Attrition is too weak

[Slaughter]

Playing as Portugal, the year is 1570. At war with Tunis and Ottomans.
I just saw the Ottomans march over 100k soldiers in the middle of Moroccan deep desert owned by one of my vassal countries, and across multiple provinces of scorched Earth. They barely got a dent in their troop numbers.

How are the Ottomans even feeding this much people across months of travel in the deep desert? Half of their army should have died.

Excuse me, but this is total bull.

 

[Shiny Dog]

Attrition should really hit stacks harder and manpower softer.
The way it stands is that armies won't be phased by attrition, but the manpower pool disintegrates.
This creates a weird situation where everybody OTHER than the people in the current war are benefiting from attrition, as if they attack next they'll be facing a much weaker opponent.

 

[Brynjar]

Did you also check their manpower? The AI is terrible at managing attrition. If attrition is increased they will either need to massivly improve the AI (not likely to happen any time soon), or it would need to "cheat" like they do with naval attrition/sailors.

 

[I'm gaming]

Attrition itself seems not bad but supply system similar with HOI is needed. 100k army easily suffers 5% of attrition per month which means it loses 60k per year without any fight. However, if you spread it over 5 provinces then they suffer nearly no attrition and this makes attirition useless. More important thing is the fact that armies don’t suffer any attrition when they fight.

 

[Less2]

There's also a bug that the devs seem to refuse to fix. There is no reinforce cost (in ducats) for regiments that are at 100% and reinforcing faster than attrition would kill them. This means that high maneuver generals can lead infinite doomstacks of mercenaries anywhere at no penalty, where normally mass reinforcement of mercs would bankrupt an AI.

 

[darth254]

There's also a bug that the devs seem to refuse to fix. There is no reinforce cost (in ducats) for regiments that are at 100% and reinforcing faster than attrition would kill them. This means that high maneuver generals can lead infinite doomstacks of mercenaries anywhere at no penalty, where normally mass reinforcement of mercs would bankrupt an AI.

wow....if that's still a present issue....

and yeah to OP, check for mercs, as certain countries like the Ottomans and Ming are notorious for merc spam. merc spam just ruins attrition warfare and dumbs down the game. if you don't occupy their lands, the Ottomans are just gonna keep flooding you with them, because that's how it worked in history. the Ottomans kept necromancers around to reanimate their dead troops to continue fighting for them. the only way to defeat necromancers is to occupy their homelands and then cast the One Ring into Mount Doom.

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

wow....if that's still a present issue....

and yeah to OP, check for mercs, as certain countries like the Ottomans and Ming are notorious for merc spam. merc spam just ruins attrition warfare and dumbs down the game. if you don't occupy their lands, the Ottomans are just gonna keep flooding you with them, because that's how it worked in history. the Ottomans kept necromancers around to reanimate their dead troops to continue fighting for them. the only way to defeat necromancers is to occupy their homelands and then cast the One Ring into Mount Doom.

Bring Ming to zero Mandate and see how AI fights with almost no mercs. I really don't like merc spam but I rather put up with it than AI being a complete pushover (well even more than it already is anyway). Sadly I don't think we will see a fix to this any time soon

 

[enkidu136]

Playing as Portugal, the year is 1570. At war with Tunis and Ottomans.
I just saw the Ottomans march over 100k soldiers in the middle of Moroccan deep desert owned by one of my vassal countries, and across multiple provinces of scorched Earth. They barely got a dent in their troop numbers.

How are the Ottomans even feeding this much people across months of travel in the deep desert? Half of their army should have died.

Excuse me, but this is total bull.

Maybe try hit and run then. Their army should be much over the combat width, so you would not nesessary have a disadvantage in numbers. Just attack, withdraw, reinforce, attack again. Now they still have 600ish men per regiment, and you have 1000. Easy slaughter

Attrition might not be enough to lower their regiment strength, but if you do the job they should definitly get a problem in reinforcement. Also, if they have a general with lots of maneuver (+10% reinforcement for every maneuver up to 100 men per month) + advisor + def ideas + general with specific trait (+33% three times, ca exceed 100 men per month), they can reinforce a lot. And they might have traits / ideas that lower attrition.

I would not like to see whole armies dying without being attacked, especially if they are traited to cross deserts ect. And you can have your advantage, not in the first attack, but in the second. But I also would like to see a drop in regiment strength instead of a drop in manpower (reasons were already mentioned in this thread). Maybe high attrition could lead to a regiment strength cap instead, lets say 80 men per regiment constantly.

EDIT: against 100k you might need more than two attacks then

 

[adhd_lama]

attiriton has been a wierd one in EUIV, I remember having played EUII and then promptly in euiv shutting in a 30k stack (this was early in the game) at Åland with boats at either side, and I was shocked that they could replenish their troops, how did the new troops get there? Row boats?

The 5% cap is, again having come from EUII, kinda silly. You can march as a Swedish army straight into Moscow from Neva without occupying any land on the way and get there relatively unscathed (different story in EUII where if you went a province too far you'd crash and burn). This also makes scorched earth tactics not very viable, but the change to affect hostile movement speed was nice.

 

[giovdb]

Playing as Portugal, the year is 1570. At war with Tunis and Ottomans.
I just saw the Ottomans march over 100k soldiers in the middle of Moroccan deep desert owned by one of my vassal countries, and across multiple provinces of scorched Earth. They barely got a dent in their troop numbers.

How are the Ottomans even feeding this much people across months of travel in the deep desert? Half of their army should have died.

Excuse me, but this is total bull.

Attrition is devastating to Manpower. You may not see a change in the troop count, but its taking a toll of them for sure.

 

[lolada]

Complex issue, move along..

ps. attrition can now be actually > 5.. check in india carefully during monsoon seasons

 

[schondetta]

attrition, money, and manpower mean nothing to the AI. Not sure why they even put those in the game tbh

 

[Avil]

In tale game ottomans run around with 600k mercs and 0 manpower. No manpower = no attrition issues.

 

[giovdb]

In tale game ottomans run around with 600k mercs and 0 manpower. No manpower = no attrition issues.

Erg... no manpower means troops will be taking the damage themselves and thus be getting smaller in size. If they only have mercs, they will still take damage, but it will take ducats instead of manpower to replenish.

 

[Avil]

Erg... no manpower means troops will be taking the damage themselves and thus be getting smaller in size. If they only have mercs, they will still take damage, but it will take ducats instead of manpower to replenish.

Yes. And if you swim in ducats, you don't care. Also, as was said above, you don't pay for reinforcement if undamaged stack takes attrition damage. So you don't overpay for mercs.

 

[enkidu136]

Yes. And if you swim in ducats, you don't care.

Doesnt matter how much money you have, the disadvantage in reinforcement speed persists. Its just that you have to make use of it by attacking multiple times, reinforce faster and benefit from your higher regiment strength.

 

[Celdur]

There needs to be a supply system, even a simple one, like a bar next to an army, if depleted and in hostile territory attrition should skyrocket, AI can be programmed to only fight when the bar is full and retreat when its low and can no longer loot for more, with additional coding to not run away if casualties are "acceptable", etc. But that can be added in time. Also, in winter or desert terrain the bar should suffer more from attrition, while looting the bar should be able to be replenished, etc. Instead of killing troops it just "kills" supplies.

 

[Avil]

Doesnt matter how much money you have, the disadvantage in reinforcement speed persists. Its just that you have to make use of it by attacking multiple times, reinforce faster and benefit from your higher regiment strength.

You don't have to explain me, why having an army of mercs is bad for you. All you need is 3x80k stacks to demolish whole ottoman army, in the end of war you'll be at 500k loses with 300k attrition on your side and 1.5kk loses and 1k attrition on ottomans side. I'm just explaining, why attrition doesn't matter when you're an AI lucky nation of ottoman size.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Attrition itself seems not bad but supply system similar with HOI is needed.

Not appropriate to period warfare.

Besides, EU 4 used to have a much, much higher attrition cap. You could inflict nearly 20% in some situations. This was back before multiple efforts to reduce player tactical control as a significant determinant of the outcome of wars.

wow....if that's still a present issue....

The line between "bug" and "WAD of something" is pretty blurry in this game. But not paying to reinforce as long as your troops are at 100% is definitely still a thing.

Bring Ming to zero Mandate and see how AI fights with almost no mercs. I really don't like merc spam but I rather put up with it than AI being a complete pushover (well even more than it already is anyway). Sadly I don't think we will see a fix to this any time soon

This wasn't really a thing in early patches. It wasn't even possible to have much more than 80 mercs even in the extreme endgame...and getting there took a long time. Pdox made it this way intentionally. They didn't HAVE to shred base manpower, gimp attrition to a pathetic shadow of what it was, and juice mercenaries to the point where you sustain triple the amount you could in early patches while keeping them up to date (they didn't always upgrade alongside regulars).

None of these things were mandatory implementations in EU 4. Pdox chose them.

ps. attrition can now be actually > 5.. check in india carefully during monsoon seasons

Another UI bug with a good chance of being ignored for years.

I'm just explaining, why attrition doesn't matter when you're an AI lucky nation of ottoman size.

It kind of does though, because the AI generally won't merc cannons. If you shred its manpower via attrition or any other means, you'll have double the back row support or more in every major engagement. In pitched battles numbers wise you'll win casualty trades and the battle. If you catch 40-50 stacks out of position and hit them with full 80, you can easily get stack wipes even with bad military NIs and stuff like defensive/quantity.

 

[Avil]

It kind of does though, because the AI generally won't merc cannons. If you shred its manpower via attrition or any other means, you'll have double the back row support or more in every major engagement. In pitched battles numbers wise you'll win casualty trades and the battle. If you catch 40-50 stacks out of position and hit them with full 80, you can easily get stack wipes even with bad military NIs and stuff like defensive/quantity.

Sigh. Didn't I already say that it's no problem beating AI army when he's full of mercs? What you're trying to say? That after a year instead of 50k of cannons and 500k merc infantry they'll get 40k cannons and 550k merc infantry? What does it change? It's still just a giant army of mindless undead. Before or after attrition. Army didn't become more or less dangerous, as well as attrition did anything useful for you. Well, excatly the opposite, you have to stay as a full stack on that siege, because a giant swarm of merc zombies actually can overwhelm you if you split.