope that after a patch that will at least slightly improve the performance of the game, we will have a complete rework of the warfare system.
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Warfare needs to be fixed, but not completely reworked. We were promised patch 1.06 next week and 1.1 till years end. Both should include some bugfixes.
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I missed the thread, anyone has a link to the discussion.
Personally, I do not have an issue with the approach, but the execution. It is too abstract.
The fatal flaw for all paradox games are the lack of tactical maneuvers. Battles were often fought in won even before the first shots were fired. Moreover, the 19th century battles widely different in 1839 than they were in 20th century.
Personally, I do not have an issue with the approach, but the execution. It is too abstract.
The fatal flaw for all paradox games are the lack of tactical maneuvers. Battles were often fought in won even before the first shots were fired. Moreover, the 19th century battles widely different in 1839 than they were in 20th century.
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They said in the last DD that patch 1.2 (next year) should include changes on warfare and diplomacy.
But if by "complete rework" you mean bringing micro and little units, then it's highly unlikely you'll ever get that
But if by "complete rework" you mean bringing micro and little units, then it's highly unlikely you'll ever get that
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What needs to be fixed then, if you don't want rework?
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I don't mean the introduction of micro (which is funny because the current system has quite a lot of microing), but a complete rework of broken and deeply flawed mechanics.
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