Thoughts about Warfare

[Caradryan]

So I've been thinking about different ways how warfare in this game could be fixed, because I believe most of the player base would agree that the warfare system is so problematic that it essentially needs to be quite literally "fixed". I would love to see the ideas from this community for what would really make warfare in Victoria 3 interesting and not just a chore. Thus the developers will get a good picture of what people actually want for this game that has limitless potential.

Now first of all, I believe the addition of actual armies to the game, that can be named, assigned and customized, was a great leap in the right direction, albeit being something that feels like an absolute necessity, not just an improvement. It won't fix the whole thing, but it's a start. Next, the elephant in the room: frontlines. I don't think I need to say much about this. Both the player base and the devs likely have a good picture of how this needs to be fixed, since it's quite broken. Splitting frontlines and generals irresponsibly leaving them etc.

It seems obvious that Paradox will stick to the chosen concept of quite autonomous frontlines and not revamp the entire system, which is fine as long as the system is greatly improved to be more intriguing. So for my first idea: what if we kept the concept of generals having frontline stances and making autonomous battle decisions BUT we also added a concept of player controlled offensives? At the moment, you can only control a generals direction by assigning a strategic objective, which is a small improvement, but not really ground breaking. What if a player could choose to draw up a battle plan for a selected number of provinces, or an area, and let it be planned by the general, similar to hoi4? Then, when the time is right, the offensive would be launched by the player, or ai if the control is given to it by a player that wants to focus on other things to manage than the war effort. The player would be responsible of selecting an army for the offensive, and a general to lead it, but thereafter, the general would be in control of conducting the actual offensive, with the current battle system, optimally with improvements to it. This would give a more realistic feel to how warfare was conducted in the game's time frame, and still today, and it could give a greater significance to individual battles, armies, generals, and war score.

Regarding war score, i was thinking the "offensives" should have a great impact on the warscore, since the outcome of individual battles have always played a major role in the coutcome of a war. An offensive in Victoria 3 could have different rewards for the player dependent on the success of it. It could be tremendously successful, giving the player starting it a good amount of warscore, or a devastating failure, impacting the player's warscore negatively, while giving the opponent a matching amount of warscore for a successful defense. How would the offensive be concluded? It could for example be given a specific time frame, like how offensives are expected to reach their goals in a given time frame in real wars. If the time frame is of the player's choice, different amounts of war score and/or prestige could be granted depending on how ambitious the goals of the offensive are, in relation to the time frame. it may, for instance, be a bit too ambitious to expect a Prussian breakthrough to Paris within the first month of a war (or not - it is the Prussians after all). Raising the stakes of an offensive could also include committing more armies to it as it progresses, or gradually fails. This should be important both for the attacker, and for the defeder. Are you really willing to commit another army from another part of the front, in order to strengthen your offensive? This could leave you vulnerable to an unexpected offensive from the defender on your weakened part of the front line.

The entire war cannot be decided solely by individual offensives though, right? I agree. Therefore, what if we kept the current autonomous battle generation all along the frontline, but scaled these battles down to resemble the minor skirmishes and clashes that naturally happen along a frontline, and do not develop into large battles, relying on important goals of a major offensive? I believe this would reflect the dynamics of war in a more complete and intriguing way.

I've talked a lot about armies, but not navies. I'm sorry, it is just as big of a problem at its current state, possibly even worse. But I don't have many ideas for that yet. I believe much could be fixed by simply adding navies to the map in the same way as in any other Paradox game, making them visible, making them feeling impactful, and glorious. Not just like buildings sailing off to randomly fight at sea, needing to be repaired every now and then.

I would greatly appreciate some feedback on this. What do you all think? Could this be a way to make warfare more interesting? And would it work? I obviously have no experience with game development, but thiese are just some things that I, from a player perspective, would make me play this game over and over and over again. Flavour for the nations is very important, but I believe that will be fixed gradually, and with mods. Warfare however, does not appear to be highly moddable, and remains one of the most pressing issues of this beautiful game at the moment.

[D-Black Catto]

tl;dr but here is what I'd like the most:

just let us give orders to many armies at once so we won't have to micromanage them so much late game. assign multiple armies to a front, give mobilization options to multiple armies at once, give orders to multiple generals at once instead of having to click their portraits individually to tell them to advance the front or defend.....

really, just some quality of life stuff to reduce the tedium once you have dozens of armies and fight on multiple fronts. and this will get even worse after the new dlc as they will make it possible to join wars while already fighting wars.

[Fatbill]

Everyone who ever played this game knows how profoundly broken the war system is.

PDX knows better than anyone, they made it.

They simply don't care. Mostly because "Vic 3 is not a war game" as devs have stated before.

Don't expect this to change.

[6ap6apblckaAa]

I'm one of people that are ok with the simplified system because indeed I'm not for the wargame. But the amount of bugs and inconveniences is too much here. I even prefer the system of 1.4 because of much less bugs.

[Karlack26]

They dont need to reinvent the wheel, bring in some of HOI IV mechanics. Like divisions and divisions templates ,similar requirements to field them, similar recruitment mechanics and order of battle. This is era when divisions became a thing.
Some teaks, Give us control over the regiments within a division, giving them different task or front lines.
example assign set up one division for colonial defence it has it HQ in one territory then can you deploy the individual regiments to other colonies in the regions.

[Fatbill]

Originally posted by Karlack26:

They dont need to reinvent the wheel, bring in some of HOI IV mechanics. Like divisions and divisions templates ,similar requirements to field them, similar recruitment mechanics and order of battle. This is era when divisions became a thing.
Some teaks, Give us control over the regiments within a division, giving them different task or front lines.
example assign set up one division for colonial defence it has it HQ in one territory then can you deploy the individual regiments to other colonies in the regions.

The war wheels they put on Vic3 are square.

Better to chop them off and start over.

[hannibal_pjv]

HOI4 style does not suit this game... I would move this game to war game what it is not and has never been.
Victoria is economy simulation in basic. Everything else is addon. When we consider the time period, this game needs battle system. but not like HOI4 for many reasons... AI suck in HOI4 type battle system... So it needs to be simpler just for that. The current system with more control, could be the ansver... Hard to say.

[Damedius]

Originally posted by Fatbill:

They simply don't care. Mostly because "Vic 3 is not a war game" as devs have stated before.

That's just an excuse. HoI4 is a war game. It's warfare has been broken since launch and hasn't been fixed. It's either programmed that way on purpose or they are unable to fix it or they don't care to fix it.

I'm guessing that is because most Paradox games are so complex, most people don't realise how flawed some of the systems in the games/the AI are. So they probably decide at a certain point that the cost to fix/improve certain systems outweigh the return on those efforts. In other words it's much more profitable to churn out DLC, than it is to fix/ improve existing areas of the game.

[Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero]

Instead of frontlines, I feel like states should have a presence / projection bonus that influences outcomes like supply, combat width, etc, and could be done similar to how colonization is represented

I.E lets pretend we have physical standing armies like Vic 2, hanging in the home territory in europe, pretend we're Great Britain circa like, 1900's. Our presence and projecting in our home territories like England and Scotland might be solid, while in maybe Ireland there may be contested area's where state presence or authority isn't really recognized anymore, and their is a failure to project power to back that authority up without security forces like an army garrisoning the province or something.

Look at different north american conflicts like 1812, or smaller conflicts in the Canadian frontier like 1885, where forces involved were quite 'small' in terms of a military force and the clashing, but because of the vastness of the frontier as well, that standing army still only 'projected' so much and a lot of power hung in the balance even maneuvering and getting an army to the frontier to quell resistance, even if the fighting itself was basically non-existent or there weren't many pitched battles.

I think 'projection' could basically replace the frontline system as being like, here are the functional limits of the states ability to project power, get supply around, etc, and players are still free to move real army units / stacks themselves and the projection will react as such with territories captured, etc.

Where a similarity to colonization could come in is that tech, improvements, military buildings, physical armies etc in a province can also boost and project that power to also simulate better the development of these frontier like territories and so on, or how a state consolidates an unruly province back in Europe or something too, or likewise to simulate as well a states inability to project power in a colony similarly and contribute to it's revolting.

For all it's flaws, colonization in vic 3 is one of the few things I think the game at least delivered something newish, I like that states aren't merely 'empty' but have decentralized nations or groups on them and that colonization is a slow spread or presence, and similarily think another layer can be added on to that, being that yes you might have claim or general 'presence' in a territory, but you might not actually render real control over that territory and it can lead to challenge and concession in a players planning for military campaigns and so on in a way that the frontline system lacks and is totally unresponsive in. Also 'projection' as a means of supply reach etc might take away immersion breaking stacks of massive ai hordes fighting over the most random province in the new world or something by making them only want to send so many troops in the first place to fight a conflict in a backwater.

[Caradryan]

Originally posted by Karlack26:

They dont need to reinvent the wheel, bring in some of HOI IV mechanics. Like divisions and divisions templates ,similar requirements to field them, similar recruitment mechanics and order of battle. This is era when divisions became a thing.
Some teaks, Give us control over the regiments within a division, giving them different task or front lines.
example assign set up one division for colonial defence it has it HQ in one territory then can you deploy the individual regiments to other colonies in the regions.

True, we certainly don't need to revert back to individual stacks of armies, but we need to be able to at least partially control the frontlines and have an influence on the battles. A better level of organisation, for example with divisions etc., like you propose, is another good way to improve on the current system. Then we don't need to change the whole thing. It is way too simple to have an entire, hundreds of kilometers long frontline simply be put on "attack" or "defend" orders. Let us pick where to attack instead with armies and divisions, and don't leave that task entirely to mindless ai.

[Caradryan]

Originally posted by Ole "Slim Jolo" the Hobo Hero:

Instead of frontlines, I feel like states should have a presence / projection bonus that influences outcomes like supply, combat width, etc, and could be done similar to how colonization is represented

I.E lets pretend we have physical standing armies like Vic 2, hanging in the home territory in europe, pretend we're Great Britain circa like, 1900's. Our presence and projecting in our home territories like England and Scotland might be solid, while in maybe Ireland there may be contested area's where state presence or authority isn't really recognized anymore, and their is a failure to project power to back that authority up without security forces like an army garrisoning the province or something.

Look at different north american conflicts like 1812, or smaller conflicts in the Canadian frontier like 1885, where forces involved were quite 'small' in terms of a military force and the clashing, but because of the vastness of the frontier as well, that standing army still only 'projected' so much and a lot of power hung in the balance even maneuvering and getting an army to the frontier to quell resistance, even if the fighting itself was basically non-existent or there weren't many pitched battles.

I think 'projection' could basically replace the frontline system as being like, here are the functional limits of the states ability to project power, get supply around, etc, and players are still free to move real army units / stacks themselves and the projection will react as such with territories captured, etc.

Where a similarity to colonization could come in is that tech, improvements, military buildings, physical armies etc in a province can also boost and project that power to also simulate better the development of these frontier like territories and so on, or how a state consolidates an unruly province back in Europe or something too, or likewise to simulate as well a states inability to project power in a colony similarly and contribute to it's revolting.

For all it's flaws, colonization in vic 3 is one of the few things I think the game at least delivered something newish, I like that states aren't merely 'empty' but have decentralized nations or groups on them and that colonization is a slow spread or presence, and similarily think another layer can be added on to that, being that yes you might have claim or general 'presence' in a territory, but you might not actually render real control over that territory and it can lead to challenge and concession in a players planning for military campaigns and so on in a way that the frontline system lacks and is totally unresponsive in. Also 'projection' as a means of supply reach etc might take away immersion breaking stacks of massive ai hordes fighting over the most random province in the new world or something by making them only want to send so many troops in the first place to fight a conflict in a backwater.

That is a very interesting concept, although one that would require a lot of work from the devs. Since it would be pretty much a total rework of the current system, I fear they might not be willing to commit to such a massive change, which is unfortunate, because I really like your ideas. You did mention the importance of being able to control armies in a region to increase your control, which just further proves that it is CRUCIAL for paradox players to be able to immerse themselves in conducting warfare, not just changing production methods for buildings and importing the stuff that the generals need for the war effort. I also agree that terrain and supply should have a lot more of a game impact, especially supply. In the current version you can basically mash as many batallions into one frontline as you wish. With a supply system, this would be way harder and more costly. Even though the devs may not feel like revising the entire system, they could certainly take a lot of inspiration from your points, and try to make the current system more balanced regarding the level of automatization vs player control.

[Caradryan]

Originally posted by D-Black Catto:

tl;dr but here is what I'd like the most:

just let us give orders to many armies at once so we won't have to micromanage them so much late game. assign multiple armies to a front, give mobilization options to multiple armies at once, give orders to multiple generals at once instead of having to click their portraits individually to tell them to advance the front or defend.....

really, just some quality of life stuff to reduce the tedium once you have dozens of armies and fight on multiple fronts. and this will get even worse after the new dlc as they will make it possible to join wars while already fighting wars.

Certainly this is needed. I hate having to click around aimlessly in order to manage my armies and generals and stop them from doing suicidal attacks when no other of the 8 generals on my front are doing so. I believe however, that quality of life updates to war will come naturally. I just wish for a bit more regarding mechanics as well. Doesn't have to be quite as expansive as what I described, just... something more. I just feel everytime I engage in a war that there's something (or a lot) missing, to make it immersive.

[rubish 1]

Originally posted by Damedius:

Originally posted by Fatbill:

They simply don't care. Mostly because "Vic 3 is not a war game" as devs have stated before.

That's just an excuse. HoI4 is a war game. It's warfare has been broken since launch and hasn't been fixed. It's either programmed that way on purpose or they are unable to fix it or they don't care to fix it.

I'm guessing that is because most Paradox games are so complex, most people don't realise how flawed some of the systems in the games/the AI are. So they probably decide at a certain point that the cost to fix/improve certain systems outweigh the return on those efforts. In other words it's much more profitable to churn out DLC, than it is to fix/ improve existing areas of the game.

i still dont get why anyone says paradox games are complex they are all really straightforward arent they?

[Damedius]

Originally posted by rubish 1:

i still dont get why anyone says paradox games are complex they are all really straightforward arent they?

Because they are. Whether or not that complexity is necessary or as result of unintuitive UI design, i'll let you decide.