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KOGAHAZAN!!
Apr 29, 2013

a miserable failure as a person

an incredible success as a magical murder spider

Actually, mobilisation is amazing, because the AI thinks its pure-infantry conscript stacks can take your regulars in a fair fight, when actually it is more like they are shovelling their dudes into a combine harvester. Ten to one kill ratios are a thing of wonder and beauty.

No but seriously, the real reason mobilisation sucks is because pressing that button gives you a thousand new armies to manage, all of them different sizes, all of them spread out all over the place, none of them with artillery or any of that poo poo and just generally the whole thing is a) not very helpful and b) a major pain in the arse to manage.

Just, loving, stop tying brigades to POPs, give me a unified manpower pool, make the mobilisation button add the conscript MP to the national pool and let me build the brigades the old-fashioned way. Actually no, not the old-fashioned way; with EUIV's army templates.

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Sarmhan
Nov 1, 2011

Agean90 posted:

It sounds like wormholes are kinda of a paratrooper option.

You really have to make you your hitting a good target, otherwise you either warp into a place thats heavily defended unprepared, or you hit a target thats unimportant while reinforcements bear down on you.
Also, wormholes and warp drives take you to the edge of a system, so you do have some reaction time before your planet is getting conquered. Hyperdrive is able to exit anywhere, but your lanes of travel are limited.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

Autonomous Monster posted:

Actually, mobilisation is amazing, because the AI thinks its pure-infantry conscript stacks can take your regulars in a fair fight, when actually it is more like they are shovelling their dudes into a combine harvester. Ten to one kill ratios are a thing of wonder and beauty.

No but seriously, the real reason mobilisation sucks is because pressing that button gives you a thousand new armies to manage, all of them different sizes, all of them spread out all over the place, none of them with artillery or any of that poo poo and just generally the whole thing is a) not very helpful and b) a major pain in the arse to manage.

Just, loving, stop tying brigades to POPs, give me a unified manpower pool, make the mobilisation button add the conscript MP to the national pool and let me build the brigades the old-fashioned way. Actually no, not the old-fashioned way; with EUIV's army templates.

Yeah, going the route of EU4's manpower pool would solve a bunch of problems like that. Also the "uhhh this brigade was built in the tiny mountain hamlet of burkburkburk and it can't actually support supplying new soldiers. Soz all!"

ThatBasqueGuy
Feb 14, 2013

someone introduce jojo to lazyb


This is why you make your regular armies pure support, and then attach them to the infantry hordes.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


Yes, please do templates. Hitting mobilize and having, say, 15000-man divisions with one artillery brigade show up where I want them several months later is much better than the swarms of unmanageable conscripts Vicky II has.

Tomn
Aug 23, 2007

And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Like I'm pretty sure once you defeated 1-2 opponent professional armies in the 1800s most of the time everyone was ready to settle things?

Westminster System posted:

Most armies were conscript based until the 20th century though. The only professional army in Europe at the outbreak of WW1 was the British one and that lasted one round of trench warfare.

To be slightly pedantic about this, both statements aren't entirely true here. The big standout is the Franco-Prussian War, where the French mobilized their reserves slowly because they trusted to the power of their professional army and figured reserves would be handy but wouldn't really stand up in a real fight, while the Germans hinged their entire battleplan on mobilizing fast and hard and striking with overwhelming numbers before the enemy could respond. The Germans turned out to be right about which worked better, and a large part of how WW1 turned out in the early days had to do with everyone being desperate to avoid becoming France in round 2.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

Tomn posted:

To be slightly pedantic about this, both statements aren't entirely true here. The big standout is the Franco-Prussian War, where the French mobilized their reserves slowly because they trusted to the power of their professional army and figured reserves would be handy but wouldn't really stand up in a real fight, while the Germans hinged their entire battleplan on mobilizing fast and hard and striking with overwhelming numbers before the enemy could respond. The Germans turned out to be right about which worked better, and a large part of how WW1 turned out in the early days had to do with everyone being desperate to avoid becoming France in round 2.

Right, but I had gotten the impression that the Prussians were still mobilizing whatever the 1870s equivalent of reservists were? The impression I get of Vicky-2 reserves is just throwing farmers out there with whatever they got.

Tomn
Aug 23, 2007

And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Right, but I had gotten the impression that the Prussians were still mobilizing whatever the 1870s equivalent of reservists were? The impression I get of Vicky-2 reserves is just throwing farmers out there with whatever they got.

The 1870s Prussian equivalent of reserves was "every man of military age." For that matter, the French were beginning to shift to a similar system of universal conscription but hadn't worked out the kinks before the Prussians hit them like a ton of bricks.

As I understand it, the Vicky 2 system isn't supposed to represent just arming a bunch of farmers and throwing them out there without any training whatsoever, they're supposed to represent the section of your civilian population that's also had enough military training to be potentially useful in a fight. That's why various techs increase the mobilization pool available to you as time goes on - it represents governments making more and more of an effort to ensure that they have enough reserves to win a serious contest.

Funky Valentine
Feb 26, 2014

Dojyaa~an

I avoid going to war at all costs in Vicky 2 not because I care what happens to the hordes of proles that die keeping kwaZulu off my lawn, but because the war mechanics are an absolute bitch.

Westminster System
Jul 4, 2009

Tomn posted:

To be slightly pedantic about this, both statements aren't entirely true here.

I wasn't trying to be super specific, but I intended to say that the only "fully professional". Obviously many states did have a semi-professional army in the sense of a core elite group and then conscripted/drafted troops.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

Tomn posted:

The 1870s Prussian equivalent of reserves was "every man of military age." For that matter, the French were beginning to shift to a similar system of universal conscription but hadn't worked out the kinks before the Prussians hit them like a ton of bricks.

As I understand it, the Vicky 2 system isn't supposed to represent just arming a bunch of farmers and throwing them out there without any training whatsoever, they're supposed to represent the section of your civilian population that's also had enough military training to be potentially useful in a fight. That's why various techs increase the mobilization pool available to you as time goes on - it represents governments making more and more of an effort to ensure that they have enough reserves to win a serious contest.

Fair enough, good to learn. Regardless, I still hate Vicky-2's war systems.

Larry Parrish
Jul 9, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Every single feature of Vicky is like, half way fun.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

Larry Parrish posted:

Every single feature of Vicky is like, half way fun.

Forming super-nations like Gran Columbia, is 100% fun. But that's the only thing I can think of.

Darkrenown
Jul 18, 2012
please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

Kavak posted:

Yes, please do templates. Hitting mobilize and having, say, 15000-man divisions with one artillery brigade show up where I want them several months later is much better than the swarms of unmanageable conscripts Vicky II has.

I wanted to add mobilization plans in the V2 expansions we did, but it was too difficult at the time and rally points was the best we could do :(

Pinback
Jul 22, 2012

I've been having real awful dreams about giant apocalyptic machinery
just mowing us all down...

Darkrenown posted:

I wanted to add mobilization plans in the V2 expansions we did, but it was too difficult at the time and rally points was the best we could do :(

It's okay. We know you'll make it up to us in Victoria 3.

:allears:

fuck off Batman
Oct 14, 2013

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah!


Vicky 3 is going to fix everything. It's going to be the best game ever when it comes out.

fuck off Batman
Oct 14, 2013

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah!


No pressure.

karmicknight
Aug 21, 2011

Disco Infiva posted:

Vicky 3 is going to fix everything. It's going to be the best game ever when it comes out.

Vicky 3 is going to be the game that reestablishes that guy who said the quote in Darkrenown's av's ability to feel human again.


Truly a paradox miracle.

Pinback
Jul 22, 2012

I've been having real awful dreams about giant apocalyptic machinery
just mowing us all down...
When I bring full communism to the world in Vicky 3, it'll bring full communism to real life.

Also while I recognize the game needs to vastly improve how Lassaiz-Faire/Liberal economics works for the sake of both fun and realism, I get a kick of how it's always and unambiguously the worst government type in the game.

meatbag
Apr 2, 2007
Clapping Larry
I hope the military unit system is closer to EUIV than V2. There are a lot of reasons I can't play V2 anymore, but army management is by a wide margin the worst part of the game.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

I certainly have no idea how valuable forts were to 1800s army strategy- but I'm guessing less important that in prior centuries- but I'd also probably prefer the EUIV fort defense system for provinces. Then at least I could figure out roughly where people will attack, as opposed to everything feeling like just one open mess of space.

Pinback
Jul 22, 2012

I've been having real awful dreams about giant apocalyptic machinery
just mowing us all down...

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

I certainly have no idea how valuable forts were to 1800s army strategy- but I'm guessing less important that in prior centuries- but I'd also probably prefer the EUIV fort defense system for provinces. Then at least I could figure out roughly where people will attack, as opposed to everything feeling like just one open mess of space.

Agreed. It's messy, but I like the way combat mechanics kinda evolve over time as you research tech. I think it should start out somewhat Eu4 like, but transition to having elements more in common with HoI as the game progresses. It's a tricky time period because you start in the area of massed armies fighting large but singular decisive battles, then transition into the WW1 era of massive static fronts and trench warfare, than into the very late-game interwar period where you start to see WWII style mobility warfare emerge.. The game would definitely benefit from HoI4 style strategic planning in the later game, as well as a more coherent (or at least less opaque) connection between industrial output and mechanized military capability.

Also while I agree that Manpower management needs to be streamlined, I hope they maintain a mechanical connection to pops because having wars actually deplete your population and in term impact your economy is really cool and appropriate.

It's tricky, but I think PDox have the ability to strike that balance and the results would be fantastic.

Also have an 1821 start and give us working Eu4 and HoI4 converters for full-bore Mega-Campaign goodness, because if we're going to dream why not dream big?

GrossMurpel
Apr 8, 2011

Frontspac posted:

When I bring full communism to the world in Vicky 3, it'll bring full communism to real life.

Also while I recognize the game needs to vastly improve how Lassaiz-Faire/Liberal economics works for the sake of both fun and realism, I get a kick of how it's always and unambiguously the worst government type in the game.

Laissez-Faire would be pretty great without the insane restrictions on max taxes (if those are in vanilla and not added by NNM). Once your literacy gets high enough, there's so many craftsmen that you can easily let the capitalists spam factories and the ones that don't shut down still give you insane industry scores.
State Capitalism is obviously better if your guys refuse to build the correct factories, but I still prefer Laissez-Faire over Planned Economy.


Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

I certainly have no idea how valuable forts were to 1800s army strategy- but I'm guessing less important that in prior centuries- but I'd also probably prefer the EUIV fort defense system for provinces. Then at least I could figure out roughly where people will attack, as opposed to everything feeling like just one open mess of space.

I like how important artillery is to the combat and how railroads combined with the battle lengths allow you to have a large front while still being able to send all your guys into one huge superbattle.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

GrossMurpel posted:

Laissez-Faire would be pretty great without the insane restrictions on max taxes (if those are in vanilla and not added by NNM). Once your literacy gets high enough, there's so many craftsmen that you can easily let the capitalists spam factories and the ones that don't shut down still give you insane industry scores.
State Capitalism is obviously better if your guys refuse to build the correct factories, but I still prefer Laissez-Faire over Planned Economy.


I like how important artillery is to the combat and how railroads combined with the battle lengths allow you to have a large front while still being able to send all your guys into one huge superbattle.

State Capitalism/Planned Economy would be phenomenal if there were a way to have projects to start and upgrade factories be generated and funded by the state automatically. It's just too much busy work otherwise.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

Frontspac posted:

Agreed. It's messy, but I like the way combat mechanics kinda evolve over time as you research tech. I think it should start out somewhat Eu4 like, but transition to having elements more in common with HoI as the game progresses. It's a tricky time period because you start in the area of massed armies fighting large but singular decisive battles, then transition into the WW1 era of massive static fronts and trench warfare, than into the very late-game interwar period where you start to see WWII style mobility warfare emerge.. The game would definitely benefit from HoI4 style strategic planning in the later game, as well as a more coherent (or at least less opaque) connection between industrial output and mechanized military capability.

Also while I agree that Manpower management needs to be streamlined, I hope they maintain a mechanical connection to pops because having wars actually deplete your population and in term impact your economy is really cool and appropriate.

It's tricky, but I think PDox have the ability to strike that balance and the results would be fantastic.

Also have an 1821 start and give us working Eu4 and HoI4 converters for full-bore Mega-Campaign goodness, because if we're going to dream why not dream big?

I agree with all of this.

I like how your manpower is tied to population in Vicky - I think one of the coolest things about that game is the non-abstracted population. Each soldier represents an actual person in your country and mobilization puts a serious dent in your industrial power simply because all your farmers/labourers/craftsmen are off at war. I do agree that it's annoying to tie manpower to specific provinces, though - just having them all be in a pool that draws equally from your soldier pops around the country would be a lot easier to deal with, and you wouldn't end up with those stupid brigades that can't reinforce because their home province doesn't have enough soldiers even though you're swimming in available manpower otherwise.

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

The Cheshire Cat posted:

I agree with all of this.

I like how your manpower is tied to population in Vicky - I think one of the coolest things about that game is the non-abstracted population. Each soldier represents an actual person in your country and mobilization puts a serious dent in your industrial power simply because all your farmers/labourers/craftsmen are off at war. I do agree that it's annoying to tie manpower to specific provinces, though - just having them all be in a pool that draws equally from your soldier pops around the country would be a lot easier to deal with, and you wouldn't end up with those stupid brigades that can't reinforce because their home province doesn't have enough soldiers even though you're swimming in available manpower otherwise.

I think the only thing you risk losing is that occasionally parts of your army will rebel if they're part of a ethnic or political movement...although it seems like you could just as easily track that as percents of your standing army and then apply "10% of the army are Czech separatists so 10% of your brigades rebel" and I don't think anyone will feel any poorer about the mechanic.

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

But then you lose the ability to use your uppity Czech soldiers as cannon fodder.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
I've admitted before the time period covered by the Victoria games are due a board gamification like EU4, but I hope its called something else out of reverence for the Victoria series being absolutely insane and beautiful and wonderful in spite of not being very playable.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
I want to be able to mobilize my subjected alien populations to fight for the glory of the human race. :911:

Ms Adequate
Oct 30, 2011

Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling



Fister Roboto posted:

But then you lose the ability to use your uppity Czech soldiers as cannon fodder.

Well, you could keep the nationality stat but just apply it when a brigade is mobilized, so when you build one it just rolls a d100 to determine which pop it belongs to.

The Cheshire Cat
Jun 10, 2008

Fun Shoe

zedprime posted:

I've admitted before the time period covered by the Victoria games are due a board gamification like EU4, but I hope its called something else out of reverence for the Victoria series being absolutely insane and beautiful and wonderful in spite of not being very playable.

See I'm hoping they don't go this route - I prefer the Sim-ness of Victoria to the Board Game-ness of EU4. I still like EU4, it's just that there's really no other sim game out there like Victoria and I think it could still maintain that while also being made more playable - a lot of the issues in Victoria 2 aren't the systems themselves but rather the way they're presented to the player. It suffers from the same issue as HoI3 where it's just got a nightmare UI that has very weird priorities about what to show where (I can drill down and see what political parties the craftsmen in Essex support but still don't know where my nation's official religion is displayed). That and Pop AI just being bad at making financial decisions.

csm141
Jul 19, 2010

i care, i'm listening, i can help you without giving any advice
Pillbug
The ethnic armies are a cool thing but unfortunately they're part of a revolt mechanic that doesn't reach its potential. Victoria could use a dose of CK2's revolt system, where revolts are more akin to states. A great Victoria revolt system would create armed factions, where your units and provinces have a loyalty based on their sentiment, ethnicity and religion. Instead of vomiting rebels everywhere, I'd like to see factions that can ally with each other or the government, e.g. The German government could align with the Freikorps against the Communists, the Russian government could work out a deal where some ethnic factions get to become independent if they help fight the Bolsheviks. Add in the ability for other great powers to sponsor factions and the ability to switch to a rebel faction to take over your own nation and you've turned a giant pain in the rear end into a compelling mechanic.

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Chief Savage Man posted:

The ethnic armies are a cool thing but unfortunately they're part of a revolt mechanic that doesn't reach its potential. Victoria could use a dose of CK2's revolt system, where revolts are more akin to states. A great Victoria revolt system would create armed factions, where your units and provinces have a loyalty based on their sentiment, ethnicity and religion. Instead of vomiting rebels everywhere, I'd like to see factions that can ally with each other or the government, e.g. The German government could align with the Freikorps against the Communists, the Russian government could work out a deal where some ethnic factions get to become independent if they help fight the Bolsheviks. Add in the ability for other great powers to sponsor factions and the ability to switch to a rebel faction to take over your own nation and you've turned a giant pain in the rear end into a compelling mechanic.

:agreed:

You could break it down into three types of rebellions: (I'll use the USA as an example)

1. Rebel troops - What we have now in Vicky II. They're just uppity groups from the population and don't have a real agenda. (Pro-Slavery rebels appear in the US)
2. Rebel states - Would be factions of government or ethnicities looking to break off and form their own nations (A state like Alabama breaks away)
3. Rebel nations - Would be rebellions involving previously conquered nations (The actual Confederate States of America attempts to rebel again)

It sounded better when I was first writing it but gently caress me if I'm just going to delete it.

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!

"Frontspac" posted:

Also have an 1821 start and give us working Eu4 and HoI4 converters for full-bore Mega-Campaign goodness, because if we're going to dream why not dream big?

If they don't do this, I'll lose the ability to feel human. :smith:

VerdantSquire
Jul 1, 2014

Chief Savage Man posted:

The ethnic armies are a cool thing but unfortunately they're part of a revolt mechanic that doesn't reach its potential. Victoria could use a dose of CK2's revolt system, where revolts are more akin to states. A great Victoria revolt system would create armed factions, where your units and provinces have a loyalty based on their sentiment, ethnicity and religion. Instead of vomiting rebels everywhere, I'd like to see factions that can ally with each other or the government, e.g. The German government could align with the Freikorps against the Communists, the Russian government could work out a deal where some ethnic factions get to become independent if they help fight the Bolsheviks. Add in the ability for other great powers to sponsor factions and the ability to switch to a rebel faction to take over your own nation and you've turned a giant pain in the rear end into a compelling mechanic.

I've actually had ideas very similar to this in the past. I think it would actually be very cool if nations actually had internal factions for not just the armed factions, but just any significant ethnic/political group within your nation, which would conflict with both each other and the government over various issues. My dream is a sort of internal crisis system that result in stuff like Slavery being an issue in the US with Dixie Aristocrats pops supporting it and both Liberal Yankee + Afro-American pops opposing it. Internal crisises could then be elevated to regional or international ones if external powers started to interfere. The estates system that's going to be implemented into EU4 would be a great starting point for this kind of system, but they'd need to be more autonomous and capable of taking sides on various issues.

Edit: And then it'd wrap into the election system and oh boy now I'm just openly fantasizing about my dream game. :allears:

VerdantSquire fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Oct 13, 2015

Fidel Cuckstro
Jul 2, 2007

VerdantSquire posted:

The estates system that's going to be implemented into EU4

Wait, can you link something on this? I haven't been following EU4 for a month or 2 now.

VerdantSquire
Jul 1, 2014

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Wait, can you link something on this? I haven't been following EU4 for a month or 2 now.

Enjoy! It's going to be an expansion feature in the new EU4 dlc, and a lot of people are understandably excited.

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!
Sadly, given the expansion is unannounced, and it usually takes at least six weeks or so from announcement to release... I'm starting to think we're not actually going to see it this year. :smith:

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Fintilgin posted:

Sadly, given the expansion is unannounced, and it usually takes at least six weeks or so from announcement to release... I'm starting to think we're not actually going to see it this year. :smith:
I figured they were waiting to announce it so they could sell it for full price right before Christmas, since they sell so many things on sale around then.

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Sindai
Jan 24, 2007
i want to achieve immortality through not dying
We've got like 10 weeks before the end of the year, that's plenty of time. And they're already doing full feature dev diaries and streams so it can't be that far off.

Or maybe the real problem is just that they haven't come up with a catchy name yet.

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