The fort system ruined this game.

[Dominion]

I can swear that did not happen earlier, in pre-Institutions or pre-estates patches, but then magically appeared with other AI “improvements”.

Maybe pre-institutions. I clearly remember writing about this issue during 1.17 or 1.18.

On the other hand the AI was definitely able to see through FoW back then, so it's a bit of a tradeoff.

And even though I'm a stern defender of the new system over the old fort system, calling it intuitive is a bit of a stretch.

Overlapping ZoC and semi-dynamic ZoC does create issues (trapped troops got mentioned earlier).
Sieging down a fort leading to my army being trapped inside my enemies' provinces without a chance to leave unless they siege down another fort is a thing.

Or in short: Controlling more means having fewer options.
That's pretty much a definition of counter-intuitive.

 

[FrogCrusher]

That is how the system works. Is it easy to learn(I mean to learn how to deal with not everything in detail)? yes according to me(with some trial and error). I'm not saying it's a very obvious system, that you are supposed to learn it in detail or that it can't be improved. Just it's easy to learn to deal with so that it doesn't fuck you over.

Are you serious ? I read this wiki article several times ( http://www.eu4wiki.com/Zone_of_control ) and I haven't yet fully assimilated it. I don't think I'm stupid.
I fully agree with TheMeInTeam, it is insane to have less movement option after a capture than before a capture. Most of the problems comes from the overlapping. When you capture the second fort in the row, you are blocked because the overlapped province between these two forts has only one ZoC remaining. Thus, you can't move anymore. This is due the possibility to reach that second fort before it is sieged out.

 

[erneiz_hyde]

As I understand it, getting trapped only happens when you leave the first line of forts alone or is recaptured. In the first case, I guess there is an argument to be made that you shouldn't be able to reach the fort in the first place. But in the second case, it's very intuitive, you're basically trapped behind enemy lines, which is an actual thing that has happened IRL.
If you do the intuitive thing, that is capturing forts systematically from the outermost province and prevent them from being retaken you will not get trapped. At least, I know I never did. I only know you can get trapped after there are people posting about it.

 

[grommile]

If you do the intuitive thing, that is capturing forts systematically from the outermost province and prevent them from being retaken you will not get trapped. At least, I know I never did. I only know you can get trapped after there are people posting about it.

When you have a chain of three adjacent forts in enemy provinces A, B, and C, all of which touch enemy province D, the outcome of the rules is nonsensical:

• If you don't control B, you can enter it from D.
• If you do control B, you can't enter it from D.

 

[Dominion]

As I understand it, getting trapped only happens when you leave the first line of forts alone or is recaptured.

Nobody said anything like that and that is not the case.

Overlapping ZoC is not limited to a "first line". There is no "first line" when it comes to ZoC. That'd be truly nonsensical.

You can get trapped by capturing a fort if a different ZoC is in a certain position.

 

[erneiz_hyde]

I'm just saying, I don't remember ever got trapped taking a fort by following what I think is an intuitive course of action. And this seems to be the major reason some people don't like the current fort system. I can only say I'm sorry I can't share in your pain because I never experienced it. I don't know, maybe I'm just lucky, try quiz me a picture of a setup where you will get trapped if you siege a fort?

 

[makaramus]

in history skipping unoccupied forts for easy targets was ALLWAYS a grave mistake
as example byzantium when fighting with barbarians man that commanding his cavalary decided to skip first forts while he was commanded by looting everyting he saw... he decided that those forts not worth to loot compared to man size... one of forts welcomed him with open doors thanks to people living in there and let barbarians die.

result? All men in those skipped forts abandoned their forts to trap those men! he starved a lot and was at death's door and saved by man who gave him command to loot with tricky strategy(making enemy belive they were surrounded by massive army)

 

[Dominion]

I'm just saying, I don't remember ever got trapped taking a fort by following what I think is an intuitive course of action. And this seems to be the major reason some people don't like the current fort system. I can only say I'm sorry I can't share in your pain because I never experienced it. I don't know, maybe I'm just lucky, try quiz me a picture of a setup where you will get trapped if you siege a fort?

Picardie is the most common region with Calais, Vermandois and similar forts being the culprit if you want to reproduce the scenario. Balkans can work as well.

Other than that pretty much any region with overlapping ZoC. You have never experienced it because the scenario itself is rare, the situation however isn't.

By that I mean I can only think of few regions where I could reproduce the issue, but I conquer most of these regions in every run since a lot of achievements are semi-WCs.

Look for any area where a single enemy (or allies you are engaged in war with) have several forts with 1 or 0 provinces between them.

 

[kakatua]

I can remember the last time I was trapped because captured a fort. More than an year ago. I saw Remano youtube guide and never got trapped or had any doubt where I could or could not move.
To a new player it can be a problem, but I'm seeing just old players with 4k+ hours, achiev hunters and guide makers complaining here.
The fort system is finally consistent with itself and the flaws are related to common sense, mostly:

1 - An army from the other side "rescuing" a trapped army by army transfer mechanic
2 - Be trapped after siege a fort.
3 - Disembark exploit.

The carpetsiege system had many flaws to common sense too, so it is a tradeoff.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Sieging down a fort leading to my army being trapped inside my enemies' provinces without a chance to leave unless they siege down another fort is a thing.

Unless, OF COURSE, you move a 1 stack nearby with a different return province onto a province they can both reach, then re-organize the stack into that 1 stack so that it inherits the movement rules. Because like he said it's "intuitive" and the ability to do this in the game should be OBVIOUS to anybody playing it regardless of experience .

I say it this way, because the reverse can screw unwary players, inheriting bad return provinces instead.

If you do the intuitive thing, that is capturing forts systematically from the outermost province and prevent them from being retaken you will not get trapped.

Which of two adjacent forts is more "outermost" when both border the same entry province? That's one of the more common ways this can happen, but here's another way:



Sorry, but the above is trash. There is no credibility to saying that outcome is intuitive. I never held Murcia. Taking Toledo prevented me from returning to another fort I captured. This is also not the only problem with forts.

I can remember the last time I was trapped because captured a fort. More than an year ago. I saw Remano youtube guide and never got trapped or had any doubt where I could or could not move.

That's right, YouTuber is a more credible source than the game's own documentation. Reman is a good player and his contribution is *very* appreciated, but if this game was implementing and presenting this mechanic in a fashion consistent with a decent release title he'd have never made it because players would have known the rules without it.

Back in the above example, had I realized the hidden rules, I'd have just sent a 1 stack from the troops in Barcelona, merged the Toledo siege party into that stack, and walked away scot free like nothing happened.

That's not good design. The reason we're complaining is that it's non-intuitive junk and even if we understand it by this point, it's a bad implementation.

The carpetsiege system had many flaws to common sense too, so it is a tradeoff.

Which you didn't list. The addition of ZoC + surrouinding mechanics added some tactics, but also removed quite a few things that used to matter in this game.

 

[FrogCrusher]

One of the main problems with the old system is the possibility to chase->stackwipe->carpet siege with mercs->instant win the war after all provinces getting sieged out.

I proposed an easy, historical and intuitive solution working with the new system that was never answered. Have armies in garrison on fort provinces. When you retreat on a fort province, you are instantly protecting by that fort.
It makes no sense to be wiped on your capital to see your enemies taking 18 months to capture that province after destroying your army... There are gates, you using gates to enter the city and be protected... Once in the city, you can replenish and so on. And when you think you are ready, you can move out with a sortie.
And with this system, no ZoC at all are needed. Which is almost true in real life. So the rules are :

• When a friendly army is on a friendly fort, it is "ghosten" for the ennemy. They can see you're here but nothing more. You can toogle a button in army view if you want to not be hidden and then instantly attacked. Default behavior has to be set to the most common/natural choice
• Retreating armies are automatically in ghost mode and go to a fort province
  
• Capturing/Recapturing adjacent provinces work as currently design: 1 month to take, fort automatically recaptures

It adds strategy: what is the point for the enemy army to reach the capital if you can store three unassailable 30k troops in provinces distant to 3 of the capital (and then being backstabbers) ?
Hiding troops to choose when/where they can be attacked is far more fun and strategical than trying to block some routes with odd and inintuitive behaviors. And after capturing a fort, you have the big advantage to hold an outpost where you can be safe, which is again quite accurate with real life.

The only flaw I can see is to teach the AI that system. And to balance things, you can add attrition to the stationary troops to avoid a 80k ghost stack.

 

[YuriiH]

The addition of ZoC + surrouinding mechanics added some tactics, but also removed quite a few things that used to matter in this game.

Could you please specify which are those few carpetsieging and immediate stackwiping things that used to matter?

And to balance things, you can add attrition to the stationary troops to avoid a 80k ghost stack.

Situation: 80k troops lost 40k in a battle and now flee to a fort nearby that can contain max 40k. Will they replenish?

 

[FrogCrusher]

Situation: 80k troops lost 40k in a battle and now flee to a fort nearby that can contain max 40k. Will they replenish?

We can choose two options (I don't say I have the ultimate situation and things can be tweaked):

• Same attrition rule than the current one is applying. Only the number is changing. For example, attrition is increased by a factor 2 when in the fort
• An absolute value above which you can't go by replenishing. In that case, you are still with your 40k. And you can consolidate to delete the 40k left un-replenished and rebuilt another army in another place. Not worse than the actual system in my opinion

 

[UnluckyKat]

I would want a fort system that.
1. Takes decently long time to siege for each fort
2. Is economically discouraged to have forts in every province(or even close to that)
3. Giving significant penalties for going beyond forts but isn't outright prevented(penalties like when attacking someone already sieging one of your forts or something).
4. Forts does not automatically retake unfortified provinces.
5. Unfortified provinces is automatically captured when enemy units enter the province

 

[kakatua]

Which you didn't list.

Lack of common sense in the old carpet-siege system:

1 - March all the way from Wien to St. Petersburg without have to siege anything or establish a supply line is completely normal.
2 - Siege St. Peter without a supply line 400km deep in enemy territory gives you only 1 attrition per month.
3 - If you control all farms in a 200km radius, the attrition will be the same.
4 - Retreating armies don't know how to use gates.
5 - The enemy army can siege a big city, which has a decent cleared area around it, from the forests half miles away. The line of sight to artillery is amazing.
6 - Defensive terrain worked for the enemy.
7 - Pockets of 2k mercenaries sieging all provinces in a 100km radius is completely normal.

Lack of fun in the old carpet-siege:

1 - Wars were mostly decided in one battle.
2 - There was no attrition war because point above.
3 - There was no planning of fort positioning. No provinces were strategical.

 

[gia257]

As I understand it, getting trapped only happens when you leave the first line of forts alone or is recaptured. In the first case, I guess there is an argument to be made that you shouldn't be able to reach the fort in the first place. But in the second case, it's very intuitive, you're basically trapped behind enemy lines, which is an actual thing that has happened IRL.
If you do the intuitive thing, that is capturing forts systematically from the outermost province and prevent them from being retaken you will not get trapped. At least, I know I never did. I only know you can get trapped after there are people posting about it.

actually no, ive gone to siege the very first fort on the edge of a country, walked all the way to it. Once in enemy lands I touched a non fort province then moved into the fort. Only one fort, no overlaps. Then I've been trapped in those two provinces (first enemy province I touched, and fort province).

 

[FrogCrusher]

Lack of common sense in the old carpet-siege system:

2 - Siege St. Peter without a supply line 400km deep in enemy territory gives you only 1 attrition per month.
3 - If you control all farms in a 200km radius, the attrition will be the same.

Still true with the new system.

6 - Defensive terrain worked for the enemy.

Wasn't true until recently even with the new system and can be compatible with the old one. It took months of threading by the community to have this change made by PDX

7 - Pockets of 2k mercenaries sieging all provinces in a 100km radius is completely normal.

Almost still true when you have big countries and sieged out 1 or 2 forts (Russia spotted).

Lack of fun in the old carpet-siege:

1 - Wars were mostly decided in one battle.

It can still happen because of army trapped by odd behavior of the ZoC. I decimated Ottomans once, because they were getting trapped. And few forts do not prevent to chase until stack-wipe.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Could you please specify which are those few carpetsieging and immediate stackwiping things that used to matter?

Of course I'm willing to do so, given I asked that of the ZoC system. Here are things that used to matter pre-ZoC, but matter less so now:

1. Attrition (fort changes necessitated drastic alteration of attrition in hostile territory. It used to cap 3x higher, more still if you go way back)
2. Naval mobility: before ZoC trapping landed troops was a thing, the risk of someone using their navy to dump stacks to assault-occupy your back lines was large. Now, that's trivially stopped long enough to bring troops back. This change was a significant hidden nerf (more like collateral damage) to the threat provided by a large navy.
3. Pre-war positioning: having opponents controlling problematic terrain on you was a big disadvantage, one completely erased by camping behind a mountain fort + having the better part of a year to reinforce the region.
4. I've seen people complain that 1 battle could decide wars, but that a) is consistent with some historical wars b) rewarded planning ahead in its own right, just like forts and c) allowed smaller nations to more readily punish nations that leave troops out of position...something good for power projection on the board in gameplay terms and not out of line with history.

The present model of "infinite replenishing merc pool with force field forts --> resource wars" is no more realistic than what we had in 1.11. Arguably, it is significantly less realistic depending on what time we're in the game. The overwhelming majority of armed conflict in the period ended in timeframes that are completely impossible in game terms, with the exceptions being the most noteworthy, long-spanning wars.

March all the way from Wien to St. Petersburg without have to siege anything or establish a supply line is completely normal.

The concept of "supply lines" is not really period appropriate. This isn't hearts of iron 4. For a major portion of this game's timeline, armies did not and could not feasibly run "supply lines" like you allude, and they weren't the reason that armies didn't tend to bypass forts.

Siege St. Peter without a supply line 400km deep in enemy territory gives you only 1 attrition per month.

That's an argument for the old system, which allowed for >10% attrition. It was seriously hell and if you read old threads you can see how people complained about losing manpower in Russia. Back then, manpowered mattered too because mercs were not infinite!

If you control all farms in a 200km radius, the attrition will be the same.

The enemy army can siege a big city, which has a decent cleared area around it, from the forests half miles away. The line of sight to artillery is amazing.

Irrelevant, on the basis that these issues identical between the two models. Forest terrain around huge cities on either side is silly.

Defensive terrain worked for the enemy.

Historically, and arguably in gameplay terms, letting your enemies set up on terrain favorable to them while your army is elsewhere has that problem. In the old system, you had to think about it a lot more than now, which is a simple "put fort on rough terrain" and then stop thinking.

Pockets of 2k mercenaries sieging all provinces in a 100km radius is completely normal.

I don't miss this any more than I presently enjoy level 8 forts, AI abusing run-arounds and insta-reacting to troops out of sight, or getting trapped by hidden rules to be fair. It functioned, and unlike now the rules were clear, but it wasn't ideal.

Wars were mostly decided in one battle.

Some wars, not all wars. Manual retreat, defensive depth, and baiting enemies since you can see in your territory and they can't were all things, depending on region + how big you/they were.

There was no attrition war because point above.

Hahahaha!





Not enough attrition for you? Here's one more:



These were all solo wars. I even showed a short tutorial on fighting Muscovy 1v1 back then, and Muscovy was stronger than Golden Horde by a margin. Songhai vs Mali and especially Najd vs Mamluks in solo wars are ridiculously 1-sided in favor of Mali and Mamluks respectively in those patches; you're outnumbered 3:1 or worse.

The present fort model has NOTHING on attrition usage strategy. That used to be part of the game, pre-ZoC. Pdox patched attrition as a war-deciding factor out of the game. Doing these kinds of plays now is *impossible*, but back then attrition could seriously decide the outcome of wars by itself. The assertion that there "was no attrition" war, while there somehow is now with much less attrition and a money-based countermeasure for its effect is asinine! Attrition is a point in favor of the old fort system, not what we have now!

There was no planning of fort positioning. No provinces were strategical.

"Put fort on terrain choke" is not exactly rocket science planning. Troop positioning was a lot more fluid in terms of what you're willing to risk. Remember, back then CW decreased on bad terrain, so you could even position troops to protect rough terrain and have enough time to reinforce.

 

[UnluckyKat]

Are you serious ? I read this wiki article several times ( http://www.eu4wiki.com/Zone_of_control ) and I haven't yet fully assimilated it. I don't think I'm stupid.
I fully agree with TheMeInTeam, it is insane to have less movement option after a capture than before a capture. Most of the problems comes from the overlapping. When you capture the second fort in the row, you are blocked because the overlapped province between these two forts has only one ZoC remaining. Thus, you can't move anymore. This is due the possibility to reach that second fort before it is sieged out.

Why wouldn't I be serious? I'm saying it's easy to play around and I disagree when someone says it makes the game unplayable. Your link didn't change my stance on it. It doesn't matter to me if you think it would make you stupid.

 

[FrogCrusher]

Actually, I kinf of agree. Yes, it is easy to not playing deep into the game. And I never said in was unplayable

Same things is true with estates. One can just clicking on the events and assign provinces when the alert shows up (easy part) or one can try to have the maximum advantages and then is always with influence greater than 65 to be on the edge. And for that you need practice.

Keeping back to fort system, it is easy to slowly walk, by taking one frontier fort province and then peacing out. Or you could want to play the fort game strategically and in that way, sorry but I don't think it is easy at all. It is almost as hard than playing chess with all the combinaison calculations and anticipation! But contrary to chess, it is easy to get takle by the board since rules can change in odd ways...

However, don't worry. I'm not feeling stupid because of this