Another thing EUII got right but EUIII got wrong was the armies.
EUII allowed you to create the army you wanted by abstraction. Quality-Quantity, Offensive-Defensive etc, it was your choice.
EUIII introduced Unit Types on top of this, which made zero historical sense (eg. no army ever consisted only of Janissaries- they were an elite standing army) presented no meaningful choice to the player (just remember to upgrade to the better unit), and ruined the game for non-Europeans who were triply penaltised: they researched slower, got their new units at Western tech years and their units were much worse. And worst of all, this was extremely difficult to correct, because one had to change all the country files for them to choose any modded units.
Therefore I hope units get abolished in EUIV. If they remain, I hope they only act as elite units. So one can select his own Imperial Standing Army and raise the rest of the army during wartime or something like that.
In the ideal case, the game would resemble the reality: I am yet to read a military historian (and I have read a few) who claims that technology determined military prowess in the EU period. For instance Jeremy Black writes China was the most effective military power in the 18th century. In EU, one can land 10k troops there and walk all over them. The technological gap was just not wide enough. It became wide enough only after the industrial revolution (e.g. we got the Maxim gun and they not).
EUII allowed you to create the army you wanted by abstraction. Quality-Quantity, Offensive-Defensive etc, it was your choice.
EUIII introduced Unit Types on top of this, which made zero historical sense (eg. no army ever consisted only of Janissaries- they were an elite standing army) presented no meaningful choice to the player (just remember to upgrade to the better unit), and ruined the game for non-Europeans who were triply penaltised: they researched slower, got their new units at Western tech years and their units were much worse. And worst of all, this was extremely difficult to correct, because one had to change all the country files for them to choose any modded units.
Therefore I hope units get abolished in EUIV. If they remain, I hope they only act as elite units. So one can select his own Imperial Standing Army and raise the rest of the army during wartime or something like that.
In the ideal case, the game would resemble the reality: I am yet to read a military historian (and I have read a few) who claims that technology determined military prowess in the EU period. For instance Jeremy Black writes China was the most effective military power in the 18th century. In EU, one can land 10k troops there and walk all over them. The technological gap was just not wide enough. It became wide enough only after the industrial revolution (e.g. we got the Maxim gun and they not).
