Yes, I was referring to that. But they reached an agreement before the occupation. The french did the same after WW1 with the Ruhr basin occupation, they also took back the Alsace region, which was a "small" and contested region.
War What is it Good For?
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Congratulations, you have successfully out-rhetoriced me.
I do not mind rules to accommodate the Great War, but it was called the Great War for a reason. It was a singular event in the history of the time period. Designing warfare and diplomacy such that every ordinary war can replicate WW1 in its scope and consequences would not only misrepresent how warfare and expansion took place over the rest of the time period, but also misrepresent WW1 itself.
Napoleon and Golden Horde. Are you maybe in the wrong subforum?
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Alexander frequently put the former local ruler back in power as a vassal or tributary, rather than imposing outside rule. Rome took several centuries to steadily advance and assimilate the regions it occupied militarily, despite an advanced road system and strong emphasis on logistics, as well as setting up trading posts and forts in the north to gradually accustom the barbarians to Roman civilization, and still had to abandon much of that eventually. Egypt mostly saw itself as either one or two kingdoms throughout most of its history, so it wasn't so much a case of "outsiders" as civil conflicts. Persia and Assyria both made massive expansions, and faced constant internal struggles for centuries, both of them ultimately collapsing.....and so on. Look at where the HRE is today, how well the vast British Empire has held together worldwide, and how the Ottomans have maintained control over the culturally different Balkans: they ultimately failed. Most of the large empires of the past survived as long as they did, and grew as quickly as they did, by leaving most of their conquered territories at least semi-autonomous, as long as they paid tribute and furnished levies on demand. Full annexation in the modern sense wasn't practical, or in many cases, even possible.
The common themes are that either the people already saw themselves as part of that larger culture (China, Germany), were gradually assimilated after a long period of looser control and trade, were taken in many small bites over several centuries, or had no strong central authority to begin with (British in India). None of that holds true in most of Europe, other than for German unification, and to a lesser degree, Italian unification, in which there was a long sense of common cultural identity. In the few instances where a country rapidly annexed huge swaths of a territory which perceived itself as being a part of something else, that country either collapsed or was eventually forced to relinquish the annexed land.
Victoria 3 should allow one to take more in a peace settlement than was possible in V2, BUT the consequent militancy at home, infamy abroad, need for constant suppression forces, and the financial disincentives of paying to maintain land and occupation forces with little return should make it pointless to do so except where the specific circumstances make the steep costs worthwhile. V2 had WAY too many revolts in core territory, and not nearly enough in non-core territory that wasn't actively being militarily suppressed. Pacification of annexed non-core territory should REQUIRE a military garrison of some kind, or face almost certain revolts, leaving the conqueror with a lot less troops free to make further conquests. Vassalization, a puppet government, or incorporation into one's "sphere" should be the norm during the timeframe, rather than annexation, except in cases such as retaking cores. Colonial expansion into more primitive areas should fall into "colonization", rather than "conquest", with land grabs from "partially civilized" countries falling somewhere in between.
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Gee I didn't know that a war that happened just 20 years before the game start wouldn't count. And these go directly to refuting the statement that it was impossible for an army to control large areas of land.
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After a few hundred years which is way longer than the time spam of the game.
Their conquests into present day Ethiopia and Syria refute this.
Once again it took CENTURIES so it was possible. I never claimed that these lasted forever. Other claimed it could never or just rarely happen and all of this 100% refutes that bogus claim.
Once again these conquests lasted for a very long time, except for Alexander which started to fall apart on his death. Many conquered regions that had nothing to do with their culture. Even the Han dynasty took areas that were not chineese. BTW my list never mentioned Germany so that was a non-sequitor.
In the game we're not saying this conquest would last till 2000. But it would last for the time period covered by the game.
Those conquests may have lasted for the span of the game or longer (most of those examples took far longer than the span of the game to do in the first place), but they were just about all extremely problematical while they held together. I'm not claiming that it should be impossible to take large areas of someone else's land in the game, but that it should be "impractical" to bite off more than a mouthful. The game should provide you with sufficient rope to hang yourself, but hang yourself you almost certainly will, if you go that route.
Rather than creating artificial barriers to stop you from blobbing, the game should attempt to represent the REAL reasons why it was a bad idea to over-expand: additional hostile land to garrison, as well as a longer border to defend, with little return compared to the added expense. It's why ancient empires generally taxed their occupied territories to the hilt, and raised taxes on their core regions to the brink of revolt; they had no other options but to do so or else release the conquered territory. Most found it more practical to set up a vassal or tributary state that paid for most of its own internal policing, except that the governors had a disturbing tendency to eventually revolt.
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Russia decided to remove autonomy of Congress Poland and annex them directly.
I figured I'd contrast my latest Victoria II British game with my most recent Victoria II France game, because I think the contrast raises some interesting questions.
In my United Kingdom game, I ended up playing some kind of Victorian-era maniacal supervillain. I conquered large swathes of China, Russia, France, America, and various other smaller places by the 1850s, and the only reason I stopped was because the jingoism mechanic was going to render any attempt at a world conquest a moot endeavour.
In my France game, I prepared for and fought a war with Prussia over the Rhineland between 1836 and 40; the war was over by '41 with my complete victory. I took one measly state, didn't even get the whole Rhineland due to the jingoism mechanic forbidding any extra war goals, and my glorious (for the time) 62-division army was reduced to 38 reinforcing divisions by the time the war was over. I was reduced to just desperately trying to get enough warscore to end the pointless carnage before another ten thousand men got sent home in wooden coffins, and after the dust settled, I quit the campaign and swore to never do something that pointlessly destructive again, hoping to make my next France playthrough a peaceful one.
The thing is, my France game, although it only lasted four years, felt like the more authentic and fulfilling experience. My Britain game, as mentioned, felt cartoonish and ultimately dull, with hordes of Union Flag-patterned raiders ripped straight out of some kind of tacky fantasy novel leaping off ships to pillage a defenceless world. It was fun for a while, but it felt about as connected to the realities of the era as Dick Dastardly feels to Formula 1 racing. My France game on the other hand, with jingoistic leaders starting a war over a patch of dirt because of extreme nationalism only to find themselves scrambling to end a horrific meatgrinder as fast as possible once the reality of conflict between two powers of equal stature sunk in (even for the victors), felt a lot closer to the time (if a lot darker and a lot less comfortable to play through).
This is one organic way to stop a world conquest, I think, or at least a cartoonish, 'mwahaha! I am a Victorian Ming the Merciless!' type of world conquest. I could have recovered my soldier pops, continued the focus on military tech, and pressed on with my planned conquest of Europe. Instead, the sheer pointless destructiveness of what I had done caused me to put the controller down and swear to try something else next time. It might have been a dark conclusion to come to, but it was a satisfying one, and left me with a more meaningful experience than any rampage around the world could ever have managed.
In my United Kingdom game, I ended up playing some kind of Victorian-era maniacal supervillain. I conquered large swathes of China, Russia, France, America, and various other smaller places by the 1850s, and the only reason I stopped was because the jingoism mechanic was going to render any attempt at a world conquest a moot endeavour.
In my France game, I prepared for and fought a war with Prussia over the Rhineland between 1836 and 40; the war was over by '41 with my complete victory. I took one measly state, didn't even get the whole Rhineland due to the jingoism mechanic forbidding any extra war goals, and my glorious (for the time) 62-division army was reduced to 38 reinforcing divisions by the time the war was over. I was reduced to just desperately trying to get enough warscore to end the pointless carnage before another ten thousand men got sent home in wooden coffins, and after the dust settled, I quit the campaign and swore to never do something that pointlessly destructive again, hoping to make my next France playthrough a peaceful one.
The thing is, my France game, although it only lasted four years, felt like the more authentic and fulfilling experience. My Britain game, as mentioned, felt cartoonish and ultimately dull, with hordes of Union Flag-patterned raiders ripped straight out of some kind of tacky fantasy novel leaping off ships to pillage a defenceless world. It was fun for a while, but it felt about as connected to the realities of the era as Dick Dastardly feels to Formula 1 racing. My France game on the other hand, with jingoistic leaders starting a war over a patch of dirt because of extreme nationalism only to find themselves scrambling to end a horrific meatgrinder as fast as possible once the reality of conflict between two powers of equal stature sunk in (even for the victors), felt a lot closer to the time (if a lot darker and a lot less comfortable to play through).
This is one organic way to stop a world conquest, I think, or at least a cartoonish, 'mwahaha! I am a Victorian Ming the Merciless!' type of world conquest. I could have recovered my soldier pops, continued the focus on military tech, and pressed on with my planned conquest of Europe. Instead, the sheer pointless destructiveness of what I had done caused me to put the controller down and swear to try something else next time. It might have been a dark conclusion to come to, but it was a satisfying one, and left me with a more meaningful experience than any rampage around the world could ever have managed.
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Even playing Prussia/NGF/Germany or Austria, I tend to be somewhat conservative in terms of using the army. Potential objectives need to be weighed in terms of value versus cost. In a typical map-painter, as long as I win the war, there is no "cost"; in V2, those recruits come directly from your general population, and can return there, so they matter.
Ultimately, what makes V2 so enjoyable is that those pops (your Accepted Culture pops in particular) are an essential asset, your own people, and are not to be casually tossed away without some pressing need to prevent some even bigger disaster. In most other strategy games, your recruits auto-respawn, and losing a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand, has no effect at all on your working population. In V2, those soldier pops come directly from your farmers, laborers, and craftsmen who pay your bills and produce your resources, so losing them hurts you in the long run. As a result, in most games I don't care about casualties, as long as I don't have to rebuild the unit from scratch, while in V2, every lost soldier is a reduction in the strength of the country I'm playing, and I DO care about them, at least while the game lasts. That sense of playing a "benevolent" leader, protecting his people against outside aggression, is a big part of it.
That's not to say that I don't fight wars, but I try to avoid unnecessary wars, particularly those that will result in high body counts for token gains, and limit aggressive actions to taking only what vital resources I can get with minimal casualties, or else retaking core territory to regain and protect more of my own pops, as I see it.
My occasional map-painting romps to "practice warfare" with some random country tend to get dropped after only a couple of decades of play, because ultimately they don't feel either realistic or satisfying.
Ultimately, what makes V2 so enjoyable is that those pops (your Accepted Culture pops in particular) are an essential asset, your own people, and are not to be casually tossed away without some pressing need to prevent some even bigger disaster. In most other strategy games, your recruits auto-respawn, and losing a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand, has no effect at all on your working population. In V2, those soldier pops come directly from your farmers, laborers, and craftsmen who pay your bills and produce your resources, so losing them hurts you in the long run. As a result, in most games I don't care about casualties, as long as I don't have to rebuild the unit from scratch, while in V2, every lost soldier is a reduction in the strength of the country I'm playing, and I DO care about them, at least while the game lasts. That sense of playing a "benevolent" leader, protecting his people against outside aggression, is a big part of it.
That's not to say that I don't fight wars, but I try to avoid unnecessary wars, particularly those that will result in high body counts for token gains, and limit aggressive actions to taking only what vital resources I can get with minimal casualties, or else retaking core territory to regain and protect more of my own pops, as I see it.
My occasional map-painting romps to "practice warfare" with some random country tend to get dropped after only a couple of decades of play, because ultimately they don't feel either realistic or satisfying.
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I've never played the Victoria games before but I'm definitely interested in joining with this one,
How devastating were the wars in the previous games? are there civilian casualties or only soldiers like Hearts of Iron and EU?
If so are there issues like starvation when supply chains get broken due to a long war or enemy occupation of vital food regions or do pops just rebel or migrate?
How devastating were the wars in the previous games? are there civilian casualties or only soldiers like Hearts of Iron and EU?
If so are there issues like starvation when supply chains get broken due to a long war or enemy occupation of vital food regions or do pops just rebel or migrate?
In Vicky 2, regular armies consisted of Soldier pops, and their casualties came from those pops. However, it was also possible to draft other lower-class citizens into the army, and other kinds of pops could form armies of rebels. Armies did require supplies of food, ammunition, and several other goods, and they suffered attrition. Attrition would kill troops, while running out of food or ammunition would make them ready to surrender. If you ran out of food for your troops, you almost certainly ran out of food for your people, too, which made them furious at their own government.
While there was a form of “blockade” in the game rules, the game’s model of trade was very crude, and attempting to put enough of the world in your sphere of influence to control the global food supply would wreck the global economy. I had more success putting all the other ammunition factories out of business and cornering the market for ammo, so no one at war with me could buy any.
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You mean "they should not adopt it", or rather "it wouldn´t make life easier"?
Or perhaps both? Because I really think the military/army organization system NEEDs to get some improvement to get rid of the micro hell and whack-a-mole seen in Vic2 under certain circumstances.
At the same time, I can accept if people think that my specific idea is stupid because it would not solve the issue, or if they consider HOI-style frontlines unsuitable to the era.
I definitely agree on division, army system, and moving armies automatically taking control of enemy land.
I would disagree on battle planner though: for victorian era warfare I think manual control of armies should be doable.
On the side note, in hoi 4 I only used planning for naval invasions and to get bonus for breakthrough, after initial phase, battle planer would make my divisions move in painfully retarded manner. Whats worse, it also made AI retarded and unable to properly defend itself from a player who exploits breakthrough properly
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Well yes... and no? I mean, "doable" depends on the situation we are talking. Defending the (narrow) French border against Prussian attacks? No problem. Invading and crushing countries with small province number (e.g. Belgium) or confined/narrow borders/frontlines (e.g. Italy)? Yes, sign me up. Waging war in Russia (loooong borders/frontlines)? I am overwhelmed. Same for other long borders (NGF vs Austria anybody?) where I always get the impression how the AI refuses to give decisive battle, ignores my main thrust towards their capital and instead sends a handful of small corps (rather divisions) to siege some distant backwater provinces (but half a dozen of them) to annoy me.
IMO it boils down to the question how many frontlines/borders can I watch and micromanage at the same time, because the armies need my manual input for ANY sensible action other than sit and watch, and how many provinces are involved, because mentioned armies will only ever act in EXACTLY the province they are sitting in, and will calmly watch enemy forces raiding burning pillaging all neighbouring provinces without feeling wrong about it - unless I personally tell them otherwise.
So in a nutshell, what I want is SOME automatization QOL for the above mentioned cases when the growing size of the task makes micro unfun. Does not necessarily need to be a full fledged battle planer HOI style, but at least the possibility to set some corps to automatically defend this border or that area while I am busy somewhere else with bigger fish to fry.
You remember the horrible rebel-whack-a-mole? This was solved by adding the "hunt rebels" checkbox to army corps, so they would do it automatically without needing manual player input for any and every small action. I could imagine something like that, some "intercept invading armies" checkbox, allowing you to set up parts of your military to cover your back/flanks while you are doing the important micro in the focal area. Of course, this would need some elaboration...
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You can improve the military organization system, but please keep division designers and such squarely in HOI. And yeah, frontlines, even for WW1, are not necessary. In Vic2, frontlines naturally and organically develop due to increased defense and troop count, which is much better than brute forcing a frontline through a specific tech that "unlocks" it and everything suddenly changes overnight.
You have a point with the division designer, I think it would be rather pointless with only three branches of arms (inf, cav, art). I would rather think of the possibility to attach (manually composed) corps, like we have them in Vic2, to some higher level of command and giving them automated tasks like described above.
Also I agree with you that some overnight total change of system by unlocking a single tech would not be the way to go. It would just end in a race to this tech IMO.
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