Proportionality in warfare

[Victor Cortez]

I guess a combo of logistics (which should limit the number of troops sent at a time) and war exhaustion (which should limit the total number of troops sent) could fix this.
However, war exhaustion should scale inversely with the size of the country. So a loss vs a big country doesn't contribute much to war exhaustion, but a loss vs a small one does.

 

[ETAIPOS]

There are some very good ideas. If it would be possible to force the countries to keep at least 60% force limit at home or face massive unrest would help a lot. But then smaller countries would never be able to conquer colonies making them barely playable and unfortunately that is something Paradox would not like. Whatever they do recently is targeted at making all countries capable of WC no matter their starting positions and making even the most remote places on earth fully playable (some recently added TAGs in EU4 are outright absurd...)

You should also remember that people back then were WAY MORE ready to accept losses than today... as long as you were winning. If those losses were from colonial, not homeland troops, they would be mostly ignored as well.
After all 400k troops were sent to Crimean War by UK and France and 120k never returned (though 90k of those died of diseases not in combat).

Remember also UK sent massive expedition, some 13k troops to Ethiopia to extract 3-4 missionaries who were imprisoned.

 

[kviiri]

The concrete cost and political cost should definitely be implemented, but with Paradox's progress on making limited war more viable being more or less zero for the past decade, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Hell, in CK3 they even took steps backward in making vassals hate you for offensive wars regardless of whether you raised their troops or not, removing one of the few token incentives to fight limited wars CK2 had.

 

[The Goldfinch]

There are some very good ideas. If it would be possible to force the countries to keep at least 60% force limit at home or face massive unrest would help a lot. But then smaller countries would never be able to conquer colonies making them barely playable and unfortunately that is something Paradox would not like. Whatever they do recently is targeted at making all countries capable of WC no matter their starting positions and making even the most remote places on earth fully playable (some recently added TAGs in EU4 are outright absurd...)

You should also remember that people back then were WAY MORE ready to accept losses than today... as long as you were winning. If those losses were from colonial, not homeland troops, they would be mostly ignored as well.
After all 400k troops were sent to Crimean War by UK and France and 120k never returned (though 90k of those died of diseases not in combat).

Remember also UK sent massive expedition, some 13k troops to Ethiopia to extract 3-4 missionaries who were imprisoned.

Definitely, cases you mentioned should be possible - and frequently happening - in game. My ideas are to reasonably limit military involvement, not to make every war result in revolution.

I agree that society should be willing to accept losses when it feels they were justified. As far as I know there was huge support in British and French societies to act against Russia in Crimean War.

As for World Conquest, I pray this will be simply impossible in Victoria. In dev diaries I see potential for a really beautifully complex and realistic world. Please Paradox dont ruin it for the sake of memes.

 

[Victor Cortez]

I agree that society should be willing to accept losses when it feels they were justified. As far as I know there was huge support in British and French societies to act against Russia in Crimean War.

This could be linked to the CB you're using. In EU terms, fabricating a claim should give you a "unjustified war malus" where war exhaustion starts kicking in earlier compared to, say, reconquest of a core province.

 

[DanielPrates]

same/similar culture

we could differentiate CBs

Well yeah, come to think of it, there are some easier workarounds that tie in popular/unpopular wars to broader triggers. Culture, religion etc. Shouldnt be hard to compute that!

 

[alanschu]

This.
Huge costs of overseas operations as well as people's outrage caused by potential defeats is what could fix this error we have seen in many paradox games!

I'm wondering if casualties could be an indicator for a "war support" and that those casualties do take into account things like attrition. So if you're sending your 400k stack into the jungle to stomp face, a lot of people back home still see their sons sent to die in a jungle across the world for no point they can agree with.

Might also provide levers to allow for propaganda/suppression efforts and censored media and whatnot to help combat stuff like this? With all the local costs of having those policies of course!

Also might make it better for colonial forces to be made up of more local. Heck, even an idea of POPs in the military to account for where they are fighting to impact their fighting spirit etc? Someone raised in Paris fighting for Alsace-Lorraine might be better motivated and supported compared to fighting Vietnamese in Indochina. I'm not a designer but could maybe be some interesting mechanics along these lines. Colonial soldiers that are more supportive with good pay, but also if they aren't fighting pan nationalists and/or are fighting people with regional animosity? I'm just spitballing as I'm also not a historian haha

 

[alanschu]

I also really like the idea about defensive/offensive war. When defending, you are left with no choice. When you decide to start an aggression, you will obviously have harder time to explain a military disaster. Your society considers you responsible for every drop of blood. You were supposed to be well prepared for this easy campaign, right?

The basic concept of V2 taking time to manufacture a CB seems well enough. The consequence of it being only infamy needs to be tweaked though. I could see Netherlands being upset with me manufacturing a CB against Borneo peoples compared to Germany and I expect something like that (like Aggressive expansion mechanic) but there is very little done with internal politicking which is also necessary for creating a reason for war.

Would also be interesting if "private sector" took opinions as well. Like simulating capitalists/upper strata that would be keen on expanding to secure a particular trade good and as such using their own influence through non-state newspapers to increase support for the war.

It also makes me wonder if, on some level, news about some of the more minor stuff even made it back to Europe if nothing overly noteworthy (i.e. a huge defeat) happened. I should check out the reading thread to do some research!

 

[Gwydden]

As for World Conquest, I pray this will be simply impossible in Victoria. In dev diaries I see potential for a really beautifully complex and realistic world. Please Paradox dont ruin it for the sake of memes.

I seem to recall the devs explicitly said this should be impossible, and that they were only qualifying it as "should" because they know there's no stopping minmaxers. It is true that previous PDS games have not made any efforts to limit how many forces you can deploy in any given conflict, but there is a slimmer of hope in that this game already seems to be following a fairly distinct design philosophy from its predecessors.

 

[Joseph K]

On that subject, in loads of my games the British AI would release Australia and NZ. After a few years they would have a rebellion of like 9k guys, who would take the capital and the British would just be like lol yeah you guys can leave the empire. They would neither station troops in OZ/NZ, nor would they fight against the new goverment.


We can talk about power projection, but there is no historical way a tiny group of Australian anarcho-liberals would have managed to wrestle an entire continent from the British Empire without a considerable fight.

 

[Joseph K]

This.
Huge costs of overseas operations as well as people's outrage caused by potential defeats is what could fix this error we have seen in many paradox games!

Potentially a new system of limiting military spending could be useful. A system that models the greater willingness of the population to accept deaths and financial costs in a war against a great power than an African minor.

 

[DanielPrates]

Funny, we were just talking about this and another solution presents itself with this DD and this "movement" mechanic. After the battle of adwa (or any other in-game equivalent) many italian pops could start supporting a "no more wars in africa" bill or something. Should be an interest easy to trigger in pops: defeat + region.

 

[ctl3]

The implementation of a war support mechanism is tricky. For example the war support mechanism in Stellaris and Humankind frustrated a lot of players because the game sometimes force them stopping a winning war. I think VIC3 is potential to solve this problem with a more nature way.

I think the case of Italo-Ethiopian war is more a government prestige/legitimacy thing than war support. Imagine which is a more possible react of Italian people after battle of Adwa:

1. "Oh no, it's not possible to conquer Ethiopia. We should end the war now!"
2. "Our government sucks. We should have conquered Ethiopia easily if they did it right!"

Losing a battle, especially against a weak enemy, should damage the legitimacy of the government and will eventually ignite existing radical movement or rebel thus make player stop the war against a weaker opponent to deal with domestic problem.

Likewise it's possible to simulate war exhaustion by loss of living standard and following increase of radicalism. We don't need a war exhaustion indicator that increase when you lose soldiers. The loss of personnel will result in reduced industrial production and a lot of widows and orphans under miserable living standard.

 

[The Goldfinch]

Funny, we were just talking about this and another solution presents itself with this DD and this "movement" mechanic. After the battle of adwa (or any other in-game equivalent) many italian pops could start supporting a "no more wars in africa" bill or something. Should be an interest easy to trigger in pops: defeat + region.

This sounds indeed promising. I can imagine some sort of ad hoc movements forming around recent unsuccessful military developments.

Similarly, I can imagine a "take action against Russia" movement in Britain, before the Crimean war. Or "free orthodox nations" movement in Russia?

The basic concept of V2 taking time to manufacture a CB seems well enough. The consequence of it being only infamy needs to be tweaked though. I could see Netherlands being upset with me manufacturing a CB against Borneo peoples compared to Germany and I expect something like that (like Aggressive expansion mechanic) but there is very little done with internal politicking which is also necessary for creating a reason for war.

Would also be interesting if "private sector" took opinions as well. Like simulating capitalists/upper strata that would be keen on expanding to secure a particular trade good and as such using their own influence through non-state newspapers to increase support for the war.

It also makes me wonder if, on some level, news about some of the more minor stuff even made it back to Europe if nothing overly noteworthy (i.e. a huge defeat) happened. I should check out the reading thread to do some research!

I completely agree with what you said about private sector supporting expansion in certain areas. Some time ago I shared some similar ideas in this thread:

Pops should react to your foreign policy

After being insulted by Bismarck, Napoleon III hardly had a choice of how to react - overwhelming demand of society and parliament forced him to go to war. British support for greek war of independence was largely a result of widespread...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

To sum up, I think Pops should have meaningfull opinions on the direction your foreign Policy is taking. And movements seem to be a right tool for it.

 

[Zalthor]

But then smaller countries would never be able to conquer colonies making them barely playable and unfortunately that is something Paradox would not like. Whatever they do recently is targeted at making all countries capable of WC no matter their starting positions and making even the most remote places on earth fully playable (some recently added TAGs in EU4 are outright absurd...

First of all, all countries should be playable in some capacity, lest the game become stale playing the same countries over and over again. Secondly, Wiz has specifically stated that WCs in Vicky 3 will be "highly improbable" (that is, only done through massive cheese and/or exploits). Thirdly, EU4 is a map-painting risk game, so realism is not in its nature, really. It does not, and should not, hold a candle to what Vicky 3 is attempting to do; they are simply different games with different focuses.

 

[Baneslave]

[...] Whatever [Paradox] do recently is targeted at making all countries capable of WC no matter their starting positions [...]

I think it is more about making all countries at least somewhat viable to weaker players, and that gives most skilled players capability to make incredible feats.

 

[Limbojack]

I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, this is something PDX have been unable to implement in any of their games so far, so my hopes aren't high.

 

[Al-Khalidi]

I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, this is something PDX have been unable to implement in any of their games so far, so my hopes aren't high.

I see a lot of pessymism in this topic but vic3 will be certainly the best game of Paradox so far and I also see they already created some mechanisms that might be useful here so I trust this issue will be dealt with nicely!
Look, the game which main focus is economy and proper allocation of funds into development is what you do 70 percent of time looks quite likely to make sending huge and expensive forces to die out in jungle a very unwise thing to do..

 

[mursolini]

After defeat in the battle of Adua, and annihilation of its army, Italy had to abandon plans of conquering Ethiopia.

This would never happen in vic2.

Instead, Italy would send another army. And another one. And would loose 300 thousand men if needed.

In vic2, you play Egypt and Britain attacks you. You cornered and anihilated 60k British army. Whats next? They send 200k more from India. And more, if needed.

I think we can all agree its plainly wrong.

Here is my idea:

Warfare should have some mechanics to ensure its proportionality. Not every war could be a total war back then. Limited forces could be used in most cases.

Your society can demand you to stop after one defeat. You should not be able to dedicate all of your resources to a small conquest war. Emptying your borders to fight colonial war on another side of the globe should be considered pure madness.

This would also make smaller nations have some some hope in opposing great powers. Defeating one expedition force could possibly win their freedom for a time being.

Simply yes.
Sending very big forces to some undeveloped nation in Asia or Africa should at best be illogical suicidal move. Powers sending huge forces to some distant places with strange reasons was a huge flaw of vic2 and eu4 as well. This absolutely must not be possible if the game is to be in any way historical! This way it will be more satisfying to play GPs trying to get colonies, and more possible for unrecognized countries to resist colonizers.
This can bd guaranteed by: logistics (sending too large armies overseas will mean simply killing off 90 percent of soldiers due to supply problems) population getting angry at any defeat with backward nation and very big costs of such operations - dedicating unproportionally big forces to not very important wars should be a huge slap in the face of your economy

And yet, Boer Wars were exactly that, Britain lost, then mobilized some more, then lost more, made changes to the way tactical units fought, and eventually won.

And yes, at the height of war, Britain threw in 340+k troops British, 100k colonial and ~100k locals at boers, which, for context, was more then British expeditionary corps in France in 1940.

Ultimately it should depend on state of national finances, and maybe government popularity.

 

[The Goldfinch]

And yet, Boer Wars were exactly that, Britain lost, then mobilized some more, then lost more, made changes to the way tactical units fought, and eventually won.

And yes, at the height of war, Britain threw in 340+k troops British, 100k colonial and ~100k locals at boers, which, for context, was more then British expeditionary corps in France in 1940.

Ultimately it should depend on state of national finances, and maybe government popularity.

Boer war lasted almost 3 years, British death toll being 20k dead and 20k wounded - far from usual vic 2 colonial meatgrinder, when in early 1900s casualties used to reach hundreds of thousands.

And yes, Boer war was exceptional case of huge mobilization for a colonial war - many factors affected it, including prestige of empire being at stake. This does not mean that limits on the scale of military involvement should not be implemented.

You also seem to have failed to grasp that your last sentence mirrors te core of ideas presented in this thread. Main obstacles, as agreed earlier, should be: finances, logistics, war support among POPs.

Indeed it would be quite naive to argue that its possible to separate "government popularity" from war support among pops. It would also be wrong to argue that a lost battle could not seriously damage governments popularity and as a result lead to its downfall or force it to make peace.

Ultimately you made an example with Boer. I made example with Italy (and many more). Now the discussion is rather about what is better design choice. I suggest some more nuanced approach matching vic3 simulation design ideas. I don't quite get the rationale behind your suggestion that only money should limit player from the ability to send his pops to slaughter over a scratch of land. You have it in EU4. I think we all agree that Vic3 should aim higher