Units in the Second Row Taking Morale Damage - Bug?

[Octavius Antony]

Imagine your units standing in formation on the second row, fairly close to the front. Close enough to watch the units in front of them getting shot, bombarded, and cut down. And, while standing in formation waiting to be given the order to move into actual combat, you are under the full stress of knowing that you will be the one about to take a turn fighting to stay alive. Morale can't last forever, especially for the units nearest to the front. The reserves only take the smaller tick because they aren't near the front, they have to move through the second row to reach the front.

Infantry nor cavalry can deal damage from the second row, so having them there is near about pointless. They lose morale quickly, and won't move to the front line until one of the units in front of them is utterly depleted anyway. Once you have artillery, the back row infantry will be closer to the edge, and will reinforce more strongly, however, it's still best to only fight with what you need. A lot of times if you do it correctly, in larger wars, their will be a lot of one stack armies running around trying to join up with major battles. If you have an extra army waiting to reinforce a battle, you can be moving around popping those little stacks, which is devastating for most nations.

 

[alpaca]

Ok, thanks, that's helpful. Now I don't get why having men in reserve (those not fielded) is a bad idea. I don't get why a larger army is beaten by a smaller one because this one is not exceeding the combat width in size while the bigger one is. I thought having units in reserve was the fastest wayto make them enter the battlefield as soon as needed (with not optimal morale due to that tick, granted) while a second army in another province needs time to get into battle and it means a micromanagement effort for the player. Units in reserve can fill immediately the holes in the second row if I'm right (in OP's picture #4, France's 2nd row holes can be seen).

And exactly the same morale loss for any kind of units behind units under fire is still a mystery I think. I don't like gamey games, I'm always for realism and would like to know what this could be representing.

It's a game rule. It doesn't have to make sense. The more relevant question is whether this rule increases fun playing the game, and I don't think it does. It's counter-intuitive and incentivizes micro-management. The better approach would be to restrict morale damage to artillery in the second row, and remove damage to units not participating in the fight to zero. Anything else will create situations where it's better to hold your units back and commit them to the battle piecemeal. Yes, I contradict my earlier statement.

 

[Florryworry__]

It's a game rule. It doesn't have to make sense. The more relevant question is whether this rule increases fun playing the game, and I don't think it does. It's counter-intuitive and incentivizes micro-management. The better approach would be to restrict morale damage to artillery in the second row, and remove damage to units not participating in the fight to zero. Anything else will create situations where it's better to hold your units back and commit them to the battle piecemeal. Yes, I contradict my earlier statement.

Well, there is also something to be said for timing reinforcements instead of mindlessly jamming new troops in. I think it adds a layer of skill since if you're too late to reinforce you'll lose the battle and if you're too early your men lose morale needlessly. It would also be weird if you could just attack with 400k infantry and win everytime simply because you don't lose morale on the reserves. There is no way that would realistically work. Armies that are too big for the battlefield they are fighting in just tend to do bad. I mean ask Xerxes or Sun tzu
Armies that are too big will be disorganized and clumsy. I get what your saying though about it increasing micro management and all, i just don't think thats a bad thing.

 

[alpaca]

Well, there is also something to be said for timing reinforcements instead of mindlessly jamming new troops in. I think it adds a layer of skill since if you're too late to reinforce you'll lose the battle and if you're too early your men lose morale needlessly. It would also be weird if you could just attack with 400k infantry and win everytime simply because you don't lose morale on the reserves. There is no way that would realistically work. Armies that are too big for the battlefield they are fighting in just tend to do bad. I mean ask Xerxes or Sun tzu
Armies that are too big will be disorganized and clumsy. I get what your saying though about it increasing micro management and all, i just don't think thats a bad thing.

Considering the "battlefield" is about 1000 km^2 or more, a large army would absolutely be able to crush a smaller one every time. I don't think of a battle as a single incident but a number of engagements.

Anyhow, gameplay-wise, there is very little skill involved. It's obvious what you have to do, so where's the skill? The only skill you need is to hit pause every few days to scan the whole map in order to see if any of your battles will need reinforcements soon. Sure, a newbie won't do it, but only because he doesn't know how battle works, so this is fake difficulty only. Once you do know the rules, all that you need to decide is when to commit additional troops, and while that admittedly requires a little bit of skill, it's definitely not worth the tedium of having to check battles all over the world every few days. Timing reinforcements is something mechanical that the game should not require you to do.

In theory, you could also say that it balances large vs small countries a little because a large country is more likely to miss a battle raging, but that is only relevant in MP as the AI always beelines all their troops in as fast as they can. This is probably the worst issue here: this design makes it super-easy to win almost every battle in a war as long as you have maybe 2x combat width of troops, no matter how large the opposing army.

 

[Florryworry__]

Considering the "battlefield" is about 1000 km^2 or more, a large army would absolutely be able to crush a smaller one every time. I don't think of a battle as a single incident but a number of engagements.

Anyhow, gameplay-wise, there is very little skill involved. It's obvious what you have to do, so where's the skill? The only skill you need is to hit pause every few days to scan the whole map in order to see if any of your battles will need reinforcements soon. Sure, a newbie won't do it, but only because he doesn't know how battle works, so this is fake difficulty only. Once you do know the rules, all that you need to decide is when to commit additional troops, and while that admittedly requires a little bit of skill, it's definitely not worth the tedium of having to check battles all over the world every few days. Timing reinforcements is something mechanical that the game should not require you to do.

In theory, you could also say that it balances large vs small countries a little because a large country is more likely to miss a battle raging, but that is only relevant in MP as the AI always beelines all their troops in as fast as they can. This is probably the worst issue here: this design makes it super-easy to win almost every battle in a war as long as you have maybe 2x combat width of troops, no matter how large the opposing army.

Like I said before thats not true; you can win any battle if you have 2x the combat width AND do the reinforcing correctly, too late=fail too early=fail, you need to asses the situation and time it correctly; if you are good at that then you do better than if you are bad at that and it is something you get better at over time= skill indicator. But eh thats the way I see it.

Besides the 2x combat width isnt even true either it depends on how much morale damage the enemy does, if your fighting vs. France who has like a +1 morale tech up on you then you'll need way more than that. This is without even taking the enemy reinforcing into account.

It makes a difference; sure but it's not a wonder-weapon or anything.

 

[Onirim]

Well, I'll have a few game sessions from now on paying special attention to all this. The little I know about modern warfare (I think it's due to a demo of the game HistWar ) is that the best deployment of an army at the battlefield was to keep always about 30% - 50% of your army in reserve and that of course a reinforcement army arriving was always a blessing for the battle outcome.

I think in game a second row should be meant to minimize casualties and recover morale (up to the max morale which is ticking down for the whole army including reserves located away from the front). But of course if the game implements a second row with the cons of the first row (heavy casualties and a high-rate morale loss) but not the pros (inf and cav making damage) there's no point in having other config than artillery at the second row and the only way to keep a reserve of inf and cav is to have a 1 x combat width artillery to fill the whole 2nd row so the extra units can only go to reserve. Right? I insist about reserve because I prefer it than micromanaging the arrival of reinforcements every time since a 0.01 or 0.02 overall morale loss per day doesn't seem a high cost for me for avoiding that micromanagement.

I could check last night that the second row indeed receives casualties so it could represent units switiching positions for relief taking turns but I need to keep an eye on what's happening.

 

[alpaca]

Like I said before thats not true; you can win any battle if you have 2x the combat width AND do the reinforcing correctly, too late=fail too early=fail, you need to asses the situation and time it correctly; if you are good at that then you do better than if you are bad at that and it is something you get better at over time= skill indicator. But eh thats the way I see it.

Besides the 2x combat width isnt even true either it depends on how much morale damage the enemy does, if your fighting vs. France who has like a +1 morale tech up on you then you'll need way more than that. This is without even taking the enemy reinforcing into account.

It makes a difference; sure but it's not a wonder-weapon or anything.

True, but "correctly" reinforcing is a skill that is about as easy to pick up as cooking soup - which is not very hard at all. It's mainly mechanical and very tolerant of errors. Sure, you can maximize it a little more by being "just right", but in practice, being a little too early isn't that bad. I'd just rather have game mechanics that are actually difficult to judge to spend time on and not single-dimensional and easily grokked, but at the same time incredibly tedious, like reinforcements. The way it is now, the game strongly incentivizes players to pay ultra-close attention to all their battles, and therefore slows down the game something fierce. The good you get by allowing this tiny increase in efficiency by becoming a better reinforcer is far offset by the bad of having to constantly scan the whole world. Is this tiny bit of skill-emphasis really worth a huge amount of micromanagement to you?

I made similar arguments with regards to AI fleets sneaking by your own fleets, and the devs fixed that by giving us a hassle-reducing auto-engage option that is not super-inefficient and therefore a legitimate option in the mid-late game. You would probably also have argued that this is a "skill indicator", because there is some positioning and prediction of AI movement involved, but really, it's just about how often you can scan over your whole coastline. I hope they will do the same for troop reinforcing, where we currently don't have such an option.

By the way: Yes, I was exaggerating when I wrote you can win any battle with 2x combat width, but there is a very big difference between just rushing your troops in all at once and waiting until your first army drops in morale. Most of the time it will mean the difference between winning and losing. As for enemy reinforcements: the AI does not deliberately reinforce, except by accident. They will send all their troops in as soon as possible.

 

[Florryworry__]

True, but "correctly" reinforcing is a skill that is about as easy to pick up as cooking soup - which is not very hard at all. It's mainly mechanical and very tolerant of errors. Sure, you can maximize it a little more by being "just right", but in practice, being a little too early isn't that bad. I'd just rather have game mechanics that are actually difficult to judge to spend time on and not single-dimensional and easily grokked, but at the same time incredibly tedious, like reinforcements. The way it is now, the game strongly incentivizes players to pay ultra-close attention to all their battles, and therefore slows down the game something fierce. The good you get by allowing this tiny increase in efficiency by becoming a better reinforcer is far offset by the bad of having to constantly scan the whole world. Is this tiny bit of skill-emphasis really worth a huge amount of micromanagement to you?

I made similar arguments with regards to AI fleets sneaking by your own fleets, and the devs fixed that by giving us a hassle-reducing auto-engage option that is not super-inefficient and therefore a legitimate option in the mid-late game. You would probably also have argued that this is a "skill indicator", because there is some positioning and prediction of AI movement involved, but really, it's just about how often you can scan over your whole coastline. I hope they will do the same for troop reinforcing, where we currently don't have such an option.

By the way: Yes, I was exaggerating when I wrote you can win any battle with 2x combat width, but there is a very big difference between just rushing your troops in all at once and waiting until your first army drops in morale. Most of the time it will mean the difference between winning and losing. As for enemy reinforcements: the AI does not deliberately reinforce, except by accident. They will send all their troops in as soon as possible.

I see where you're coming from. I've thought about this alot (like whether or not this is a good thing).
I have come to the conclusion that changing this would lead to more problems than it solves. Since if this weren't the case the exploits one could do would be astronomical; like making a battle last forever so you can trap the entire enemy army. Or luring all pf the AI's forces to one place so you can act with impunity whilst at the same time getting completly unrealstic 500k vs 500k battles and such. At the cost of forcing people to pay attention. So i'm a little torn buy when I weigh the pro's and cons i'm for the current system ut provides some 'Active' player involvement aswell as leading to less immersion breaking scenario's.
Then again one could argue keeping 4 50K stacks in reserve waiting to reinforce at the right second might also be undesireable. And to that I have no Answer!

 

[alpaca]

I see where you're coming from. I've thought about this alot (like whether or not this is a good thing).
I have come to the conclusion that changing this would lead to more problems than it solves. Since if this weren't the case the exploits one could do would be astronomical; like making a battle last forever so you can trap the entire enemy army. Or luring all pf the AI's forces to one place so you can act with impunity whilst at the same time getting completly unrealstic 500k vs 500k battles and such. At the cost of forcing people to pay attention. So i'm a little torn buy when I weigh the pro's and cons i'm for the current system ut provides some 'Active' player involvement aswell as leading to less immersion breaking scenario's.
Then again one could argue keeping 4 50K stacks in reserve waiting to reinforce at the right second might also be undesireable. And to that I have no Answer!

How would changing second-row morale damage lead to battles that rage forever? Could you elaborate this point a little because I don't see it?

From the player's side, you can already have perpetual battles by cycling armies in and out with manual retreat and reinforce. From the AI's side, you'd basically be arguing that it's a good thing the AI takes so much morale damage because it forces it to retreat. If that is your argument, I would suggest a better design would be to prohibit partial retreating of armies so that the player can't take out some forces and let them recover morale, then send them back in. In the alternate scenario where troops not in battle don't take significant morale damage and second-row units only take morale damage if they are artillery, this would basically put the player on an even footing with the AI.

Also, I don't think you can make arguments from realism with regards to EU4's battle system. It's so abstract that arguing against 500k vs 500k battles on the points of realism is about as useful as complaining that the bishop in chess can only move in a diagonal line. Its flavor is inspired by real battles, but the actual implementation is completely abstract and has nothing at all to do with them.

 

[Octavius Antony]

If that is your argument, I would suggest a better design would be to prohibit partial retreating of armies so that the player can't take out some forces and let them recover morale, then send them back in.

You actually can't really do this anymore with more recent patches. Retreating a portion of the combat stack will cause all remaining units to lose a percentage of their total morale equal to the percent of troops leaving. This is very easy to see when you have an AI stack in combat with you and you retreat. The remaining units will shatter instantly.

 

[YuriiH]

Imagine your units standing in formation on the second row, fairly close to the front. Close enough to watch the units in front of them getting shot, bombarded, and cut down. And, while standing in formation waiting to be given the order to move into actual combat, you are under the full stress of knowing that you will be the one about to take a turn fighting to stay alive. Morale can't last forever, especially for the units nearest to the front. The reserves only take the smaller tick because they aren't near the front, they have to move through the second row to reach the front.

Exactly this.

And for the TC, don't confuse troops in reserve with deployed non-fighting troops (in the 2nd row). The second-row troops could fight if they had cannons.

 

[alpaca]

You actually can't really do this anymore with more recent patches. Retreating a portion of the combat stack will cause all remaining units to lose a percentage of their total morale equal to the percent of troops leaving. This is very easy to see when you have an AI stack in combat with you and you retreat. The remaining units will shatter instantly.

Ah, thanks for the info. I have a house rule for not doing it anyways, so I didn't notice