New changes in combat system

[BurnC]

I've seen a few of the Florryworry streams where he showed how bad the combat system is at the moment, but i thought it couldn't be that bad so i decided to test myself and i can't believe no one spoke in here yet about this!
Right now, quality of the troops don't matter AT ALL! it's insane! In a battle one of the forces doesn't even have double the troops and the other side has better quality in all aspects, the side with more troops wins easily! We are talking +10% more discipline and +.2 more morale and the way they loose is just insane.
I do get why Florryworry wants to play on the previous version because this completely makes the combat system stupidly simple, where the only thing you need to worry is numbers.
Is this intended?

 

[LegacyAdrian]

Paradox hate prusia, change my mind

 

[Atopo]

I've seen a few of the Florryworry streams where he showed how bad the combat system is at the moment, but i thought it couldn't be that bad so i decided to test myself and i can't believe no one spoke in here yet about this!
Right now, quality of the troops don't matter AT ALL! it's insane! In a battle one of the forces doesn't even have double the troops and the other side has better quality in all aspects, the side with more troops wins easily! We are talking +10% more discipline and +.2 more morale and the way they loose is just insane.
I do get why Florryworry wants to play on the previous version because this completely makes the combat system stupidly simple, where the only thing you need to worry is numbers.
Is this intended?

I also don't understand why people are not complaining about this more. I don't care about the forts but with the combat changes they basically made a huge part of the game obsolete. Getting any mil-idea group besides quantity is now completely pointless because modifiers just don't matter anymore.

Also, battles are taking waaaayyyy too long now. It does not make sense that someone can reinforce even small battles that happen five provinces away in time. Before the patch it was possible to beat superior enemies by playing smart. Now you must expand until you have more men than the enemy. Extremely dull.

 

[Sergeant Major Gross]

I agree.

 

[Vin55]

The beta showed this, people where saying it sucked, same with Fort Spam cmon the HRE had some castles but it was not a forest of forts, there is much that is worse in this patch, I did find the ai was good enough in the last patch witch expansion and gold. Now the Ottomans are just on steroids with over a thousand dev 30 years in the game, even a human player would need extreme Luck to be able to pull of something like that. Paradox should have either tested more or just postponend this patch. The game was fun before, now it is in favour of the ai and I know some people enjoY rng fest and ai killing them, but I dont whant to be punished for going for Quality instead of Hordes (in the sense of mass assault).

 

[DasHeat]

I'm not a fan of the new combat system either.

For what was originally supposed to be a bug fixing patch, I don't understand the decisions to change some of the core game mechanics (Battles, CBs, Loan Visibility, Unconditional Surrender) as this has inevitably lead to more bugs.

 

[jamal bakr]

with Fort Spam cmon the HRE had some castles but it was not a forest of forts

France had over 40,000 castles and fortresses dating from between the 9th and 21st centuries.

 

[currylambchop]

My high quality Songhai and Bahmani troops are faring fine against superior numbers.

 

[Opanashc]

France had over 40,000 castles and fortresses dating from between the 9th and 21st centuries.

99.9% of them too small to be represented on the map.

 

[Melbar]

Not sure this is right. Just ran a short test; England had 20% infantry combat ability and 5% more discipline. France had 50% more troops. Almost exactly the same morale. England filled combat width. Combat rolls were set to 0. No terrain modifiers or leaders. Results? England won the battle, barely.

More tests need to be run, of course, but on the surface it seems that the notion that "quality doesn't matter any more" is incorrect.

 

[Melbar]

The tests I ran can be made at different tech levels, with artillery, with cavalry, with more modifiers etc. However, I
think the most important thing is to not draw any hasty conclusions. Let these new changes be tested by the community for a
few months, then we might analyze this further. There's so many variables that no one can know for sure now.

 

[Saat98]

I'm talking from intiution, but in my Castile game I was able to defeat Ottos 60k against my 40k, using a disc advisor and the papal 10% morale blessing. So I think quality does matter. (I did lose a lot of troops, but I won the battle)

 

[Vin55]

France had over 40,000 castles and fortresses dating from between the 9th and 21st centuries.

Well duh, but how many of those where able to hold against cannons? The thing is through cannons forts became even more expensive and most wars where not siege battles but battles. There where famous sieges like Vienna, but it had one of the best defenses there was at that time. River control or mountain road control was much more important.

 

[Dunderscore]

If you read the Dev Diaries the combat changes have been pretty intensely criticized, the issue is that most of the community doesnt understand how combat works AND the devs making the change dont understand it enough to actually debate the merits of the changes.

Im glad that im no longer screaming into the void on my own though. Hopefully theyll revert the combat changes

 

[BurnC]

Not sure this is right. Just ran a short test; England had 20% infantry combat ability and 5% more discipline. France had 50% more troops. Almost exactly the same morale. England filled combat width. Combat rolls were set to 0. No terrain modifiers or leaders. Results? England won the battle, barely.

More tests need to be run, of course, but on the surface it seems that the notion that "quality doesn't matter any more" is incorrect.

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Keep in mind some of the issues, when it come to the quality vs quantity might come from combats that don't fill the combat width. I know it is supposed to make some difference, but not to the point quality seems almost irrelevant. is like 20k Prussian troops supposed to loose to 40k+ other weaker troops when the width is above 24?

 

[currylambchop]

Keep in mind some of the issues, when it come to the quality vs quantity might come from combats that don't fill the combat width. I know it is supposed to make some difference, but not to the point quality seems almost irrelevant. is like 20k Prussian troops supposed to loose to 40k+ other weaker troops when the width is above 24?

Of course having half the number of troops as the enemy means you should lose most of the time.

EDIT: here is example of space marines in real life losing to 2+ times number of low quality troops. The actual scenario in the game has the Russians a few techs below the Swedish, in fact. Yet they still win proving that quality should lose out to numbers when talking about this degree of being outnumbered.

Battle of Poltava - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Fenrirwolf]

Not sure this is right. Just ran a short test; England had 20% infantry combat ability and 5% more discipline. France had 50% more troops. Almost exactly the same morale. England filled combat width. Combat rolls were set to 0. No terrain modifiers or leaders. Results? England won the battle, barely.

In a pure infantry battle, with 20%infantry combat ability and 5 % disc, which effectively translates into +15% disc advatage for england iirc, and they barely won, difference in causalities of just about a third.
thats insane. thats absolutley insane, quality is dead, long live quantity. like, how many more modifiers do you want to stack on top of that to actually be able to keep up manpower wise? if youre prussia with quality and offensive and max militarization, sure, you will have more disc and combat ability, but you also will not have much money or manpower due to your government type, and for what, another third more losses for the enemy? still wont be a stackwipe, the battle will still last forever so the enemy has the time to pile his entire army into the battle, and with any other nation you will barely be able to have a much larger quality advantage thanthe one in your test. cavalry benefits the one with a larger army, so no great advantage here, and cannons will act the same way as infantry, the enemy will still have 50% more cannons than you, and cannons benefit less from discipline since they usually dont take damage, negating half the bonus you get from disc.

 

[Atopo]

Not sure this is right. Just ran a short test; England had 20% infantry combat ability and 5% more discipline. France had 50% more troops. Almost exactly the same morale. England filled combat width. Combat rolls were set to 0. No terrain modifiers or leaders. Results? England won the battle, barely.

More tests need to be run, of course, but on the surface it seems that the notion that "quality doesn't matter any more" is incorrect.

In an individual battle, of course, quality is still important. But such an isolated battle like you tested rarely ever happens in EU4. The problem we are facing now is that morale matters a lot less and battles last way longer. Because of this enemies can reinforce battles with troops that are far far away. This is what I mean by "quality does not matter anymore". Your army can be boosted into the sky but you will still lose against superior numbers because the enemy will just keep piling in with men from god knows where and win anyway.

 

[currylambchop]

hats insane. thats absolutley insane, quality is dead, long live quantity. like, how many more modifiers do you want to stack on top of that to actually be able to keep up manpower wise? if youre prussia with quality and offensive and max militarization, sure, you will have more disc and combat ability, but you also will not have much money or manpower due to your government type, and for what, another third more losses for the enemy?

Maybe that is how Prussia supposed to play, instead of the previous patch where 10k Prussian could stackwipe 30k any other troops. And it's more historical, I don't see Prussia IRL defeating Napoleonic France

EDIT: 2/5 times won this battle against more than double sized enemy. Not too bad given I only havve 1 military idea group (though am ahead in tech)

 

[Olaf Trygvasson]

France had over 40,000 castles and fortresses dating from between the 9th and 21st centuries.

And the sieges for most of those would take a few days at the most, or would surrender almost instantly to a force the size of any army on the map.