Paradox: PLEASE do an expansion totally overhauling the combat system

[unmerged(175440)]

I was playing as Russia and when I had to fight a second great war against China, the UK, and Japan I contemplated just turning the game off.

Why?

Because the combat system in Vic2 doesn't resemble anything that a sane person would consider fun.

"BUT VICKY 2 ISN'T A COMBAT GAME!!!111ONEONE11!ELEVEN" you say? That's all well and good but just because it's not a war-oriented game doesn't mean that the combat should be so bad that I deliberately try to avoid war at all costs.

The problem is that it uses the EU3 mechanics yet the EU3 mechanics don't make much sense for more than half the time period. Also, what's with forts not giving a defensive bonus? They just make it longer to siege the province? Absurd!

The system, if you're a gamey player, is easily exploitable. Meet their superstack with yours, encircle, done. If you don't choose to do that, you resign yourself to a glorified game of whack a mole, moving your armies from province to province to beat their armies and to chase after their retreating armies again and again and again and again and again. Have frickin' mercy.

It's just not fun. In my wars with China, they sent little armies of 3-18k men to occupy provinces while I was decimating their bigger armies. Not only did that ultimately doom the chinese war effort, it made fighting the war incredibly unfun for me because I had to painstakingly destroy each and every one of these armies. I almost wished there was a button similar to the one for "automatically attack rebels" except it was "automatically attack hostile armies".

I'm not trying to bash here I'm just trying to tell it like it is so please don't be condescending (I remember when the devs and fanboys would talk down to people who criticized the Great War system but low and behold, they ditched it and got a new one LOL). The combat in Vicky 2 is horrendous and makes me NEVER go to war unless I know I won't be fighting much. I'd pay over $50 for you guys to implement the move=attack system from the HOI games (and nearly $100 for a proper converter but that's besides the point).

Your thoughts?

—V

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

1. What is "move=attack"? I've seen it many times but haven't seen it explained...

2. I was under the impression that forts reduce your casualties by 10% for each level, similar to military tactics

3. What you should have done is put a stack into each border province before the war, then declare war and attack every Chinese stack on the border. That's what I did as the UK when I had 700 brigades surrounding China, from Korea, Siberia, Central Asia, India, and Vietnam against their 700.

Because the combat system in Vic2 doesn't resemble anything that a sane person would consider fun.

To be honest, most sane people would find any Paradox game not very fun...

 

[s1234567890m]

But vicky 2 isn't a combat game!!!111oneone11!eleven

 

[vertinox]

You know what would be awesome in Vic2? Army automation like HoI3.

Once I needed to beat France as the Prussia and I seriously declared war on them, saved, played as another country and waited for them to beat France and then reloaded as Prussia because I did not want to manage the armies.

 

[unmerged(175440)]

1. What is "move=attack"? I've seen it many times but haven't seen it explained...

2. I was under the impression that forts reduce your casualties by 10% for each level, similar to military tactics

3. What you should have done is put a stack into each border province before the war, then declare war and attack every Chinese stack on the border. That's what I did as the UK when I had 700 brigades surrounding China, from Korea, Siberia, Central Asia, India, and Vietnam against their 700.



To be honest, most sane people would find any Paradox game not very fun...

Simply put, move=attack is what the HOI3 series has. Combat is initiated upon MOVING INTO a province rather than having two opposing armies occupying the same province like in EU and Vicky. Nevertheless, forts don't make much sense in terms of making sieging longer. They just make it more frustrating/take longer. The game goes all the way to 1936. So Vicky is telling me I need to "siege" the provinces in the countryside in order to capture them with tanks and planes? LOL.

You know what would be awesome in Vic2? Army automation like HoI3.

Once I needed to beat France as the Prussia and I seriously declared war on them, saved, played as another country and waited for them to beat France and then reloaded as Prussia because I did not want to manage the armies.

Yeah, anything would be better than what they have now. Wars as major powers simply AREN'T FUN.


—V

 

[MannheimCouncil]

I agree that the combat system is the worst part of Vicky 2. It's like a step back from Vicky 1. I like the realistic rate of reinforcements and the fact that battles give more warscore, but that's about it. I don't know whether a HoI move=attack system would help much, though. At least early on and in colonial wars it would feel very wrong.

Personally I'd be happy with a somewhat reduced random factor and a change back to the occupation system of Vicky 1. That means quicker occupation and only eliminate armies if they can't retreat onto an unoccupied territory. Realistically, given the size of Vicky provinces, it shouldn't matter whether there are 3000 cavalry waiting in Paris for your 30k retreating army unless they stand a chance to defeat them. A way to actually shelter troops in forts (à la AGEOD games) would also make the game more interesting. I sure wouldn't mind battle AI either, but I don't think that's going to be in the cards any time soon.

 

[Commandante]

Good thoughts, Veritas555.

Personally, I think the prolonged siege time caused by forts is illogical and hard to understand why it has been implemented in the game from the first place. Why would it be harder to occupy a province when you have defeated the enemy army there? Forts should give combat bonuses, no more.

I also think that it should not be necessary to encircle an enemy army with troops in every single province in order to annihilate it. Defeated enemy armies should be annihilated automatically if they cannot retreat into friendly/unoccupied territory.

As for the move=attack system, I am unsure. In what way would such a system help?

 

[lol887]

Good thoughts, Veritas555.

Personally, I think the prolonged siege time caused by forts is illogical and hard to understand why it has been implemented in the game from the first place. Why would it be harder to occupy a province when you have defeated the enemy army there? Forts should give combat bonuses, no more.

Having provinces with forts taking a longer time is not illogical, but actually quite logical and historical. If a Invading Force attacked a region, the local army would retreat into the fortress. They may not be enough soldiers there to fight the enemy soldiers in the province, but they can still do hit and run attacks, sniping, cutting off supply lines etc.
Wich is actually the reason they made fortresses in the first place in the time period. It's only after the destroying capabilities of cannons/bombs/tanks evolved sufficently that forts became useless.

As for combat in Victoria 2, I actually like it a lot. My first paradox game was the first HOI, so i actualy like the old system than the new HOI3 system. Having such a system would not fit the time period very well either, as combat before ww1 was like:

not

As for the management of armies being hard, I have no problem fighting a war as a superpower against France, Russia and in the colonies at the same time. But i can understand that the learning curve can be steep for new players.

 

[unmerged(160565)]

The way the game's combat system is set up is something that is entirely second thought, imho.

I have ranted and raved about this many times, like my game where I had WWI era englishmen with tanks and planes beaten by musket wielding mexicans.

Its hard to fix it, without completly re-doing it though. a Hoi III sort of 'enter territory, gain it instantly' needs to be applied by in moderation. For example, it should travel along the lines of the arms and artillery tech... IE

Fort level one negates the first tier (already start with) artillery and soldier weapons. You need to upgrade both of them to the next level and once that happens the fort no longer provides a defense. This goes on until the final tier, which should be alot more expensive and do something like lower the RGO or production in the province considering how massive the fortifications were in WWI and WWII.

If you negate the fort, lets say they have a level one fort, like a star fort or something similar, and you have indirect fire artillery and bolt action rifles... well that star fort would never stand a chance (FOR THE MOST PART) you could just sit outside their line of fire and rain death into the fort with mortars. Granted yes, this would take time, but vic II goes on days per turn and forts fell FAST the further you get in history. Look how fast WWII germany took many of the 'undefeatable fortresses' throughout europe. Yes there are examples of forts causing problems, the one in north africa that the americans could not get into even after hitting the gates with a freaking priest, but those are exceptions.

Even if a fort would be able to hold out that does not really mean much... Like, lets say... I dunno... any large piece of territory. You have a fort, it is only SO big, the more modern your weapons the more you could just bypass it completely leaving troops a some MPs with artillery and machine guns to watch the gates and just starve them out while out of harms way.

Look at WWI, trenches, yeah, you can consider them a fort... but tanks negated them so baddly that it wasn't funny. There was no real significant AT and the tanks just rolled over the things. There was only one real AT Rifle made to specifically counter tanks.

Also, with the Napoleonic tactics... I cant say for europe and asia but combat was massively more mobile in the vic ii period then it is now. Only reason they fought like that was because of the inaccuracy of the weapons, with better weapons better tactics came into play. Heck, look at the Alamo, Mexico had the old nap type rifles, the texans had long rifles and they beat the snot out of the mexicans with them up until they got close because the long rifles took to long to reload.


All of that being said Vic II's combat system has two side. One an oppressive, hard to understand brick wall that smashes new players in the face, repeatedly, until they rage quit, and a simple, VERY EASY to beat and stupid AI for people who stick it out and learn the system.

I RARELY loose wars in my games because I learn how the AI runs it's wars, every one does the same thing.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

TBH, I don't have any major problems with the combat side of things but it is a common complaint.

 

[Darkrenown]

I'm not trying to bash here I'm just trying to tell it like it is so please don't be condescending (I remember when the devs and fanboys would talk down to people who criticized the Great War system

Did we? I guess I will stick with that then:
Forts do give a defensive bonus, the fact that you don't know that invalidates all your other points. LOL.

Also, the idea that because we (apparently) disagreed with some critics means we can never change anything is absurd. I'm not sure why you bring that up at all, it's a strange point to make and only detracts from the main point of your post. If you actually want serious replies you should probably stick to just your main question/points without trying to "score points" over people, otherwise they get annoyed and address your provocations instead. Like this.

 

[DoomBunny]

Firstly, we have a thread like this every month. It starts well, then quickly dies as people realise that a HOI style combat system simply doesn't fit into most of the period covered by the game.

Furthermore, I fail to see the need to brand those who like the current system in such a way. Not only is it insulting, but also silly, as most of the people opposed to the change do give good reasons against it.

 

[Marcus Septim]

It's just not fun. In my wars with China, they sent little armies of 3-18k men to occupy provinces while I was decimating their bigger armies. Not only did that ultimately doom the chinese war effort, it made fighting the war incredibly unfun for me because I had to painstakingly destroy each and every one of these armies. I almost wished there was a button similar to the one for "automatically attack rebels" except it was "automatically attack hostile armies".

I'm not trying to bash here I'm just trying to tell it like it is so please don't be condescending (I remember when the devs and fanboys would talk down to people who criticized the Great War system but low and behold, they ditched it and got a new one LOL). The combat in Vicky 2 is horrendous and makes me NEVER go to war unless I know I won't be fighting much. I'd pay over $50 for you guys to implement the move=attack system from the HOI games (and nearly $100 for a proper converter but that's besides the point).

Your thoughts?

—V

i would very much prefer automated arimes too sometimes war gets too booring moving all the armies around most of the times when i fight i end up using three-four stacks while i have 100... or maybe its just my in-ability still though autmated army button would be great

 

[Callendor]

I would very much like an improved military system, especially after 1900.

 

[Krautkopf]

I do not think the combat system needs to be completely 100% redone, but one thing I really would like to see changed: the AIs tendency to doomstack.
I am not a programmer, but maybe there would be some way to push the AI (hardcoding?) into setting up several armies of quite the same size?

 

[Commandante]

Having provinces with forts taking a longer time is not illogical, but actually quite logical and historical. If a Invading Force attacked a region, the local army would retreat into the fortress. They may not be enough soldiers there to fight the enemy soldiers in the province, but they can still do hit and run attacks, sniping, cutting off supply lines etc.

Yes, I understand that this what the prolonged siege time tries to illustrate. This is why I think that it should give the defender bonuses while the defending army is in the province, not when it has been defeated. When the defender has been defeated, there are no enemy soldiers that could retreat into fortresses.

 

[Darkrenown]

I literally just posted that forts do give a combat bonus. That aside, forts can be assumed to have a garrison.

 

[unmerged(457167)]

So if I build level 5 forts on every single piece of land in my Empire I have a permanent combat bonus in my lands... overpowered ?

 

[s1234567890m]

So if I build level 5 forts on every single piece of land in my Empire I have a permanent combat bonus in my lands... overpowered ?

...nope

 

[Wookie1]

So if I build level 5 forts on every single piece of land in my Empire I have a permanent combat bonus in my lands... overpowered ?

Only if you can afford the massive cost in time, money and resources to do so.