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.
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?
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
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.
a broader combat width would make it completely obsolete as it would be even higher on open terrain.
Also the combat width of 20 here in the forest is totally okay
No, they were not.
Yes, they did, they gave numbers in the hundreds of thousands, numbers I gave are the modern estimates
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?
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.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
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.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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I'm always in defense of gameplay > historical accuracy.
It implies neither of those things.it implies that history inherently makes for bad gameplay, and that gameplay inherently can't be historical
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.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.
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.
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
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.
Feel free to take any of my ideas and incorporate them into your suggestions, just give creditWith your permission I am going to think a suggestion out of it.
Pointlessly arguing with and antagonizing each other over the credibility of ancient sources will get us nowhere
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
Dear God do I hate this argument with a passion
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