Population Growth and Losses in War

[unmerged(10416)]

I'm surprised no one has brought up the example of Paraguay yet! Not only were they a small country that fought lots of war, they literally depopulated parts of their country in the late 19th century to the point where there were three times more women than men at the end of their wars. I'm against changing the system, because in Victoria wars are fought differently than in real life. You, as the player, may decide to turn France into a totalitarian military state bent on world conquest and field WW1 sized armies, or you can play historically and stick to limited aims when at war with countries such as Austria or Russia. And if you choose the totalitarian world conquest you should suffer the consequences. I think it would be stupid to let you play like a megalomaniac but make the effects on your country the same as if you were fighting little wars.

That the AI is unable to adjust its war effort is sad, but unavoidable until someone programs a better AI, one with strategic foresight and real concepts of war aims and an idea of what means it has at its disposal. The AI in Victoria is pretty good, compared to other games of smaller complexity, but of course it's nowhere near what a human player does.

 

[unmerged(10416)]

Losses caused to rebelling POPs should be scaled back by at least 75%, though. It's far, far too drastic, and totally unhistorical. Even people who rebelled every other year historically were not killed in such amounts are currently the Poles or Greeks are. It's ridiculous when you watch a 3000 man strong division kill off a 5000 strong rebel force and thus decimate a 9000 clergy POP by a third or even half.

 

[unmerged(3921)]

The "massive" damage to gameplay is from early 19th century wars lasting too long, not from the depopulation resulting from long wars. If a problem needs to be fixed, fix the problem not the consequences of that problem.

I have repeatedly suggested that AI stubbornness be dependent on the number of Culture techs researched. This would result in shorter wars early on and longer wars as the game rolls into the 20th century. In order to force the same considerations onto the human player, make the onset and severity of War Exhaustion also dependent on the # of culture techs researched.

 

[unmerged(10416)]

But that would just scream "EXPLOIT!!" since war exhaustion is no big deal in the first one or two years of a great war. You could wrangle the AI into the ground.

What you could do, is to make soldiers cost something.

"If a bullet costs five thousand dollars, there won't be no more 'innocent bystanders'!"

Or another approach: If you refuse a peace deal that is 15% less than your warscore, your war exhaustion should increase by one percent. The good old EU2 method. I think that would make the Ottomans or the USA more willing to accept peace instead of sluggin it out to the last soldier.

 

[Gwalcmai]

I like that idea of refusing good peace deals costing WE. It could help reduce the AI stubbornness a bit. And I'd like the casualty/pop loss ratio to not change with the difficulty settings. And maybe be pulled back to 2 casualties = 1 dead pop. That still costs 2 people in the overall population for each dead soldier, but would maybe produce more realistic results.

 

[Golden_Deliciou]

Or another approach: If you refuse a peace deal that is 15% less than your warscore, your war exhaustion should increase by one percent. The good old EU2 method. I think that would make the Ottomans or the USA more willing to accept peace instead of sluggin it out to the last soldier.

One should be careful about this to avoid players offering favourable treaties which they know will be refused in order to increase War Exhaustion.

Perhaps War Exhaustion should be scaled dependent on government type? For example autocracies are much more likely to shrug off losses than democracies.

 

[JScott991]

Some good suggestions. Probably most of them seem like they are too much for Victoria I. Victoria II, if it exists, should totally revamp the combat, peace, and demographic system.

I still feel our best chance of fixing this issue is to simply ask Paradox to turn the POP losses off or to give us the chance to include whatever value we like for POP losses from war casualties.

Paradox isn't going to revamp the AI , the combat system, or the peace-making system at this late of a date. But they have been adding user-controlled variables with every patch. Please, just add this one.

 

[Theonlystd]

Maybe the causlities should be toned down or allow poeple to edit them but not get rid of em. That always irked me in eu2 that i could lose a 100k army and only have short term problems of no army. No population reducing or anything.

 

[Lotus Lo]

how could you not lose people to casualties? having no actual deaths due to combat would be no consequences to your actual population. i went from 17.4 to 16 million ppl in a war as prussia... those are serious consequesnces that make the game for the better. w/o that, even though millions had died, I wouldn't have lost a pop....

however, exporting those values , actually exporting any new values is a nice idea That way ppl who did not like the feature could disable it

 

[Gezz Inti]

I'm in favor of keeping the losses as they are.
A simple step to shorten long wars would be to increase WE linked to the losses. In other words, making the AI care about caused demographic changes.

 

[Powerslave]

I have to agree that the losses are absurd. In my current game as Mexico I fought an early war against USA. All fighting took part on US soil and after two years with about 60 divisions active I won the war but to my horror my population had gone from 8.5 miilions before the war to 7.1 miilions after the war. I do not know the total US losses but since I whopped him quite good in almost all battles I estimate he must have had atleast 50% more losses than me. That would mean he lost over 2 million people in this war.

I really fear the next war with USA as I cant afford another loss like this. US on the other hand has now 3 times my populations and can much easier take this kinda losses.

And yeah I always only play on very hard in paradox games. I have no intentions to play it on easier levels just to get the pop losses more reasonable.

 

[Rosey Palmer]

As has been suggested, if a nation declines a favorable peace deal its WE should increase. That was a great addition to EU and it would prevent the long drawn out boring BB conflicts with GB from going on forever.

 

[Rosey Palmer]

I have to agree that the losses are absurd. In my current game as Mexico I fought an early war against USA. All fighting took part on US soil and after two years with about 60 divisions active I won the war but to my horror my population had gone from 8.5 miilions before the war to 7.1 miilions after the war. I do not know the total US losses but since I whopped him quite good in almost all battles I estimate he must have had atleast 50% more losses than me. That would mean he lost over 2 million people in this war.

I really fear the next war with USA as I cant afford another loss like this. US on the other hand has now 3 times my populations and can much easier take this kinda losses.

And yeah I always only play on very hard in paradox games. I have no intentions to play it on easier levels just to get the pop losses more reasonable.

On very hard the losses are absurd. On normal the losses are less absurd. The pop changes due to casualties on very hard should be tweaked.

On normal your population would have shrunk by about 300,000 I think, since losses are trebled on VH.

 

[swilhelm73]

It seems to me the bigger issue population wise is the AI taxing at 100% for extended periods of time.

I usually see when taking over AI countries or taking their provinces in war that they have a negative population growth.

Over the course of the game this seems more of a problem then the deaths from warfare (though on VH this is ridiculous too).

Also, rebellions seem far too common - with that attended population loss.

I know playing as Prussia or Russia I've seen my Polish populations reduced to a fraction of what they start at. Yes, partly immigration - but partly rebel death too.