How do fronts and battles work?

[Hank the Cow dog]

this is what I've experienced in war from past few games.

War breaks out, I assign a general to the front line tell him to advance.

Enemy has more battalions on that front than I do, OK so I add 2 more generals to that front with the advance order. I now outnumber their battalions.


Battle progress builds, a battle breaks out. A seemingly random quantity of batalions from both sides decide to participate in this battle. The battle goes on. Both sides take casualties, more often than not my attack is repulsed. Because the defender gets an advantage and the random nature of how many batalions got assigned to the battle.


I scroll down and watch the battle resolve. I notice we have the same technology judging by the picture, my units are getting 100% supplied because I have enough convoys.

I inspected the battle details tab, and even when my battalions are on superior technology modes both lines seem to slope downward at the same rate. Making me question the efficacy of teching up my divisions at all.

I inspect the market to confirm I have no shortages of military goods.

And then I loose almost as many battles as I win, the front line doesn't move

I get frustrated and assign an obscene amount of generals and batalions to the front. For some reason this seems to make the random number of batalions entering each battle lean in my favor, and thus I win more battles.


But then I get a pop-up indicating my army is taking high attrition rates, I check the costs of war tab, and I'm suffering litterally 10x losses from attrition than I am in battles. The indicator suggests to resolve this, I change stances of my generals , or remove them from the Frontline.

Both stances offense and defense have the same base attrition 20%

So that doesn't matter.


And I can't remove generals from the front lines, because this reduces the seemingly random number of battalions that get selected for each battle.

So at this point I just accept that inorder to win a war, I have to start construction to max out all my army barracks, and recruit as many generals as it takes to hold all the batalions, and set them all on the front line with the advance order, taking huge attrition. And if I'm lucky the dice might let some of them actually participate in a battle.




Please for the love of victoria, tell me I'm mistaken somewhere and that I'm doing something wrong

[Sir Robin]

My experience playing the Ottomans was almost the same, 200k army from my side against 140k from the side of Egypt, for three years we had small skirmishes and the front didn't budge, I was about to give up when a decisive battle happened with the full stacks from each side participating.

The Egyptian army was wiped out and I lost 150k but I forced them to give up syria and all the territories they held in the levant, now if you ask me why or how I have no idea, I think its just random.

[SirBob]

It seems to partially be related to ( And this may just be me guessing) how promoted your generals are. IF you have a bunch of generals with small stacks they seem to only bring small numbers of troops. IF you have one maxed promotion 5 general he seems to bring bigger stacks.

MAy just be perception though.

The key to cheesing the ai is to open up as many fronts as possible. Its worth it sometimes to fall back a bit on one front and only fight defensively while you advance on another. Remember you regain your own ground on defensive battles. MAke naval invasions, split fronts and you can always hire and fire crappy generals while the war is going. The key is you are always trying to keep the ai off foot. On this end navies are really important. MAke sure all you zone have at least a small navy so you can hire a new general and naval invade a small force. You can split off a small general, delay an enemy on a large front (He will be slowly taking ground) while you assault with your main force somewhere else than turn around and push them back (ON defense mode since you can regain ground on defense). Than leaving a small force where you originally assaulted in defense.

[Bibliophylax]

The game is design for defense, only the last "mobile warfare" units have equal attack and defense stats, for the rest it rely mostly on generals traits i presume. It's unclear how it works exactly for me so far.
I have some weird experiences for exemple:
One balkan war where like 90 regiments where trapped in an encirclement but once the land was taken, those armies were automatically dispatched on other frontlines.
War between russians and kazakhs. I outnumbered them 10 to 1 on the front and was still loosing battles, while taking more than 100k attrition.
not to mention frontlines splitting and generals teleporting back to their HQ, war require much micro management than they intended because the feature is buggy
I avoided war at all cost ever since

[baldrick]

I cannot stand the war system now. Playing as France I just lost the game when a revolution broke out and I could not assign generals to any front.

I don't even agree with the design logic. Yes, in WWI there was a very definite Western Front but in virtually all other geographical locations and times throughout Victorian history wars were fought by columns - monster stacks if you will - marching into enemy territory. The Army of the Potomac. The Army of Northern Virginia. The Army of Retribution. Sherman's March to the Sea. Etc., etc.

[Hank the Cow dog]

Originally posted by Sir Robin:

My experience playing the Ottomans was almost the same, 200k army from my side against 140k from the side of Egypt, for three years we had small skirmishes and the front didn't budge, I was about to give up when a decisive battle happened with the full stacks from each side participating.

The Egyptian army was wiped out and I lost 150k but I forced them to give up syria and all the territories they held in the levant, now if you ask me why or how I have no idea, I think its just random.

this was my concern, this level of abstraction really bugs me if we dont fundementally misunderstand something. I dont see a difference between this, and just flipping a coin to determine if you win the war

[Hank the Cow dog]

Originally posted by Vipic:

It seems to partially be related to ( And this may just be me guessing) how promoted your generals are. IF you have a bunch of generals with small stacks they seem to only bring small numbers of troops. IF you have one maxed promotion 5 general he seems to bring bigger stacks.

MAy just be perception though.

The key to cheesing the ai is to open up as many fronts as possible. Its worth it sometimes to fall back a bit on one front and only fight defensively while you advance on another. Remember you regain your own ground on defensive battles. MAke naval invasions, split fronts and you can always hire and fire crappy generals while the war is going. The key is you are always trying to keep the ai off foot. On this end navies are really important. MAke sure all you zone have at least a small navy so you can hire a new general and naval invade a small force. You can split off a small general, delay an enemy on a large front (He will be slowly taking ground) while you assault with your main force somewhere else than turn around and push them back (ON defense mode since you can regain ground on defense). Than leaving a small force where you originally assaulted in defense.

this is interesting i need to investigate this, i always max out all of my generals becuase its basically free, and it just increases their number of max troops.

(possibly this is what im doing wrong)

maybe your only supposed to have one high ranking guy?

[Hank the Cow dog]

Originally posted by Bibliophylax:

The game is design for defense, only the last "mobile warfare" units have equal attack and defense stats, for the rest it rely mostly on generals traits i presume. It's unclear how it works exactly for me so far.
I have some weird experiences for exemple:
One balkan war where like 90 regiments where trapped in an encirclement but once the land was taken, those armies were automatically dispatched on other frontlines.
War between russians and kazakhs. I outnumbered them 10 to 1 on the front and was still loosing battles, while taking more than 100k attrition.
not to mention frontlines splitting and generals teleporting back to their HQ, war require much micro management than they intended because the feature is buggy
I avoided war at all cost ever since

I have also observed this, if an encirclement occurs there is no penalty for it, if a front breaks the units at the front teleport to another front, or back to your home country. in which case you have to reassign them back to the front.

which isnt exxactly microing anything but is incredibly annoying.

I find myself spending the same amount of time managing this mechanich, as i would actually managing units

[Hank the Cow dog]

Originally posted by baldrick:

I cannot stand the war system now. Playing as France I just lost the game when a revolution broke out and I could not assign generals to any front.

I don't even agree with the design logic. Yes, in WWI there was a very definite Western Front but in virtually all other geographical locations and times throughout Victorian history wars were fought by columns - monster stacks if you will - marching into enemy territory. The Army of the Potomac. The Army of Northern Virginia. The Army of Retribution. Sherman's March to the Sea. Etc., etc.

yeah slightly tangential but ive noticed the USA seems perticularly broken atm

my last game they just never banned slavery, and never had a war. it was the 1900s and there where still slaves out in the feilds.

the game before that new york, iowa,ohio jersey penselvania ,maaryland massachusets connecticut and vermont all joined the confederacy

with florida and south carolina staying in the union.


neither of these games was the US able to defeat mexico for manifest destiny

dont get me wrong, i like the focus on more dynamic play, and not making things be completely railroaded. but this is just rediculous lol

[DENTist]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2882620591

[Hank the Cow dog]

• If the attacking troops have average offense higher than the defenders' average defense, then the defenders multiply their baseline by a random value between 1 and 3 that's also limited by how big the difference in stats is:
  
  
• If the attacking troops have average offense lower than the defenders' average defense, then the attackers multiply their baseline in a similar way, but limited to 2 instead of 3:
  
  
• These multipliers can't increase the number of troops beyond the number available on the front. On the attacking side, this cap doesn't include troops under generals set to "Defend Front".
  Finally, the attacker's number of troops is reduced to a random value between 33% and 100% of the previously-calculated amount, and the defender's total is reduced to between 50% and 100% of the previously-calculated amount.

nice that seems to be the answer!

and unfortunatly it seems to confirm its totally random, just send your units and pray they roll well

[Midas]

This is half true. A general that has a defensice personality, is bedder defensivly used...an offensive planer in an offensive war. If an offensive general is in charge, he uses also troops he can grab from other generals at his frontline. So look at your generals, if you get one that is defensive oriented, us him to stall an offense by the enemy so he gets the defense fight, an offensive general vis a verse