AAR pour Rise of Prussia et dev diary part 12 pour Victoria 2

Paradox a mis en ligne une nouveau chapitre du carnet de développement de Victoria 2, chapitre s’attardant cette fois sur la dimension militaire du jeu. Au passage on découvre aussi une nouvelle capture d’écran. Si besoin vous trouverez aussi ce dev diary ici dans le forum officiel.

De plus Ageod diffuse sur le forum officiel de Rise of Prussia les deux premières parties d’un rapport de bataille montrant en détail le déroulement d’une campagne dans le jeu (partie basée sur l’actuelle bêta). L’article est accompagné par de nombreuses captures d’écrans.

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Developer Diary 12 – Military

Victoria 2 is not a game that focuses on warfare, however that is not to say that warfare should be neglected. The Victorian period did see a number of small skirmishes, like some sort of very civil dispute in America and a couple of small scale battles in France. So although we may not be willing to devote as much time to the military as we are to things like politics and economics, it still does get a bit of a make over.

Our first big change is to directly link a unit and a soldier POP. You no longer recruit troops from manpower; you recruit troops from a specific province, and thus a specific soldier POP. This gives us a very neat consequence, if your soldier POP gets unhappy we know exactly which unit will get upset.

At a base level we have selected the 3,000 man brigade as the base unit. However, unlike Hearts of Iron 3, you can group these together in stacks of any size for manoeuvre purposes. Our aim is to get the right blend of flexibility vs. micromanagement.

The core combat system is a combination of Rome, EU3 and HoI3. So we have frontages, artillery units sit in the rear rank, firing over the enemy. We have attack frontages that widen as you advance in technology while your units improve in ability. We are aiming for two effects here, first a smaller modern army will actually be more effective in combat than a larger backward one. Secondly we want to see the evolution of military. In the American civil war, armies marched around and fought epic engagements, essentially unchanged since time immemorial. By World War I you had continuous front lines. As your technology advances the amount of troops you need to fight effectively in a province drops, leading to a much more frontal style of warfare.

There is still the question of Cavalry. The Victorian period opens with Cavalry still being the supreme shock weapon; just witness the amazing success of the Charge of the Light Brigade. However, cavalry is already becoming obsolete in a battlefield role, in the American civil war we see cavalry as scouting units and raiding instead of being used in set piece battles. By the end of the period cavalry is completely obsolete.

What we have done is add a new combat variable, reconnaissance. Reconnaissance does two things; a high reconnaissance value increases the speed at which you capture provinces. Secondly if you enter combat not dug in, then your relative reconnaissance value assists you in combat. Essentially, the more you know about the enemy before you attack the more likely your commander is to be able to attack in the right place. High recon will benefit you, and penalise the opposition. However, with each successive round of combat the effect starts to diminish (nothing quite like shooting at people to give yourself away to the enemy). Cavalry units have very high recon values, so an army with cavalry fighting an army without will have a decided advantage in combat.

Now I know what you are thinking, the Battle of the Somme did not open with British cavalry probing the German trenches to get reconnaissance for Haig, and we have thought of that too. The Aeroplane is much better than the horse for reconnaissance. Thus, your late game army all but dispenses with cavalry and instead you have aeroplanes as your scouting units.