Surprising Number of Casualties

[ParmenionGiant]

Hi,

I am a fairly new player to Victoria II (2nd game after a quick game as Belgium) and there is something I am not quite sure about when looking at battles.

As you can see in the picture below, I have an overwhelming number of troops on the battlefield outnumbering the Austrians 4 to 1 but I still take a lot more casualties that they do, why is that so ?

I dont think they have better military technologies as I have all the ones before 1850. I was the attacker and had -1 for river crossing and -1 for terrain but I don't think it should make that much of a difference ? Is there some kind of stacking penalty for using too many troops at once like in HoI III ?

I would really appreciate it if someone could shed some light on this.

Thanks,

ParmenionGiant

 

[austrianemporer]

Hi,

I am a fairly new player to Victoria II (2nd game after a quick game as Belgium) and there is something I am not quite sure about when looking at battles.

As you can see in the picture below, I have an overwhelming number of troops on the battlefield outnumbering the Austrians 4 to 1 but I still take a lot more casualties that they do, why is that so ?

I dont think they have better military technologies as I have all the ones before 1850. I was the attacker and had -1 for river crossing and -1 for terrain but I don't think it should make that much of a difference ? Is there some kind of stacking penalty for using too many troops at once like in HoI III ?

I would really appreciate it if someone could shed some light on this.

Thanks,

ParmenionGiant

That penalty, the stats of your and their general, the the dice rolls all contributed to that large amount of casualties.

 

[BrunoDerKaiser]

^^ Pretty much. Sometimes you might have the best army, but the dice rolls still play against you strongly.

 

[SknerusMck]

Maybe their general is an Austrian Jackson .

 

[Mjarr]

Good general can be extremely nasty in the right spot and outright ridiculous if right conditions are met, say max dig-in bonus, narrow frontage and terrain effects and so on. I once was able to get over 10 months long pitched battle in the French Alps with +4 defence leader that was occasionally reinforced with some few other stacks when things started to look bad. In the end over 200k Austrians, Germans and Italians were tied there and casualty totals were something like 50k vs ~170k. Initial battle was like ~25k mauled and somewhat disorganised French stack vs ~100k Germans and Italians and a month later Austrians showed up and over time add reinforcements at random. Helped me quite a bit actually given it was essentially me vs UK, NGF, Austria, Italy and Spain.

I once got +5 attack general as Sicily while I was thinking should I just restart the game or try to play to the bitter end as I botched up my plans to be ahead of Sardinia-Piedmont. In the end I was able to fight it in my favour since as long as I was on the attack, a bad roll meant I was "even" (even against French doomstacks with 5-10 artillery units) and on a good roll it was pretty ridiculous slaughter.

 

[durvas]

Did you attack them while they were low (but not empty) on morale? Sometimes, you can attack and decrease their morale, but both sides will keep fighting. In this situation, only you will take casualties for some reason, then the enemy will retreat.

 

[austrianemporer]

Good general can be extremely nasty in the right spot and outright ridiculous if right conditions are met, say max dig-in bonus, narrow frontage and terrain effects and so on. I once was able to get over 10 months long pitched battle in the French Alps with +4 defence leader that was occasionally reinforced with some few other stacks when things started to look bad. In the end over 200k Austrians, Germans and Italians were tied there and casualty totals were something like 50k vs ~170k. Initial battle was like ~25k mauled and somewhat disorganised French stack vs ~100k Germans and Italians and a month later Austrians showed up and over time add reinforcements at random. Helped me quite a bit actually given it was essentially me vs UK, NGF, Austria, Italy and Spain.

I once got +5 attack general as Sicily while I was thinking should I just restart the game or try to play to the bitter end as I botched up my plans to be ahead of Sardinia-Piedmont. In the end I was able to fight it in my favour since as long as I was on the attack, a bad roll meant I was "even" (even against French doomstacks with 5-10 artillery units) and on a good roll it was pretty ridiculous slaughter.

Oh that's nothing. I once had 144,000 British troops completely annihilate (as in smashing and destroying the entire army) around 1,200,000 American troops in Idaho. Definitely not overpowered

 

[The Silent Hero]

That's about 2:1 losses, doesn't seem too unreasonable. Dig in can be killer, stops assaults right in their tracks for the first few days. It will only get worse as the game goes on and defenders get huge bonuses. You really have to be prepared to take huge losses assaulting the enemy, not unlike in real life.