There was in ck2 if you looked into it and so could win with a stack of inferior size, they decided not to for ck3 because they streamlined everything
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Why does Paradox keep saying their historical grand strategy games aren't about war?
- Thread starter Adam363
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PDX Grand Strategy games are not about war (except HOI), but since you're ruling a polity, war should be one of the integral pillars of every game. Your economy, ostensibly the point of Vic 3, is heavily affected by wars which you have nearly no control over, which causes no end of issues for the player to have to deal with, many of which are just infuriating. You are held captive by your country’s war AI and RNG.
There were so many ways they could've taken war in this game. I don't mind automation and simplification, but what they've done with war in Vic 3 is probably the worst route they could've taken.
There were so many ways they could've taken war in this game. I don't mind automation and simplification, but what they've done with war in Vic 3 is probably the worst route they could've taken.
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Which was included in my post. How do you strengthen your armies? You stack bonuses. How do you do that? Via RPG mechanics. The only tactic you have in CK2 and 3 is to bait the AI into attacking your mountain defense.
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Its not just about wing commander traits but army comp through mercs and retinues
Why do people repeat this strawman
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Because they play the actual games rather than describing a high powered tactical experience that they don't and never sought to provide.
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They aren't saying every game isn't about war. They're saying these two specific games, their dynasty/interpersonal/role-playing game and their economic/political/societal game, aren't primarily about war. The wargame is obviously still going to be primarily about war. But they're finally truly understanding that some of their games can be about other things too and how to make them focused around those things without other parts getting in the way.
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Not every country is replete with mountains, in game centred on france and England how much will you come across mountain baiting. If you camp in mountains too much you'll get occupied too much and can lose wars that way
Why did you ignore my other point
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Why do you keep bringing up things which are part of my argument as a knock against it?
'mountain baiting isn't all you do in crusader kings 2' = yeah there's river crossing baiting and forest baiting as well as sieging the enemy to 100% once you get enough retinues. It's not chess.
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Its got more working parts than chess. 'river baiting', 'forest baiting', are we going to call everything baiting now?
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Yes, Crusader Kings is a deeper tactical game than chess.
You don't need to reply, because I won't.
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Because they realized what people loved the most about Crusader Kings was the roleplay, events, dynasty management, and crazy stories that happen. Yes, war is an aspect of that, but not the focus.
Because they realized what people loved the most about Victoria was the pop system, economic simulation, the scramble for colonial resources, government management, and spheres of influence. Not war. Yes, war is an aspect of that, but not the focus.
Do both of these games have flaws and lots of room for improvement? Of course. I don't think anyone has every claimed CK3 is the most flavorful game ever invented or that Victoria 3 isn't rough around the edges, especially war.
By seriously, why is it so damn hard for PDX fans to get over the fact that not every single game they are trying to make is a war-focused board game. Also doesn't seem like people understand the difference between war-focused and war existing in the game. EU4 and HoI4 are war-focused. CK3 and V3 are not. Stellaris sits somewhere on the fence.
Because they realized what people loved the most about Victoria was the pop system, economic simulation, the scramble for colonial resources, government management, and spheres of influence. Not war. Yes, war is an aspect of that, but not the focus.
Do both of these games have flaws and lots of room for improvement? Of course. I don't think anyone has every claimed CK3 is the most flavorful game ever invented or that Victoria 3 isn't rough around the edges, especially war.
By seriously, why is it so damn hard for PDX fans to get over the fact that not every single game they are trying to make is a war-focused board game. Also doesn't seem like people understand the difference between war-focused and war existing in the game. EU4 and HoI4 are war-focused. CK3 and V3 are not. Stellaris sits somewhere on the fence.
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War and violence is the final argument. We build nations for certain goals, which most likely will need a forceful resolution. Victoria 3 core economic loop gets stale fast, and enemies, wars, and crisises are things that actually keep you on your toes. A good warfare system is absolutely necessary.
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In Crusader Kings, playing the eugenics portion of the game can result in faster land acquisition then war can ever provide.
Both CK and VICKY have war as a potential tool, this is what they mean by it not having focused on war. It is a tool in the proverbial toolbag of politics, and is not always going to be even a decent solution in these games and can even be a big negative.
In CK, the goal of the game is to expand your dynasty. In Victoria yout goal is based on who can get the best economy. War can both help and hinder in achieving these goals. It is up to the player to figure out how.
Something like Hearts of Iron, the goal is military buildup for winning WW2. So. War is obviously the focus there.
People obviously have preferences for which of these mechanics they prefer to be accentuated. That's why the different game series exist. I don't want every game to be about War. I sometimes want to focus on economics instead, or maybe I want to build the greatest dynasty.
Does the warfare system still need to be good? Yeah, but HOI 4 style warfare along with Vicky economics will lead to feature bloat and the inevitable down sizing of all features to make it manageable. Or them being ignored completely. Something EU 4 is a good example of.
Both CK and VICKY have war as a potential tool, this is what they mean by it not having focused on war. It is a tool in the proverbial toolbag of politics, and is not always going to be even a decent solution in these games and can even be a big negative.
In CK, the goal of the game is to expand your dynasty. In Victoria yout goal is based on who can get the best economy. War can both help and hinder in achieving these goals. It is up to the player to figure out how.
Something like Hearts of Iron, the goal is military buildup for winning WW2. So. War is obviously the focus there.
People obviously have preferences for which of these mechanics they prefer to be accentuated. That's why the different game series exist. I don't want every game to be about War. I sometimes want to focus on economics instead, or maybe I want to build the greatest dynasty.
Does the warfare system still need to be good? Yeah, but HOI 4 style warfare along with Vicky economics will lead to feature bloat and the inevitable down sizing of all features to make it manageable. Or them being ignored completely. Something EU 4 is a good example of.
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tl;dr; Warfare not being the focus, nice. Warfare being neglected, not nice.
I'm really not fond of the war micro in any (older) Pdx title that has it, and I'm all in for automation. But the thing is, while warfare is present, it's not really part of the gameplay. If you think about it, when the Diplomatic Play ends, generals are affected and war starts, you pretty much know who will win -> alliances, technology, supplies, number. It all depends on pre-war actions, there is no real decision making in warfare (except for naval invading the enemy capital).
Warfare not being THE focus is perfectly understandable and there are already other Pdx games where it is the focus, but it got to be A focus, since as it is in the game, it still has an enormous impact on countries and pops. It doesn't need to be at the center of the gameplay, but it must be part of it meaning that you should be able to interact with it. i don't know, give objectives to generals (like taking your claims rather than a meaningless state, or hitting armies bases/weapons factories if it had any impact), select stances with various modifiers like advance speed, kill rate, sparing civils, target supplies, scorched earth, etc... (you kind of have this with late game specialists, but that's not really impactful and unwieldy to say the least, and it's only beginning at tech IV).
The worst part is that there STILL IS MICRO, since you got to babysit your fronts and generals, because a front might break in two, your armies go to one and the enemy go to the other, which means they could make a dramatic unopposed advance, you also got to quickly reassign a general after a successful naval invasion (no it wasn't fixed).
Just look at the graphical representation of it, those sad little encampments shooting at each other... Why not having some small guys shooting at each other, advancing on the map ? Everyone says warfare is not the focus of CK3, yet you still got those really neat little sparing guys. you might think it's just a detail, but I think it's just another sign that warfare was just neglected, and that's hardly defensible.
I'm really not fond of the war micro in any (older) Pdx title that has it, and I'm all in for automation. But the thing is, while warfare is present, it's not really part of the gameplay. If you think about it, when the Diplomatic Play ends, generals are affected and war starts, you pretty much know who will win -> alliances, technology, supplies, number. It all depends on pre-war actions, there is no real decision making in warfare (except for naval invading the enemy capital).
Warfare not being THE focus is perfectly understandable and there are already other Pdx games where it is the focus, but it got to be A focus, since as it is in the game, it still has an enormous impact on countries and pops. It doesn't need to be at the center of the gameplay, but it must be part of it meaning that you should be able to interact with it. i don't know, give objectives to generals (like taking your claims rather than a meaningless state, or hitting armies bases/weapons factories if it had any impact), select stances with various modifiers like advance speed, kill rate, sparing civils, target supplies, scorched earth, etc... (you kind of have this with late game specialists, but that's not really impactful and unwieldy to say the least, and it's only beginning at tech IV).
The worst part is that there STILL IS MICRO, since you got to babysit your fronts and generals, because a front might break in two, your armies go to one and the enemy go to the other, which means they could make a dramatic unopposed advance, you also got to quickly reassign a general after a successful naval invasion (no it wasn't fixed).
Just look at the graphical representation of it, those sad little encampments shooting at each other... Why not having some small guys shooting at each other, advancing on the map ? Everyone says warfare is not the focus of CK3, yet you still got those really neat little sparing guys. you might think it's just a detail, but I think it's just another sign that warfare was just neglected, and that's hardly defensible.
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I think they make each game have a primary focus to make them unique, warfare is a focus & it should be it's just not the primary one.
You'll even find they have their own takes on warfare mechanics.
You'll even find they have their own takes on warfare mechanics.
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I have found that the best way to read the forum since Paradox succumbed to Steam is to first watch Bad Lip Reading so that you're already laughing.
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Yeah it's fine and all that warfare is not the main focus.
But wow, warfare in that game is so objectively terrible, it's this buggy unintuitive RNG mess, and it does require micromanaging generals and fronts. I've had generals just go home once their front in a split front war was won, and ended up losing on multiple split fronts from it because they either dont reinforce or all go to the same place etc, so you have to constantly monitor where they are, while waiting for weird RNG battles. Then I have to keep getting rid of generals because I can't get their armies to replenish no matter what I try. So I have this growing number of reserves with this generals with slowly depleting armies, and there is nothing I can do because you cannot manually assign troops.
They've created this horrible automated system that does not even function properly. It needs fixing at the very least. Warfare doesn't need to be the main focus, but that doesn't excuse it being as bad as it is.
But wow, warfare in that game is so objectively terrible, it's this buggy unintuitive RNG mess, and it does require micromanaging generals and fronts. I've had generals just go home once their front in a split front war was won, and ended up losing on multiple split fronts from it because they either dont reinforce or all go to the same place etc, so you have to constantly monitor where they are, while waiting for weird RNG battles. Then I have to keep getting rid of generals because I can't get their armies to replenish no matter what I try. So I have this growing number of reserves with this generals with slowly depleting armies, and there is nothing I can do because you cannot manually assign troops.
They've created this horrible automated system that does not even function properly. It needs fixing at the very least. Warfare doesn't need to be the main focus, but that doesn't excuse it being as bad as it is.
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Some of these things were fixed in the patches, some are you doing something wrong and not knowing what you're doing (notably the part about "slowly depleting armies", which sounds like you've sent them somewhere where they're attriting to death). Front splitting is better now, though not perfect.
It's quite possible to learn how the system works and win against superior opposition; it's also quite possible to have a good idea in advance how things are going to go and ignore the war to concentrate on building factories. Plenty of people have figured it out. It's not RNG; in fact it's arguably less RNG than EUIV, where a couple of bad rolls in a row can cost you a war.
The main issue with it is how it really, really doesn't explain how it works very well at all (most obviously by presenting misleading numbers of total army strength that led everybody to go "Why is my 89 defence being beaten by their 32 attack!?").
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All of this happened to me yesterday, it is my experience of the current patch, the only patch I have played as I started playing two weeks ago.
The armies die in battles do they not? Could also be attrition. I wasn't paying attention, men die, that's not the issue. The issue was that the armies would never replenish troops, ever. No matter what I did, moving them, leaving them at home where they had replenishments, not during the war, not after, not after several wars, 10 years, etc. To be very clear there were replenished troops waiting in the home region, just sitting there. As the armies lost men to battles or attrition it meant that army was permanently smaller and the only way I could fix it was to fire the general and hire a new one who would take the old soldiers + the replenishments and be back at full strength. Maybe there is another way to make them to add soldiers back into their armies from the replenishments in their home region, but I for the life of me could not get them to do it.
For front splitting, I have had armies abandon fronts and go home in the middle of wars, or the more common one is when more fronts form throughout the war, but as fronts are won all soldiers join ONE front. I have to micro manage fronts, and the myriad of splits, especially in larger wars. Just yesterday one small war against an African nation caused me to take the middle of their country, split it into like 6 different fronts, and then most of my generals went home after winning one or two, causing the nation to snake up the coast because I assumed they would be able to handle that small war. It was so weird. This system just seems bad? Maybe this was worse, as mentioned I started late, but this is my current experience.
Perhaps there are ways to get what appears to be RNG to work in your favour But none of that is intuitive, none of that is explained, and none of it makes sense. Why is a superior and larger army only consistently fighting small battles where their outnumbered enemy outnumbers them enough to actually win, despite being worse? For example why is my army of 500 fighting a bunch of battles against an army of 50 across a massive front line, one battle at a time where each battle is like 5 v 6 to their advantage? Simplified numbers but I hope you get my point. It is such a peculiar system. Why are my troops not fighting with larger numbers? Why are they not pushing through the massively thin enemy lines to take land?
I am no genius when it comes to war in the game, I do plenty wrong, that's fine. Hell it took me a week to realise you could even promote generals, I was so annoyed that army sizes were restricted to 20, and thought surely that cant be right. Part of the learning process, it is what it is. My issue is that the simplified and automated system is unintuitive, frustrating, and inflexible. Tbh I wouldn't really care that the system was simple and automated if none of the above were an issue.
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