I disagree (of course.
) I think the the system is fine as is BUT I will agree the AI isn't as good as it should/needs to be in dealing with this issues. But that's an issue with the AI, not with the system itself.
War Exhaustion Out of Control
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I disagree (of course.
) I think the the system is fine as is BUT I will agree the AI isn't as good as it should/needs to be in dealing with this issues. But that's an issue with the AI, not with the system itself.
I disagree (of course.
I'll have to agree on this one too.
The biggest problem with WE is that it calculated dead men, but not against your total manpower pool. Surely if you loose 10k out of your 15k manpower pool to attrition you are supposed to be more exhausted then when you loose 20k out of your 200k pool... in the game however it's just the opposite.
WE from battles works like that (actually it scales against your total army size i believe), WE from attrition however doesn't. This need to be fixed by Paradox, it's not moddable as far as I know.
WE from battles works like that (actually it scales against your total army size i believe), WE from attrition however doesn't. This need to be fixed by Paradox, it's not moddable as far as I know.
No matter how big your army as a whole is, your WE due to attrition is the same. That is to say if a small nation with 10,000 troops loses 50% of its army due to a prolonged winter campaign in foreign lands, they suffer the same war exhaustion as a massive, world-spanning empire would, even though 10,000 is just one army out of dozens for them.
On the other hand, WE for battles is scaled. So if that small nation loses half of its army in a battle, it suffers far more WE than the world-spanning empire.
Now we can of course say, it's a good thing for there to be mechanics to make world-spanning empires less stable and harder to play; that there should be a method for them to break apart and lose their power. Paradox has been on a campaign to make world conquest harder almost since the game launched - some HTTT mechanics like overextension are the latest reflection of that goal
But this mechanic is not the way to do it. This just seems like paradox overlooked something when they added WE for attrition way back in IN somewhere. It's very frustrating and does not make sense IMO. The goal of making it hard to be a big empire fighting lots of little wars is laudable, but doing it by having WE not scale is not the way to do it.
Especially because attrition is almost a given if you want to have competitively sized armies.
You sir are one of the few people that understand why War exhaustion as a mechanic doesn't work for larger empires. Manpower simply doesn't scale. And thats without getting started on what blockades can still do to countries.
Oh it's fine in single player when you can conquer the world with 100k soliders. But in Multiplayer where 200 province empires slugging it out with each other is common place, WE gets maxed. Its unavoidable in many cases.
That said....
It's now a lot easier to simply negate it by stacking huge numbers of minus rebelion decesions. It is possible to reach -20 revolt risk from judges, decesions, buildings, stability, tolerance, etc. Once your at the stage you just slap on war taxes, stick two fingers up at the world and drive your super stacks forward into an orgy of bloodshed until your hearts content.
Not a single revolt in France. The French fought until they lost faith and then went home. The did NOT rebel against Napoleon. No Draft riots, no resistance. France just ran out of manpower, he was drafting boys and old men at the end, and they mustered up and marched untrained into death.
The German vassals swapped sides at the first opportunity, agreed. But French peasants were not rebelling against Imperial Rule, they were paying their taxes and sending their sons to die for Napoleons Ambition (see the reference
)My point remains, home country and home culture provinces did not rebel in the face of extended war. They did for other reasons, but not because of war and never when invasion threatened.
Just to make it clear, I am not suggesting we remove the revolt risk due to war exhaustion. I am merely suggesting that certain types of revolts do not happen due to war exhaustion and I am suggesting that WE leads to nationalist, particularist and non-country religion religious rebels.
The reason I make this argument is that peasant revolts did not happen during invasions and political/religious revolts were often less likely to happen during wartime as patriots might revolt over many issues, but now when the country is in danger.
I just dealt with this issue in my current game. At least in IN 3.2, killing rebels really doesn't affect your WE, however the effort of moving large stacks to kill them might due to attrition. I was at 15 WE after a rather fruitless war and had to spend the better part of a decade getting it under control, and found attrition to be my number one issue. Even minor attrition that you might not think about normally (5% or less) will stack up against you especially when you're trying to reduced WE fast.
Maybe it could be solved by making WE partially propotional to army size. Like you get 50% of WE for the absolute number of soldiers that died, and 50% depending on the fraction of your total army they were.
In that way, bigger empires would be more difficult to maintain, but in a more fair way.
Well i honestly think WE + attrition is what makes EU3 playable. The reason i say this, is because, ofcourse, when i started playing EU3 i also figured that WE + attrition is very annoying and i was thinking "hmm it has to be better without it" so i turned it off (modded it out). And guess what? It didnt get better, it was actually game breaking as blobification was ruining it. Without it, once first nation reaches landforce limit of 20, and makes that first 2 can + 18 inf doom stack, the rest of the world is done. With that army u can take on 10 AI nations, together fielding 3 X more divions than you, simply cuz ur doomstack will steam roll anything and everything.
Now a bit more related to first post, u have to see things from a different perspective. You now have the biggest and strongest (Ming might be bigger and more numerous, but ure in western tech group so u > everyone) country in the world. Ur landforce limit is probably like 300 if u made workshops in all provinces. Now imagine how powerful u would be from this point on if u could fight the rest of world one country at the time, fielding 100% of your troops each time u fight vs their 100% landforce limit. For example 300 divisions vs 100 Spain can probably mount at this point. They wouldnt stand a chance, u would simply overrun them, and even more so in HTTP where all it takes for u to actually win any war is to destroy their stacks which is pretty simple.
As u can see the whole point of this system is to slow u down once ure over 20 provs, so that u couldnt conquer the world in 20 years.
Also add 1 more thing into account. Unlike AI who thinks in a linear fashion, human player, once they understand the game mechanics, can out smart AI by factor of like 20.000%. AI think in goals and objectives given to them by scripts, refreshing them from time to time, while human changes, adapts all the time. Just remember ur first game, ur first battles, and compare the chaos from before to organized actions and tactics u can comprehend now. Every game u play u learn something new, while the AI remains the same. The reason im saying all this, is basically any country human plays has godly advantage over the rest of the world, period. Without restrictions such as WE/attrition, u could literally beat AI using 1% of ur brain power.
Now a bit more related to first post, u have to see things from a different perspective. You now have the biggest and strongest (Ming might be bigger and more numerous, but ure in western tech group so u > everyone) country in the world. Ur landforce limit is probably like 300 if u made workshops in all provinces. Now imagine how powerful u would be from this point on if u could fight the rest of world one country at the time, fielding 100% of your troops each time u fight vs their 100% landforce limit. For example 300 divisions vs 100 Spain can probably mount at this point. They wouldnt stand a chance, u would simply overrun them, and even more so in HTTP where all it takes for u to actually win any war is to destroy their stacks which is pretty simple.
As u can see the whole point of this system is to slow u down once ure over 20 provs, so that u couldnt conquer the world in 20 years.
Also add 1 more thing into account. Unlike AI who thinks in a linear fashion, human player, once they understand the game mechanics, can out smart AI by factor of like 20.000%. AI think in goals and objectives given to them by scripts, refreshing them from time to time, while human changes, adapts all the time. Just remember ur first game, ur first battles, and compare the chaos from before to organized actions and tactics u can comprehend now. Every game u play u learn something new, while the AI remains the same. The reason im saying all this, is basically any country human plays has godly advantage over the rest of the world, period. Without restrictions such as WE/attrition, u could literally beat AI using 1% of ur brain power.
I'm guessing blockades are having a large impact on your WE. Just judging by the screenshot you posted, you have only one navy (though I suppose that navy could be huge) to protect almost the entire coastline of Europe. You are up against Castile, the world naval superpower of the time and the Ottomans who always have tons of boats and probably dominate the Mediterranean in your game.
I'd also take a look at those stacks in the Pyrenees. I know the force limits for those provinces aren't very high, and take a while to move through, thus really increasing attrition as you move through them. Iberia as a whole really doesn't support large armies well, especially when compared to central Europe.
If attrition is your major factor, pause, look at every stack, and manage each one to avoid getting attrited to hell and gone. You might want to keep a large infantry stack following your front lines for quick assaults on forts, limiting the time you spend sieging, and thus taking attrition.
If attrition is your major factor, pause, look at every stack, and manage each one to avoid getting attrited to hell and gone. You might want to keep a large infantry stack following your front lines for quick assaults on forts, limiting the time you spend sieging, and thus taking attrition.
Obviously controlling all of Germany, Italy, France and Hungary would be a complete walk in the park historically. It's not like any of those nations were proud or willing to defend themselves.
If you don't like war weariness, don't go to war.
Unfortunately, this does not have to do with war weariness. I doubt it even had to do with nationalism either considering the time period (but this is not a debate about nationalism).
Like most things in this game, they work well for small/midsized countries and work terribly for large countries. War weariness definately needs to be toned down for larger countries.
Easy answer : when you're at war put your mouse over the WE in the Military tab and it will give you the change. Probably attrition.
Here is France deblobified. Apart from Brittany all the French Minors (Burgundy Included) revolted 3 years before. A Gut feeling told me this was an opportune time to take Rousillon. But.. I got attacked by the french doom stack with a lucky nation king against my 3.1.0.5 (fast shooter) king I lost two 20 regiment stacks in the time it took me to lose the first one, build the second one have it lose it's first battle and retreat.