Hang on, by stacks you mean regiments? Of course you'll have more than 150 regiments
Mate, it's also dishonest to turn 30 into 150 (and insist it's a regular thing) in order to push a narrative
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Victoria 3 isnt focused in war and it hurts
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Mate, it's also dishonest to turn 30 into 150 (and insist it's a regular thing) in order to push a narrative
lol... now a single regiment is already an army?
gee, some people are really getting desperate with defending a completely indefensible design choice to replace warfare with a bunch of buttons and rng animations
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Well, when you mobilize, they all come individually created, son while they are a bunch of single 3k men group not attached to each other, they technically count as an army.
To me, it was clear once mentioned to manage 150 armies when you mobilize, what the argument was. If you want to be nitpicky about saying that they should be called regiments, instead of armies, sure. But then don't say the person is completely wrong that handling all those units when going to war is pain in late period of Victoria 2.
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I'm actualy very interested in the way the devs are modelling warfare, and I personally have always found the micromanaging of armies to be tedious. I can do it just fine, and, sure, I get a little endorphin rush when I stackwipe an enemy army, but its one of the less fun parts of any of the games.
That said, I don't like this approach to the grand strategy games. I have never liked the idea of 'just focus on these mechanics, and if you don't like them, play a different game set in a different time period.' For me, it is the time period that is most interesting to me. I play CK because I want to play in the middle ages, not because I want to play a character-driven sims/risk hybrid. Obviously, different eras require different mechanics, and that will dictate much of what is prioritized in the game and, to be sure, certain playstyles will be favored over others.
I'm happy to see them try to do something totally new with something that, historically, has been the core of many of the games, and I fully accept that it might not work out - but at least its something new, and the reasons make sense to me (and I am aware that my own personal preferences are biasing me in favor of it). For those that want more detailed simulation of warfare, hopefully future development of the game can find a way to satisfy their concerns without compromising the basic vision the devs have for this aspect of the game.
that's arguing in bad faith, though
merging 150 regiments into 5 stacks comes no where close to the claim of having to micro 150 armies into battles
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Keep in mind most people here are probably not native speakers and are very unlikely to be aware of such nuances.
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It wasn't clear for me, in my mind 'managing 150 stacks' means managing 150 armies. Yes, you will have more than 150 regiments to manage, they merge you know, so it's not 150 stacks.
So if I mention 150 stacks in Eu4 will you think 150k troops or 150 actual stacks? It wasn't clear for me, sorry
In that case, you can manage 150 'stacks' it's not a problem
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That is why pointing out nuances is a good thing. Engagement is a great teacher.
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The point was you’d have to individually assign them to stacks before you could even get into major operations. That’s micro too, micro that will occur regardless because even the Rally mechanic means you’ll have to engage in micro to create your stacks at some point.
That wasn’t the argument. What is dishonest is ignoring what comes literally right after where it’s stated those regiments get consolidated and the problem is still there.
Do you have an actual argument, or is it just nitpicks and ignoring context?
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My argument is that it's not a problem to manage 150 regiments, at the very least not a problem WHICH WARRANTS as a solution to have this mobile game version of warfare, don't pretend you didn't understand it because everybody else did
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So let me get this straight... managing 150 stacks late game is tedious micro, but actually a stack is just a regiment, so really we're talking about maybe 15 total armies. And every time you hit mobilize it creates a bunch of little armies too because for some reason we aren't using rallypoints with auto-merge, BUT apparently rally points don't even work well enough because literally every time you click a button or a province or a menu in your 8+ hour campaign to create a unit that's somehow "engaging in micro."
And yet this isn't tedius micro
Or maybe it is, and I'm just misreading things?
And yet this isn't tedius micro
Or maybe it is, and I'm just misreading things?
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I will think 150 actual stacks and then ask how big they are. Considering EU4 DOES HAVE an army template builder that automatically merges everyone together is one of the reason EU4 isn't as grindy as Vic2.
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V2 also has this. Go to army view que what to build. Now pick a province and click the rally point and merge boxes so they are checked. Your units will now go there and auto merge. Works for mobilization too.
Only if you mobilze you might have to sort out the details as they stack over supply and need some more rally points to make it more manageable.
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Yes, you would need more rally points because of supply and then see if they actually got balanced out (probably they didn't) then you need to break and merge the stacks to get them balanced and then join then with your (hopefully recruited before) stack of artillery, (engineers and cavalry optional). Anyway, yes, Vic2 forced you to play micro not to be super optimal, but not to be completely idiotic and launching one 150 infantry stack into enemy territory sieging one province at a time (and probably being attacked by a stack with artillery support)
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What you are describing is very easy. Especially with your merging of artillery and so on stacks. Want to know what to do? Make these stacks with arty, cav, engineers etc. Then plop them down on the rally point and your mobilized infantry now auto merge with them. Now all I need so is say split them up and/or sort out the remaining excess infantry. And no engineers and cav are not optional. Engineers are essential if your enemy is dug in and defending in territories with forts because of their siege value which negates those advantages and they help cap provinces with forts faster because forts slow down occupation and the cav not only give a recon bonus which is essential if you want to do the most damage early in an engagement but also helps cap provinces faster with their recon value.
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To be fair - you can expand all factories (at capacity?) with a single click, and depending on your ruling party your capis can also happily auto-expand factories for you. You might want to disable subsidies for a month every few years, but that's pretty much it in terms of necessary late game micro.
...well, and I guess you might need to delete a lot of Clipper factories in the early game, depending on how you manage your initial buildup.
I'd say for something that is way closer to the core of the game (= the pops) that was (for its time) actually pretty accepable in terms of tedium.
I'll certainly take that over fighting a late game, multi-front war as Russia - because number of stacks aside I'll still need to turn all those mobilized units into proper divisions by attaching pre-build ART, ENG, HUS (etc.) and deploy one in each frontline province to avoid whack-a-mole AI incursions & carpet sieges. If I mobilize, that is - something that you could argue isn't really necessary against the AI. The whole frontline & army management was still bad enough for me to simply not wage wars as any major if I could avoid it (and still harder to avoid than Planned Economy for most nations).
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Unless you press it as, let's say Russia, and get 300 regiments in a single province.
EDIT: ... or, God forbid, industrialized China in late game.
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Unless you press it as, let's say Russia, and get 300 regiments in a single province.
EDIT: ... or, God forbid, industrialized China in late game.
Make it proportional as your army size increases.
However I think there is a better way to handle this we need not bash those complaining about V2. We can what I suggested earlier with units on the map to control HOI4 style and the planner while still retaining mobilization as key. Now we should have something like a division designer to help with this. I pointed out another game set in the same era already does this. But also we moved from regiments which were the basis of units in EU4 to Divisions by the time of Napoleon with what is essentially early mass mobilization and early industrial warfare with a few essential elements still missing. However we are now post napoleonic and moving forward with divisions being now the standard element by which armies are compromised of it only makes increasing sense to have a division designer.
So you can design some divisions and now you make a choice. Borrowing from HOI3, you can either maintain them as active where they retain their full strength and upkeep. Or you toggle building them as a reserve. Both gather their equipment and train up but here is the difference. When you pick where the active unit will be when they finish training they plop down on the map. The reserve one does not but when you hit the mobilization button they spawn where you say they will be. Add one additional note of being able to move active divisions and into reserve and vice versa for ease of management. Now players can structure their military how the want, decide how many reserves they have, how much active they have, and still have their forces set for slugging it out and outmaneuvering and their colonial police forces with no merging required.
However this does leave 1 issue of army management of assigning divs to which army and so fourth to which I would propose being able to sign unmobilzed reserve armies to armies and generals. The armies prior to WW1 all did this and so when they mobilzed each unit already knew to which parent unit they belong too and so things would just naturally be taken care of from there. So just hit the mobilization button your reserves are already assigned commands. Now all you need do is assign the frontline.
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Yeah, honestly, as far as the game goes, if we can only set to attack/defend/wait BUT we can tell, try to take these first and try to defend these to the last man. I would be okay. I would prefer if say, I could tell my generals to fall back from the border and form a defensive line behind rivers and on top of hills and mountains and let the enemy come. Unfortunately, I can't. At most, I would have to have lucked out on getting a prudent or cautious general, put him on defense and hope that the game automagically puts that as his plan and plays out accordingly. Again, I don't want to go stack hunting or carpet sieging. I just want to tell my generals to TAKE THIS ASAP or PROTECT THIS EVEN WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF BULLETS.
It's all context dependent on what the core gameplay focus is, because the core gameplay naturally should require the most detail and player attention, and if other more minor aspects of the gameplay start intruding on the player's attention and taking player attention and time away from the gameplay focus, then it becomes tedious micro. So managing factories is not tedious micro in the Victoria series because the economic management is the core gameplay focus of the game so you expect to have most of your attention and focus on the economic aspect of the game. However, combat and unit management are not a core focus of the game because the Victoria series is not a wargame, so if your attention is constantly and necessarily drawn to unit management instead of factory management whenever a war starts up, which by necessity it is with previous warfare mechanics, then it becomes tedious and detracting from the gameplay.
Meanwhile, combat and unit management would not be tedious micro in, say, Hearts of Iron because it is specifically a wargame where that is the main gameplay focus and so you expect the most detail and player attention to be directed there. In that case, factory management on the level of Victoria being absolutely necessary in order to keep your economy going in Hearts of Iron would be tedious micromanagement, because the economy is not the focus of Hearts of Iron series so the player would not expect and does not want to have to direct that much of their attention to that part of the game. That's why factories and economic management in Hearts of Iron is abstracted to just two broad categories of civilian and military factories in order to not bog the player down with micromanagement in the economic aspect of the game.
With Victoria 3, Paradox is just finally taking that proper mindset of conservation of gameplay detail to make a game where warfare and unit management in an economy game requires as much attention as economy and consumer goods production management does in a wargame, and finally approaching it from the correct perspective that more detail on each in each game would just end up being tedious micromanagement distracting the player from the real meat of the intended gameplay.
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