About the combat system

[Soulmojo]

Hello,

I posted this on the general discussion thread, but was asked PDX-Trinexx to post it also here.

The game in the current iteration is designed in a way, that it forces you to take one type of men at arms, or knights and focus entirely on that type, due to the limited slots you have to build duchy buildings. Duchy buildings provide the best bonuses to men at arms or knights, and makes one type of unit better than the others. However, it also makes combined arms gameplay impossible in an efficient way.
There are several units in the game which works quite well with each other, eg. heavy infantry+heavy cavalry+knight or heavy infantry+light cavalry+knights or archer+heavy infantry+knights etc. but due to 2-4 duchy building you take the most efficient option. This makes warfare very boring and flavourless as you always arrive to the same conclusion: Either heavy infantry, or crossbowmen.

What I propose is this: Unlock all duchy buildings to all slots in duchy capitals, and only allow to build either economy buildings, or duchy buildings.

This would allow players and the AI to have more useful knights and different combinations of units as all unit types could be realized to its fullest.

One last thing: I would be awesome, if in the case of duchy buildings, there would be a first era or dark age version of the duchy buildings.

​

 

[Soulmojo]

Upon further contemplation I wanted to post additional reasons too:

1. Terrain makes limitations to units, even if the culture you are playin have flavour toward some specific unit or, multiple units.
France is the prime example of this, where their culture, heavily favours knights, and have an armored cavalry unit called Gendarmes, yet because france terrain lacks large amount of farmlands, and does not have access, to camelry and elephantry, both of these flavours becomes lost as most of the bonuses you could get comes from duchy buildings. Or if you do try to access these flavours you have to choose one. Now if you would be able to build all types of duchy buildings, you could have a healthy amount of knights, a healthy amount of Gendarmes and use traditions to enhance them further.

2. Having the ability to field more duchy buildings means you get to finally use buildings like tax offices, royal reserves, siege workshops, royal armory, which I'm pretty sure 99% of players don't build ever, unless you are playing a very specific game.

3. It makes the game much less about what type of terrain you hold and instead how well you build up your duchies.

4 Makes the game focused a little bit more about your knights and thus enhances your roleplay value.

5 If the game is a bit more focused about knights, it also makes building castle baronies more viable compared to city and temple holding, as you will definitely have more knights, and the main source of knights besides invite events are low born nobles in castle baronies.

6. What type of units Mercenaries and Order units field might differ vastly of the units you field, and these units inherit the realm combat bonuses of your held land. You could enhance them more via duchy building and make them a more viable fighting units.
For example, you play mali, and you focus on heavy infantry. You reform Mandé your religion to organized. Mandé order units are skirmishers. normally you wouldn't build skirmisher camps or archery range, to make the order units more effective, but if you could build blacksmiths AND archery range in your duchies it would be an entire different gameplay, since you could field archers(high damage+low toughness) and heavy infantry(high toughness+low damage) and compliment your army with skirmisher from order.

All of these above mentioned items allows you to field multiple effective armies and makes aspects of the game more viable than before.

 

[IlPopa]

Honestly I don't understand why buildings add stacking damage modifiers in the first place. Imagine if EU4 had a building that gave 1% infantry combat ability. It would be the most broken thing ever. It also makes the cultural traditions that add damage modifiers look pathetic in comparison.

If buildings increased the amount or size of men at arms regiments instead of their damage their cost would scale with their combat effectiveness and it would be more balanced. A barracks could allow you to build one heavy infantry, a camp one crossbowman, a grounds one cavalry, for example. That way there would be no incentive to go full mono and you could mix and match.

 

[Soulmojo]

Honestly I don't understand why buildings add stacking damage modifiers in the first place. Imagine if EU4 had a building that gave 1% infantry combat ability. It would be the most broken thing ever. It also makes the cultural traditions that add damage modifiers look pathetic in comparison.

If buildings increased the amount or size of men at arms regiments instead of their damage their cost would scale with their combat effectiveness and it would be more balanced. A barracks could allow you to build one heavy infantry, a camp one crossbowman, a grounds one cavalry, for example. That way there would be no incentive to go full mono and you could mix and match.

The combat system in eu4 was in favor of bigger and larger empires. With the exception of my Hungary plays in EU4 I always started as a one province minor, and built it up to a couple of thousand development empire. The biggest challenge was to survive that first couple of decades and conjure up the necessary military quantity to be able to expand. This system, inherently favors smaller domain and tall gameplay and you can start to stomping from the get go. As a small count or duke that initial small bonuses adding up can be the edge.
And while buildings over time provide big stackable bonuses, it also requires a vast amount of gold investment from your end while traditions require only prestige.

The bigger problem here, is the mid-late game, when your man at arms limit and regiment size increases. Then you could field different type of regiments, but they would be considerably weaker, due to no additional duchy slot or if you do replace duchy buildings, then it would weaken your already standing armies. Therefore you keep building your original man at arms type.

 

[IlPopa]

Well I think you've correctly identified the problem that late game mixed men at arms are way less efficient than stacking a single type. The exception of course are siege weapons because they add something no one else had. Maybe if pursuit was as essential as siege progress then it would be worth it to build unbuffed cavalry similar to how we build unbuffed siege engines now. As it stand though you can simply stack archers to 100 damage and stackwipe everything with zero pursuit.

 

[Rigg42]

Hello,

I posted this on the general discussion thread, but was asked PDX-Trinexx to post it also here.

The game in the current iteration is designed in a way, that it forces you to take one type of men at arms, or knights and focus entirely on that type, due to the limited slots you have to build duchy buildings. Duchy buildings provide the best bonuses to men at arms or knights, and makes one type of unit better than the others. However, it also makes combined arms gameplay impossible in an efficient way.
There are several units in the game which works quite well with each other, eg. heavy infantry+heavy cavalry+knight or heavy infantry+light cavalry+knights or archer+heavy infantry+knights etc. but due to 2-4 duchy building you take the most efficient option. This makes warfare very boring and flavourless as you always arrive to the same conclusion: Either heavy infantry, or crossbowmen.

What I propose is this: Unlock all duchy buildings to all slots in duchy capitals, and only allow to build either economy buildings, or duchy buildings.

This would allow players and the AI to have more useful knights and different combinations of units as all unit types could be realized to its fullest.

One last thing: I would be awesome, if in the case of duchy buildings, there would be a first era or dark age version of the duchy buildings.

​

The terrain of your domain holdings, building terrain restrictions, and traditions/innovations for your culture dictate what MaA regiments you should build IMO. While archers and heavy infantry are often a very good choice, I certainly don't "always arrive to the same conclusion".

My issue with you suggestion is that combat vs. AI is already way too easy and your solution would probably make this problem considerably worse.

If you are playing against the AI it really doesn't matter all that much what MaA you choose as long as your building buffs create synergy with them. It comes down a choice between kicking the enemies ass or wiping them out completely. Either way you'll probably never lose a battle after the early game if you have a basic understanding of the game mechanics. I agree that monotyping MaA troops is the generally the best way to min/max in most circumstances. The general incompetence of the AI, along with the massive skill/domain advantage the player generally has, hardly makes this a requirement though. That being said, I get where you are coming from. The game presents you an obvious choice that makes you feel like you are handicapping yourself if you don't take advantage.

There is nothing but an opinion modifier to stop you from holding more than 2 duchy titles. This kind of defeats the basis of your argument in my opinion. Its not really that difficult to hold 8 or more duchy capitals and maintain a perfectly stable realm. Theoretically your domain limit can be filled entirely with duchy capitals. The bonuses are so insane from duchy buildings that rebellious vassals are hopeless against you in combat. At that point they can hate you all they want. This is already bad enough to completely break the game. If you were to allow players to start building multiple duchy buildings in a single holding without a hard limit on duchies it would further exacerbate an already glaring issue. You make no mention of implementing a hard limit on duchies in your post which would be a must have for this to be implemented.


I made a suggestion thread not too long ago that covered some of this ground if you or anyone else is interested.

 

[Soulmojo]

The terrain of your domain holdings, building terrain restrictions, and traditions/innovations for your culture dictate what MaA regiments you should build IMO. While archers and heavy infantry are often a very good choice, I certainly don't "always arrive to the same conclusion".

My issue with you suggestion is that combat vs. AI is already way too easy and your solution would probably make this problem considerably worse.

If you are playing against the AI it really doesn't matter all that much what MaA you choose as long as your building buffs create synergy with them. It comes down a choice between kicking the enemies ass or wiping them out completely. Either way you'll probably never lose a battle after the early game if you have a basic understanding of the game mechanics. I agree that monotyping MaA troops is the generally the best way to min/max in most circumstances. The general incompetence of the AI, along with the massive skill/domain advantage the player generally has, hardly makes this a requirement though. That being said, I get where you are coming from. The game presents you an obvious choice that makes you feel like you are handicapping yourself if you don't take advantage.

There is nothing but an opinion modifier to stop you from holding more than 2 duchy titles. This kind of defeats the basis of your argument in my opinion. Its not really that difficult to hold 8 or more duchy capitals and maintain a perfectly stable realm. Theoretically your domain limit can be filled entirely with duchy capitals. The bonuses are so insane from duchy buildings that rebellious vassals are hopeless against you in combat. At that point they can hate you all they want. This is already bad enough to completely break the game. If you were to allow players to start building multiple duchy buildings in a single holding without a hard limit on duchies it would further exacerbate an already glaring issue. You make no mention of implementing a hard limit on duchies in your post which would be a must have for this to be implemented.


I made a suggestion thread not too long ago that covered some of this ground if you or anyone else is interested.

The goal of this suggestion is not to fix how weak the ai against your armies, it is to fix unit versatility in your armies, and give the player and the AI the ability to utilize more duchy buildings previously unused.


The weakness of the AI is rooted in different issues. What are these issues?

1. gold and manpower provided by your realm priest. In my hungary game, by high medieval era, it gave me 200 gold monthly, and over 50k levies, to a point where I drafted no levy from any of my vassals. This gives you so much extra cash and manpower compared to what the ai gets it is ridiculous.

2. Large empires cannot call vassals to war, except them being serving as knights, and the levy you get from feudal contract. Emperors, kings and dukes, generally cannot hold territory other than their realm capital, and when you declare war on to them, you only face a fraction of the kingdoms true power, like 10-15k levy, and some man at arms. Even if they have 30 dukes, each with 5k levy and 2-3k man at arms, they are never ever called to war. So even if you declare on the HRE or Byzantium even if the combined military power of these empires are over 200k levy, 50k man at arms 300 knights, you will never face them and just roflstomp on them these empires like you do with a minor duke.

3 constant internal wars. Independent kingdoms and empires are constantly slowly disintegrating due to internal strife, because factions to install a ruler, are not countered with a faction who supports the current ruler, and the king or emperor has like 1 province, and cannot muster the strength to defend his title, and certainly cannot call supporting or allied vassals to war. So it is slowly breaking apart. Making kingdoms and empires over time weaker and weaker, while you are getting stronger and stronger.

4. learning and tech. People generally disregards the fact how easy it is to stack learning and how easy is to get waaaay ahead of the ai in research. Currently I play an India Ironman, where my empress has 70+ learning, year is 1100 and I already maxed out in 50 years most of the 3rd era innovations due to the fact that i research tech 100% monthly. While the ai are still halfway second era. I've taken duchies with cultures not even able to build the duchy buildings. So I have to convert culture first before giving it to my vassals.

5. development. provinces the AI hold are way underdeveloped throughout the game, which makes them inherently weaker than my vassals for example. Why? Because independent rulers doesn't have inherent hard coded development bonuses in their provinces but I give all of them in feudal contract the coinage rights, which gives them 0.3 development each month. and over time their provinces will be double tripple more developped than the indepentent rulers, thus giving me more money, more tech research and them more money and levy.


These are the root problems why the ai is so weak. Generally most my vassals by the end of the game have 10k-15k levy full 10k man at arms and I can barely hold them off conquering vast amounts of land, due to the fact, that I gave my vassals, and my vassals vassals the tools to counter the above mentioned shortcomings+ I keep the peace my empire.

 

[Rigg42]

The goal of this suggestion is not to fix how weak the ai against your armies, it is to fix unit versatility in your armies, and give the player and the AI the ability to utilize more duchy buildings previously unused.

I get that. Don't get me wrong I think its an interesting idea. Despite the stated goal there would be side effects that would further cripple an already weak AI, and throw an already out of balance combat system further out of balance. Surely you can see that. If there was a hard limit on duchies your suggested solution would have far less potential for abuse. It seems like a pretty extreme solution to a pretty minor issue honestly. While diversifying your troops isn't optimal, it 's pretty far from devastating to your military effectiveness.

The weakness of the AI is rooted in different issues. What are these issues?

1. gold and manpower provided by your realm priest. In my hungary game, by high medieval era, it gave me 200 gold monthly, and over 50k levies, to a point where I drafted no levy from any of my vassals. This gives you so much extra cash and manpower compared to what the ai gets it is ridiculous.

2. Large empires cannot call vassals to war, except them being serving as knights, and the levy you get from feudal contract. Emperors, kings and dukes, generally cannot hold territory other than their realm capital, and when you declare war on to them, you only face a fraction of the kingdoms true power, like 10-15k levy, and some man at arms. Even if they have 30 dukes, each with 5k levy and 2-3k man at arms, they are never ever called to war. So even if you declare on the HRE or Byzantium even if the combined military power of these empires are over 200k levy, 50k man at arms 300 knights, you will never face them and just roflstomp on them these empires like you do with a minor duke.

3 constant internal wars. Independent kingdoms and empires are constantly slowly disintegrating due to internal strife, because factions to install a ruler, are not countered with a faction who supports the current ruler, and the king or emperor has like 1 province, and cannot muster the strength to defend his title, and certainly cannot call supporting or allied vassals to war. So it is slowly breaking apart. Making kingdoms and empires over time weaker and weaker, while you are getting stronger and stronger.

4. learning and tech. People generally disregards the fact how easy it is to stack learning and how easy is to get waaaay ahead of the ai in research. Currently I play an India Ironman, where my empress has 70+ learning, year is 1100 and I already maxed out in 50 years most of the 3rd era innovations due to the fact that i research tech 100% monthly. While the ai are still halfway second era. I've taken duchies with cultures not even able to build the duchy buildings. So I have to convert culture first before giving it to my vassals.

5. development. provinces the AI hold are way underdeveloped throughout the game, which makes them inherently weaker than my vassals for example. Why? Because independent rulers doesn't have inherent hard coded development bonuses in their provinces but I give all of them in feudal contract the coinage rights, which gives them 0.3 development each month. and over time their provinces will be double tripple more developped than the indepentent rulers, thus giving me more money, more tech research and them more money and levy.


These are the root problems why the ai is so weak. Generally most my vassals by the end of the game have 10k-15k levy full 10k man at arms and I can barely hold them off conquering vast amounts of land, due to the fact, that I gave my vassals, and my vassals vassals the tools to counter the above mentioned shortcomings+ I keep the peace my empire.

I agree with your observations although I don't think most are root causes. The massive advantage the player usually has in skills, succession management, domain limit, and held duchies seems to be the root cause of the majority of AI issues. The AI doesn't employ strategies that even remotely resemble what a competent human player would deploy. At the end of the day that's the root of all AI issues and everything else is just reflective of that reality.