Victoria 2: Heart of Darkness Beta AAR: War. War never changes?Hi,There's one part of the coming expansion I am particularly excited about, and when at the end of the development cycle the time came for us humble but tireless betatesters to come out of "the mines" and write for the community, that's what I chose to showcase in my beta AAR. Many suggestions from the forum about land combat were heard and this part of the game has undergone vast changes in tech and balance. I think it'll be great prep before you get to play Heart of Darkness to find out what you're getting into. If you still wonder whether we need four types of cavalry – this is the AAR to read – and where a case will be made that yes, indeed we do. To begin, I really enjoy the main menu artwork of this expansion, and if you look very closely, you might notice top secret beta content in the following screenshot.Before we go to war, I need to mention at least a chunk of the changes in everything that leads to it. Heart of Darkness gives the player new better ways to grasp the international relations. Some things inside AI's brain were brought to light which previously weren't shown in the relations map mode or anywhere else in the interface. Newspapers will regularly print articles about how various AI countries feel about one another – if another country is afraid of you, or would want to sign an alliance with you, you'll read about it in the papers. Look here, a Bach concert!* In other news: Modena feels intimidated by the Pope (my ally), and Württemberg wouldn't mind closer ties with my country, should Austrians fail to protect them.(* - the above joke might have been "borrowed" from another more talented author absent his knowledge and permission)In addition to that, when you hover over the little "?" icon before sending a diplomatic offer, AI will tell you why they don't think you'd be a great ally for them or why they don't want your armies to be marching through their land. In turn, allies are generally more faithful and will more often stand with whomever they chose to guarantee. "You will always fight alone" is no longer the case in Victoria 2. If you make the countries around you really upset, don't expect much patience on their side. But if you stand with them as friends and brothers, you can count on their help when you get attacked.It's my opinion that AI is way smarter when signing alliances. For example the uncivilized countries you put inside your sphere of influence – they will no longer stand with you no matter what just because your ships block them from trading with others. They will respond that you're too far, that you have high infamy, that you hold parts of what they (wrongly of course) call "their ancestral lands" among a long list of other reasons. They won't let your armies cross their land if you fight against someone they particularly like – but if they dislike your target, you'll have no trouble getting the flanking deal of your dreams.For example you can expect neutral Belgium to allow military access to the French with whom they are friends, while refusing it to Germans who tend to ally with the Dutch and aren't overly popular down in the southern provinces. Because nothing bad could ever happen to Belgium as a result of such policies, they say. At the beginning for example, they'll deny military access to France, because they are still under the British influence, so Prussian soldiers on the border are for the time being secure from getting cut off.In the early period AIs will generally only ever seek to have one Great Power patron and ally. Gone are the times when you could sign alliances with three or five great powers and feel untouchable. Now you pick your favourite great power ally – and rely on their help (and help of their allies), while your neighbour might pick someone else to aid them. For example, Two Sicilies might choose the United Kingdom, while Sardinia-Piedmont allies with France, they each have one patron of choice, they both can only rely on help from one direction only while battling for Italy. No other GP will ally with them until they dissolve their current alliance, and if they pick poorly – they can expect to be beaten into a pulp.Don't think this ends big conflicts on the board though, this rule only applies until Great Wars are invented. After 1890 (the new date for Great Wars invention, and something worth memorizing!) it's really free-for-all. A net of alliances will quickly expand after this date, and as you can expect the wars will grow in size massively. But until that date, alliances are bilateral, and you need to pick your great power allies wisely, judging them based on the quality of help they are actually capable of providing.Now to the topic. The way we build armies has changed greatly. We now have four components to each army, and it's wise to not neglect any of them. My favourite set of changes – cavalry rebalances. Yes, we do need so many types of them, and now there's a good reason for each! Every cavalry type now has its use and purpose. They are all available very early in the game, with the Military Staff System research. You no longer need to research up to the tier 4 of army techs, and wait long decades before you can unlock them.The old, standard "Cavalry" unit is now considered to be mounted Irregulars and is always available, even at tier 0 (which means unciv, no tech). Weak in stats, cheap to build and feed, it's the reconnaissance component for the armies of uncivilized countries. Dragoons are their counterpart as far as regular army of civilized countries is concerned – you can consider them mounted infantry for all needs and purposes. Hussar is the advanced and specialized type of elite light cavalry, customized for recon purposes, able to do amazing things in battle like hitting units multiple squares away – but it also means it's getting pretty expensive. You can find Hussars on the flanks of armies of richer and more powerful countries, where they replace more "stock" Dragoons.My favourite cavalry type – Cuirassiers, they have their own niche and use as well. Their field of speciality is... glorious charge. They were rebalanced into an early tank-like unit, they are perfectly capable of riding down early game infantries, but their superpower has an expiration date. At tier 3 (which means the line of the 1850 army techs), they will vastly fall behind in stats. Around the time of historical Franco-Prussian wars in the 1870s, during what we call tier 4, Machine Guns level of technology, they will be nothing but a relic of the past. But before that truly sad day comes, you can expect many great performances from them. If you need a unit to tear through enemy center in the early game, CURs are the guys to send there.The way we construct "the line" also is different. The bulk of the army will now be standard regular Infantry. Guards are no longer "infantry++", they have their separate use as well, as shock troops and flankers. Units with high attack value but due to their braver tactics, also more prone to taking damage. With higher maneuver than standard infantry, allowing them to reach towards more distant enemy, aid other units of yours to quicker break that unit.In my own experience, they are performing best when you need to break through a line of less modern troops, beat some rebels or uncivilized armies. My "police" force or expeditionary corps will typically feature Guards more often than the army that defends my border from incursions. They might come of help against weaker troops, but using them for the whole length of your main line while facing modern armies with upgraded infantries backed by artillery – this won't end well. You'll deal a lot of damage overusing Guards, but will also take a lot of it yourself, it takes a lot of planning and some knowledge of future targets to decide how many Guards to build. Spamming Guards – I consider a thing of the past.Artillery is the unit which received the biggest rebalance and reality check. Base stats were lowered across the board on all tiers. You can expect upgrades as low as a quarter or a half of a point of attack from technology. Instead their support strength was multiplied – artillery is only really useful in the second line in Heart of Darkness. If they have to fight in the first line directly facing enemy infantry, they will be quickly dismantled. You don't want to see your expensive artillery pieces to find themselves in front of French or Prussian Cuirassiers, you really don't.Engineers are no longer a "weird infantry" unit. They now feature solid defence stats (but terrible offensive ones) and address early game army's siege needs, considerably speeding up the process of taking provinces with forts. They can fight fairly well from the second line, being a support unit. You'll often find yourself replacing some of your artillery with engineers to quicker break through enemy forts, and negate their dig-in bonuses in battle.Spoiler alert. In the late game, tanks become your go-to breakthrough and siege units, taking on themselves the roles of both of Guards and Engineers, although also putting a huge strain on your budget when overused. Airplanes now are a support unit, fighting from the second line in battle. If you can afford them, they will add to your army's reconaissance, will allow you to faster conquer provinces, but they aren't completely inept in combat at all.Every army, in short, relies on those four components: a line of Infantry with Artillery behind them, a recon component of Dragoons, Hussars or Airplanes, a siege component of Engineers or Tanks, and a shock breakthrough component of Cuirassiers, Guards or Tanks. AI will follow those rules – unlike in the past, you can expect diverse armies from AIs, especially the more modern ones. They will be covering each of the above areas, they will bring their recon and engineers with them, they will also put a lot more attention towards having a stronger artillery ratio with their armies than ever before. Their regular troops will be able to make a serious dent in your line if you don't follow a similarly rich and diverse composition.Let's build some armies then, for the war I want to show here. We'll use two approaches. Let's say there's two generals tasked with taking one country from two different directions. One guy is the "old war" person, a veteran used to the old Victoria 2 ways, let's pick my general Hamelin for this role. He'll go "straight infantry" and then take some small artillery detachment to be at his side in case a larger battle happens. Cheap and reliable, easy to split to siege multiple provinces, easy to merge, a big stack of pure infantry has always been a viable choice. The other guy, let's say my general Pellissier, will go with the wave of modernisation, he will try to cover all four aspects of the army. He will build his line with Infantry (it's too early for Guards as I play this), place Artillery and Engineers behind them, use Hussars for recon and Cuirassiers for breakthrough. His armies won't split into singular brigades, they will fight and siege as one unit, moving from one province to another in organized stacks. Notice the Pellissier's army (here commanded by his 2nd, general Petain) on the left having 100% recon and siege efficiency, while the Hamelin's troops on the right have 0% there because they lack specialized units. How grave the consequences of neglecting that are going to be? We'll see soon enough.The target – the most annoying of them all, Egypt. Generally weak militarily, so I can "wrap them up" within the confines of this AAR and still do some betatesting today, but terribly expensive to conquer due to high attrition. The "new guy" Pellissier will land in the north, in two stacks of carefully customised army composition. Defeat Egyptian armies around their capital, take the fort there, and progress to quickly secure the coast of Levant and the whole Delta, crippling Egyptian economy before he marches to the south.The "old guy" Hamelin will land in the south, he will split his armies into stacks of 3000, a common strategy of the past, and will try to subdue that part of the map in the quickest time possible, then march to the north to aid the newbie, whom he considers to most certainly fail and require aid. I drew a battle plan for this war, it's one more new war feature of Heart of Darkness and it's plenty useful.My plan is as straight as a punch to the face, where France is blue and Egypt is yellow and arrows point to important places, so my commanders can actually understand it. You can notice I cleverly used dotted yellow lines to mark for them where the desert begins. Before we depart, looking down at the maps I tell them "Do not cross that line! Do you understand?". And they confirm that they do indeed "Je ne parle pas anglais". We don't need to conquer the whole Egypt to get the result we desire, it's enough to take the important parts.We attack with a noble goal of restoring Ethiopia's rightful lands to that country, it's a new wargoal of this expansion, it allows to fight for the return of all regions belonging to a particular nation at once, so I don't have to add a number of separate wargoals for each of them. Ethiopians attacked Egypt a while back, when they considered it weakened with a war against the Ottomans, and lost badly, not only didn't get Eritrea back, but also had to cede another region to Egyptians. We will right this wrong, and while at it, demonstrate what the war is now all about.Egyptians won't cause us much grief, I am playing France after all. But they will cause more grief than they used to. For one thing, AI budgets are way stronger in Heart of Darkness. Despite being fresh out of two major wars, Egyptians will actually have a fleet this time, and they will have at least two dozens brigades of regular army with them, more to be trained as they get attacked, and those won't be all Irregulars, as they have some early army reforms already, having partially westernized their country.Another big change of the expansion, there's a base Tactics level now – armies of uncivs (or rebels!) no longer fight at 0% tactics against you, the base is 150%, and is only fractionally improved by technology, meaning their losses won't be as high as they used to be, and my losses will be equally higher – especially if I attack a strong leader of theirs in tough terrain. In the military screen you can notice my tier 2 tactics is 200%, so not that much higher than Egyptian base 150%.Let's roll then. Hamelin and his "old" army of mainly Infantry are sent around Africa to land in the south. Pellissier's "new" army's first stop is Crete, then they can make a landing in Egypt proper and a second one in Levant. The first mistake I've made was sending all my heavier ships with Hamelin – only leaving Pellissier five Commerce Raiders to deal with the Egyptian navy. Their Man-of-Wars aren't top notch, but there are four of them to five combat ships of mine, and it'll take a while to tackle them as we meet off the coast of Crete. Hopefully none of my transports will sink here, I expect Egyptian navy to be vastly inferior and I am pretty happy with my admiral. Naval combat, rewritten from scratch for the purposes of this expansion, has gotten considerably more intricate. I hold my breath a little as I watch the confused crowd of my transports and commerce raiders trying to reorganize their line to react to the sudden encounter with a smaller so also much more coordinated enemy.After sinking some of their ships and sending some running back to the port, we proceed to sieging Crete. It only takes a couple weeks, but also costs quite a few soldiers. Supply limits of provinces were raised a lot in this expansion to support new larger armies of more types of units. Crete can supply as many as 30k of hostile troops, 40k after getting occupied. And it's still at tier 2 of Chemistry techs. Which is a huge upgrade over the AHD, you can generally expect to be able to use much larger stacks through the game after you get the expansion.At the same time taking enemy provinces always incurs 2% of attrition damage to the attacker, regardless of his army size, as people generally die, get wounded or desert when you conquer land. Takes only a couple weeks to take the island – siege progresses 6% a day because the army is large and contains good recon units. The whole island claims 5k people before it's subdued – so Pellissier is forced to pause for a while here, resupply and reinforce before he can proceed with the actual invasion.Before landing in Egypt, he splits his armies in half, two stacks of 21k troops. It allows for two sieges in Egypt at once, but both stacks still take 2% attrition, and they also take longer to conclude. I progress roughly 2.5% a day here which is still a nice and fast rate, but isn't as quick as when I was taking Crete with both stacks merged together. This means there's very little incentive to split your armies. As long as the land they are occupying can feed them - they can as well stay together, take it faster, then move further into enemy land.Dumyat, my landing spot, falls quickly, and I attack Egyptian soldiers in Mansura. You should first take notice of the cavalry component in their army, despite being an unciv they now have mounted troops, and those troops will try to poke my right flank, facing against my Hussars there, who also have the Egyptian infantry in front of them to deal with. Then, if you look even closer, you can also see the new battle icon for engineers, here strategically placed in the 2nd line between two artillery units. And then notice that there's a little "/" cavalry icon in my centre, symbolizing my Cuirassiers. That's also where Egyptian army will be torn in half before it gets routed. My Hussars take heavy losses trying to tackle their Sipahis, but French centre stand strong, and on the back of a stunning performance from Cuirassiers we win the battle.I win, but I get hurt where it is least convenient. My Hussars are badly damaged, recon efficiency of the army fell from 100% to mere 7% as they are only 200 men strong at the moment (their actual size matters, not the amount of brigades, 0-strong Hussars do not recon at all). I will have to reinforce them before the old pace of taking enemy land can be restored. At the moment I take land as slowly as 1% a day. Remember how it was 6% on Crete, then 2.5% when I still had my Hussars?Dragoons wouldn't get so badly damaged against Sipahis, but they also wouldn't take Crete as quickly, forcing me to take more of attrition there, arriving to Egypt later and with fewer soldiers. Do you think I'd be better off using Dragoons rather than Hussars?Meanwhile Hamelin, my "old" general lands in Massawa, and marches towards Khartoum while spreading his infantry thin to "carpet" provinces of the south. He takes note of the Egyptian army hurrying to the north, to attack Pelissier's army in the delta. He decides to not fully disperse, but rather keep a larger strategic reserve in the south, regardless of the attrition, in case they change their minds and turn his direction.Pellissier receives the warning that the other half of the Egyptian troops are headed his way, and decides to pause before advancing against Cairo. He orders to wait two months for reinforcements, until his Hussars are up to at least a thousand, and recon efficiency is 100% again. Meanwhile his other stack in Levant under Petain already conquered three provinces, including Jerusalem, and is sieging the fourth. They didn't fight against Egyptians yet, their recon is intact and they don't need to pause at all before moving from one province to another quickly painting the land in blue stripes. If need be, the French fleet can quickly move them to the delta to aid the other half of the army there, but Pellissier is fairly confident there for the time being.Meanwhile Hamelin in a sudden stroke of military "genius" decides to drop the siege of Khartoum and chase the Egyptian army so Pellissier doesn't claim another victory for himself. He catches them in Atbara, where he's certain his infantry and artillery will easily beat them. Big mistake, Egyptians don't seem to be willing to concede this one despite their weaker troops. Attacking them across a river with a smaller force – a terrible idea.You can see in this screenshot the terrible inefficiency of the old carpeting strategy. While a dozen provinces have fallen already in the north, in Levant and the Delta, Hamelin's spread around for "carpeting" purposes 3k infantries haven't taken a single province yet. Even worse than that, they didn't even advance beyond 0% in either of the places, while still taking the same 2% attrition for being the attackers in hostile land.Hamelin decides to cut his losses, surrender in Atbara, gather his soldiers scattered around the countryside, pull them together and start chasing Egyptians through Sudan under crushing attrition, while they are no longer willing to accept battle and actively move away from him. This is turning into a disaster, and the fleet still docked on the coast of the Red Sea is dispatched back to France to fetch reinforcements for the southern part of the campaign. Newspapers in France add to his humiliation, posting articles about disasters in Atbara and Wad Madani, quoting the losses he took, while also reporting about his competitor's victories in the Delta.It's not all terrible though. Hamelin actually manages to grab his troops together before it's too late, defeats Egyptians outside Khartoum and proceeds to siege the city. He still didn't take a single province, and he doesn't have any cavalry with him, and it shows in his progress there of mere 1% a day. But he has a bigger stack now, so he actually gets somewhere with the siege – but it will take him months what could be done in weeks if he composed his armies according to the new standard. His progress there is slow, and he's stranded, incapable of aiding the remainder of his small stacks against Egyptian guerilla tactics, so he loses another two heavily damaged by attrition singular brigades shortly after, which French newspapers quickly post side to side with reports of quick progress by Pellissier in the north.Egyptians don't rest either, they sortie with their Man-of-Wars and badly damage two French Commerce Raiders in the Bay of Alexandria before they are chased back into harbor and blockaded there by a larger navy. Pellissier having lost the last of his Hussars has to order Dragoons from Tunisia to reinforce his siege in Cairo, but subdues the Delta and Levant at quick pace. Hamelin seriously bored with his sitting in the south through the months it takes to make Khartoum fall initiates talks with Ethiopia about military access and potential alliance. Now that we're fighting against their enemies, they are more willing to listen to our envoys, though our bad fame related to earlier French conquests in Algeria and Tunisia precedes us, so they are really hesitant about their future as French neighbours.Meanwhile, the war is going on for a year already. I took the richer parts of Egypt, but I've failed to secure the south, and take most of the provinces I demanded Ethiopia should receive. This means we can get to another fun new part of the warfare system. The ticking warscore, something you might remember from Crusader Kings 2.The theory is simple here, if you fail to secure the target of your conquest, the province that is contested, warscore will begin ticking against you with every next day that passes. Slowly undoing your score coming from other successes like conquests and naval battles, or adding even more to your enemy's score if he's the one winning the war. This means that if you don't hurry and don't secure the target provinces quickly, the way Hamelin failed with his stupid idea of splitting his infantry into tiny stacks scattered across the endless clay plains of Sudan, your score will start shrinking. This is another strong incentive to use plenty of recon units, you really have no time to waste, especially if you are required to secure a lot of land for a liberation wargoal.Lucky for me, I am playing France. Egypt is utterly beaten, and no other GP dared to intervene on their behalf (which wouldn't be the case if I wasn't France-allmighty). Since Pellissier's stacks in the north sieged faster than Hamelin's failure in the south ticked against me – I can sign peace with Egypt, as they give up having lost the last of their soldiers and seeing nobody would back them up. You can compare the progress in the north and in the south, how much the new way of building and using armies is superior to the old ways.The fact there's even progress in the south mostly relates to Hamelin's change of strategy, if he used carpeting all the way through, he'd lose all his soldiers and conquer nothing. Forming a larger stack out of them allowed him to subdue parts of Sudan – but the lack of cavalry was extremely painful and slowed him down by many months. He lost half of what he landed with, and he didn't take even one tenth of what Pellissier secured in the north. You can visually compare both performances in this screenshot.Finally, let's compare both armies. The northern chunk of the forces defeated the bulk of Egyptian army, fought many more battles overall and occupied many more provinces. Those troops remained largely intact as they were built and used in a smarter way, and regularly paused to receive reinforcements. If it wasn't for the Hussar that got caught in the crossfire one time too many, and had to be replaced with Dragoons from Tunisia, they wouldn't lose a brigade. Meanwhile the southern stack is half its starting numbers, many POPs took a lot of damage, Egyptians claimed some battle warscore here and managed to fully prevent the conquest of the target of the war regardless of the advantage French had in tech and numbers.You should notice the mysterious red skull icon here in some of the army screens. It allows to quickly disband all undermanned brigades, which don't have large enough POPs to reinforce them, allowing to quickly purge badly damaged units and prevent Soldier POPs from getting completely drained while attempting to reinforce them.Marching out of Egypt won't be particularly challenging. My armies will become "exiles" as a part of the peace deal, and will be peacefully escorted out of the country into friendly territory or, in this case, my fleet of transport ships. Thanks to this feature, you will no longer find yourself stranded in the land where you've just signed peace, for example in the country you've just freed, and will be allowed to return your troops home safe and sound. In practical terms, "exiled" soldiers have no organization and cannot fight or occupy again until they enter friendly territory. They will also be shielded from unnecessary attrition until they return home.To wrap this up, here's a short summary:- AI offers more feedback but also acts differently regarding many diplomatic actions, and players need to adjust their gameplay to that.- All units and techs were heavily rebalanced, and AI is aware of it. Armies will be much bigger and more versatile. Cuirassiers are supercool.- You need recon cavalry in every army tasked to take enemy land and engineers or tanks in every army tasked to take enemy fortifications.- Carpeting of the land is a thing of the past, it'll get you nowhere. Supply limits are more generous across the board, but you always take attrition when you siege.- Prioritize the land contested in the war, or it will tick in favour of your enemy.Thank you for reading this. Feel free to ask your questions below if you'd like something explained in more detail.