My Vic Suggestions (Stacking, Weather, Terra Incognita)

[unmerged(26044)]

I enjoy EU/EU2, Vic and other games. But in the military engine, I notice some unrealistic behaviour in the tendency of a player to keep all his divisions in a single stack and advance from territory to territory without regard to flanks.

In traditional wargames, players are forced into keeping a continuous front line with rules that create a "supply line" from the unit stack to the home base, for which there are serious consequences if the line is cut. Another common rule is a "hard" stacking limit in which no more than this number of divisions is permitted in the territory. I propose the following solution: a "soft" stacking limit.

In order to simulate the divisions of a large army in a small space getting in each other's way, a "soft" limit can be implemented in the form of a strength scaling factor between 0 and 1 by which the strength of each additional division is multiplied. For example:

strength scaling factor = 0.9 = 90%

first div occupies the territory at 100% strength
second div is at 90% strength
third div is at 81% strength
fourth div is at 72.9% strength
And so on...

This scaling factor would still allow you to cram your whole army into one territory if desired, but it would also cause you to consider the benefit of spreading out your forces, or at least keeping a reserve, so as to preserve their effectiveness.

Maybe each territory can have its own "soft limit" reflecting the physical size of the territory. (Smaller territories would have a smaller, more restrictive limit.) Or maybe as military technology advances, a nation's "soft limit" can be slightly increased toward 1, allowing a larger army to be more effective.

How does this sound?
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On the subject of seasonal variation:

I miss the EU / EU2 seasonal snowy terrain / icy waters, with their attrition effects. And I think it would also be an interesting idea if the productivity of agricultural provinces was seasonally adjusted.
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On the subject of slowing down the rate of colonization:

We could bring back the EU / EU2 concept of a new claim having a probability of not being established. Some players may find it frustrating to make such a big investment and watch it fail, but it would be more realistic and slow things down. And a country's probability of success could depend on the quality of the territory, the claim building chosen, and the country's overall level of technology.

We could also bring back the concept of discoverable Terra Incognita for places like Central Africa and the Canadian Arctic. This would also slow things down, and we could introduce new events with interesting effects, like The Franklin Expedition, Livingstone/Stanley and Amundsen/Scott.

 

[Darkrenown]

I enjoy EU/EU2, Vic and other games. But in the military engine, I notice some unrealistic behaviour in the tendency of a player to keep all his divisions in a single stack and advance from territory to territory without regard to flanks.

I certainly don't do that. The stack would be encircled, attacked from multiple directions and destroyed. By anothe player certainly and by the AI quite often.

 

[unmerged(24517)]

When facing an equal number of troops late game, its necessary to create a stable front, and shift your troops around to open up holes and exploit them. It maybe be possible to just use one big stack if you have 5 times the troops, but generally many smaller stacks work better.

Also, attrition can reach astronomical levels if you have just one big stack trying to occupy a single province. Plus since each stack can only occupy at 12% each turn. The enemy could end up actually taking more territory than you if they split their forces up into smaller stacks, even if you have more troops in your one big stack than the enemy has.

Victory already does a good job of simulating the need for a stable front. Especially in the late game.

 

[unmerged(11486)]

The stacking limits I disagree with, but the other ideas (terra incognita and weather) are excellent.

Steele

 

[OriginalRafiki]

I'm with Steele on this. Especially about the weather.

Rafiki

 

[unmerged(8351)]

I always thought an elegant solution to the colonization problem would be to make parts of the world premanent incognita until a set date. The congo until say 1877 (first real serious expeditions)

 

[Grosshaus]

I=====

On the subject of seasonal variation:

I miss the EU / EU2 seasonal snowy terrain / icy waters, with their attrition effects. And I think it would also be an interesting idea if the productivity of agricultural provinces was seasonally adjusted.
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Luckily this will never happen. There's enough of micromanagement around already, no need to make the player think of these as well. For instance grain farms would produce only during a month, but the rest of the year pops would just consume stuff. Any idea how hard it would be to balance budgets? Also this would mean farmers and labourers would be converted to soldiers at other times, because their productivity would be zero outside Autumn.

 

[unmerged(17581)]

I agree with the Terra Incognita and the weather affecting armies, but farming being affected by weather is way too much complicated. But I agree that the attrition effects of weather should be added. The stacking limit idea in its present form doesn't suit me too well, but I'm also annoyed at AI UK landing 400 000 men in the province of Togo, which I doubt could support 400 000 soldiers. Perhaps Life Rating and the railroad could affect the number of troops you can station in a province without extra attrition.

 

[unmerged(9621)]

Weather would be really great to have - it could have both attrition, movement and combat effects.

Supply lines would be a really, really important thing to have in Vik. It would make the combat much more strategic, interesting and realistic. It would prevent huge invasions 10,000 miles from home, like in my last game, where as Japan I invaded the Baltic to win a war with Russia. No way the Japanese could have dropped 200,000 men in Finland and the Baltic States and fought for 5 years. I wouldn't have had to do that if the Russians hadn't holed up in Irkutsk with 500,000 men though - but that wouldn't have been possible either.

The problem with supply lines is that the AI needs to be able to handle them too.

Stacking limits are not actually a bad idea per se. Supply lines would force a stable front anyway, but there are actual military limits on how many soldiers cover how much front. If you have them standing shoulder to shoulder they are quite easy to hit. But I don't think this is a critical addition if supply lines are modelled. With no supply lines, stacking limits become important, though.

 

[Caranorn]

One annoying aspect I noticed in the game right now is how cut off forces can get replacements (be raised back to full power). Otherwise encirclement works wonders right now and establishing frontlines is correctly portrayed. Though as I said in another post, the ai is not too bright in that aspect, but then few games of this scope can get an omnipotent ai

For the rest, attrition based on stacking and a province's size, type and population (more population means more food to scavenge) would be nice. The same applies to weather effects on the military aspect of the game. While I'd love to see wheather also affect production (the farmer turning soldier during summer is actually realistic), I fear this would be abused by the human players.

For claims I'm less enthousiastic. To me the game doesn't seem to go too fast. The only problem with claims I've had so far is Turkey and Russia colonizing Africa (ok Turkey in East Africa might make some, minimal, sense, but not the Congo). In additon to odd neighbours that will also prevent Germany and Belgium from ever becoming Colonial Powers as they did historically. Those problems could probably be solved by changeing the ai files.

Marc aka Caran...