EU4 - Development Diary - 6th of October 2020

[Froonk]

i am worry about this change perhaps you are making galleys to strong. heavy ships use 3 combat width, so now 1 havy ship is ecual to 6 galleys (use to be 1 to 3)

i will use the current stats of the ships in an open sea battle

In early game a Early Carrack (heavy ship) has 40 cannons and 20 ship hull, when a Galley has 12 cannons and 8 ship hull. Adjusted to the combat width, cannons: 12x6=72(before 36) vs 40
Ship hull: 48 (before 24) vs 20.

In late game a Threedecker has 120 cannons and 60 ship hull, when Archipelago Frigate (Galley) has 36 cannons and 24 ship hull. Adjusted to the combat width, cannons: 36x6=216(before 108) vs 120
Ship hull: 144 (before 72) vs 60.

In general you can stack more galley combat ability than havy ship combat ability and galleys are sustancialy cheeper than havy ships so you can go over force limit with littel penalty.

So why galleys sees to be so good but they aren't? Moral, when a ship is sunk all the fleet recives a moral damage. so in big battles galleys use to sunk 1.5-2 per 1 heavy at the start but when the battle contineu the recerves of the side with galleys join the battlel with the double of moral hits surrending before so the ratio start to become 2,3,4,5,6... per heavy ship. this change in emperator when it was intruduce the disengache mecanic, and you can still avoid the moral recerve damage as simple as reinforcing the battle slowly.

So in recap. I am worry about change the combat beacause essencialy you double the galleys stats. The havy ships will became useless even in open sea battles.
I imagin this will happen seeing only the numbers but perhapps in your test for some reason that i am not considering don't happen. i hoppe i am wrong or you are planing to introduce more changes?

Easy to fix this, they should reduce number of cannons on galleys, especially on galiots, chebecks and archipelago frigates but increase the bonus cannons in internal seas from 2x to 3x.

 

[paulatreides0]

In SP sailors are already a big bottleneck for anyone that wants to have a navy. Try and start with a nation that has only a few coastal provinces or whose provinces don't have high development. You will be lucky if you can field 20 galleys without taking sailor attrition, let alone afford the sailors to build the damned things to begin with.

Balancing naval gameplay towards the absolute worst case of small nations that start with little coastal territory is silly in the extreme. It's like saying that mercenaries weren't overpowered before because small states like Cologne and Brandenburgh could barely afford more than a handful in 1445, while the problem was that even midsized nations which were properly built could obtain absolutely game breakingly huge stacks of nigh-infinite troops on a whim and within a few days' notice.

It is not hard at all to get a lot of sailors to enable heavy-spamming, especially by mid-game with any nation with a sizable (not even a huge) number of coastal provinces like Britain, France, Spain, Unified Scandinavia, an India with a chunk of coastal . . . India, Italy, China, Japan, several CNs, and so on.

This is ignoring how you can further tweak things with buildings, ideas, CNs, and trade companies to get truly ludicrous levels of sailors without being massive either.

Unless I'm playing a very small nation with almost no coastal provinces, I've never even once been stopped from rebuilding sizable portions of my navy even after catastrophic defeats. Not when a full heavy takes the equivalent of ~6 development of to flash-build which means that even a midsize power can flash-order dozens of heavies at once. Nevermind that maintenance costs for heavies is basically a non-issue for non-trivially sized and equipped nations, since heavies will often spend a lot of their time at port when they aren't directly involved in some kind of combat or operation anyways (and even then the cost isn't huge, it's 4 sailors or a little under ~1/8th of the amount of sailors you get per point of development).

 

[Steel_atlas]

i am worry about this change perhaps you are making galleys to strong. heavy ships use 3 combat width, so now 1 havy ship is ecual to 6 galleys (use to be 1 to 3)

i will use the current stats of the ships in an open sea battle

In early game a Early Carrack (heavy ship) has 40 cannons and 20 ship hull, when a Galley has 12 cannons and 8 ship hull. Adjusted to the combat width, cannons: 12x6=72(before 36) vs 40
Ship hull: 48 (before 24) vs 20.

In late game a Threedecker has 120 cannons and 60 ship hull, when Archipelago Frigate (Galley) has 36 cannons and 24 ship hull. Adjusted to the combat width, cannons: 36x6=216(before 108) vs 120
Ship hull: 144 (before 72) vs 60.

In general you can stack more galley combat ability than havy ship combat ability and galleys are sustancialy cheeper than havy ships so you can go over force limit with littel penalty.

So why galleys sees to be so good but they aren't? Moral, when a ship is sunk all the fleet recives a moral damage. so in big battles galleys use to sunk 1.5-2 per 1 heavy at the start but when the battle contineu the recerves of the side with galleys join the battlel with the double of moral hits surrending before so the ratio start to become 2,3,4,5,6... per heavy ship. this change in emperator when it was intruduce the disengache mecanic, and you can still avoid the moral recerve damage as simple as reinforcing the battle slowly.

So in recap. I am worry about change the combat beacause essencialy you double the galleys stats. The havy ships will became useless even in open sea battles.
I imagin this will happen seeing only the numbers but perhapps in your test for some reason that i am not considering don't happen. i hoppe i am wrong or you are planing to introduce more changes?

Hopefully not. To me part of what makes Naval combat so bad is that it feels mindless. Numbers still rule the day and making heavies down right bad in the most common combat area goes against this.

Having a mixed fleet with a few heavies in your Mediterranean fleet should be better.

As was pointed out galleys werent better outright then heavies they were just cheaper and more maneuverable.

Hopefully heavies scale much better and can space marine galleys especially endgame

 

[paulatreides0]

I like you r idea in general the only problem is that you only get the higher tier naval buildings at higher levels of tech, so how would you construct heavies in early game?

Just do it the same way buildings tiers work. You start off with low tier and then successive unlocks are higher tier.

You start with Tier 3 ships (Carracks), get Tier 2 by around the time you get Shipyards, and get Tier-1 by late game when you get Grand Shipyards. Delaying the techs a bit may also be justified to properly space things out.

Galleys can be balanced by only being split into two Tiers instead of three so that they are easier to build even for more advanced ships, or alternatively, and perhaps better, add a 3rd tier of Shipyard whose only real benefit is to build Tier 1 ships.

 

[Ixal]

Royal navy isn't the entire use of sailors though, as I posted above the larger ships and fleet sizes of the Napoleonic era boosted Britain to having roughly 400-500 serving ships, most of which much larger than the 7 years period, while also supporting a massive merchant navy who themselves would require sailors, of which the Royal Navy dipped into frequently during wartime. Even considering the maritime fleet alone during the Napoleonic period of 19,000-22,000 ships this more than easily meets the whole 100k sailors on its own, while the Royal Navy would be manned and staffed by a strong 40,000 just to man half of their 3rd rates (roughly the number that would be active at any one time) Let alone the huge frigate fleet and larger battle ships.

And the merchant marine is not represented at all in the game, which means all the sailors on those ships are neither. The number you have on top of the screen are only for the fighting navy.

 

[Canute VII]

So will artillery also occupy 2-3 slots in future?

 

[paulatreides0]

And the merchant marine is not represented at all in the game, which means all the sailors on those ships are neither. The number you have on top of the screen are only for the fighting navy.

Wouldn't that the "merchant marine" basically just be transport and trade ships.

 

[Skyfus]

This doesn't fix anything. The only good change here is the raiding change, but raiding shouldn't even be a mechanic past 1500 anyways

Francis Drake would like to know your location- his location is currently the remains of Cadiz

 

[Sete]

Fantastic news on the leader pool.

Marines will still suck, just less.

 

[Katsue]

Wouldn't that the "merchant marine" basically just be transport and trade ships.

No, light ships and transports are explicitly military vessels.

 

[Rule Britannia]

There are a few things I really like from this update.

1) Fleet size influencing the liberty desire of CN
2) separating the pool for generals and admirals.
3) Making newer ship models faster.

However, there are another few ideas that I would love to see instituted.

1) The role of protecting trade especially over long distances should be significantly expanded. It makes little sense that you can currently steer trade from the other side of the globe with little or no penalty from not having a fleet protecting the trade route. I would significantly boost the piracy feature and unite the trade steering and anti-piracy missions and make Light ships the main anti-pirate ship type. If there is lucrative but unprotected trade flowing through a node, then this should become a heaven for pirates, forcing the nations engaged in the trade to send light ships (frigates) to protect the shipping routes. This would mean that any global trade power would need to make a significant investment in their navy to maintain a presence along their trade routes or loose out on a significant share of the trade they would otherwise get. This penalty should increase by each unprotected seaborn trade node and if possible by overall distance to end node. That way, benefitting from the riches of India or Indonesia would come with significant requirements regarding navel presence.

2) Professionalism for navies would be a nice addition. Part of the reason why Britain ruled the waves was due to how well trained her sailors were, and it would be great for countries to be able to boost their navel proficiency through professionalism, as happens with armies. The attrition from this should naturally be balanced, but it would be a great feature.

3) It makes sense to have strong galleys for the early game but they should really get left behind even for inland seas after the first two centuries of gameplay. To me, it makes no sense that Two- or Three-deckers have to worry about galleys in the med. This is even more of a concern now that e.g. the Malaka strait is now considered an inland sea.

 

[Katsue]

And the merchant marine is not represented at all in the game, which means all the sailors on those ships are neither. The number you have on top of the screen are only for the fighting navy.

I will say that I think the Sailors stat only represents the number of more or less able seamen that can be drafted into the navy without hurting the merchant marine. Dipping into the merchant marine's manpower pool is represented in-game by exploiting Development.

 

[gigau]

Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you don’t have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence.

Oh i love particularly that one !

 

[antonbarin]

I really like the changes, specially the one about CN, I think it makes a lot of sense having the liberity desire tied with naval strength and it gives a little bit more importance to the navy.

But I was hoping for something like the removal of the transport ship. It makes the player make a non-fun decision between being able to move troops (even at peace), being at least competent in sea or playing the trade game. You can only play the three of them if you are a big nation and in best cases only two of them.

I think having to choose between military navy or trade navy is much more fun. Just make that you can load your armies in your military ships or your trade ships (as it was irl). And, if you think it’s necesary, make that ships fight X% worse when transporting armies.

Right now if feel like if you want to have transport ships, you don’t want to have 2 because you will get stack wiped by those gotland separatist. You need more, and if your naval force limit is 10, that means that you have to expend 80% of your NFL in those 8 cocks leaving you with only 2 “fun boats” wich is basically nothing. Or you are Aragon and you want to beat the tunisian navy and the tunisian army so you have no room for trade ships because landing with only 10ks is not a good idea and fighting with 8 galleys neither.

Other than that I really like how the game is going since Emperor ans the naval game getting some love, keep it up!!

PS: sorry about my english, I hope you can get the message

 

[TheDungen]

Still not going to fix the naval game. As long as navies are floating armies which engage any other fleet in the same sea zone the naval game will never be well represented. The Naval game of EU4 is completely wrong and should be thrown away and rebuilt from scratch, with no direct control of fleets.

 

[Finardin]

Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you don’t have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence.

Will they care what type of ships you have? Will they care where you have your ships?

 

[Katsue]

I really like the changes, specially the one about CN, I think it makes a lot of sense having the liberity desire tied with naval strength and it gives a little bit more importance to the navy.

But I was hoping for something like the removal of the transport ship. It makes the player make a non-fun decision between being able to move troops (even at peace), being at least competent in sea or playing the trade game. You can only play the three of them if you are a big nation and in best cases only two of them.

To be honest, the three way division between galleys, light ships and heavy ships is pretty artificial. There were heavy galleys and light galleys, and the light galleys were perfectly good commerce raiders.

 

[Sapa Inca]

Still noit going to fix the naval game. As long as navies are floating armies which engage any other fleet in the same sea zone the naval game will never be well represented. The Naval game of EU4 is completely wrong and should be thrown away and rebuilt from scratch, with no direct control of fleets.

How this would work?

 

[perry7484]

Greetings, Noble Platypuses!
With this focus on improving/revamping navies, will any adjustments be made to ship namelists?

Certain tags (Noticeably in southern France, as that's where I've been modding) have numerous names that are anachronistic or don't appear to belong, such as for Toulouse:

Auzeville-Tolosane (Auzeville until 1944)
Castanet-Tolosan (Castanet until 1921)
Grand-Rond (Built 1752-1754, so existed in the game period...just very late therein)
Plaisance-du-Touch (once Plaisance-de-Minhac, but unsure of the date; it may be better to keep simply 'Plaisance')
Portet-sur-Garonne (Portet until 1921)
Quint-Fonsegrives (Quint until 1992)
Ramonville-Saintt-Agne ('Saint' here is mispelled, and this name is another modern merger: Ramonville was the community, and Saint-Agne was the name of the parish; it would be best to separate into two ship names or just use 'Ramonville')
Rangueil (Castle built 18th cen. Late in the game period, but still within it.)
Saint-Geniès-Bellevue (Saint-Geniès until 1921)
"La Salvetat-Saint-Gilles" (La Salvetat until 1965)
Stade-Toulousain (founded in 1907!)
Villeneuve-Tolosane (formerly Villeneuve-lès-Cugneaux, unknown date; may be best to use simply 'Villeneuve')

An additional two names I'm unable to find the origin of:
Labruc (Where did this name come from? Closest adjective in Occitan is 'Labrut')
Paradous (Where is this from? Are you talking about Paradou in Bouches-du-Rhone?)

^Finally, Toulouse retains the article before all ship names that was removed in other French tags. Certain among these are gramatically incorrect, notably:
"le Balma", "le Busca" (in Occitan, the original language, Busca is feminine)

Please, Paradox, look at your namelists in the area. I speak the local language (Occitan), if you're interested.

The ones I was able to translate (Using local dialect per location, so some are in Languedocian while others are in Gascon):
Aucamvila Ausevila Balmar Bausèla Busca
Blanhac Capitòli Castanet Colomèrs Cunhaus
"Illa del Ramièr" Labeja Labrut "La Cepièra" "La Pasquièra"
Laran Lardena Launaguet "Grand Redond" Miralh
Domaisèlas Minimes Union Marquisat
Montaudran Montrabe Murèth Puègbonieu Puègbusca
"Puèg David" Pibrac Plasença Portèth Quint
"Pè d'Auca" Ramonvila Ranguèlh Tornafuèlha "Sent Aubin"
"Sant Ginèst" "Sent Martin" "Sent Orenç" "Sant Sarnin" "Sent Simon"
"La Sauvetat" "Vièlha Tolosa" Vilanava

Hope this helps.

 

[antonbarin]

To be honest, the three way division between galleys, light ships and heavy ships is pretty artificial. There were heavy galleys and light galleys, and the light galleys were perfectly good commerce raiders.

I totally agree with you, I would love to see more ships, with some minimal variations or something like a ship that can do trade but you don’t want to detach when you are going to fight (unlockeable when you take naval+trade). Something that can make the naval game more interesting if you want to but that is totally avoidable if you are not playing that type of game