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CapnAndy posted:How did he win going pure defensive? The game rapped my knuckles for me on Denmark even though I machine-gunned some 200,000 Frenchmen, because I never won an offensive battle. As ThatBasqueGuy and Mandoric said, there are ways to cheese the AI. Basically, find an area that has low infrastructure so the maximum combat width is small (combat width is the maximum number of units that can be engaged on either side at any given time). Now, sit on defense and because defense stats are usually higher than offense this will make it more likely for you to win the battle. Next, wait until the enemy have broken themselves on your lines over and over. Then eventually, once the enemy units are so smashed as to be ineffective, switch to offense. The game has a habit of committing the same units to subsequent fights in the area and the rate at which units recover manpower and morale after a defeat is usually lower than the time between one battle ending and a new battle starting. This means that once a side starts winning on any given front it tends to keep winning (and vice versa for losing). In the case of the LP I was talking about Da9L won by basically 'reverse Isonzo'ing' the Austrians at the Sound until Austria tapped out of the war and then he took Denmark. It really should not have worked, but sometimes the game breaks down in ways that help the player. I have no idea why the Austrian AI didn't just naval invade Stockholm because that would've ended things almost immediately. Or just pull the units and put a new general in between battles. The AI has a tendency to dump hundreds of units in fronts that can't support them and then just eating insane attrition from doing so. This can be pretty frustrating when you're in South America or SE Asia and you have fight 300,000 Russian peasant levies that somehow materialized out of the Borneo jungle or the Pacific side of the Andes Mountains.
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Jul 31, 2023 07:41
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Yeah, warscore can also be deceptive when allies get pulled in because it's not the only mechanism by which they can flake. Dropping it to -100 lets the player force the matter, but occasionally the AI will just decide that it doesn't really care that much (especially if it ends up entangled in a different play) and abandon your original target.
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Jul 31, 2023 07:48
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I'll note that there's not *zero* cost to keeping slack industry capacity. You still have to pay for the infrastructure regardless if the factory is at full or zero employment. This can be pretty noticeable in nations that are struggling to catch up industrially. Took a step into modding - i'm amping up the effects of battle conditions by 2-3x to increase the randomness of battle outcomes. Looking at the files, the Battle Conditions system is a little more complicated than I thought - you can have a condition heavily increase the odds of leading into another condition. For example, "Charted Terrain" and "Camouflaged" have a 2x multiplier for leading into "Dug In". So theoretically you could have a "Charge!" condition that has good odds of leading into a "Melee" condition.
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Jul 31, 2023 22:46
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Banemaster posted:From couple pages back, but I would guess that those Clerk Qualifications are held by upper class Pops who aren't actually willing to become Clerks as long as they are employed at their current jobs. It might be that, but then wouldn't I get the message saying that? Like "unable to hire because the clerks are unwilling to accept this building's wage"? Or does that not show up if the pops aren't already clerks yet? In any case, still pretty frustrating. Another thing that's frustrating is that new buildings sometimes set their wages unreasonably high or low, and then take forever to reach either full employment or solvency.
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Aug 1, 2023 00:13
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:Took a step into modding - i'm amping up the effects of battle conditions by 2-3x to increase the randomness of battle outcomes. Looking at the files, the Battle Conditions system is a little more complicated than I thought - you can have a condition heavily increase the odds of leading into another condition. For example, "Charted Terrain" and "Camouflaged" have a 2x multiplier for leading into "Dug In". So theoretically you could have a "Charge!" condition that has good odds of leading into a "Melee" condition. I appreciate the complexity of a simulation, but it's a little bit silly and just a computer having fun with numbers. You have very little control over the battle condition but that in itself is OK, I guess, you can send a mountain expert into the mountains and hope for a higher chance of ambush or something. But then if that ambush creates a higher chance of camouflaged or something - it's all so far away from user input it's just digital noise. Made more sense in a more military-oriented game where you'd closely follow battles and decide on possible changes, but even then these mechanics should have been exposed.
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Aug 1, 2023 09:23
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The Battle system is obviously placeholder and yeah it's very annoying. The war splitting into a dozen different fronts and back happens pretty often.
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Aug 1, 2023 09:52
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I'm just happy to have a modern paradox game so focused on economy and infrastructure that the military aspect ended up an afterthought.
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Aug 1, 2023 12:05
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i really like the battles themselves, though the front splitting stuff is infuriating, i find the conditions usually just make it easier to envision how the battle progresses in a narrative sense instead of anything you'd game
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Aug 1, 2023 15:32
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Kulkasha posted:I'm just happy to have a modern paradox game so focused on economy and infrastructure that the military aspect ended up an afterthought. Didn't you know history only happens when people kill other people? Everything else before and after everyone is in a state of suspended animation until the killing starts again! Maybe some Great Man saying or doing something might be important here and there, but don't count on it. In seriousness, hard same, I'm glad Modern Marvels: The Game is out, and I can't wait until 1.5 drops.
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Aug 1, 2023 17:31
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TwoQuestions posted:Didn't you know history only happens when people kill other people? Everything else before and after everyone is in a state of suspended animation until the killing starts again! Maybe some Great Man saying or doing something might be important here and there, but don't count on it.
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Aug 1, 2023 19:00
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I think I'd basically like the war system outside of a couple of problems that end up being huge. Fronts is the biggest one. The fact that allies can fling their armies halfway around the world at 0 effort is another annoyance. Naval war is completely bewildering. And, I kinda get that battles are being decided by tactics modifiers, probably, but it still annoys the hell out of me when I have some, like, fifty attack unit against a 35 attack unit that's just getting slaughtered for some reason and I can't work out why.
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Aug 1, 2023 20:36
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spectralent posted:I think I'd basically like the war system outside of a couple of problems that end up being huge. Fronts is the biggest one. The fact that allies can fling their armies halfway around the world at 0 effort is another annoyance. Naval war is completely bewildering. And, I kinda get that battles are being decided by tactics modifiers, probably, but it still annoys the hell out of me when I have some, like, fifty attack unit against a 35 attack unit that's just getting slaughtered for some reason and I can't work out why. Along with allies going across the world, it feels like the AI is just way too willing to turn a random colonial thing into a hellwar =involving half of Europe for no reason.
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Aug 1, 2023 20:47
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Gorelab posted:Along with allies going across the world, it feels like the AI is just way too willing to turn a random colonial thing into a hellwar =involving half of Europe for no reason.
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Aug 1, 2023 20:49
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CapnAndy posted:In a game meant to simulate 1836-1936? You don't say. this only happened once in that period towards the end
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Aug 1, 2023 20:53
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VostokProgram posted:this only happened once in that period towards the end
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Aug 1, 2023 21:05
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I mean like more it feels like European powers are way too willing to get called into essentially fighting to the death for African and Asian minors. Sometimes when they can't actually get units either to you or them, and sometimes when you actually have good relations with them. Some hellwars are fine, but in general the play system I think has them too willing to jump on everything.
Gorelab fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 1, 2023 21:07
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CapnAndy posted:But, like... you get that it was a total coincidence that it happened there, but it was absolutely going to happen? Europe was a tinderbox and the next minor colonial flare-up, whatever or wherever it was, was going to set the whole thing ablaze. There were many, many, many little disputes that did not bubble up to the scale of WW1. I agree that this should happen, especially towards the end of the game. But it should be balanced such that most games only have a few total wars between all the great powers at the end, rather than every single play turning into one. Also part of the problem is that the militaries are too powerful for most of the game. If you are at war with Russia you can drop troops on St Petersburg and then occupy huge swathes of territory. The game just can't represent something like the Crimean War.
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Aug 1, 2023 21:20
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Gorelab posted:I mean like more it feels like European powers are way too willing to get called into essentially fighting to the deal for African and Asian minors. Sometimes when they can't actually get units either to you or them, and sometimes when you actually have good relations with them. Some hellwars are fine, but in general the play system I think has them too willing to jump on everything. My most recent Turkestan run had Austria-Hungary side with the Heavenly Kingdom and Prussia back up Qing, with the end result that the fate of China was decided primarily in Germany.
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Aug 1, 2023 21:31
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VostokProgram posted:There were many, many, many little disputes that did not bubble up to the scale of WW1. You could also get a system in where your pops are radicalized by excess war casualties, so if you go marching off to some silly colonial dispute and some 300,000 men don't march back home, the people are gonna start thinking maybe they need a different system of government.
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Aug 1, 2023 21:49
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What I do like about the war system is how for a lot of objectives you can capture a handful of land then park your armies on the defensive until they surrender. But yes less fronts shifting plz
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Aug 1, 2023 21:55
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Yeah, I don't really mind it happening sometimes, but I do mind that, for instance, Austria, a country that's essentially landlocked and barely interacts with me, will happily throw it's entire army inexplicably into indochina to back a siamese independence play from Qing vassalage. Which then generates like seven fronts somehow and forces me to mobilise about eight generals to deal with it.
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Aug 1, 2023 22:53
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Yeah, that's really the problem, not the whole WW1 thing with entangled alliances and colonial interests. This is "we have a mild interest in this region so we're going to commit our entire military to backing Bumfuckistan in their border conflict with Nowheresville, based entirely on a coin flip."
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Aug 1, 2023 23:05
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Maybe that's a good way to work things out, "minor" or "major" interests. Minor for "I just want to trade stuff from/to here", Major for "It's Imperialism Time"
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Aug 1, 2023 23:11
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Like, I do like that you could get World War 0.5 blowing up over a treaty of alliance Britain signed with an unrecognised state to force them into their customs union so they could milk them for all the rubber they're worth which is right on the border of France's new pet colonial project, but it's possibly batshit that the Ottomans are trying to invade the home islands because they have an interest in madagascar too and just sort of felt like it.
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Aug 1, 2023 23:27
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The game probably does need a mechanical seperation between a 'colonial war' and a hellwar for the GPs, maybe one that breaks down with lategame techs and where taking too many casualties is no bueno even though you can support it. IIRC the next patch will have AIs less interested in taking sides against another GP in conflicts against unrecognized powers, unless there's a specific reason like being a protectorate. Also IIRC they're working on some pretty significant revisions to the military/fronts system, where 'armies' are gonna be a thing, fronts will naturally conjoin (sortof), and large enough fronts (conjoined or otherwise) can support multiple battles. spectralent posted:I think I'd basically like the war system outside of a couple of problems that end up being huge. Fronts is the biggest one. The fact that allies can fling their armies halfway around the world at 0 effort is another annoyance. Naval war is completely bewildering. And, I kinda get that battles are being decided by tactics modifiers, probably, but it still annoys the hell out of me when I have some, like, fifty attack unit against a 35 attack unit that's just getting slaughtered for some reason and I can't work out why. Often the reason is that although the game prefers to display Battalions, it's actually the number of men that matters. if you have 50 battalions going up against 50 battalions, but your battalions are at 50% strength you're probably just hosed. TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Aug 1, 2023 |
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Aug 1, 2023 23:38
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I also hope we get a generals screen revision because clicking non stop to promote a bunch of generals is ugh
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Aug 2, 2023 00:05
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Pop history teleology of World War I aside, there’s also a big difference between a regional crisis in 1914 sparking a hellwar where the great powers fight to decide who gets to redraw the borders of Europe, and
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Aug 2, 2023 00:13
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Which just once again points to the game screaming for the need to have a great war mechanic and a post-war conference setup for sufficiently bloody/large scale conflicts
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Aug 2, 2023 00:21
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Imo have wargoals and theater determine the max amount of troops you can mobilize so a gp helping it's protectorate has less soldiers involved than going balls deep into a general European conflict as a European nationsl
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Aug 2, 2023 01:12
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ilitarist posted:I appreciate the complexity of a simulation, but it's a little bit silly and just a computer having fun with numbers. You have very little control over the battle condition but that in itself is OK, I guess, you can send a mountain expert into the mountains and hope for a higher chance of ambush or something. But then if that ambush creates a higher chance of camouflaged or something - it's all so far away from user input it's just digital noise. Made more sense in a more military-oriented game where you'd closely follow battles and decide on possible changes, but even then these mechanics should have been exposed. IMO, the enhanced chance to be followed by x is probably a way to have "critical hits" so to speak without blowing open the internal logic of the combat cycle--two rounds of 25% buffs rather than one round of 50%+, so that if you roll it during an undecided battle you get the full benefit but during the last few days of bleeding out you don't get regular Pavlov's Houses. As for the willingness of great powers to jump into a world war over "nothing", I think it needs to be viewed from several angles. The first is that the era has to have some transitionality from late EU era warfare if the Concert breaks down, and into WW1 style precarity on the other end--remember, we're only eighty years on from a single platoon led by a fresh-from-academy Washington getting into an unauthorized firefight over a trading-post site and kicking off, well,  The second is that due to deficiencies in the warscore system, hellwars are not precisely hellwars; no more can be gained or lost from them than the initial goals, and each tag has a hard timer of a year before score reaches 0 and the smallest movement of the front makes the result near-inevitable. It pays, in other words, to against an equally-matched foe gamble that you will have the first offensive victory after the first anniversary and get anything you want that isn't immediate annexation, especially as the AI is very unlikely to set goals as lofty as you do unless you're over 100 bad boy points. The third is that due to the flow-not-stocks implementation of the economic system, wars are probably less immediately costly (and thus harder to value) than they should be; the exponentially-compounding population loss can definitely hurt smaller powers if they're not taking land (though between the AI's poor development and the huge populations of many GPs, it's rare to not find an excess), but as an immediate effect each div simply consumes 1.6x or 1.4x its peacetime allocation of goods. The AI also doesn't appear to consider at all how much of their flows are from trade partners who will cut them off, see the "go ham into exporting cheap arms and then map-paint against nothing but irregulars" strat. The fourth is that intervention in a going war is impossible under the system's rules. I feel like you could produce something much more like historical by simply having infamy from goals within Europe in most circumstances spike harder and decay faster, such that you should expect everyone with a land border to any direct participant you haven't specifically buttered up piling in for a Cut Down to Size+Humiliation+Regime Change counter-goal. The meat is in tailoring those circumstances to allow for things like the Franco-Prussian War. The ability to add or expand goals at certain checkpoints, and probably to adopt a more standard warscore calculus for territorial goals between equal-tiered powers, might help too, though those have a lot of other implications.
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Aug 2, 2023 02:22
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i don't think it necessarily makes sense to limit deployment by wargoal or anything like that, feels a bit artificial, but it should probably be much harder to deploy troops at high distances from their HQ at low tech or without enough navy or w/e, and if you do manage to get a bunch of troops halfway across the world for a piddly little war, losing them in any significant numbers should generate a ton of radicals. people like imperialism until their boys come home in coffins, then things start to get dicey unless the domestic political situation is rock solid
Jazerus fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 02:37
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Yeah I feel like the main issue is the ability to deploy troops far from your capitol and also to defend territory. One reason naval invasions are so effective is because there's basically no way to defend stuff on your side. Also, naval combat and navies in general are a total mess right now. If any part of the war system needs fixing first it's the naval game - which, given the time period and name of the game, should probably be just as if not more important than army stuff. There's also issues with land based deployment. Historically, the USA and Russia had issues moving their armies across what was ostensibly their own states just because of the lack of infrastructure. Fortunately, I think the last dev dairy said that they were looking at the naval game.
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Aug 2, 2023 03:13
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As far as I can tell, having a coastal capitol is a liability. When I played Russia, one of the first things I did was move the capitol back to Moscow. As the US it seems to make sense to move it to Ohio or something. also as the US it was frustrating that I couldn't organize the world's fair without moving my capitol as it seemed to be impossible to get any appreciable number of people to move to DC.
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Aug 2, 2023 06:04
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I have only ever understood what the gently caress is happening with navies when I was sweden and had an enormous navy I just stuck on every dot remotely near the baltic and that seemed to basically just work, but I was still losing convoys somehow. I did see that there's now a "convoy screening" effect where your losses aren't as bad.
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Aug 3, 2023 00:41
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Having played a bit more, I think the thing to do to protect your convoys is to just know where the majority of them are travelling to. Like as the Ottomans I had a completely contiguous empire except for a small colony in West Africa that would get isolated by raiding every war. If I selected "protect convoys" and then that colony, I got a fair amount of intercepts. gently caress knows what you're meant to do if you have the British empire or a lot of overseas trade.
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Aug 3, 2023 08:49
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Maybe it'd be good to have conflicts that are initiated across power ranks start off with limiting how many battalions the greater powers can deploy, regardless of which side the power is intervening on. Then, if there are greater powers intervening on both sides, they could have the opportunity of escalating things upwards, allowing for a chance to add more war goals, involve more powers, and deploy more troops, while also risking greater devastation and their opponents doing the same.
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Aug 3, 2023 20:45
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Arbitrary restrictions are probably the easiest way to do it, because it'd be pretty tough to model how hard logistics were for any significant number of troops. It's not just overseas stuff. Like, historically speaking Khiva in Central Asia held out until 1873 because of how difficult it was to assemble the logistics to attack it - it was basically an oasis surrounded by a huge tundra desert. There was one dude who insisted that you could do it in winter because the troops could drink the snow, and, uh, well, that didn't go well. It took the Russians at least 30 years of pushing in borders, building up logistics and mapping waterholes before they managed to successfully attack Khiva, and even that only ended up supporting about 10,000 dudes. But ingame you can just splatter all of Central Asia immediately in 1836 with 50,000 soldiers and theres not much the defenders can do about it.
TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Aug 4, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 23:46
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Supply limits might just be something that needs to be ported over from EU4. Give modifiers for terrain, infrastructure, and military techs. Canning most notably, but others too. And probably a further modifier for malaria too while we're at it. It should be almost impossible to invade most of the African states and huge chunks of Asia at the game start. But whatever, this is just another idea for the pile, V3 has a whole host of things that are 'for the future'.
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Aug 4, 2023 00:00
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Vagabong posted:Maybe it'd be good to have conflicts that are initiated across power ranks start off with limiting how many battalions the greater powers can deploy, regardless of which side the power is intervening on. Then, if there are greater powers intervening on both sides, they could have the opportunity of escalating things upwards, allowing for a chance to add more war goals, involve more powers, and deploy more troops, while also risking greater devastation and their opponents doing the same. Yeah progressive escalation would be good. I would also like to see some real mechanics for horse trading between equal powers. We won't colonize here if you won't colonize there, territory exchange (probably for unincorporated states only). Also deploying an army far from its HQ region should be a much bigger cost. Perhaps even a hard cap based on technology, convoys and infrastructure. But this should be communicated very clearly, and it probably requires being able to freely reallocate brigades between your generals.
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Aug 4, 2023 00:10
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Ithle01 posted:Supply limits might just be something that needs to be ported over from EU4. Give modifiers for terrain, infrastructure, and military techs. Canning most notably, but others too. And probably a further modifier for malaria too while we're at it. It should be almost impossible to invade most of the African states and huge chunks of Asia at the game start. But whatever, this is just another idea for the pile, V3 has a whole host of things that are 'for the future'. You could have an "out of theatre" thing where troops start requiring groceries instead of like, grain, to represent the fact they're fuckin' miles away.
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Aug 4, 2023 16:59
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