War is completely broken in this game

[Gloater]

The way that battles are processed on the front makes no apparent sense. When I outnumber opponents 3 to 1, battles spawn on a front repeatedly where I am outnumbered 5 to 9 or 7 to 10... There doesn't appear to be any way to make the battles actually land in your favor numerically, making battles have an outsized weight on how long battles last in favor of weaker opponents. If you didn't have to watch Britain and France join on opposite sides of ever minor battle in the game, that wouldn't be a big deal. But the way the game plays with the great powers jumping into everything, it makes every war an almost guaranteed bankruptcy unless you try to take very small gains.

[Gloater]

Actually, I want to stress this - the only thing I've seen more broken in a Paradox game is the loyalty system in Imperator Rome. It doesn't make sense that USA can invade Mexico with 600+ troops against 190 (France supporting Mexico) and lose every fight. The fights spawn awkwardly with never more than 10 armies on each side, and they seem to always favor the smaller side. So even when you outnumber your opponent by a massive amount, the odds in the individual fight appear to be a randomized number of less than 10 that favors the defender. Why? Is war functioning properly?

[The Void Boy]

From what I can tell. When you fight on a front, the game does a hidden dice roll to decide how many troops from each side will participate in the battle between a minimum and maximum value. The combat width is a value that's hidden from the player and is decided by the total amount of infrastructure in the state the fight is happening in.

There is also an overstacking penalty. Having too many troops on a small front will result in less land being taken upon winning a battle. This is particularly annoying because the AI always overstacks. I assume the overstacking penalty was put in place so Russia and Great Qing don't roll over everyone with superior numbers.

[Gloater]

France finally bowed out of the war that they were somehow winning every battle in support of Mexico despite being outnumbered 3 to 1. Now Mexico stands alone against USA with 22 armies vs. the US 462 armies. The first battle fought between the two of them was 3 American armies vs. 7 Mexican armies. Mexico won.

This just doesn't appear to actually be functioning properly. How does a battle take 8 weeks when outnumbered 20 to 1, and yet the massive weight of numbers on one side still results in crazy outnumbered fights against the weaker side?

[Doug_Dimmadome]

Originally posted by The Void Boy:

I assume the overstacking penalty was put in place so Russia and Great Qing don't roll over everyone with superior numbers.

So basically remove the one historical advantage either of these two powers had in war?

[BadWizard]

yup 100% agree super broken im done trying this game as of now

[BadWizard]

ill try again in 6 months

[BadWizard]

might as well free some space up on my pc

[salad fork]

It's a strategy game, you have to use your brain. General skills, equipment quality and logistics must all be taken into account. If you try to send 200 thousand troops on a death march through Nevada in 1842 to chase 2 battalions of Mexicans you deserve defeat.

[Oaks]

Here is a helpful guide about warfare:

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

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Gloater:

Actually, I want to stress this - the only thing I've seen more broken in a Paradox game is the loyalty system in Imperator Rome. It doesn't make sense that USA can invade Mexico with 600+ troops against 190 (France supporting Mexico) and lose every fight. The fights spawn awkwardly with never more than 10 armies on each side, and they seem to always favor the smaller side. So even when you outnumber your opponent by a massive amount, the odds in the individual fight appear to be a randomized number of less than 10 that favors the defender. Why? Is war functioning properly?

Nothing wrong with the battle system, it's a huge frontline, you don't expect 600k soldiers to be sitting in the same province leaving everywhere else open, do you?

It's basically the same as hoI4, except players have no direct control, so it's an automatic/spread out frontline, sometimes you engage with more, sometimes you engage with less, if your troops are good enough they should have no problems though, and defense is always easier than attack (unless the generals are of very different quality).

Also, there's this thing called combat width, even the archaic Paradox systems similar to EU had it, you can send a 600k troops doomstack to an area with bad infrastructure and/or terrain, but, at most, 10k men are going to be fighting at any given time.

By the way, of all the things broken at Imperator's Rome release, like mana, lack of features, blandness, the spammy trade system, etc... Loyalty wasn't one of them, that was one of the things the game got right from the start, and one of it's best features as generals could act on their own if they got too powerful and/or the player screwed up.

[The Doctor]

Well done. That really is a very good guide to what's going on under the hood even if it's not all WADS. It seems to cover many of the issues we see raised here where simple numerical superiority is not giving them a result they can understand. Frontage has been a thing in PDS games since EU2 at least as well as has attition in low infrastructure provinces. I sent legions to die horribly in Infra 1 provinces in central Russia in HOI2 and I had clear numerical superiority and my general was a boss. I soon figured it out.

There are clearly some serious issues with the system at the moment but I think part of the problem is a result of people thinking that war really has been 'removed', dumbed down or just reduced to 'my army is bigger thanh yours'. Some folks remain in defiant denial that there is any kind of logistics in this game and also that there is any sophistication in the new system. They're just borked and not as transparent as they should be. Unfortiunately, anger and rage speaks with more authority than does knowledge and reason on these boards.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Originally posted by Gloater:

Actually, I want to stress this - the only thing I've seen more broken in a Paradox game is the loyalty system in Imperator Rome. It doesn't make sense that USA can invade Mexico with 600+ troops against 190 (France supporting Mexico) and lose every fight. The fights spawn awkwardly with never more than 10 armies on each side, and they seem to always favor the smaller side. So even when you outnumber your opponent by a massive amount, the odds in the individual fight appear to be a randomized number of less than 10 that favors the defender. Why? Is war functioning properly?

Nothing wrong with the battle system, it's a huge frontline, you don't expect 600k soldiers to be sitting in the same province leaving everywhere else open, do you?

It's basically the same as hoI4, except players have no direct control, so it's an automatic/spread out frontline, sometimes you engage with more, sometimes you engage with less, if your troops are good enough they should have no problems though, and defense is always easier than attack (unless the generals are of very different quality).

Also, there's this thing called combat width, even the archaic Paradox systems similar to EU had it, you can send a 600k troops doomstack to an area with bad infrastructure and/or terrain, but, at most, 10k men are going to be fighting at any given time.

By the way, of all the things broken at Imperator's Rome release, like mana, lack of features, blandness, the spammy trade system, etc... Loyalty wasn't one of them, that was one of the things the game got right from the start, and one of it's best features as generals could act on their own if they got too powerful and/or the player screwed up.

Oh, and by the way, there are workarounds for the current system.

in HoI4 you can make one huge frontline to stop the enemy, which works exactly like the vic3 system, but you could also overlap that frontline with another one, with the same number of soldiers, but smaller, to push through a specific area while the rest holds a wider area for them, this, unless you consider giving a ton of battalions for a single general (so he can apply all of his mad bonuses to a larger number of soldiers to push through) is something you cannot do in vic3.

What you can do, however, is leave your wide frontline holding back the enemy and then create naval invasions with extra armies to flank around them, if you have big enough navies to transport your armies, creating several frontlines and forcing the enemy to pick the which ones they will reinforce, chances are they won't be able to equally defend them all, one of them is going to create a weak spot and/or have a ♥♥♥♥ general, hell, if you open too many frontlines sometimes they can't even defend some of them at all, leaving their backs wide open for conquest.

[Inquerion]

Originally posted by salad fork:

It's a strategy game, you have to use your brain. General skills, equipment quality and logistics must all be taken into account. If you try to send 200 thousand troops on a death march through Nevada in 1842 to chase 2 battalions of Mexicans you deserve defeat.

All these things don't matter when you get a bad roll. I saw many situations when attacker and defender has similar amount of troops, but defender better equipment/traits and defender would still lose because of RNG.
Enjoy 10vs2 dice roll.

I hated dice rolls (0-9) in V2, it was the worst part of warfare in that game, but here it's even worse.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Inquerion:

Originally posted by salad fork:

It's a strategy game, you have to use your brain. General skills, equipment quality and logistics must all be taken into account. If you try to send 200 thousand troops on a death march through Nevada in 1842 to chase 2 battalions of Mexicans you deserve defeat.

All these things don't matter when you get a bad roll. I saw many situations when attacker and defender has similar amount of troops, but defender better equipment/traits and defender would still lose because of RNG.
Enjoy 10vs2 dice roll.

I hated dice rolls (0-9) in V2, it was the worst part of warfare in that game, but here it's even worse.

I'd say it's worse in the archaic model, as you said, when you roll the minimal result and the enemy rolls the max result you're completely ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

In vic3 RNG plays a role, but unlike the old model wars are not over from a single battle, having one bad roll won't collapse your entire frontline all the way back to the capital, in battles between big states you'll probably have to fight dozens if not hundreds of battles spread out accross multiple frontlines, so the effects of RNG get dilluted.

Also, the numbers of troops on either side are based on a % of the total, so a huge army, even with a terrible roll will always outnumber a smaller army.

Ofc I heard infrastructure also plays a huge role on this but I haven't checked the exact math/mechanics behind it so I won't comment on that.

Still, I don't see what people are complining about, if anything I find the system to be far too predictable as I haven't lost any wars unless I derp and try to take on a huge army, like France, before I even get to superpower status.

Just by having competent generals, decent military equipment, enough convoys to keep your population and army restocked you should be winning basically everything, I mean.

[Nilserrich]

To be honest, I'm a big fan of the new war mechanic in the basic idea. In fact, to the point that I would like to see something like this in a future EU5.

However, there are some (thankfully relatively easy to fix) flaws with the system in this game. For one, incredibly inadequate documentation. People on Reddit had to dig through the files, algorithms, and modifiers of the game data to even comprehend the system and the influences in everything.