I've learned more about PDX games in the last 5 days watching videos than I did in the 500 hours previously. The community really does make these games playable.
Another great one, it's weird seeing all the strange little quirks of Vic 2 warfare. I never knew what caused priority when two nations reached the same province on the same day. While I don't think I'll look at the game files in the middle of a war, it's good to know.
Thank you! Yeah there are loads of little oddities like that, many of which aren't as much "game mechanics" as they are simply quirks of the game's code.
Yeah it's not super obvious, but that's how it is! This combined with the fact that supply limit is doubled when you besiege a province really has a massive impact if you want to try to rush through enemy territory.
I honestly didn't know of that weird quirk of a max number of units able to siege a province... Since watching this, I've gotten better at fighting outnumbered. So, thank you bro 😎
Countries with small mobilization pool should build more frontline (even that applies for late game because until mobilized forces arrives, frontlines will be melt unless frontline is very static). That way after a couple of battles armies still have enough frontlines to keep armies effective. Unfortunetely this will mess up efficiency of siege and recon but it is what it is. Also lack of tools for attacking armies in victoria 2 really frustrates me.
Important to notice, this statement that every unit has hidden +10 attack stat is actually misleading! +1 attack = +10% damage, as it is stated at wiki. And that does roughly what it says. Having +3 attack means 100% +10% x3 =130% damage. Having "hidden" +10 attack would mean 100% +10% x(3 +10) =230%, which is not the case. I agree however that %support stat is applied not for attack stat but for total damage. This means, artillery not has 600% attack, it has 600% total damage.
So I think siege speed is something I managed to intuit over the years and my army composition as a result is slightly different from the norm most people use 10 regiments I have for a long time used 14 5 infantry 5 artillery 2 hussars and 2 engineers why 14 and not 13 simple you need 2 units of engineers and hussars to keep the efficiency high the same infantry and artillery to keep the frontline intact with those other two for sieges. Since the ai is rather easy to beat with this unit composition I find the siege speed to be a far more important stat then min maxing battle stats so even though I lose some efficiency in battle by having 14 sized army with 2 engineers and hussars I make up for it in siege speed which allows me to occupy the enemy faster in the end.
Yeah I would agree that in singleplayer it's often more worth it to focus on optimizing siege speed as opposed to combat efficiency, except when you're fighting an enemy significantly stronger than yourself. I think the big focus on combat stacks is more important in multiplayer though.
From my own experience, the guide works for most mods. You might have to check which troops in mods are referencing which unit template and then apply that to your playstyle
My understanding is that a stack will only be wiped upon a organization defeat if they lose it in the first 11 days they are locked in. I.e. being routed while prohibited from retreating means they get wiped as if surrounded.
That's what I thought too, but it's actually not entirely consistent. I don't remember exactly what I found when I experimented with this, but I do remember that units did occasionally avoid being wiped even if they lost within the first 11 days. The actual rules for this are more complicated and I don't think I even fully understood them.
Could you include a brief section or summary on naval warfare & strategy in part 3? For me that is the most enigmatic part with the least information out there
I will include a brief section on naval warfare in part 3, but unfortunately it will mostly come down to "don't bother with navies" basically :P I'm not very good with navies myself and for the most part you don't really need to be good at them, in singleplayer at least.
Thank you so much! :) I unfortunately don't have a good idea of when the third part will be released, as I have a full-time job now and thus much less time on my hand overall, but even disregarding that I became a bit burned out from working on videos and I haven't regained the motivation yet. I do intend on releasing the third part eventually, but I can't say when, sorry!
6:25 im trying to do this but it literally just wont work. I split my army in two and have them reinforce on two different days, all goes well and my artillery goes to the backrow and infantry goes to the front row. However, the second i move out an army to reinforce and rest, it creates a gap in my line that instantly gets filled up with my artillery. I dont understand what im doing wrong, its made army cycling inefficient for me because army cycling just causes my artillery to get slaughtered in the front line
When you cycle armies, are you retreating with just the infantry or with both infantry and artillery? And when you send a new army in, is that army only infantry, only artillery, or combination of both?
@@xarxos5274 hi thank you very much for getting back to me. Basically I initiate attack with a stack of 30k troops, 5 inf, and 5 artillery. Once it starts to get a little damaged, I reinforce with 5 inf and 5 artillery but I follow this videos instruction of making sure the reinforcing artillery arrives a day later than the infantry. This goes perfectly, the reinforcing infantry is on the front line and the artillery is behind it. I then try to retreat the damaged army and this is where things go wrong, the damaged army (5 infantry and 5 artillery) leave the battle and it opens up a gap in the centre of the battle line, and this gap gets filled in by all of my reinforcing back line artillery the next day tick. So to TLDR your question, I reinforce with a combination of infantry and artillery that arrive one day apart, and retreat my initial army which is a combination of infantry and artillery.
@@perpetual_suffering1458 Ah, I see! Hm, it might be that army cycling gets a bit wonky if you combine it with separated infantry-only and artillery-only armies. I haven't tested that scenario very much. It might be that when you retreat with your first army, you will have to also retreat with your second artillery army too, and then send them back in ASAP. That should avoid getting them on the frontline, but of course it will leave your infantry without artillery support for a while which isn't great. What you could do, is that when you retreat with your first armies + your second artillery, make sure to have a third artillery army ready to arrive one day after the others retreat, so they fill up the backline behind the infantry that's still in the battle. That would make things a bit extra finicky, but might be the best you can do unfortunately.
Yeah it's sure is helpful, but all that talk about number of regiments just doesn't make sense when you have 1 brigade as Transvaal and those Zulu has 9.. And you can't even win oranje republic, as they have the same amount of brigades, and you can't win siege race, because they get UK as an ally even if they are not sphered. I would be grateful for any tips about making Transvaal great. Also what do you think about winning Texas independence war solely against Mexico without US help? I tried to smash their 3-6k stacks, then sit and bait them to attack me in San Antonio fort and/or Dallas forests (gives huge advantage, as Sam Houston has +6 defense), I win a couple of battles, but I can't then chase and stackwipe them, sometimes even I lose that 1 infantry (guards even, sadly, as they have less defense than regular inf) and left with only 1 art and cav. Any skilled players suggestions on that?
Indeed, warfare is a lot trickier when you just don't have a lot of manpower or resources to work with. I haven't played Transvaal much myself, but generally speaking, when you play a minor nation like that you'll have to start by finding and picking on smaller and weaker countries first, usually uncivs. If you have no such countries as neighbors you might have to look elsewhere, and for that purpose exiled armies can be a great help. I also haven't tried playing Texas, but they have an amazing defense general if I recall correctly, so my advice would probably be to just keep luring Mexico into defensive battles until their army is completely worn down, and then you can start going on the offensive and besieging them.
Excellent question! The answer is: Whenever I manage to find the time and energy to work on it. Unfortunately I've had a shortage of both lately, so I can't say when I might be able to make any real progress.
so with mobilization, the best thing to do is just make sure those infantry have artillery units waiting for them to match up with right? so much of this seems like unnecessarily annoying micro...
If you want to make optimal use of your available soldiers and mobilized troops, then yes you'd want to do that. And a lot of this can indeed be unnecessary micro in a lot of cases, as beating the AI at war in singleplayer can often be achieved without optimally handling all of these aspects. But it can still be good to know for those situations where you really do need to play optimally, like if you want to take on a much stronger foe.
I've learned more about PDX games in the last 5 days watching videos than I did in the 500 hours previously. The community really does make these games playable.
Another great one, it's weird seeing all the strange little quirks of Vic 2 warfare. I never knew what caused priority when two nations reached the same province on the same day. While I don't think I'll look at the game files in the middle of a war, it's good to know.
Thank you! Yeah there are loads of little oddities like that, many of which aren't as much "game mechanics" as they are simply quirks of the game's code.
Hey, you're quite a famous person.
this video gave me 150% discipline and organization
the Prussian army would be proud
Keep researching that military tech! :D
I had no idea the attrition was ALSO applied every province movement. Very interesting mechanic to exploit
Yeah it's not super obvious, but that's how it is! This combined with the fact that supply limit is doubled when you besiege a province really has a massive impact if you want to try to rush through enemy territory.
I'm getting flashbacks to all the 27k brigades
Brilliant stuff. Every new vicky2 player should see this
Thank you!
I agree with the sentiment, but realistically every intermediate player should see it 😅😅
Thanks man, im triying to do a conquest of europe with germany, i have 2 months playing in victoria 2 and you have teach me a lot of things :D
Sounds good, I'm glad I could teach you something! Good luck! :)
what a nice job, thanks for this
Thank you, glad you liked it! :)
Very helpful
I'm glad you think so!
I honestly didn't know of that weird quirk of a max number of units able to siege a province...
Since watching this, I've gotten better at fighting outnumbered. So, thank you bro 😎
@@TheSkyGuy77 Doesn't seem like a lot of people know about it, so I felt inclined to spread the info!
I'm very glad you found some use of it! :)
Countries with small mobilization pool should build more frontline (even that applies for late game because until mobilized forces arrives, frontlines will be melt unless frontline is very static). That way after a couple of battles armies still have enough frontlines to keep armies effective. Unfortunetely this will mess up efficiency of siege and recon but it is what it is. Also lack of tools for attacking armies in victoria 2 really frustrates me.
Important to notice, this statement that every unit has hidden +10 attack stat is actually misleading!
+1 attack = +10% damage, as it is stated at wiki. And that does roughly what it says.
Having +3 attack means 100% +10% x3 =130% damage.
Having "hidden" +10 attack would mean 100% +10% x(3 +10) =230%, which is not the case.
I agree however that %support stat is applied not for attack stat but for total damage. This means, artillery not has 600% attack, it has 600% total damage.
Great video, looking forward to the final video
Thank you! Hopefully I will get it done... some day :)
So I think siege speed is something I managed to intuit over the years and my army composition as a result is slightly different from the norm most people use 10 regiments I have for a long time used 14 5 infantry 5 artillery 2 hussars and 2 engineers why 14 and not 13 simple you need 2 units of engineers and hussars to keep the efficiency high the same infantry and artillery to keep the frontline intact with those other two for sieges.
Since the ai is rather easy to beat with this unit composition I find the siege speed to be a far more important stat then min maxing battle stats so even though I lose some efficiency in battle by having 14 sized army with 2 engineers and hussars I make up for it in siege speed which allows me to occupy the enemy faster in the end.
Yeah I would agree that in singleplayer it's often more worth it to focus on optimizing siege speed as opposed to combat efficiency, except when you're fighting an enemy significantly stronger than yourself. I think the big focus on combat stacks is more important in multiplayer though.
Best tutorial I ever see. Great bro.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate it! :D
Great work, we want a guide on naval units and warfare
Thanks! Unfortunately I don't have much to say on Naval warfare, my take is essentially "It doesn't matter that much in singleplayer" :)
Sup bro, this guide only works for Vanilla or can be used in GFM, HFM or HPM? Greetings from Argentina bro!
Sup! The guide is primarily made for vanilla, but I think most of it should apply just as well to mods too!
From my own experience, the guide works for most mods.
You might have to check which troops in mods are referencing which unit template and then apply that to your playstyle
My understanding is that a stack will only be wiped upon a organization defeat if they lose it in the first 11 days they are locked in. I.e. being routed while prohibited from retreating means they get wiped as if surrounded.
That's what I thought too, but it's actually not entirely consistent. I don't remember exactly what I found when I experimented with this, but I do remember that units did occasionally avoid being wiped even if they lost within the first 11 days. The actual rules for this are more complicated and I don't think I even fully understood them.
Could you include a brief section or summary on naval warfare & strategy in part 3? For me that is the most enigmatic part with the least information out there
I will include a brief section on naval warfare in part 3, but unfortunately it will mostly come down to "don't bother with navies" basically :P I'm not very good with navies myself and for the most part you don't really need to be good at them, in singleplayer at least.
Victoria 2 navy is easy to learn.
Just make ship, move ship, make more ship, success
@@-YaRR- True enough, that approach works pretty well against the AI at least :)
After you unlock cruisers, spam them like no tomorrow. That's your navy guide.
@@officialromanhours Average Ottoman game
Hey dude thanks a lot for ur work 👌😀
Do you have an idea of the release date of the third guide ?
Have a good day and good job !
Thank you so much! :) I unfortunately don't have a good idea of when the third part will be released, as I have a full-time job now and thus much less time on my hand overall, but even disregarding that I became a bit burned out from working on videos and I haven't regained the motivation yet. I do intend on releasing the third part eventually, but I can't say when, sorry!
@@xarxos5274 Hey ! Thanks for ur answer
No problem I understand 😊
I hope it'll be all right for u in ur new job. Good luck !
@@NeXus01minecraft Thank you!
6:25 im trying to do this but it literally just wont work. I split my army in two and have them reinforce on two different days, all goes well and my artillery goes to the backrow and infantry goes to the front row. However, the second i move out an army to reinforce and rest, it creates a gap in my line that instantly gets filled up with my artillery. I dont understand what im doing wrong, its made army cycling inefficient for me because army cycling just causes my artillery to get slaughtered in the front line
When you cycle armies, are you retreating with just the infantry or with both infantry and artillery? And when you send a new army in, is that army only infantry, only artillery, or combination of both?
@@xarxos5274 hi thank you very much for getting back to me. Basically I initiate attack with a stack of 30k troops, 5 inf, and 5 artillery. Once it starts to get a little damaged, I reinforce with 5 inf and 5 artillery but I follow this videos instruction of making sure the reinforcing artillery arrives a day later than the infantry. This goes perfectly, the reinforcing infantry is on the front line and the artillery is behind it. I then try to retreat the damaged army and this is where things go wrong, the damaged army (5 infantry and 5 artillery) leave the battle and it opens up a gap in the centre of the battle line, and this gap gets filled in by all of my reinforcing back line artillery the next day tick.
So to TLDR your question, I reinforce with a combination of infantry and artillery that arrive one day apart, and retreat my initial army which is a combination of infantry and artillery.
@@perpetual_suffering1458 Ah, I see! Hm, it might be that army cycling gets a bit wonky if you combine it with separated infantry-only and artillery-only armies. I haven't tested that scenario very much. It might be that when you retreat with your first army, you will have to also retreat with your second artillery army too, and then send them back in ASAP. That should avoid getting them on the frontline, but of course it will leave your infantry without artillery support for a while which isn't great. What you could do, is that when you retreat with your first armies + your second artillery, make sure to have a third artillery army ready to arrive one day after the others retreat, so they fill up the backline behind the infantry that's still in the battle. That would make things a bit extra finicky, but might be the best you can do unfortunately.
Yeah it's sure is helpful, but all that talk about number of regiments just doesn't make sense when you have 1 brigade as Transvaal and those Zulu has 9.. And you can't even win oranje republic, as they have the same amount of brigades, and you can't win siege race, because they get UK as an ally even if they are not sphered. I would be grateful for any tips about making Transvaal great.
Also what do you think about winning Texas independence war solely against Mexico without US help? I tried to smash their 3-6k stacks, then sit and bait them to attack me in San Antonio fort and/or Dallas forests (gives huge advantage, as Sam Houston has +6 defense), I win a couple of battles, but I can't then chase and stackwipe them, sometimes even I lose that 1 infantry (guards even, sadly, as they have less defense than regular inf) and left with only 1 art and cav. Any skilled players suggestions on that?
Indeed, warfare is a lot trickier when you just don't have a lot of manpower or resources to work with. I haven't played Transvaal much myself, but generally speaking, when you play a minor nation like that you'll have to start by finding and picking on smaller and weaker countries first, usually uncivs. If you have no such countries as neighbors you might have to look elsewhere, and for that purpose exiled armies can be a great help.
I also haven't tried playing Texas, but they have an amazing defense general if I recall correctly, so my advice would probably be to just keep luring Mexico into defensive battles until their army is completely worn down, and then you can start going on the offensive and besieging them.
When is the next part comming out ?
Excellent question! The answer is: Whenever I manage to find the time and energy to work on it. Unfortunately I've had a shortage of both lately, so I can't say when I might be able to make any real progress.
so with mobilization, the best thing to do is just make sure those infantry have artillery units waiting for them to match up with right? so much of this seems like unnecessarily annoying micro...
If you want to make optimal use of your available soldiers and mobilized troops, then yes you'd want to do that. And a lot of this can indeed be unnecessary micro in a lot of cases, as beating the AI at war in singleplayer can often be achieved without optimally handling all of these aspects. But it can still be good to know for those situations where you really do need to play optimally, like if you want to take on a much stronger foe.
Are we still getting the third guide?
Hopefully, eventually, can't say when though I'm afraid.
Oh boy more internet meth