ZoC is still a mess

[macd21]

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If that is the case then explain how the Ottomans 80k stack just walked from point A to point B through my fort in Trebizond (and another 10k is in the process of doing the same thing). Because I can guarantee you that there is no way a human player would be able to just blatantly ignore that fort and walk on by while the garrison cheers them on and wishes them a happy journey.

And while we're on the topic of "any special exemptions" for the AI, it seems to me (and please do correct me if I'm wrong because I'm trying to figure out how this insanity works) that if the player takes an enemy AI keep that this keep then doesn't project any ZoC to block the enemy. Whereas if the AI takes one of the players keeps it does project a ZoC.

It's almost as if, and I'll give Pdx the benefit of the doubt and say that this is not the case, this whole thing with forts and ZoC was designed to confuse and annoy the players with rules that half the time dont even seem to make sense and with outcomes that are too hard to predict.

Edit: Infact the state that the "fort system" is in at the moment breaks any sense of immersion and instead of being a tool to be used it feels more like an annoyance that you have to learn to play around.

And no... making the upkeep cheaper or making them give you Army Tradition isn't going to fix the underlying issues with the system.

As Makaramus said, the above works for a player as well as the AI. It's just that players tend not to even try to make a move like this, because it isn't intuitive - we see the fort, assume we can't move through it, and so never tell the army to try to move to point B. The AI doesn't have that problem, because it knows every path available to it.

And no, Paradox are not just doing this to confuse players. It's just a difficult problem. They tried replacing it with a much simpler system a few patches back, but it caused more problems than it solved.

 

[makaramus]

by the way your fort placement is terrible ai can easly walk in that screen almost anywere without occuping forts dont let zone of controls cross between too much

 

[Dingens]

Make forts just block movement from their province into enemy territory. No control over adjacent provinces, you can move freely through every province that has no enemy fort. You can also always move into a fort (for sieging), but out again only either into a neutral or friendly province, or (if none exists) into the one you came from.

Forts can then still be used to block off bottlenecks, to secure key provinces against easy takedown (giving you some time to deploy forces if rebels or enemy stacks appear), or as border security (for a significantly higher investment, as it should be). But this huge mess of having no clue where you can move and how the hell the AI just got where it got is gone. It might be that the rules work as intended right now, but if every few days a new post appears about how there is a bug, maybe the rules are not as clear as necessary.

 

[Taelyn]

as much as you can allways walk between forts you can also allways reach to friendly province even if you are in ZoC
in screen shot you sent Ottoman can't reach from point B to A ever! BUT! they can reach point from A to B because your fort is near their zone
remove trabzon and erzincan forts and replace them with erzurum and there will be no problem

Again: this happened because you can reach to friendly provinces this applies to player too

See, that's something I don't get. It should never, ever happen that you can move from B to A but not A to B. That's absurd. Fixing that would mean adding a check to see if the reverse path is valid and only allowing movement if it is. Troops should not be getting trapped.

There's just too many unintuitive special rules for ZoC.

 

[macd21]

See, that's something I don't get. It should never, ever happen that you can move from B to A but not A to B. That's absurd. Fixing that would mean adding a check to see if the reverse path is valid and only allowing movement if it is. Troops should not be getting trapped.

There's just too many unintuitive special rules for ZoC.

I this case the special rule that allows the movement is that an army can always move to friendly territory. The rule is precisely there to remove instances where armies get trapped. Remove that rule = more trapped armies, not less.

 

[makaramus]

See, that's something I don't get. It should never, ever happen that you can move from B to A but not A to B. That's absurd. Fixing that would mean adding a check to see if the reverse path is valid and only allowing movement if it is. Troops should not be getting trapped.

There's just too many unintuitive special rules for ZoC.

actually it makes sense! you must not move your troops passing forts because you may be cornered in enemy land by doing this.
but your troops can say "guys... we can simply skip this fort! they cant make us stuck here since its our borders."
also rule usually exist there to prevent army trapping as you said

 

[Dingens]

I this case the special rule that allows the movement is that an army can always move to friendly territory. The rule is precisely there to remove instances where armies get trapped. Remove that rule = more trapped armies, not less.

It's a rule that is documented nowhere ingame, outside of trial and error you will never understand why it works like this. Add the mess that begins once multiple ZoC overlap, and you get a maze of bullshit movement rules you can only navigate by pausing, picking your army and trying out where you can go and how the pathing is done to get there. If the ZoC rule requires half a dozen undocumented special rules to reduce unwanted abusable effects, then maybe the original rule is bad.

From a historical point of view there were very few castles or forts that were able to control (in a sense of "can stop an enemy army from passing through") more than their immediate surrounding - mainly being constructed at important river crossings, mountain passes and so forth. Such geographical prerequisites simply don't exist everywhere, so there's no logical explanation how a fort somewhere in the grass land is supposed to inhibit troop movement a hundred miles away from it. If a rule is implemented strictly for gameplay reasons, then it should improve gameplay, not make it worse.

 

[Taelyn]

I this case the special rule that allows the movement is that an army can always move to friendly territory. The rule is precisely there to remove instances where armies get trapped. Remove that rule = more trapped armies, not less.

And yet I had troops trapped in enemy territory unable to enter my territory in the next province over due to a fort in enemy territory. This rule is not true, you cannot always enter friendly territory.

 

[makaramus]

And yet I had troops trapped in enemy territory unable to enter my territory in the next province over due to a fort in enemy territory. This rule is not true, you cannot always enter friendly territory.

if fort is not near friendly terrority you will stuck after that its your fault for letting your army imprisoned by not defending captured fort or not escaping in time while captured fort being recaptured

 

[macd21]

It's a rule that is documented nowhere ingame, outside of trial and error you will never understand why it works like this. Add the mess that begins once multiple ZoC overlap, and you get a maze of bullshit movement rules you can only navigate by pausing, picking your army and trying out where you can go and how the pathing is done to get there. If the ZoC rule requires half a dozen undocumented special rules to reduce unwanted abusable effects, then maybe the original rule is bad.

From a historical point of view there were very few castles or forts that were able to control (in a sense of "can stop an enemy army from passing through") more than their immediate surrounding - mainly being constructed at important river crossings, mountain passes and so forth. Such geographical prerequisites simply don't exist everywhere, so there's no logical explanation how a fort somewhere in the grass land is supposed to inhibit troop movement a hundred miles away from it. If a rule is implemented strictly for gameplay reasons, then it should improve gameplay, not make it worse.

Sure, there should be an explanation somewhere for how ZoC works. It’s certainly confusing. But this doesn’t mean the rules are bad. They’re a complex solution to a complex problem. It’s not like Paradox are intentionally trying to mess with people, it’s just no one has come up with a better system. And before some says ‘why not just *insert-obvious-solution-here,*’ trust me, the Devs have already tried that and found it didn’t work. Either it created problems (like trapped armies) or it simply resulted in bad gameplay (like the fort-per-area patch).

 

[ETAIPOS]

if fort is not near friendly terrority you will stuck after that its your fault for letting your army imprisoned by not defending captured fort or not escaping in time while captured fort being recaptured

Yeah, exactly - especially as AI can move 3 provinces in the time you move 1 and capture the province before you can even reach it.

 

[makaramus]

Yeah, exactly - especially as AI can move 3 provinces in the time you move 1 and capture the province before you can even reach it.

 

[Brynjar]

It's a rule that is documented nowhere ingame, outside of trial and error you will never understand why it works like this.

As is the case with just about every important mechanic in Paradox games, and not unique for the ZoC rules.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

this? extremly simple:You can allways reach to nearby fort. this means if you build fort in every single province then enemy will travel on your entire army without trouble
this is same for you! open cheats give yourself max amount of money. build many forts as you can and switch nation and dow target with full forts. you will see that you can walk on forts with ease

I'm moving through a ZoC fort to a capital fort. If I cancel this move order and try to give it again, the game won't let me.

Let's not be defending the fort rules without knowing the fort rules...and what I've quoted is hard evidence you do not .

 

[VivaStPauli]

as much as you can allways walk between forts you can also allways reach to friendly province even if you are in ZoC
in screen shot you sent Ottoman can't reach from point B to A ever! BUT! they can reach point from A to B because your fort is near their zone
remove trabzon and erzincan forts and replace them with erzurum and there will be no problem

Again: this happened because you can reach to friendly provinces this applies to player too

As Makaramus said, the above works for a player as well as the AI. It's just that players tend not to even try to make a move like this, because it isn't intuitive - we see the fort, assume we can't move through it, and so never tell the army to try to move to point B. The AI doesn't have that problem, because it knows every path available to it.

And no, Paradox are not just doing this to confuse players. It's just a difficult problem. They tried replacing it with a much simpler system a few patches back, but it caused more problems than it solved.

First of all, thanks for the replies and trying to explain how this works. It's going to help me keep my sanity for a few more days (and hopefully place my forts better under the current system).

However I feel like I only got an answer to the first half of my post so I'll try bringing those issues up again:

#1 Taking an enemy AI fort = No ZoC but AI taking a player fort = ZoC?

#2 The system still feels unintuitive and more like something you have to learn to play around instead of another tool in your toolbox.

#3 Lowered upkeep and Army Tradition to try to incentivize the use of forts will not fix the problems with the system, it's like putting make up on a pig.


I would prefer a revamp of the system with much less convoluted rules OR a much more clear UI to help the player understand better how these ZoC's work.

Edit: Well I guess point 2 and 3 are more opinions than issues... just curious to hear why people enjoy this system.

 

[macd21]

I enjoy it because it is, for the most part, fine. Yes, there are weird exceptions, but honestly I just don’t see them come up that much and when they do I just shrug and put it down to the vagaries of war. It’s much, much better than the old system. I’d love it if they’d replace it with something better, but they haven’t been able to do that yet, so I’m content with what we have.

Edit: and it should be noted that they tried to revamp it with a much less convoluted system. Which was then rejected by the players and the current one kept instead.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

#2 The system still feels unintuitive and more like something you have to learn to play around instead of another tool in your toolbox.

Edit: Well I guess point 2 and 3 are more opinions than issues... just curious to hear why people enjoy this system.

I see people make a case it's intuitive or not opaque.

Those same people utterly fail to demonstrate actual knowledge of the mechanic that is supposedly intuitive in the vast majority of cases. The example I used in this thread is egregious but not uncommon.

I enjoy it because it is, for the most part, fine.

Strategy game mechanics that hide/obscure the rules are not fine. For player choices to matter in a strategy game, they need to know the rules and have a reasonable ability to anticipate outcomes based on their decisions regarding the rules.

This is a beta mechanic and it should not have been implemented until it was finished. I do find it strange that players so frequently defend this rule set while not knowing it...

 

[hwoosh]

Sure, there should be an explanation somewhere for how ZoC works. It’s certainly confusing. But this doesn’t mean the rules are bad. They’re a complex solution to a complex problem. It’s not like Paradox are intentionally trying to mess with people, it’s just no one has come up with a better system.

The pre-Common Sense system works just fine. One fort per province, no fort maintenance, and if you wanted to take a province in a peace deal, you had to siege it down. No inscrutable movement rules with bizarre exceptions and edge cases.

 

[macd21]

The pre-Common Sense system works just fine. One fort per province, no fort maintenance, and if you wanted to take a province in a peace deal, you had to siege it down. No inscrutable movement rules with bizarre exceptions and edge cases.

The old system was boring, lacked depth and made it more difficult for small countries to stand up to large ones. The new system is a massive improvement.

 

[Admiral Fischer]

I thought the very existence of this bug was already admitted and documented in the 1.24 patchlog?