Army Tradition total Nonsense

[Hugh de Salle]

So losing gains you triple the army tradition how utterly absurd is that in reality.

The Roman's dominated the know world because they won , The British and French Dominated the 17th Century , Alexander the Great Kept winning but if they were in a Paradox game?.

History proves what utter BS this game mechanic is.

[Tarshaid]

At what point does gaining army tradition translate into winning? You said it yourself, when you gain lots of tradition from your fights, it's cause you're getting obliterated.

Why is that so? You learn more from your failures than from your successes. That's really all there is to it.

And why your whining about the Roman empire and everything is utterly pointless: if you fight and win a lot of wars and battles, you'll get army tradition through the roof anyway. But you'll have to work for it, don't expect to get to 100 because you successfully stackwiped an OPM.

[Tasty Bunny]

Alexander conquest is about Alexander himself, not military tradition of macedonia. You can do the same ingame. When you got military genius ruler, make him general. Boom=3star general with 0 tradition(minus rng curse)

Rome learned great deal of military code from resounding defeat like Ticino, and many struggling war like Pyrrhic campaign.

Naval supremacy of Great Britain is obtained from it's national naval doctrine and it's long history of naval action, which is perfectly represented by national ambition(naval tradition +1).

Overall, learing many from defeat and little from win is mostly realistic.

[Hugh de Salle]

Originally posted by Tarshaid:

At what point does gaining army tradition translate into winning? You said it yourself, when you gain lots of tradition from your fights, it's cause you're getting obliterated.

Why is that so? You learn more from your failures than from your successes. That's really all there is to it.

And why your whining about the Roman empire and everything is utterly pointless: if you fight and win a lot of wars and battles, you'll get army tradition through the roof anyway. But you'll have to work for it, don't expect to get to 100 because you successfully stackwiped an OPM.

That's not how it works in fact its the opposite their are very few generals who actually learned from losing off the top of my head Scipio and Cromwell , In all honesty Army's make the same mistakes over and over again which makes this mechanic pointless and not realistic.

[reprodukTOOOOOOOOOOOR]

From historical wins you mentioned were achieved by genius tacticians, not army doctrines, once leaders died, you can see the falls of those empires ( macedonia great example ), the only country you could mention is prussia due to their high discipline

[Raider Deci]

Originally posted by Tarshaid:

At what point does gaining army tradition translate into winning?

People that survive. Their experience and knowledge.

When Sweden lost at Poltava in the great nordic war the carolean army-traditions died with that army. Everything that came after were just subpar and worse in comparison.


That is ofcourse not to say that there isnt something to be learn from defeats, there always are.

[IvantheFormidable]

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

That's not how it works in fact its the opposite their are very few generals who actually learned from losing off the top of my head Scipio and Cromwell , In all honesty Army's make the same mistakes over and over again which makes this mechanic pointless and not realistic.

But army tradition isn't attempting to portray individual generals. Armies have, historically, been forced to change and adapt to better fight when their tactics failed them. Sometimes they were able to adjust, and other times they didn't.

To your OP, my suspicion is that you're fighting a smaller country than yourself, which means that you're gaining less army tradition upon winning than you would be if you were fighting someone on an even playing field.

[Hugh de Salle]

Originally posted by IvantheFormidable:

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

That's not how it works in fact its the opposite their are very few generals who actually learned from losing off the top of my head Scipio and Cromwell , In all honesty Army's make the same mistakes over and over again which makes this mechanic pointless and not realistic.

But army tradition isn't attempting to portray individual generals. Armies have, historically, been forced to change and adapt to better fight when their tactics failed them. Sometimes they were able to adjust, and other times they didn't.

To your OP, my suspicion is that you're fighting a smaller country than yourself, which means that you're gaining less army tradition upon winning than you would be if you were fighting someone on an even playing field.

Actually i was Hungary fighting the Ottomans.

Lets count all the Wars where Army tradition counted for nothing

1/ First World War
2/ American Civil War
3/ Second World War
4/ Napoleonic Wars
5/ Hundred Years Wars

In all these wars army's kept making the same mistakes over and over again and while granted some generals would indeed learn from mistakes made it was extremely rare.

Its a proven fact that a winning army gets a huge morale boast compared to a losing army and considering AT gives a morale boast i find it a stupidly thought out mechanic.

[tonypa]

You are making huge simplifications about all these wars you listed. Napoleonic wars or wars in last century had leaps of improvements from the start of the war when compared to the end of the war.

The armies Napoleon fought when he started to command french where totally obsolete compared to the french armies, but at the end all the major powers involved had upgraded their armies to the same level. They absolutely learned a lot from their losses.

Same way you can not seriously compare Soviet armies that were destroyed in 1941 by germans to the armies that took Berlin in 1445. Within couple years Soviet Union upgraded pretty much everything, from the guns and tanks and planes to the way generals sent armies into battle or how and when reserves were used.

In both cases the side that was losing battles (Austria, England, Russia against Napoleon or US, England, Soviet against Germany) managed to learn from their mistake and turn the war around because of that.

[IvantheFormidable]

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

Actually i was Hungary fighting the Ottomans.

Lets count all the Wars where Army tradition counted for nothing

1/ First World War
2/ American Civil War
3/ Second World War
4/ Napoleonic Wars
5/ Hundred Years Wars

In all these wars army's kept making the same mistakes over and over again and while granted some generals would indeed learn from mistakes made it was extremely rare.

Its a proven fact that a winning army gets a huge morale boast compared to a losing army and considering AT gives a morale boast i find it a stupidly thought out mechanic.

I'm not going to go out of my way to break down why your generalization here is misleading, given that at least three of those wars include fairly high profile reassessment of strategies following defeat, but I'm just going to say that so much more goes into winning battles/wars in EU4 that I simply can't understand your outrage at this small mechanic.

If you're losing a war in EU4, I very much doubt that army tradition is the leading cause.

[billy]

you get army tradition a lot quicker by fighting and winning lots of wars than losing. i don't get what the problem is.

the examples you give are exactly what happens with the current system. the people who keep winning have big army tradition and the people who lose get destroyed.

[tonypa]

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

So losing gains you triple the army tradition how utterly absurd is that in reality.

There are really 2 unrelated points about this claim.

1 - It is a matter of gamebalance. Imagine if after every battle winner would become much stronger and loser would be weaker. Now in next battle the loser would lose again because they were wekened again and winner gets another boost. This would very quickly create big cap between countries who are amazing at warfare and countries who are not. Even worse, there is no way to go from being useless to being great.

Instead of boosting the side that is already proving to be stronger by winning the battle, the game attempts to boost losing side because this way the next battle could be more balanced and outcome of the whole war is not based on whoever won very first battle.

It is same reason the game has Revanchism:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Warfare#Revanchism


2 - Now if you think about Army Tradition as a will to become stronger at warfare, a way to learn new ways to improve your equipment, discover better tactics, make use of new technologies. It is not just the will to fight (that is Morale) it is not just about training the soldiers (Discipline), it is mostly about wanting to be better for the next battle.

After the battle the winning side has no reason to change anything they did. They won. They were already better, the best, why would they change anything? Just keep doing whatever they did.

However, the losing side has every reason to completely redesign their whole approach. Perhaps their equipment needs upgrading - research and manufacture better stuff. Maybe their generals were old and blind and stupid - behead them and bring in new generals with better ideas. Overall, the losing side has much more interest to change and improve so in next battle they will have a chance.

And no, this is not about individual soldier taking part in the battle. This is not even about generals commanding the troops. It is about country, a nation as whole.

[Freeman]

In a way this is what happened in napoleonic wars. Boney beat his enemies time and time again - and eventually they learned his tricks, modernized and finally got him. As tonypa pointed out they were forced to change and adapt. Obviously enough it also serves a balance purpose.

Army tradition is a rather brilliant idea: impactful, unique and even historically semi-plausible.

[firestar587]

so your saying the soviet army didn't change at all during WW2?
i would like to see some proof to back up this claim

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

So losing gains you triple the army tradition how utterly absurd is that in reality.

you and i are in a bar fight. one beats the ♥♥♥♥ out of the other. who is more motivated in round 2?

[Hugh de Salle]

Originally posted by tonypa:

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

So losing gains you triple the army tradition how utterly absurd is that in reality.

There are really 2 unrelated points about this claim.

1 - It is a matter of gamebalance. Imagine if after every battle winner would become much stronger and loser would be weaker. Now in next battle the loser would lose again because they were wekened again and winner gets another boost. This would very quickly create big cap between countries who are amazing at warfare and countries who are not. Even worse, there is no way to go from being useless to being great.

Instead of boosting the side that is already proving to be stronger by winning the battle, the game attempts to boost losing side because this way the next battle could be more balanced and outcome of the whole war is not based on whoever won very first battle.

It is same reason the game has Revanchism:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Warfare#Revanchism


2 - Now if you think about Army Tradition as a will to become stronger at warfare, a way to learn new ways to improve your equipment, discover better tactics, make use of new technologies. It is not just the will to fight (that is Morale) it is not just about training the soldiers (Discipline), it is mostly about wanting to be better for the next battle.

After the battle the winning side has no reason to change anything they did. They won. They were already better, the best, why would they change anything? Just keep doing whatever they did.

However, the losing side has every reason to completely redesign their whole approach. Perhaps their equipment needs upgrading - research and manufacture better stuff. Maybe their generals were old and blind and stupid - behead them and bring in new generals with better ideas. Overall, the losing side has much more interest to change and improve so in next battle they will have a chance.

And no, this is not about individual soldier taking part in the battle. This is not even about generals commanding the troops. It is about country, a nation as whole.

Balance issue well their are certainly better ways of doing it.

People talking about adapting to tactics is BS.

Lets ask the French in the Hundred Years War why at Pointers , Crecy , Agencourt why they still charged Knights at an English Longbow line even though they had 60 years to adapt , The only reason why the they stopped was because the English ran out of expert bowmen.

Napoleon in all his wars was only once beaten by a country learning from its mistakes and that was Russia after they lost some 100k men and decided to do a scorched earth policy if it had not been for the late arrival of Blucher at Waterloo well who knows.

Both Army's in the American Civil War were still fighting inferior tactics with superior weapons both sides never learnt how to properly use them or how to adapt to them , One battle sums up the ACW that is Cold Harbour.

Its very rare Armies adapt as has been proven in history, While certain individual's might well change how an army fights like Cromwell's New Model Army or Scipio's Roman army they are the exception to the rule.