Why didn't those DLC make naval power more meaningful (for maritime nations)?
EU4 fails to recognise the importance of the navy historically.
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In regards to the guy saying th Brits attacked the Danish Navy in harbor. Yes they did that, but it was a preemptive attack to prevent the Danes from getting any funny ideas about letting the French use their fleet. The same French who had gone HAM on Central Europe and could over run Denmark easily.
It was not fear of the Danish Navy itself, more a fear of a concentration of forces between France, Spain and any other navy they might scoop up.
It was not fear of the Danish Navy itself, more a fear of a concentration of forces between France, Spain and any other navy they might scoop up.
Why fight your enemy on fair terms when you can kill him in his sleep? That’s just poor tactics.
Besides, that was basically just scuttling the Danish fleet for them so Napoleon couldn’t use them. The French-Spanish Navy was already terrifying enough, adding the Danish Navy to it would be very difficult if not impossible for the British to defeat in open battle.
I'd imagine shrinking the individual sea-zones to smaller ones could fix this. as with current large sea-zones like as you said Atlantic usually means that your stack of Heavy ships tend to go anywhere from coast of France to the North American coast and White Sea.
so instead of having massive sea-zone like North Atlantic you'd have things like "British Isles" "White Sea" "American East Coast" "Bordeux and North Iberia" etc etc.
If you can imagine that then surely you can also imagine how this wouldn't be a minor footnote in an upcoming patch but rather its focus or even a full DLC.
Since they don't change anything about naval warfare ever and have only recently started trying to teach the AI how to use transports (which was mostly successful, respect where respect is due) I doubt it's ever going to come.
Nobody cares about naval warfare including their team.
Since the game came out we got
- AI nations learn how to use transports more often and only mostly successful (they transport troops in neighbouring provinces despite existing land connections for example)
- QoL changes in the form of fleet missions as a DLC feature (semi-successfully, most of them don't work)
- Raid coasts as a DLC feature (stupidly overpowered in playerhands, useless for AI nations)
That's it.
AI nations don't even know how ship compositions work. Or ships in general. You can get attacked by a pure galley/transport stack in south Africa.
Honestly, I do not mind.
There's already more than enough for me to do without having to worry about ships. I don't want to see any form of naval warfare.
HOWEVER that's purely my personal opinion. Some kind of "I don't like stuffed peppers and wouldn't mind if they declared them illegal".
I can not deny that naval warfare was important in the timeframe we're playing. Neither can I deny that it's hopelessly underdeveloped compared to every other part of the game.
Won't hear me complaining though. I'll leave that job to those who are interested enough to come up with solutions.
But they need to be aware that they better lower their expectations. A lot.
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I personally dislike this proposal. Making seazones smaller would make it harder to destroy weaker fleets, making naval dominance even less significant since you can't reliably catch them. The seazone setup now, I believe, is fine. What paradox can do at ease would be to 1) link navies with trade 2) make being blockade a thing 3) change AI navy composition (don't put transports in fight you fool!)
What would satisfy me would at least make the navy more automatic.
For example I can just assign it to the English channel and forget it about and be safe knowing that no retarded 3 transport ships will just slip past and siege down London.
For example I can just assign it to the English channel and forget it about and be safe knowing that no retarded 3 transport ships will just slip past and siege down London.
I`m not sure about this. Naval battles are probably some of the most onesided things in the entire game. You either are a naval focused nation and are unbeatable with more ships than armys or your ships are made out of wet paper. There doesn`t seem to be a balance. Also don´t say "Just take naval ideas" otherwise I will tell you to take spy ideas if you find your espionage too slow.
I’m sorry but that’s blatantly false. They reworked ship engagement during Mare Nostrum. It wasn’t a fundamental change to the system but it still improved naval combat by a degree.
Sorry, but no. I will try elaborate on this later, but Russia always dreamed of sea and fleet.
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Yea, but exchanging "I drink tea with my left hand" with "I drink tea with my right hand" isn't an improvement. It's a change, that much I'll give you, but not an improvement.
The most impactful change we got was morale hits to your fleet and replacing positioning with combat width.
Effectively simplifying naval engagements and ending combat faster while also making the whole process more transparent.
That's it. That's all we got from the so-called 'massive naval overhaul'.
Other stuff is laughable. Siege pips increasing blockade efficiency, maneuver value enabling you to steal ships, these things are gimmicks.
Okay, stealing ships is a smart gimmick. Everyone likes his candycrush moments every once in a while. "Oh wow, I barely did anything and got rewarded. I'm a good boy", but blockade efficiency?
Not to mention.... not sure what not to mention honestly. Pretty sure we're out of content already.
That's all there was to the free patch.
We could discuss DLC content. Missions maybe?
Hunting? Doesn't work.
Evasion? Works, but isn't used (who has his ships on the open sea actively evading when you can just bring them back to port?)
Intercept? Doesn't work.
Blockade? That one does work. Extremely well actually.
If one of your blockading ships is getting attacked, all ships immediately collapse, followed by returning to blockading.
When I first saw it in action I was amazed.
I saw it in a youtube video.
Because I haven't used it.
Ever.
Neither has anybody else.
I haven't seen the mission used ever since Arumba used it once in a single run over a year ago.
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Dreamed, but never realized it.
The navy was important for colonial and trading nations and a glorified status symbol for others.
Sadly in EU4 the importance of the navy does not rise for nations which colonize and while hiding in port reduces trade income in some cases its far from crippling (having money is trivial anyway mid game) as trade is mostly steered by CoT ownership.
The "all or nothing" doomstack naval gameplay really limits how important navies are in EU4. There is no blockade running or merchant hunting like it happened in the real world. And being blockaded has neglible consequences even for nations which would depend on trade and oversea ressources.
Naval superiority in wars should definitely have way more of an impact, except against landlocked nations perhaps.
I think greatly increasing the effects of naval blockades would go a long way. Full blockade of coastal provinces should have a much larger impact than it does currently, both in terms of warscore and economic effects.
I think greatly increasing the effects of naval blockades would go a long way. Full blockade of coastal provinces should have a much larger impact than it does currently, both in terms of warscore and economic effects.
Yes, but at the same time the one with the inferior navy should still be able to do something like running blockades, privateering, etc.
I think it should be also possible to occupy coastal/island provinces with a naval presence (unless there's a big fort).
Austria maybe, but Russia became a great power only after it got fleet. The whole aspiration of Peter to get sea access was due to how trade, knowledge, technologies in particular, communication and whatnots were transferred.
Sea used to be like what Internet and Air combined are to us.
As for the OP: well, HoI4 fails at this too.
In fact, among all PDX games I played the best one in this regard was Victoria: ships actually resembled the cutting edge of technology. You had to have/build industry prior building ships, but in turn shipbuilding could become an industry itself - I used to make fortunes by selling its products abroad to less advanced nations.
What really is missing in EU4 and what would instantly make navies an important gameplay element are supply lines.
Currently you only need 1 single successful naval transport to conquer all of the British Isles. You can happily dump 100k soldiers on the Isles and then hide your entire fleet of 20 transport ships in the next harbor, once the 25 heavies of Great Britain show up. What a broken system....
Japan tried that once in real life when it launched an invasion on Korea (1592). The Japanese army was superb. They absolutely obliterated any Korean resistance on land, even to a point where the Korean court was held in an insignificant village at the northern border of the country because everything else had already been conquered by Japan. Who did win this war?
--> Korea
Why? Because Japan continuously failed to establish naval superiority, which in return meant that it was impossible to ship supplies to the front. This unbeatable Juggernaut of an army was basically starved out for manpower, weapons and other crucial supplies and ultimately beaten because of that.
If you dump 100k soldier onto the British Isles and don't have the means to resupply them with a navy you should loose every man to attrition and lack of morale like in HOI4. It should be what it would be in reality = a suicide mission.
Currently you only need 1 single successful naval transport to conquer all of the British Isles. You can happily dump 100k soldiers on the Isles and then hide your entire fleet of 20 transport ships in the next harbor, once the 25 heavies of Great Britain show up. What a broken system....
Japan tried that once in real life when it launched an invasion on Korea (1592). The Japanese army was superb. They absolutely obliterated any Korean resistance on land, even to a point where the Korean court was held in an insignificant village at the northern border of the country because everything else had already been conquered by Japan. Who did win this war?
--> Korea
Why? Because Japan continuously failed to establish naval superiority, which in return meant that it was impossible to ship supplies to the front. This unbeatable Juggernaut of an army was basically starved out for manpower, weapons and other crucial supplies and ultimately beaten because of that.
If you dump 100k soldier onto the British Isles and don't have the means to resupply them with a navy you should loose every man to attrition and lack of morale like in HOI4. It should be what it would be in reality = a suicide mission.
Never realised? Imperial Russian Navy became a pretty respectable force with time.
Not as the Royal Navy, of course, but there was need in having a fleet to at least war with the Ottomans, to protect the Baltics (and the capital, which had elaborate anti-naval fortifications too) and so on. So a lot of effort was put into it.
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That's still in the game if you don't have a DLC that gives you privateering.