Did The Late-Mid to Late-Game Uber Stacks Ever get Balanced / Nerfed??

[marty99]

And maybe you can afford it. Point being that you'll deplete the enemy manpower without engaging their armies. Imagine the Persians depleting Mainland Portugal of manpower by repeatedly assaulting a fort in Goa.

Fair point; theoretically it could be a slightly helpful strategy in some situations, for instance if your nation has far greater manpower but inferior troop quality. My point is that I don't think there's enough benefits, or applicable situations, to call it 'Huge' (or indeed an exploit - there's always going to be a tradeoff, whereas I see an exploit as something which almost entirely favours the player) however it is of course a subjective thing. Personally I think requiring manpower to refill forts is a sensible idea.

[Anthropoid]

Hmmm. Well I guess I AM eventually gonna have to reinstall this game and replay from an early game start up to the 1650s to 1700s just so I can actually talk intelligently about what I was whining about when I started this thread . . . chuckle

There we go! Spend enough time NOT playing an incredibly complex game like EU and eventually, even when you got sick of some particular aspect of it, you'll forget exactly what that aspect was, and have to go back and replay it for a few months to relearn the game and that pet peeve that made you stop playing it!

It sort've reminds me of breaking up with you girlfriend for a couple years, forgetting what it was about her that annoyed you and thus getting to reexperience the joys of 'falling in love again'

ADDIT

WOW . . . just intalled EU3 (In Nomine edition I guess) and started it up (to make sure it had installed okay) and . . . really didn't remember my "ex" was quite so ugly without her Heir to the Throne makeup on . . .

Holy crap gaming has evolved rapidly! When was EU3 vanilla released? 2007? and In Nomine maybe a year or so after that? These graphics and User Interface are truly PAINFUL!!

I wonder if I could even stand to go back and play Civilization 3 any more? Just amazing how much graphics have evolved in such a short time.

[Alpha Zeke]

The answer is no, no you could not go back to civ 3, I could not.

[Grubnessul]

Coming back to my previous post. Although the total number of the armies seems to be not too inaccurate, stacks are. Until the 18-19th century, it was just not economical to have more than 10.000 men in the field at the same place (in game terms a province). Which is one of the main reasons why smaller states managed to survive as long as they did. Attrition should go up significantly and the AI should be taught how to avoid it.

[GaiusC]

Why can't paradox fix the AI so it will care more about attrition? Even in CK2, which is their latest and most polished top selling game, the AI is killing itself because of Attrition.

Possibly because it happened in real history?
And, actually, attrition was usually the biggest killer of armies, battles were only a (quite far) second culprit.

The real problem here is that human players can avoid a good deal of attrition.

[Flammehav]

Yeah, but so what. If you war against these giant stacks (I've never seen them THAT big...), let them walk on your land, and let attrition do its thing. Then you can easily kill the armies. The thing is, the province support limit is affected by many things - technology and ownership is one thing, I believe ownership is x3. So while you are fine standing with 80K troops in your own territory, the equivalent territory belonging to your enemy is only one third. This also makes it a lot harder to be aggresive with huge stacks, though!

Not quite correct. If you own the land yourself it's x5, if it's the enemies land, but you CONTROLL it, it's x3. I also think allies and areas you have MA acess on in x3. Hostile area that you don't controll you get no bonus for.

[Capzero]

I definitely think the armies get a bit too large. I don't think increasing the cost is as important as upping maintenance cost. That is the true limiter on military. You should be forced to keep a mid sized military at peace time then build like crazy at war start. The way it is now I can almost always keep within 75% of my force limit and still expand my economy and colonies.

[Uebergold]

The answer is no, no you could not go back to civ 3, I could not.

Well, why should you go back to Civ III when Civ IV is much better

[Grubnessul]

I definitely think the armies get a bit too large. I don't think increasing the cost is as important as upping maintenance cost. That is the true limiter on military. You should be forced to keep a mid sized military at peace time then build like crazy at war start. The way it is now I can almost always keep within 75% of my force limit and still expand my economy and colonies.

Maintenance should indeed also go up. It's strange that a company of medieval peasants with point sticks require as much money as Napoleonic fusiliers to remain operational.

[Atlanteax]

There is a thread in the 5.2 Beta folder that has a petition asking for reduced force-limits, particularly for late-game.

[Emren]

Hostile area that you don't controll you get no bonus for.

Well, that was my point - let them in, siege for a bit, while attrition takes them down somewhat, then hit them. Even better if they try a siege assault and fail, then their morale will be very low and it's a cakewalk.

[DarthJF]

I definitely think the armies get a bit too large. I don't think increasing the cost is as important as upping maintenance cost. That is the true limiter on military. You should be forced to keep a mid sized military at peace time then build like crazy at war start. The way it is now I can almost always keep within 75% of my force limit and still expand my economy and colonies.

Yeah, back in EU2 I always had smallish army at peacetime and when war broke out, would start recruiting more. But back then raising troops fast was easier since you could recruit more than one regiment at a time. And the armies didn't reinforce so the only way to make up casualties was to recruit more regiments. Wars felt more costly back then.

[StephenT]

Although the total number of the armies seems to be not too inaccurate, stacks are. Until the 18-19th century, it was just not economical to have more than 10.000 men in the field at the same place

Really?

Ottoman army at the siege of Constantinople, 1453: 80,000 men
Ottoman army at the siege of Rhodes, 1480: 70,000 men
Ottoman army at the battle of Mohacs, 1526: 60,000 men (and the Hungarians had 40,000)
Ottoman army at the siege of Vienna, 1529: 120,000 men

Guess nobody told the Turks about that rule.

[Knut Posse]

Have to comment on off topic a bit: Civ 3 might not be worth it, but I've found that Civ1 is actually quite cute and the nostalgia hits are intoxicating. The graphics with that technology are so different and aim at a different standard that it's quite nice.

On topic, the problem isn't necessarily the existence of the big stacks, but that they are continuously there, without splitting up. Perhaps the AI should spread their forces a bit and incorporating some sort of levies system should be in effect, that the army actually costs more money when gathered in big numbers in one place and when spread out the local communities are better and more cheaply able to support the troops. Perhaps a famine could be caused by keeping too many big stacks around indefinitely Of course someone would find a way to exploit that as well.