A suggestion on increasing the usability of janissaries

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Lunar Spark

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Oct 24, 2015
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From balance perspective janissaries right now are essentially trash and using them is borderline nation ruining.

  1. They require you to spend mana, which prevents you from getting ideas/slackens/technology
  2. They provide you with miniscule quality bonuses
  3. They have an insane penalty to reinforcement cost, which would make them a detriment to your nation even if they didn't cost military power

Here's a few suggestions on how this could be improved:
  1. Reduce cost of raising janissaries to 2 military power.
  2. Increase janis’ fire damage taken bonus to -20%; add a +50% reinforcement speed modifier

This would make janissaries an actually somewhat worthwhile unit, and would allow using them as a frontline meatshield, meant specifically to take on the first blow of the opposing army.
 
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They require you to spend mana, which prevents you from getting ideas/slackens/technology

Idea is that you don't get many of Janissary regiments, instead you start with just a few and add them gradually if you have mana, money, and there still is a room to avoid disaster (so it's better to keep less than 20 regiments to be on a safe side). It's your elite forces and not just some meatshield.

Note that in early game you don't need them at all because Anatolian base units are already overpowered.

They provide you with miniscule quality bonuses

They have whooping 100% drill gain which allows you to keep them fully drilled all the time, which gives additional +10% damage done and -25% damage received (-35% in total).

They have an insane penalty to reinforcement cost, which would make them a detriment to your nation even if they didn't cost military power

Ottomans are insanely reach nation (after some effort taken), so they can afford it.
 
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They require you to spend mana, which prevents you from getting ideas/slackens/technology
So?

Janissaries is easily accessible source of big, military power in game. When others nation will need longer time to recovery, Turks dont feel this problem. Even when this country is ruled by AI - manpower isn't problem. Money to recovery? Country can have many monetary debts, but with manpower debts are higher problem. Always you can dissolve and rapid appoint a new formations. Time is important in wars and Ottomans have, thanks janissaries, advantage in this. You can experience it well if you play in game "humans vs humans". You think, that janissaries bonuses are weak? Haha! Peoples, who don't know how game work, think that small modifiers havent sense.

Janissary disaster and other quasi-problems are joke to logic, historical processes etc. When this IRL was very important "Sword of Damocles" for ottoman monarchs, leading to a revolt, weak militarization and others negative consequences in game this is extremal easy to avoid. Reduce few units - no problem...
 
They have whooping 100% drill gain which allows you to keep them fully drilled all the time, which gives additional +10% damage done and -25% damage received (-35% in total).
This is an unfair thing to say.
If you are going to assume that janis have 100% drill, then at the very least you need to assume that non-janis will have 50%. This is still going to be inaccurate but whatevs

also it's not +10% damage done but +10% fire and +10% shock damage done, an important distinction


. You can experience it well if you play in game "humans vs humans". You think, that janissaries bonuses are weak? Haha! Peoples, who don't know how game work, think that small modifiers havent sense.
I'm sorry but I can't tell to what degree you are trolling here, as I find it impossible that someone who actually played in MP would still think that janis are anything but nation ruining.
 
This is an unfair thing to say.
If you are going to assume that janis have 100% drill, then at the very least you need to assume that non-janis will have 50%.
Not at all. You likely won't have enough money to drill all your forces, at least in early game, but you certainly can and should drill Janis.
 
I'm sorry but I can't tell to what degree you are trolling here, as I find it impossible that someone who actually played in MP would still think that janis are anything but nation ruining.
I think, that this topic is more trolling that my answer.

Do you know what mean "lesser damage received"? This mean, that in battle unit have lesser losses. Lesser losses mean also lesser reduction of morale. By longer period have more people and higher morale. By long time of game time battles are lost more by morale (still army have people but haven't will to fight) than by extermination (still have will to fight, but haven't people). Also in situation extermination of one regiment - this have influence on morale rest army. Therefore lesser damage received is very important.

Next. In MP money is often less important than MP. How I wrote - you can have mechanical debts, you can get gold from other players, from AI and from many other sources. But Manpower? Less sources. Main are atural recovery, burning professionalism and dev exploit. And you can image, that many players can play by long time balancing on the brink of bankruptcy and winning great wars. In one great battle, when still and still and still players send new armies, fresh soldiers etc. size can be gigantic. Half milions soldiers and more fight by few months. Rapid create new support army, even by big cost of sword mana and risk of disaster. In this moment you don't play to next 50 years. Here and now you think about elimination of enemy. And manpower can be used to normal armies - this is also important.

I will not reveal all the secrets and tactics in multiplayer. But you have to remember one thing - the game is completely different than in SP.
 
Let's please settle down and remember to remain civil, even when we strongly disagree with one another.
 
I have no multiplayer experience, but I certainly know that you can easily buy some mana (by hiring better advisor or upgrading existing), but buying MP is most often impossible, so if you are low on MP (which is often the case in multiplayer from all what I've heard) Janis can save your ass.
 
From balance perspective janissaries right now are essentially trash and using them is borderline nation ruining.

  1. They require you to spend mana, which prevents you from getting ideas/slackens/technology
  2. They provide you with miniscule quality bonuses
  3. They have an insane penalty to reinforcement cost, which would make them a detriment to your nation even if they didn't cost military power

Here's a few suggestions on how this could be improved:
  1. Reduce cost of raising janissaries to 2 military power.
  2. Increase janis’ fire damage taken bonus to -20%; add a +50% reinforcement speed modifier

This would make janissaries an actually somewhat worthwhile unit, and would allow using them as a frontline meatshield, meant specifically to take on the first blow of the opposing army.
While some points were already mentioned (i.e. that the existing boni are actual pretty neat). You should also consider some additional points.
1.
Special units in general are an important flavor option to spice things up. In this case Janissaries can definitively give you an advantage in battle, even against somewhat equal foes, but this should also have an considerable downside since the Ottomans are one of the most powerful nations anyway. Plus you can avoid this disaster by not having too much Janissaries, considering their costs early on something that shouldn't be too hard.
I also should mention, that you have a huge advantage as the Ottomans by not only having enough money to buy high tier advisors early on (you can buy 3 Regiments for a year with an tier 3 advisor which is good even if it doesn't sound like it), but also the advantages the Ottoman Government gives you in terms of rulers (at least as far I understand it you should get better rulers by it, therefor mitigating mana cost further)
2.
If you compare them to other special units in the game, I'd say they are one of the better ones. Banners may give you discipline but also raise corruption, something the nations that can field will probably struggle with anyway. Additionally they take far longer to reinforce, which is a huge downside.
Rajput's are probably still worse event if their estate privilege is granted and you take their government reform plus you can only recruit a fairly low number of them, almost none until mid game (though maybe I didn't do that properly). Second point also goes for Cossacks who are weaker anyway.
Now the only ones left are Revolutionary Guards and Streltsy.
Rev. Guards are not only a late game unit, but also everyone can get them (and probably should if it's about fighting power only). Therefor I think it's no good to compare those two.
Streltsy on the other hand are arguably overpowered, no stat wise but because of their way of recruitment (+combat bonus). Trying to get any other unit to compare to them is just breaking the game further, something we don't really need I'd say.
Well and I guess I don't really have to mention marines that are actually weaker in combat itself (though I want to anyway :D ).
3.
As I don't know how experienced you are, I'd like to suggest to watch some videos about the fields you struggle with, i.e. if you have trouble winning battles even with Janissaries you should look further into the combat mechanic and actual army management (both in terms of composition and in how and when to move them etc.). Also different boni do well with other ones, I'm not that good in this my self but if I remember correctly damage reduction should pair well with morale boots since you can stay longer in battle anyway while grinding enemy morale fast (therefor ending the battle faster than by winning through casualties).
4.
This part is my personal opinion so please only look at it in that way.
EU IV is a game where things should be difficult. If there are actions that give you a pure advantage while there are no real downsides (like Streltsy recruitment) there is something wrong. Boni that are nation or culture specific should only be minimal to not only further harm game balance but also historicity.
The boni you want to see for Janissaries are insanely powerful if you compare them to the ones you can get at all. 20% fire damage take is not only double the amount you can get through normal means, but also in a normal game only the Ottomans can get them while still having the ones anyone can have. This would put the unit itself at least on the level most nations can get at all (just think about how strong that would be). Decreasing the recruitment cost is even worse - just imagine the Ottomans could field 24 regiments of this kind after two years of peace by only hiring a tier 2 mil advisor, that have no downside to them until fighting starts and it did it's only something that the Ottomans can easily take on (seriously double the reinforcement cost is negligible for them). Nobody would be able to stop them, I mean that's the case in SP anyway but in a MP this would require all other nations to team up on the Ottomans just to prevent them steamrolling everyone early in the game (the janissary disaster can't happen during the first 100 years of the game anyway so you can field as many as you like).
Instead those types of units should make up only the core of your army. They are elite regiments after all and any army comprised only out of such regiments who be... strange to say at least.
 
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Ottomans are extremely uneven. Ignoring SP for a bit, where they are strong just because you can start blobbing fast and AI in this game is bad, they start arguably a bit too strong but very quickly derail into a country with one of the weaker potentials of all regions and nations in game.

Janis are bad. It's going to be hard for me to convince you, because in the end the perception of them is always going to come down to anecdotal perspectives and personal experiences with them. I'm not sure how much it matters to you, if at all, but janissaries being very bad is a sentiment shared by most experienced and accomplished players both in the SP and MP scene.

Some points to bring up
a) fire/shock damage dealt/reduced does NOT impact morale casualties and only affects the physical side of combat. Correspondingly, -10% fire/shock damage received that janis provide you is an equivalent of like 1/3rd of what +% global discipline provides you(give or take) but it also only affects janis themselves.
b) while this might be slightly different in the very first years of the game, you'll extremely quickly get to a point where it's much, much better to hire 5 generals and slacken(also giving you 5 rolls on generals, which give you significantly better quality boost than janis) rather than hiring janis.

While you could make some very weak argument for janissaries having some slight degree of usefulness in the very first years of the game, their uselessness in later stages of the game should be undisputable really.

You have a point about Ottomans being a bit too strong early game already, but the way I'd approach correcting this, would be by shifting their ideaset(ie. by removing their starting +5% discipline and pushing it to the end of the ideaset) or doing any other nerf to their early capabilities AND boost janissaries themselves, as this would make Ottomans's "power curve" a little bit more even(they would still fall off, but not as much as they do now).

As I don't know how experienced you are
I've been around for a while ._.
 
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Good to know, should have looked at the badges since they are after all somewhat telling.
I have to admit, I never heard anyone complaining about Janis since Great Powers are normally banned in my MP Group and I don't watch LPs nowadays.
Therefor let me ask you a question: In comparison to what are they bad?
If your point is that they are just not cost effective than I think lowering the cost is all you should do. Even than cutting it down to 2 mil is still pretty extreme, I mean you could basically buy 1k manpower for 2 mil after reaching 60% professionalism (something the Ottomans can reach fairly early on), ergo 25k for the cost of only one general.
In terms of damage reduction I'm not entirely sure since PDX math is a mess, but as far as I understand it it should be part of the casualty multiplayer, which is used for both morale and strength casualties.
Maybe I'm wrong there so if you know of other calculations please let me know :)
For your second point: What do you mean by 'extremely fast'? Because I'd say I normally reach a point where I can casually do this in late middle game at best .
Also it's not like Janis disappear, even if you consolidate your regiments it only requires a tiny bit of micro management to exclude them (at least if you dissolve regiments in the process otherwise it isn't a problem anyway). So it's a one time investment in opposite to generals, though its nice to be able to pick one, not gonna lie.

In the end I have to admit I stand by my point, that the regiments themselves shouldn't be buffed. Reducing cost somewhat is fine but especially extra reinforcement speed for an elite regiment is somewhat contractionary...
 
Good to know, should have looked at the badges since they are after all somewhat telling.
I have to admit, I never heard anyone complaining about Janis since Great Powers are normally banned in my MP Group and I don't watch LPs nowadays.
Therefor let me ask you a question: In comparison to what are they bad?
To regular regiments. With the exception of the very first years of the game where you might genuinely have an abundance of MP and slackens aren't as effective, I genuinely consider using janissaries to be nation ruining, compared to hiring regular regiments.
If your point is that they are just not cost effective than I think lowering the cost is all you should do. Even than cutting it down to 2 mil is still pretty extreme, I mean you could basically buy 1k manpower for 2 mil after reaching 60% professionalism (something the Ottomans can reach fairly early on), ergo 25k for the cost of only one general.
Still less efficient than slackens after a certain point. You are right though that the reduction to 2 mil should come with nerfs/rebalances to other aspects of Ottos
In terms of damage reduction I'm not entirely sure since PDX math is a mess, but as far as I understand it it should be part of the casualty multiplayer, which is used for both morale and strength casualties.
Incorrect. Fire/shock damage received/dealt impacts physical casualties, not morale casualties. That's all that is to it really, feel free to check it in game
In the end I have to admit I stand by my point, that the regiments themselves shouldn't be buffed. Reducing cost somewhat is fine but especially extra reinforcement speed for an elite regiment is somewhat contractionary...
And elite regiments being bad isn't? :D
The point of giving them +% reinforcement speed is specifically to allow them to serve a function of an elite force that you use for the frontier of your army.
 
To regular regiments. With the exception of the very first years of the game where you might genuinely have an abundance of MP and slackens aren't as effective, I genuinely consider using janissaries to be nation ruining, compared to hiring regular regiments.
But how? Cost shouldn't be an issue and if you don't want to have more regiments than you have already just don't use them.
Additionally I'd like to know what are the first years for you? I mean depending on what you are talking about that could mean the first 1/3 of the game or just some 20 years.
Still less efficient than slackens after a certain point. You are right though that the reduction to 2 mil should come with nerfs/rebalances to other aspects of Ottos
That point would be pretty late in the game though. It would give an extreme early on advantage none the matter what your traditions are. Also slacken reduces your professionalism, while this wouldn't.
Incorrect. Fire/shock damage received/dealt impacts physical casualties, not morale casualties. That's all that is to it really, feel free to check it in game
Ah, had a little mishap here. That's right to be fair.

And elite regiments being bad isn't? :D
The point of giving them +% reinforcement speed is specifically to allow them to serve a function of an elite force that you use for the frontier of your army.
Well being bad is one thing and if it were true it would be a problem (whatever is actually the case). The thing about elites is, that you wouldn't use them as your frontline, but the core of your army. Modern military doctrine may be different in that regards, but in past times sending your best soldiers in every opportunity you have actually makes them die pretty fast, something you obviously wouldn't want ;)


I think the best way to solve this entire thing would be to give every nation the ability to recruit a certain number of elite regiments (something like a permanent standing army core, while the rest of the troops would only fully be raised in times of war). After all, at least on the military side of things, that's pretty much what the Janissaries were (more or less). That way you could introduce stronger buffs for elite regiments while giving nations/cultures that had some special form of that (Ottomans, Russia, the Qing etc.) some buffs or additional flavor (i.e. Streltsy, as far as I understand it, were simply better performing than Russia's regular troops which doesn't mean that they were more effective than those of different countries -> Maybe Russia would have the option to recruit more elite regiments at all, that have a slight debuff in comparison).
 
But how? Cost shouldn't be an issue and if you don't want to have more regiments than you have already just don't use them.
Additionally I'd like to know what are the first years for you? I mean depending on what you are talking about that could mean the first 1/3 of the game or just some 20 years.
The cost of janis is very much an issue, because you get better returns from getting next techs(even if ahead of time) and slackening
The length of the 'first years' heavily depends. If we are talking a blobby SP game then it's probably a few decades, give or take, before you get to a point where slackens give you a reasonable amount of mp(they don't need to give you more than janis, because slackens also give you rerolls on generals)
in a MP game it would be 0, because at no point the cost of delaying your mil tech can justify hiring a shitty unit like janis(that also arguably would be a detriment to your army even if it costed only ducats)

That point would be pretty late in the game though. It would give an extreme early on advantage none the matter what your traditions are. Also slacken reduces your professionalism, while this wouldn't.
No the point is that you spend 250 military power on getting 5 professionalism and a slacken, it's even less with some estate privileges/innovativeness and whatnot, this nets you no change in professionalism, but gives you 2 years worth of manpower and 5 general rerolls(far, far bigger quality boost than what janis give you )
Ah, had a little mishap here. That's right to be fair.


Well being bad is one thing and if it were true it would be a problem (whatever is actually the case). The thing about elites is, that you wouldn't use them as your frontline, but the core of your army. Modern military doctrine may be different in that regards, but in past times sending your best soldiers in every opportunity you have actually makes them die pretty fast, something you obviously wouldn't want ;)
Good thing it doesn't work like this in the game
I really think we should not think too much about history when it comes to tweaking an already heavily abstracted system in the game, because that leads nowhere
I think the best way to solve this entire thing would be to give every nation the ability to recruit a certain number of elite regiments (something like a permanent standing army core, while the rest of the troops would only fully be raised in times of war). After all, at least on the military side of things, that's pretty much what the Janissaries were (more or less). That way you could introduce stronger buffs for elite regiments while giving nations/cultures that had some special form of that (Ottomans, Russia, the Qing etc.) some buffs or additional flavor (i.e. Streltsy, as far as I understand it, were simply better performing than Russia's regular troops which doesn't mean that they were more effective than those of different countries -> Maybe Russia would have the option to recruit more elite regiments at all, that have a slight debuff in comparison).
You have a point that it would be cool if every nation could recruit an 'elite force'. My suggestions in this thread, however, are meant to be an easy tweak that doesn't require too much from the dev team, that would correct what, IMO, right now is just a, forgive me the harsh wording, noob bait