Border sieges

[Pyske]

In the current siege system, it is no more difficult to besiege a capital province buried deep in the heart of my territory than it is to conquer lone, vulnerable, or surrounded provinces.

Would it be feasible to add a siege modifier to account for neighboring friendly provinces? The modifier could be relatively small, but encourage conflict along the borders of an empire, where they could more realistically be supported and fed, rather than deep in the heart of enemy territory.

I'm thinking something along the lines of +0.25% attrition and +1% defensiveness per adjacent friendly (unoccupied) province. Enough to be noticeable without completely changing the current siege landscape.

 

[Incompetent]

Or they could just bring back the 'out of supply' modifier to attrition that existed in EU2 (not sure about EU3). http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/Supply

Another reason why invaders do unreasonably well in EU4 is that the invader gets to use the defender's supply limit, even bonuses from forts by the looks of it. Logically, every level of fort (not just special mega forts) should *increase* supply for friends of whoever controls the fort, but *decrease* supply (or at least not give extra supply) for the fort's enemies. If the system worked like this, building forts would actually make sense as a form of protection against invasion, inflicting horrible attrition on anyone who tries to siege it down.

 

[AmbroStoics]

I admit I do tend to rush for Moscow just to get a warscore even if they took Finalnd and Lithuania. I like the idea of getting attiration bonuses/penalties for surrounding enemy/friendly provinces.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Makes perfect sense. Another that i've been asking myself, is from where comes the garrison of provinces you occupy. Is it subtracted from the nation manpower?

 

[SultanOfRum]

Or they could just bring back the 'out of supply' modifier to attrition that existed in EU2 (not sure about EU3). http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/Supply

Another reason why invaders do unreasonably well in EU4 is that the invader gets to use the defender's supply limit, even bonuses from forts by the looks of it. Logically, every level of fort (not just special mega forts) should *increase* supply for friends of whoever controls the fort, but *decrease* supply (or at least not give extra supply) for the fort's enemies. If the system worked like this, building forts would actually make sense as a form of protection against invasion, inflicting horrible attrition on anyone who tries to siege it down.

well, i was sometimes annoyed by this also... i got a good supply limit in my country, but how the heck enemy gets the same supply limit? and yeah conquering one by one from border to capital sounds better and harder no more rushing to capital

so this would be a big change for eu4 and i really liked it i would also love to see that upgrading forts will be useful.

imo, it should be something like this. like the "distance from border" mechanic, you should get attrition depending on the distance from your border OR distance from the province you have sieged, so if you got too far without sieging or conquering provinces behind you, you will get huge attrition and also decrease in morale (who wouldn't lose his will to fight if he is starving?). decrease in morale should be added for all kinda stuff like this; low supplies, far from home or border, warscore, long siege times... because currently it is not realistic to fight like a boss when you are obviously losing the war or when your country lost hundreds of thousands soldiers, manpower... if you are a defender, maybe you shouldn't suffer from these and actually you should get a bonus for defending your country, but if you are the attacker, this should definitely lower the morale of your troops. there are lots of things to write about these...

for the fort owners, i think it should lower the supply limit for the enemy depending on the fort level.
fort level 1 = 10% less supply limit for the enemy
level 2 = 25%
lvl 3 = 40%
lvl 4 = 55%
lvl 5 = 70%
lvl 6 = 85%
but maybe you can get -10% for every adjacent province you conquered or you own

 

[grommile]

Makes perfect sense. Another that i've been asking myself, is from where comes the garrison of provinces you occupy. Is it subtracted from the nation manpower?

All garrisons, whether occupier or owner, appear out of nowhere.

 

[leo1993]

well, i was sometimes annoyed by this also... i got a good supply limit in my country, but how the heck enemy gets the same supply limit? and yeah conquering one by one from border to capital sounds better and harder no more rushing to capital

so this would be a big change for eu4 and i really liked it i would also love to see that upgrading forts will be useful.

imo, it should be something like this. like the "distance from border" mechanic, you should get attrition depending on the distance from your border OR distance from the province you have sieged, so if you got too far without sieging or conquering provinces behind you, you will get huge attrition and also decrease in morale (who wouldn't lose his will to fight if he is starving?). decrease in morale should be added for all kinda stuff like this; low supplies, far from home or border, warscore, long siege times... because currently it is not realistic to fight like a boss when you are obviously losing the war or when your country lost hundreds of thousands soldiers, manpower... if you are a defender, maybe you shouldn't suffer from these and actually you should get a bonus for defending your country, but if you are the attacker, this should definitely lower the morale of your troops. there are lots of things to write about these...

for the fort owners, i think it should lower the supply limit for the enemy depending on the fort level.
fort level 1 = 10% less supply limit for the enemy
level 2 = 25%
lvl 3 = 40%
lvl 4 = 55%
lvl 5 = 70%
lvl 6 = 85%
but maybe you can get -10% for every adjacent province you conquered or you own

Forts are defensive structures. Though you can certainly sally forth and run supply route raids you can't really influence the supply of a besieging army.

I think that default attrition should be 5, but there should be a -80% modifier for "adjecent controlled province".

Making it more complicated would be to check if there is a route to a port/cored province to check if that route is besiges, so that making a gigantic snake for the enemy capital isn't TOO beneficial. If this were to be done I'd make there be 2 modifiers: -20% adjecent province controlled/-60% supply route.

 

[BFTeixeira]

All garrisons, whether occupier or owner, appear out of nowhere.

Shouldn't they change it?

 

[grommile]

Shouldn't they change it?

Perhaps.

 

[Camarada78]

It is underlined that the supply is taken from the province itself. Pillaging and stuff. That is why every six months you can loot the province (if not bordering).

The garrison part should be changed. It is annoying that a 2k army siegied a province, and 3 months later, another 2k army is occuping that province, even thou the army never grew beyond 4 units. I loved the "sortie" option now, essential in some moments. But i think it should be related somehow with the fortification size AND manpower.

 

[987655mm]

I kinda agree. It needs to be changed.

 

[Freudia]

If your idea is to make provinces harder to siege, you should also consider, you know, making sieges not take an ahistoric amount of time.

 

[SultanOfRum]

Forts are defensive structures. Though you can certainly sally forth and run supply route raids you can't really influence the supply of a besieging army.

I think that default attrition should be 5, but there should be a -80% modifier for "adjecent controlled province".

Making it more complicated would be to check if there is a route to a port/cored province to check if that route is besiges, so that making a gigantic snake for the enemy capital isn't TOO beneficial. If this were to be done I'd make there be 2 modifiers: -20% adjecent province controlled/-60% supply route.

It is underlined that the supply is taken from the province itself. Pillaging and stuff. That is why every six months you can loot the province (if not bordering).

The garrison part should be changed. It is annoying that a 2k army siegied a province, and 3 months later, another 2k army is occuping that province, even thou the army never grew beyond 4 units. I loved the "sortie" option now, essential in some moments. But i think it should be related somehow with the fortification size AND manpower.

they are not actually just forts. i m pretty sure that ( because i ve seen them) some of these provinces in europe like vienna or constantinople had great walls which includes the city. they were not just forts, so i assume that if there is level 3-4 fort in eu4, i imagine places like vienna, constantinople and there are many other examples for these of course. So, these cities aka fortresses gather the supplies around them and even some times they burn the supplies if they think they wont be able to get it in order to prevent enemy to take it. This is why i believe that upgrading the fort should allow fort to hold more supplies of the province and prevent enemy taking it.

and if you are not limiting the influence of a province by sieging it or conquering it, it sounds weird that enemy can just supply its troops from homeland. are the people in those provinces stupid enough to let the enemy suppliers pass by?

in short, actually there are 3 ways to be supplied for the armies. first one is pillaging and imo, as the province fort gets upgraded, it should be harder to find enough supplies by pillaging. second one is bringing supplies along with the army and it is limited, so there should be some kind of counter/timer then for leaving provinces of allies or we can just skip this way and consider only the last way of supplying which is getting supplies from provinces of allies and this should be impossible if you are far from an ally province or a conquered/besieged province . I want changes according to this logic and i also wish to see upgrading forts will be more significant.

If your idea is to make provinces harder to siege, you should also consider, you know, making sieges not take an ahistoric amount of time.

well, idea is not to make (any) provinces harder to siege, idea is to make provinces which are not adjacent to you (conquered provinces are included) harder to siege. This is not only realistic, but also this will make choosing capital etc. more important, because what i do as a strategy in this game is (which is impossible to do in real life), i just march my armies straight forward to enemy capital, i conquer it and suddenly i get enough warscore to make a peace deal with the enemy. so if my enemy got 2-3 allies, i conquer 2-3 capitals and my enemy loses its allies. and also this is the reason in real life why people don't choose capitals as a border city.

 

[leo1993]

they are not actually just forts. i m pretty sure that ( because i ve seen them) some of these provinces in europe like vienna or constantinople had great walls which includes the city. they were not just forts, so i assume that if there is level 3-4 fort in eu4, i imagine places like vienna, constantinople and there are many other examples for these of course. So, these cities aka fortresses gather the supplies around them and even some times they burn the supplies if they think they wont be able to get it in order to prevent enemy to take it. This is why i believe that upgrading the fort should allow fort to hold more supplies of the province and prevent enemy taking it.

and if you are not limiting the influence of a province by sieging it or conquering it, it sounds weird that enemy can just supply its troops from homeland. are the people in those provinces stupid enough to let the enemy suppliers pass by?

in short, actually there are 3 ways to be supplied for the armies. first one is pillaging and imo, as the province fort gets upgraded, it should be harder to find enough supplies by pillaging. second one is bringing supplies along with the army and it is limited, so there should be some kind of counter/timer then for leaving provinces of allies or we can just skip this way and consider only the last way of supplying which is getting supplies from provinces of allies and this should be impossible if you are far from an ally province or a conquered/besieged province . I want changes according to this logic and i also wish to see upgrading forts will be more significant.



well, idea is not to make (any) provinces harder to siege, idea is to make provinces which are not adjacent to you (conquered provinces are included) harder to siege. This is not only realistic, but also this will make choosing capital etc. more important, because what i do as a strategy in this game is (which is impossible to do in real life), i just march my armies straight forward to enemy capital, i conquer it and suddenly i get enough warscore to make a peace deal with the enemy. so if my enemy got 2-3 allies, i conquer 2-3 capitals and my enemy loses its allies. and also this is the reason in real life why people don't choose capitals as a border city.

By forts I meant defensive structures in general. The current default attrition is 1 for moving in enemy territory and +1 for sieging. As attrittion is an overtime thing, having your army move too deep for too long would cause it to grind through your manpower like nothing else. I suppose having it increase overtime would be a more viable solution (to simulate the starting with a bag train) and increase overtime, kind of like naval attrition when out of range of ports. Starting with an attrition of 0 when you're in an adjecent controlled province and gaining 0.5 attrition for every month you're not in an adjecent controlled province. A cap could be 10 attrition. I'd suggest it being removed when an army enters controlled territory, or adjecent to controlled territory.
Pillaging could reduce this attrition by 0.5 per basetax.

Having 10+1(siege) attrition is no joke, so altough you can siege that enemy capital, you will burn through a lot of manpower for it.

Does this sound like a more viable model?

 

[lolada]

Not sure about actual numbers, Paradox would balance that anyway, but general idea is quite sound. Harder to siege provinces inland - unless you control adjacent province(s), bonuses/penalties to defense if province is at border or deeper in the country, probably shorter siege times overall to compensate for extra defensiveness, more attrition deep into enemy territory. Sound nice.

 

[Incompetent]

Forts are defensive structures. Though you can certainly sally forth and run supply route raids you can't really influence the supply of a besieging army.

The besieging army is apparently living off the land, which is harder to do if all the local stores are locked away in the fort. In any case though, forts shouldn't give *benefits* to enemy armies, which is the situation we have at the moment.

 

[Freudia]

well, idea is not to make (any) provinces harder to siege, idea is to make provinces which are not adjacent to you (conquered provinces are included) harder to siege. This is not only realistic, but also this will make choosing capital etc. more important, because what i do as a strategy in this game is (which is impossible to do in real life), i just march my armies straight forward to enemy capital, i conquer it and suddenly i get enough warscore to make a peace deal with the enemy. so if my enemy got 2-3 allies, i conquer 2-3 capitals and my enemy loses its allies. and also this is the reason in real life why people don't choose capitals as a border city.

You seem to misunderstand. Sieges in this game right now take an unrealistic amount of time; most sieges in game take somewhere in the realm of a year or more, when most sieges historically are finished in mere months. That is my problem with making any province, regardless of realism or not, harder to siege.

I'm not opposed to making fort benefits only apply to allied forces, though. That's something that should actually be a thing.

 

[Incompetent]

You seem to misunderstand. Sieges in this game right now take an unrealistic amount of time; most sieges in game take somewhere in the realm of a year or more, when most sieges historically are finished in mere months. That is my problem with making any province, regardless of realism or not, harder to siege.

I agree with this in terms of duration, especially once we get into the age of cannons. Crappy out-of-date castles should be very quick to siege down, with long sieges generally reserved for unblockaded ports (Siege of Candia!) and/or state-of-the-art fortresses. Still, there should be a decent payoff for players who do actually make the effort to wall up. Also, if we reduce the duration, sieges should be a bit deadlier per month for the attackers (e.g. outbreaks of infectious diseases were very common among besieging armies of the era).

 

[Nucky]

+1, in the EU4 timeframe, in Europe, the building of fortification was a major part of military spending. Maybe instead of making non border sieges harder, make border siege easier, like a +1 or +2 modifier. Buiding lines of fortification would be fun, strategic, and kind of historical!

Agreed also that ennemy should not benefit from supply limit increase from fortifications, that doesn't make any sense.

 

[unmerged(194490)]

Theoretically +1
But:

Entire theory (and practice) of fortification system is that you have border regions which are fortified, and they are protecting vulnerable underbelly...
They only country I remember which was not really following that idea were Netherlands - at some point one big fortress.

I would propose few changes to current system:
1. The warscore gain for capturing province should be modified by fortress size. So capturing important fortress (like level 5 + march) should mean A lot.
2. Loose of heavily fortified province should impact War Exhaustion.
3. Movement from unoccupied province to another province should have be slower (fortress size should be a factor here).
4. Supply lines should be simulated (EU 2 style).

That would probably boost FM indirectly, but also maneuver would be more important.