The rainbows actually teleports the armies to another dimension where there is no war and all the soldiers will drop their weapons and join the unicorn to eat cake.
Petition to Paradox: Keep the current percentage-based terrain system
- Thread starter Comes Imperii
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This is worth mentioning again. This is still a game and as a game it needs to have a coherent design that allows you to plan and execute a strategy. Having some aspects of randomization is fine, but not when the UI lies to you about what potential outcomes are or does not provide adequate information to the player. One terrain type per province is an excellent change--it's an excellent change made after several patches worth of silly changes designed to constrict the player.
The attacker loots the plains and if left alone long enough occupies them; since the plain regions in most provinces are the most important regions that means the province as a whole is occupied (after all who cares if the enemy is dug in up in the mountains when you have control the important cities, supply lines and trade. The army in the mountains can then engage the attacker when it wants to or hope the attacker leaves the province so that it can start to lift the occupation.
How is it better strategic choises to have provinces which is completely ruled out as a battle field now, whereas they could become one under certain circumstances previously?
Between Italy in Charlemagne and in Art of War, I want to puke.
Here pictured: "plains".
Here pictured: "mountains"
Yeah and the Highlands of Scotland are apparently a bit hilly. ;p
The attacker now has free way to go move past and besiege another province without the defender being able to block them with mountains.
The defender is going to try to sit on the mountains regardless.
What I propose would give an attacker more options and would basically do away with the whole kerfuffle people have been arguing about for the last 28 pages.
There would also be a tad more variety. For example, the attacker could essentially hold the lowland(while the province center is in the mountain region), which would cripple the production and basetax of the province.
Conversely, the defender could be in the mountains, but the province center might be in the lowlands and thus not getting the mountain defense bonus, forcing the defender to choose.
Lots of strategic variety possible like that.
Random example:
Then you have the reverse.
A province that is 100% mountain or 100% flatland would not have these options, of course.
And this is just my rough idea. You could probably do a whole lot more with it.
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And why do you think this is bad? I agree 100% with this kind of gameplay. If the defender had enough strenght to face the attacker in the first place, there would be no need to retreat to mountains, since they would only suffer attrition and/or be entirely sieged. Now, a smaller nation is going to be defeated in open terrain and staying in the mountains allows it to wait for the right moment to engage the enemy. The attacker, then, occupies all of the defender's provinces, while he waits for the army in the mountains is surrounded or leaves that safety.
I'm perfectly fine with this kind of warfare.
It's better because there's less randomness. The dice rolls are more than enough to simulate randomness in the battlefield. Now, we'll just use our brains and use the terrain to our advantage without randomness getting in the way. Why is this so terrible? Frankly, I have not heard a single decent argument beyond the fact that leader maneuver needs to be changed as well to be more meaningful - something that probably is the case.
I am not against that and I actually think it could work well. I am against one province one terrain.
Having one terrain per province firstly means that there will be some attack paths you won't use anymore; secondly it leads to idiotic consequences. Do you really think it is reasonable that there are no Alps or even hills in Lombardy whereas the Alps end in the outskirts of Venice?
This is good. If Poland wants to invade Hungary it makes sense that they should send your armies around the Carpathian Mountains instead of trying to charge right through, using a high-maneuver general to somehow avoid the Carpathians. Hungary can use the terrain effectively as a defense mechanism and if Poland doesn't have any alternate invasion paths, they might rethink their invasion. So this is another level of thought that players should go through when they formulate their strategy.
It's perfectly reasonable. Please see the region in Western USA where Great plains turn into the Rocky Mountains. Flatlands straight into mountains. Maybe if you greatly increased the province density you could make an argument for a hills transition zone between the Alps and the Po Valley but you still couldn't use that as a reason in support of arbitrarily random terrain.
I live in the transition zone (the Brianza hills). I am halfway through the Lombardia province. The problem is not that there is no transition zone between the Alps and Lombardia, it's that HALF OF THE PROVINCE is mountains. And the other half is plains. And it repeats, again and again and again, because almost all the provinces in Italy go from a watershed to a river and/or sea, which makes so that the greatest majority of them are half/half. And yes, as I'm saying, I point out more that this system butchers the CURRENT map - add some half a dozen Alpine provinces and we are...not golden, but on the way there.
It´s pointless man. All we can ask at this point it´s for Paradox to make the feature moddable.
Sigh, there were dozens of suggestions to make the system better. Stop that crap. Randomness is bad when it follows no logic, which was NOT the case with the previous system.
Even having a system where what matters is the difference in Maneuver stat is better that no randomness.
Sigh, there were dozens of suggestions to make the system better. Stop that crap. Randomness is bad when it follows no logic, which was NOT the case with the previous system.
Even having a system where what matters is the difference in Maneuver stat is better that no randomness.
But throughout history good generals have managed to gain favorable battle ground even in mountains. Somebody earlier in the thread mentioned how Napoleon fought a battle in the Alps and was the one getting favorable grounds; not the defender.
It wasn't arbitrary, since it actually more realistically represented the geography of the world; yes it was random which of the possible terrains you got, but it certainly wasn't arbitrary.
This is what would happen if one province had only one terrain. ATM, if the enemy has a high maneuver general, then there's a chance that being in the mountains is useless. If there's only one terrain type per province, then you know - factually - that you're on terrain that favors you.
As it should be. I don't see any problem with that, since it makes sense: why would a cavalry army wish to engage a smaller force in mountainous terrain? Just occupy the whole nation, cut their supply of manpower and either engage or wait for warscore.
This has nothing to do with one terrain per province, but on how provinces are divided. EUIV separates regions politically but uses those divisions to calculate army movement - this means that an army can never outmaneuver another, since they all share fixed routes. The system in place now, of percentage of terrain per province, was used as a way to mitigate that: the possibility that an army being chased could outmaneuver its enemy and engage on favorable terrain. And I would not have a single problem with it, if it wasn't random. They should have made so that if a leader has, say, 4 pips in maneuver and attacks another with 3 pips, he's guaranteed to get that 10% plains always. 100% of the time. No randomness. To me, it's simple: the current system is mostly noticeable when you're either unlucky or lucky. When you or your enemy has a good/bad roll on terrain. Good/bad roll on general. Good/bad roll in battle. This is too much, in my opinion. They're taking one less roll from that equation, making it a fixed modifier. I support that. It's not perfect. But between this and how it works now, I prefer one province one terrain.
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Randomness is not bad in itself, or if it follows no logic. It's bad when it's excessive, which is the case right now. I'm not against battles having random variants: it's just that the dice, the good/bad general, the random events that raise/lower morale/AT/discipline, the rebel pop-up chance and a few others that I'm probably forgetting, are just too much. If it wasn't the terrain, if it was any other random part of EUIV, I would support a change.
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Napoleon did so because he was a genious strategist. And you, the player, controls army movement. He didn't got to the favorable battleground on a dice roll or a chance percentage: he just went for it, positioned his army better and that was it. There was no chance or randomness: he just made the best use of the terrain he had - in this case, mountain.
This is true. The biggest problem with one province one terrain is that the map no longer accurately portrays the world as it is. This is the only big problem with this change, but I see very little being said about it.
You apparently haven't read what I replied to with that suggestion (the one you replied to originally). Somebody suggested that a province could have several position points for armies; that way you could have more realistic terrain and not that silly no Alps in Lombardy nonsense and you could do the things I mentioned. For instance stand waiting in the mountains of a province while the attacker walked through the lowlands of the same province looting and perhaps occupying the lowlands.
War is random so you shouldn't be certain to get the 10% plains; you could stumble into all sorts of things or scouts could discover you. You should in general get favorable terrain, but not always.
You don't control the army on the battle field level though. Yes you decide whether or not it should move into province x, but you have no control over which way it does it so no you don't play the role of Napoleon and other great generals.
Many people have mentioned it many times.
I did read. I just dismissed it because it's effectively the same as removing armies from province routing and giving them their own routes. The devs will never do that because that requires a new game. I'm not going into that, since this thread is about a change that some like and some dislike; not about wishful thinking.
I agree that war and conflict have randomness, not that they're all random. That's overstating the role of strategy and planing. But there should be randomness, that's the point where I agree. And that's why there's a dice roll in battle. It accounts for random while we can concentrate on other things. I don't need any more randomness.
Napoleon was not just a general, you do know that, right? Anyway, the point is that you do have control over positioning, line organization and things like artillery placement, etc. A battle is not a FPS deathmatch: just because fighting commenced that doesn't mean that people just go nuts on the battlefield. People have been studying warfare for millenia for a reason.
Oh really? Aren't I the idiot. It's just that I've just read almost 30 pages of comments and about 10% of that is about how provinces no longer portray the world as it is. This is why I said "very little" and not "nothing". Frankly, if I'm going to have to explain simple semantics to you, then it's best if we stop this argument right now.
You know what? Let's. The fact of the matter is that the change is coming and you'd better get used to it. This petition - as every single one I've seen in the forum - is not changing anything. And for once it's something I agree with.
So, just to make things clear: I am totally and utterly in favor of one province, one terrain because less randomness=better gameplay. Thanks, Paradox.
I never said all random. Furthermore the dice takes care of randomness during battle plus you still have the random chance of your general dieing suring battle. But there will be missing randomness in where the battlefield is located; randomness which existed historically. A battle took place where both armies met; they didn't first agree to have it on those hills in the south eastern bottom corner of the province or that forest in the middle of the province.