Why are my armies being destroyed in one short battle?

[Telemnor]

Hello everybody,

I've been playing an ironmode game with Ayautthaya and i've encountered a strange problem.

I'm in 1548, and since the beginning i've been able to handle my neighbors with quite competent armies and good use of back-stabbing, attacking countries already at war.


However, i have encountered Terminator. Namely : Kachar. In my game, it's become big, having conquered Tibet, Bengal and Shan.
They only had an army of around 20 000 men, while I have 30 000, and even ~50 000 counting Pegu as my vassal and Dai Viet in union.

So I attacked. The war lasted 30 seconds. An army of 17 000 Kachar attacked one of my 10 000 men army and destroyed it in only two days of battle. Not defetead, destroyed.

I thought : damn, they are tough. So I sent my whole army, 20 000 men, with a very good shock and fire general against their 17 000. The battle lasted three days, my army was destroyed.


In 10 days, the 17 000 army of Kachar destroyed in single battles of ~2 days my 30 000 men, the 9000 Pegu and the 10 000 Dai Viet. Their morale doesn't seem to drop much from their battles...


Now, here are the facts : my maintenance costs were at maximum, I'm only one level of military tech behind Kachar (i'm 8, they're 9).

What. The. Hell ?! . A country with almost the same tech as mine shouldn't even be able to destroy any of my army in one battle ever. Let alone all of my armies while outnumbering them !

 

[unmerged(502093)]

Hello everybody,

I've been playing an ironmode game with Ayautthaya and i've encountered a strange problem.

I'm in 1548, and since the beginning i've been able to handle my neighbors with quite competent armies and good use of back-stabbing, attacking countries already at war.


However, i have encountered Terminator. Namely : Kachar. In my game, it's become big, having conquered Tibet, Bengal and Shan.
They only had an army of around 20 000 men, while I have 30 000, and even 40 000 counting Pegu as my vassal and Dai Viet in union.

So I attacked. The war lasted 30 seconds. An army of 17 000 Kachar attacked one of my 10 000 men army and destroyed it in only two days of battle. Not defetead, destroyed.

I thought : damn, they are tough. So I sent my whole army, 20 000 men, with a very good shock and fire general against their 17 000. The battle lasted three days, my army destroyed.


In 10 days, the 17 000 army of Kachar destroyed in single battles of ~2 days my 30 000 men, the 9000 Pegu and the 10 000 Dai Viet. Their morale doesn't seem to drop much from their battles...


Now, here are the facts : my maintenance costs were at maximum, I'm only one level of military tech behind Kachar (i'm 8, they're 9).

What. The. Hell ?! . A country with almost the same tech as mine shouldn't even be able to destroy any of my army in one battle ever. Let alone all of my armies while outnumbering them !

I'm having this problem against some rebel stacks. 30k troops vs 10k peasants and I insta lose day 1. Check your military sliders but I think it's a bug.

 

[bleakie]

Do you have any country modifiers that lowers your army morale? For example, if you go bankrupt, your army morale would be so low that any rebel stack can wipe yours instantly.

And the morale effect of army maintenance does not take place in day 1. You need to wait a few months for the army morale to reach the new maximum. Maybe that's the problem?

 

[Telemnor]

Nope, nothing of that sort.

And the morale of my armies was at max, maintenance was raised a few weeks / monthes in advance.

 

[artemis667]

I've seen something similar where an Ottoman army of 18K insta-wiped my Muscovite army of ~12K or so sieging in Crimea. Army maintenance was at full, the army hadn't been in combat, and my morale from tech and ideas was about par (no quality or anything). There's something a bit funny going on with the mechanics. It wasn't an ironman game, so I reloaded an autosave before I DOWed that coalition.

 

[unmerged(668251)]

I've seen a lot of this on Steam forums and I've chalked up to people for "doing it wrong" as most people are quick to tell someone there, but I just watched 13k men in mountains with nearly full morale defending against 8k men with no leader + crossing penalty + -3 penalty for terrain just steamroll me. I keep seeing this a lot too and I highlight everything and make sure sliders are full. I keep 3:1 infantry:calv ratios. I'm doing all I can really. Tech should be trivial because we are talking early game. I'm sitting at 300/300/300 monarch points barely so if the AI is that much ahead, I'd love to know where my other 220+ are.

I just can't seem to make any sense of the war engine. It seems like the aggressor always has the advantage, and I don't get any kind of aggression bonus when it's me attacking. I can push 10k (8 infantry 2 calv usually) onto 3-4k that are seigeing against me and get wrecked.. constantly. River crossing bonus sure. That's 1. 10:4 though? I'll throw a guy in a river as sacrifice and chalk him up, but this is probably how fights go 95% of the time.

I've yet to take Aragon as Castile and ended up just quitting 3 Ironman games now because of it. I'd love to know what I was doing wrong but after videos, reading, examining, taking everything into consideration... I just don't get it. Even when I'm defending with their odds and stand on borders with stacks, it's futile. Le dice are borked somewhere and if morale makes THAT much difference at that scale, then why am I getting beat by armies with less forces and lower morale quicker than I can even diminish their morale? oO

What am I missing.

 

[bleakie]

Can you remember the dice rolls? Is it possible that you got doomed by 2 consecutive 0-9 or something? (Although it is extremely unlikely)
I always suspect AI get better dice rolls...

An easy way to avoid stack wipe is to add 1 artillery to every army. Since the artillery is usually placed in the second line, its morale can always survive the first 12 days before you retreat. If the stack wipe still happens with artillery, then maybe a bug is present.

And for the early mil techs, i think mil 4 gives a +0.25 tactics bonus (from +0.50 to +0.75), which can be overwhelming especially with bad dice rolls.

 

[Korashy]

For that Prussia is supposed to be a lucky nation I'm constantly rolling 2 vs 9. If the AI rolls a 9 and maybe has a + 3 shock general better than you and you roll a 0, you'll drop pretty hard if you don't have high morale/discipline.

 

[Andy578]

AI usually gets better rolls and add to that from what i've seen they tend to take moral advisers and tons of arty NAs

 

[blasteg]

I hink it's just that all we remember are bad rolls that destroy the entire war, so we think AI got better rolls.

 

[Letar]

AI usually gets better rolls and add to that from what i've seen they tend to take moral advisers and tons of arty NAs

And where would this information come from (better rolls for AI)?

 

[bleakie]

The lucky nation bonuses are only for the AI. Player controlled countries are being blessed by... being controlled by the player.

 

[Korashy]

The lucky nation bonuses are only for the AI. Player controlled countries are being blessed by... being controlled by the player.

Well that explains the 200 year line of 6/6/5-6 Austrian god monarchs directly descended from jesus and every other prophet himself apparently, while dear old prussia has 3/3/3 averages.

 

[unmerged(668251)]

I could chalk it up to bad dice rolls if the AI didn't constantly head-first into a situation where they were outnumbered and luck was the factor that won it for them. It's like they already knew they were going to roll well.

 

[Telemnor]

It cannot be bad rolls, there is a limit to luck. If I reload, my allies armies are still alive. And they get kicked the same all the time.

We're not even talking about an AI winning every battle, we're talking about an AI utterly destroying, in only one battle of 2 or 3 days, every army it encounters. While, at the same time, the AI doesn't seem to have any factor explaining the fact (no huge tech, no huge general (2 fire, 2 shock, 4 manoeuver), no low maintenance, morale at max etc etc).

That is not working as intended, this is obvious.

Even if the AI had a 9000+ shock general, it wouldn't destroy my army in one very short battle. It'd need a huge fire stat for that, something that it doesn't have in 1548, or two battles (dropping on an army already low on morale).

 

[Maxuli]

A friend of mine was defending against the Aztecs as the Inca, he had <20k troops defending a province against 30k Aztec warriors. The battle is slowly going sour for him (terrain is in Inca's favour), so he brings more troops into the fray, enough to eclipse the Aztecs. The moment the troops arrive, he loses the battle. Shattered retreat. We were puzzled, and thought that this was perhaps some sort of mass panic thing, but maybe a dev or someone more informed could state the problem here?

 

[Gemberkoekje]

If it's 100% reproducable, post the save on the bug subforum

 

[Telemnor]

I would, but how do I find my ironman save? I thought they were only saved on the cloud.

 

[Gemberkoekje]

I would, but how do I find my ironman save? I thought they were only saved on the cloud.

There's a sticky on the bug subforum where to find it.

 

[Carewolf2]

Did you have random lucky nations? Lucky nations get really really nasty bonuses to battles that will tend to wipe you out unless you outnumber them 2-1.