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My first impression is the battle frontlines aren't stright for some reason? Maybe the more advantageous a regiment is over the other hostile regiment the more "forward" that regiment would be on the interface?
 
The unit visually drops back as its morale is reduced. There's no additional gameplay impact, just a nice way of making battles look a little more alive.
 
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The unit visually drops back as its morale is reduced. There's no additional gameplay impact, just a nice way of making battles look a little more alive.

Neat idea!
Can't wait to delude myself into thinking that my general is pulling off a Cannae as our whole line collapses from the centre :cool:
 
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Are the flanking cohorts now more distinguishable? The six flank cohorts (three on each flank) of the top army are somewhat offset/shifted from the main battle line - at least it seems so. Or do these flank cohorts just have very good morale as they don't face directly an enemy cohort?


Would be cool, if there is a small space between the main battle line and the dedicated flank units. That would offer some additional information and immersion to the battle tab.
 
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The unit visually drops back as its morale is reduced. There's no additional gameplay impact, just a nice way of making battles look a little more alive.

Speaking of battle, I hope you guys took into consideration that with the 50% reduction of cohort size battles will now be pathetically tiny, I mean a CW of 20 means that it's a 10k v 10k now, which is absurd, it was already small with the front being 30k v 30k, largest battles of the era were between 40k on the smaller end of the big battle spectrum to 80 frikin k for stuff like Ipsus


also, shouldn't CW be a function of army size in relation to terrain with certain upper and lower limits rather than static?

Because it'd pretty pathetic if battles were like 15k max at a time, assuming an avg of 30 CW

also naval CW shouldn't exist, large naval battles of the era were in the range of 300 ships per side at once
 
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Speaking of battle, I hope you guys took into consideration that with the 50% reduction of cohort size battles will now be pathetically tiny, I mean a CW of 20 means that it's a 10k v 10k now, which is absurd, it was already small with the front being 30k v 30k, largest battles of the era were between 40k on the smaller end of the big battle spectrum to 80 frikin k for stuff like Ipsus


also, shouldn't CW be a function of army size in relation to terrain with certain upper and lower limits rather than static?

Because it'd pretty pathetic if battles were like 15k max at a time, assuming an avg of 30 CW

also naval CW shouldn't exist, large naval battles of the era were in the range of 300 ships per side at once

10k v 10k were pretty large battles in the ancient. The ancient sources exaggerated immensly, when they talked of large battles with several 10k armies. Many modern military historians saying this. So if the halved cohort sizes without increasing cohort numbers and combat width are totally fine - so battles with just a few thousand soldiers are totally fine. Also the combat width of 20 here in the forest is totally okay - a broader combat width would make it completely obsolete as it would be even higher on open terrain.
 
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10k v 10k were pretty large battles in the ancient.

No, they were not.

The ancient sources exaggerated immensly, when they talked of large battles with several 10k armies. Many modern military historians saying this.

Yes, they did, they gave numbers in the hundreds of thousands, numbers I gave are the modern estimates

So if the halved cohort sizes without increasing cohort numbers and combat width are totally fine - so battles with just a few thousand soldiers are totally fine.

They are not, neither in the historical sense, nor in the gameplay sense, armies in this game are large, even bigger than they were at the era, cutting combat width to be this small makes the issue of battles taking too long even worse

It's also ridiculous that your armies are limited to be deployed in such small numbers, especially when there is no reason, HI are dense formations, thousands can deploy in one kilometre of front, they aren't all standing in a formation one line deep, but several, 8-16, and front lines stretched up to ten kilometres,

a broader combat width would make it completely obsolete as it would be even higher on open terrain.

Funnily enough, I don't know of a single example when a portion of an army in this era was held back because there wasn't enough room for it, it's always because of a suspected ambush, attempted ambush, an attempt at wearing the enemy down, or the Romans just keeping a line in reserve, it's always stuff like tactical choice or doctrine, not terrain that limited what width the army's front was

Also there was Cannae, where the Roman army was so big they couldn't command it.

Also,

Also the combat width of 20 here in the forest is totally okay

no.

You are also forgetting that this isn't an issue where the armies are small, this is an issue wherein army size is limited by some artificial, nonsensical case of bad game design, it isn't that my army is 10k, it's that you can't deploy bigger armies even though you should because reasons, as if battles in IR needed to be even slower and more boring than they already are, and don't get me started on how the combat system itself is better at approximating trench warfare than classical battles
 
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Just quick question... did battles take more than a few days? I feel like 2 armies lining up in phalanx lines engaging each other would just finish in max 2 days in any case. Longer fights would be fights about controlling a territory.

Hmm...

What do battles in the game represent in the first place? A scheduled battle agreed by both commanders to choose a good location to fight in one head on formation?

Or it's a slow process of non-formational fighting that smaller units of soldiers were trying to fully control a location?
 
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No, they were not.

On what evidence do you base this? Only Rome (after a certain expansion) and other large empires can field armies of several 10k soldiers (like the Diadochi, Maurya, Carthage). Everybody else wasn't capable of it and if you look at the I:R map, you notice that most of the tags are significantly smaller. Rome had at the time of Augustus 28 Legions with around 5k to 6k soldiers each - which weren't always met - so let's say 100k to 150k for the entire Roman Empire. So battles with several 10k are rather the exception, but they are more prominent than smaller ones.

Yes, they did, they gave numbers in the hundreds of thousands, numbers I gave are the modern estimates

Yes, but they also talked about several 10k, which is often times questionable. At the Battle of Magnesia Livius is talking about 72k and Appian about 70k Seleucid soldiers; Romans 30k plus several 1 to 5k from allies. 50k loses after the battle for the Seleucids (and only 365 [sic] for the Romans). Especially the loses are nonsense, but also the 70/72k are questionable. Sure you can field in crisis more men, but the Seleucids throwing 70k men in one (even if it's a major) battle, when the whole Roman Empire during Augustus had 100k to 150k for all offensive and defensive purposes is unrealistic. How do you even feed such large armies? This is one of the main points, when modern historians and military officers critizise such high numbers.

Edit: Source: Alfred Hirt - Magnesia. p. 215-238. in: Ilja Steffelbauer, Gerfried Mandl - Krieg in der Antiken Welt (2007). (War in the Ancient World)


And while providing historical informations and modern topics of military history, I'm always in defense of gameplay > historical accuracy. You can say combat width should be replaced with something else, but making combat width obsolete, then why introduce combat width at all? So as long as we have combat width, it should matter as a feature.

Edit2: I just want to make aware that there is a lot of doubt about the actual soldier numbers in ancient battles. Historians are only able to make estimates, which can be wrong as they therefore only make estimates. So I would not call smaller battles unhistorical as we don't know the exact sizes and as I wrote above, most tags in I:R weren't able to field several 10k armies, especially if you think of soldiers needed to stay as garisons and/or operate on a different front. Also think of the efforts in logistics and supplies in long lasting wars at such high numbers.
 
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Just quick question... did battles take more than a few days? I feel like 2 armies lining up in phalanx lines engaging each other would just finish in max 2 days in any case. Longer fights would be fights about controlling a territory.

Hmm...

What do battles in the game represent in the first place? A scheduled battle agreed by both commanders to choose a good location to fight in one head on formation?

Or it's a slow process of non-formational fighting that smaller units of soldiers were trying to fully control a location?

For all intents and purposes, battles in-game might as well as be trench warfare, they go on and on and on, where casualties are very equal and way too high, and units fight until they are destroyed or can no longer fight, wherein they are replaced by reserves ready to be thrown into the meat grinder, so very little to do with how battles of the era worked

Further, units just deeply in a line, which I can excuse for performance/focus reason, this isn't TW after all, so all battles being a line with the 'skill' of the general and terrain bonuses abstracting the physical deployment can be justified

Battles very, very rarely lasted more than one day, at least not until the American Civil War that it started being regular, melee battles even less likely so, even then multi-day battles involved one side in a strong position, hill or fort perhaps, being assaulted by their foe, battles in the open even less so, most notable being Yarmuk, lasting an astonishing 5 days, but it's rare

and this is why I say that the current system has more inline with trench warfare than classical, as it's pretty clear from the combat screen that a capital B Battle is being fought day in and day out, now I understand PDS in wanting battles to last more than one ingame day, it'd just be uncontrollable if battles resolved instantly/in one day, but come on guy, this is not a good enough solution

Battles of the era were preceded by days or months of skirmish and manoeuvre, a phase not represented by the instant deployment of forces, and the way battles of the era were fought made casualties very small and somewhat equal in the fighting phase, and then when one side started to lose cohesion that they actually began to lose, and then the casualties were very lopsided, almost one-sided even

further, the can infer that formations in IR deploy in one man thick formations, because they lose combat power as they take casualties

this isn't musket/open-formation warfare PDS, if the guy in front dies, the one to his back takes his place, you don't really lose all that much combat power when you take casualties, as is evident by how Roman legions could fight at very high power at even half strength, even to the point of overpowering green legions at like 2:1 numbers during the Roman civil war

Territories aren't large enough to represent more than a pitched battle/siege of a fort, if armies occupied an entire province or a defined zone and making casualties on the monthly tick then we can say that they are entire campaigns, but they are not, so we have to say that they are pitched battles
 
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Fielding large armies in one location puts more stress on your country in terms of both logistics and economy than outright surrendering and ceding land. But hey we have magical donkeys and portable teleportation jump for reinforcement. Since we somehow can't give up these 2 magics, we just have to put up some artificial limits of not Fielding large armies.

I am trying to think about how the system has been justified in EU4. Perhaps the EU4 armies would like up in one single Rank and shoot each other so the Fielding Width represents the widest battlefield in the whole province, so commanders would generally just agree to meet on that battlefield because that's where both sides can put the most soldiers on single lines.

But how does it work for antique warfare? I have no idea.

I also think terrain should play such a higher effect in ancient warfare and soldier quality an even bigger part as well. I mean... in EU4, it's all about shooting enemies in a straight line. Of course the side with better equipment, therefore technology, would win. In Imperator, however, fighting was actually about swinging a sword. So the formulae have to change.

I think the combat mechanics in terms of terrain and armies would be a complete failure if we cannot reproduce the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 elite Spartans and around 5000 other Greek soldiers could somehow hold off 70k Persians for a while instead of a stackwipe.
 
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For all intents and purposes, battles in-game might as well as be trench warfare, they go on and on and on, where casualties are very equal and way too high, and units fight until they are destroyed or can no longer fight, wherein they are replaced by reserves ready to be thrown into the meat grinder, so very little to do with how battles of the era worked

Further, units just deeply in a line, which I can excuse for performance/focus reason, this isn't TW after all, so all battles being a line with the 'skill' of the general and terrain bonuses abstracting the physical deployment can be justified

Battles very, very rarely lasted more than one day, at least not until the American Civil War that it started being regular, melee battles even less likely so, even then multi-day battles involved one side in a strong position, hill or fort perhaps, being assaulted by their foe, battles in the open even less so, most notable being Yarmuk, lasting an astonishing 5 days, but it's rare

and this is why I say that the current system has more inline with trench warfare than classical, as it's pretty clear from the combat screen that a capital B Battle is being fought day in and day out, now I understand PDS in wanting battles to last more than one ingame day, it'd just be uncontrollable if battles resolved instantly/in one day, but come on guy, this is not a good enough solution

Battles of the era were preceded by days or months of skirmish and manoeuvre, a phase not represented by the instant deployment of forces, and the way battles of the era were fought made casualties very small and somewhat equal in the fighting phase, and then when one side started to lose cohesion that they actually began to lose, and then the casualties were very lopsided, almost one-sided even

further, the can infer that formations in IR deploy in one man thick formations, because they lose combat power as they take casualties

this isn't musket/open-formation warfare PDS, if the guy in front dies, the one to his back takes his place, you don't really lose all that much combat power when you take casualties, as is evident by how Roman legions could fight at very high power at even half strength, even to the point of overpowering green legions at like 2:1 numbers during the Roman civil war

Territories aren't large enough to represent more than a pitched battle/siege of a fort, if armies occupied an entire province or a defined zone and making casualties on the monthly tick then we can say that they are entire campaigns, but they are not, so we have to say that they are pitched battles
Totally agree with you, now we have to translate it gameplay wise. One option is that battles do not start right away but you commit your army to engagement. For weeks the generals prepare a base camp, negotiate, etcc with the other army before the final showdown. This way armies will not storm a country in two weeks, neither will be engaged in open war for months.

With your permission I am going to think a suggestion out of it.
 
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Totally agree with you, now we have to translate it gameplay wise. One option is that battles do not start right away but you commit your army to engagement. For weeks the generals prepare a base camp, negotiate, etcc with the other army before the final showdown. This way armies will not storm a country in two weeks, neither will be engaged in open war for months.

With your permission I am going to think a suggestion out of it.
Not starting an engagement right away does very well to walled cities where you can turtle your main forces inside and harass enemies with Skirmishers. With a main force inside a city, the sieging army would think twice before mounting an assault. An assault would just be like a piece of cake if your target just has like very basic garrison there instead of having to last 3 years for a regular siege.
 
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Cut out a whole thing here because it didn't matter

Pointlessly arguing with and antagonizing each other over the credibility of ancient sources will get us nowhere, nor is it a good thing to do, what matters is that battles in IR ranged from 10K on the smaller end of the spectrum to 80k on the very largest end, which the current system can't handle, and the next one also can't

the issue is that CW is a static number, Elephants, HI, and LI all somehow occupy the same width, further, both systems vastly limit how many men can be deployed, way too much, like are formations one man deep?

CW needs to be a function of army formation, units themselves, and the modified with an upper and lower caps by terrain, now preferably we have an actual battle system, with a 2d hexagonal grid where forces can actually be deployed and manoeuvre...

but I don't think computer hardware is advanced enough to do that, ever noticed how Total War is turn-based, with auto-resolve being an algorithm rather than an actual simulation of a TW battle? yeah, nobody has that kind of processing power, which is why PDX battles need CW, but neither the current system nor the next one are good in my opinion

also

I'm always in defense of gameplay > historical accuracy.

Dear God do I hate this argument with a passion

I'm sorry, but this is such a bad and reductionist argument, to the point where it's borderline not and argument, as it implies that history inherently makes for bad gameplay, and that gameplay inherently can't be historical, well, gameplay in and of itself can't, that'd be a pretty weird game of correspondence, or just LARP, but we can replicate a good chunk and come close

sure, there are the occasional outliers, such as an actual comms delay, or an overly obtuse FOW, but if that were the (blanket) truth, we wouldn't be asking for someone to add the Cursus Honorum to the titular republic now wouldn't we?

I don't for one second believe anyone ever actually believes that argument, as we wouldn't get as **** about this whole subject if we did

What I'm saying is, history is interesting, and it's complex, we can use that to make a more inherently interesting gameplay experience by imposing a good chunk of the same challenges that were on the shoulders of the generals, kings, consuls, countries, and people of the era, and providing a pretty good estimate of the tools they had at their disposal, we don't need to be perfect
 
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it implies that history inherently makes for bad gameplay, and that gameplay inherently can't be historical
It implies neither of those things.
It implies that sometimes they can be conflicting, there's nothing inherent about it, at all.
If they were inherently incompatible I don't think these games would be made in the first place, or many here (myself included) wouldn't even play them.
It's the outlier indeed, but whenever it happens, gameplay takes precedence.
 
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The unit visually drops back as its morale is reduced. There's no additional gameplay impact, just a nice way of making battles look a little more alive.
The units falling back is an improvement, but I am abit disappointed that the layout remains the same old battle screen we see in so many paradox games. Its getting abit bland and tired tbch - I must have seen that screen since the days of Vic II.

Could we create a system similar to that of Kings and Generals YouTube videos, where each unit were represented as a rectangular colour, and they actually crashed into one another and cracked as casualties mounted, like something similar to this?

2021-01-14 23_51_59-Pyrrhus and Pyrrhic War - Kings and Generals DOCUMENTARY - YouTube and 7 m...png

(Cheers Pyrrhus for having so many casualties so that u can make my point :))

You could even paint the terrain underneath the units in the battle screen like in the pic rather than a generic forest, giving us almost an extremely cool display as if we are seeing the battle itself. That would really help with immersion without going full blown Total War.

Would it be possible for such a thing to be done @Arheo ? Im not asking for sweet strategic manoveures, just to replace the symbols to the ones in the picture to make it look very immersive :)
 
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Fielding large armies in one location puts more stress on your country in terms of both logistics and economy than outright surrendering and ceding land. But hey we have magical donkeys and portable teleportation jump for reinforcement. Since we somehow can't give up these 2 magics, we just have to put up some artificial limits of not Fielding large armies.

You know, I'm willing to bet that a large portion of the shear bullheadedness of ancient warfare was because of logistical considerations, but I digress

well...we can give them up, portable teleportation jump for reinforcement we can just make it so that you can *only* reinforce in your *owned* and *controlled* territory, that'd solve most of the issue

as for donkeys, well, m8, I've solved that issue via observed experimental results

if we cut down food production, increase civilian consumption, and reduce army carry capacity by like 50%-75%, and make donkeys move at
speed 1, you very much account for a lot of the logistical issues of fielding 80k armies, like I started sending smaller amounts of cohorts to campaign simply because I was fighting in a low supply area, it works, we can easily fix this issue, we only need to teach the AI how to guerrilla warfare though

I am trying to think about how the system has been justified in EU4. Perhaps the EU4 armies would like up in one single Rank and shoot each other so the Fielding Width represents the widest battlefield in the whole province, so commanders would generally just agree to meet on that battlefield because that's where both sides can put the most soldiers on single lines.

But how does it work for antique warfare? I have no idea.

I hope I am allowed to quote myself, because I already have a spiel on it

The issue is that this style of doing battle has been basically the same since EUI as I understand it, at least since EUIII, un(substantially)changed from then, the only changes have been the removal of the 2nd line, and setting your flanks, and that's very minor, this needs some major changes, like Cicero levels of major, both to fix underlying issues, and to bring it to a modern standard, since we no longer live in the year of our lord 2007/2760 AVC.

There are several intrinsic issues that this style of combat faces that stem from it being a third-grade approximation of Line warfare hacked into a pathetic attempt at abstracting classical infantry group defence tactics (Hoplite warfare), then shoehorned into the rest of classical infantry combat, both heavy inf (chequerboard cohorts/maniples), and lighter inf (think of the many *many* light inf fighting styles that the ancient world is famed for), and let alone how many different styles of cav

I frankly don't envy the devs on this, since any attempt at fixing this system wouldn't do enough, but any attempt at substantial changes look like a nightmare to even think of, let alone implement, if they are even possible with the design goals/limitation that they have imposed/deemed practical/possible within the limitations of the engine

So yeah, I've been beating this drum since the start, the issue is that any system that isn't 'everyone stands in a line' and 'general quality is just a bonus to damage' starts to break down, mostly for performance reasons, though design and AI issue halt it as well, let alone monetary and time constraints

I also think terrain should play such a higher effect in ancient warfare and soldier quality an even bigger part as well. I mean... in EU4, it's all about shooting enemies in a straight line. Of course the side with better equipment, therefore technology, would win. In Imperator, however, fighting was actually about swinging a sword. So the formulae have to change.

I think the combat mechanics in terms of terrain and armies would be a complete failure if we cannot reproduce the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 elite Spartans and around 5000 other Greek soldiers could somehow hold off 70k Persians for a while instead of a stackwipe.

Completely agree; strangely enough, unit-specific-terrain modifiers do exist, but only in some military traditions trees, units should definitely interact with terrain, a mountaineer elephant regiment might sound rad, but elephants are not conducive to mountain warfare, neither is anything TBH.

and do I need to talk about HI and forests? because a certain traitor sure as hell made a good argument about why that's a bad ide
 
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Pointlessly arguing with and antagonizing each other over the credibility of ancient sources will get us nowhere

This is true, because it's sometimes even extremely difficult for historians to get valid information from sources. So it's sometimes very vague, which is sad, that we often cannot gain 100% correct informations about the antiquity.

10K on the smaller end of the spectrum to 80k on the very largest end, which the current system can't handle, and the next one also can't

I'm not sure if I understand this sentence correct, when you are talking about handling, but it was currently quit easily possible to have battles with 80k soldiers involved in the late game. Or do you mean, if battles would be more properly presented and have way more details, which require more background calculations from the system?

Of course a even more complex battle simulation and a less abstract value like combat width would be great, but overall the upcoming changes are great improvements in comparison to the current warfare. And I dare to say, that I:R will have the best warfare experience out of all Paradox grand strategy games after the HOI series.

Dear God do I hate this argument with a passion

I can somewhat relate to that, as I often have to argue about the "need" of historical accuracy or as I prefer to say historical authenticity to get immersion and not having the feeling to play with an excel file, but here on the forums I'm somehow often on the other side :D Because people - at least in my opinion - here sometimes overdo which historical aspects should be in which detail in the game. I understand, if you say the devs should revisit certain aspects someday, but I always get the feeling people want every feature being super historical accurate and therefore complex as soon as they touch it, which sometimes should be the case and a good idea, but often would exceed a realistic development goal of a game - I mean, if everything would be so detailed we would get way less different features - so a good middle ground has to be found as I think it would be strange to have one or two super detailed and historical accurate features, but everything else would be almost without any update. So I just prefer a bit the approach to look more on the gameplay than on historical accuracy as long as it's immersive, sometimes it's more and sometimes it's less accurate.

So I think we share more the same opinion as it seems after this discussion. The whole topic started just because we disagreed on the numbers of soldiers :D
 
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I'm not sure if I understand this sentence correct, when you are talking about handling, but it was currently quit easily possible to have battles with 80k soldiers involved in the late game. Or do you mean, if battles would be more properly presented and have way more details, which require more background calculations from the system?

Of course a even more complex battle simulation and a less abstract value like combat width would be great, but overall the upcoming changes are great improvements in comparison to the current warfare. And I dare to say, that I:R will have the best warfare experience out of all Paradox grand strategy games after the HOI series.
soldiers :D

Currently, no more than 30k men can take part in battle at once per side, I've already written several spiels on what's wrong with the combat simulation itself, but this is also an issue, I don't how wide army formations of the era were, I also don't know how large each tile is, but they sure could bring more than 30k men at once, let alone how this messes with cav, that's of course if we don't assume that each cohort is deploying in a one mand deep formation, since then I could see CW being that small, also the next iteration has it even worse, with CW being both smaller and having smaller cohorts, I fear that we could see the return of world war style front lines

and don't get me started on HoI
 
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