Seeing eu4 dev team committing to balance the game, reducing power creep and fixing bugs has motivated me to make this thread and try to help them. My objective is to talk about some of the major complains about navies in eu4 and other stuff I think it can be improved on. From there we can determine some solutions as a suggestions.
I can almost say in full confidence that everyone in the community had some kinda of problem with navies, from personal experience every time I ask someone what do they think of navies in eu4 they say "the navy is broken".
So we will slowly talk them in 4 categories for better understanding. Do remember you can't talk about one without taking into account about the other, these problems are all connected with each other. Also It may take some time to read.
That about sums up. Don't ask me why the tech tab has more space between it and the others, I dont know how to fix it. Please be respectful and I would like to hear people thoughts about this and their suggestions on the issues I presented. Maybe you can write others flaws which I forgot or didn't had time to write. Also some feedback on the new suggestion would be great, I took a lot of time to reflect about them but Im no lord genius that will get everything right. Even if they sound good, they can have some obscure drawback that could make stuff worse than the current state (most stuff is theory and from personal experience, I do not have the time to mod and test this stuff).
I can almost say in full confidence that everyone in the community had some kinda of problem with navies, from personal experience every time I ask someone what do they think of navies in eu4 they say "the navy is broken".
So we will slowly talk them in 4 categories for better understanding. Do remember you can't talk about one without taking into account about the other, these problems are all connected with each other. Also It may take some time to read.
Admit it, you at least heard someone say this about eu4, they aren't wrong, they do feel useless. This isn't a unknown issue, in the past (1.30) blockades were changed to make navies feel more impactful. But even after those changes, it still feels relatively useless and people keep complaining, why? There are some answers to this. To start of most of these complains are because of warfare, since outside of warfare (trade, piracy, subject liberty desire etc) the navy actually preforms well and doesn't feel useless. Now eu4 is based on land armies, so it isn't surprising the navy usually preforms a supportive role for the army, since you can't gain land without using a army or occupy land without an army. Thanks to that the navy already feels not that important. That is fine as long the supporting role of the navy is useful and has impact. Looking at the feedback right now, that isn't the case. Lest's go layer by layer of what the navy would normally do in a war.
Here are some examples:
-Imagine you are Byzantium and managed to gain naval supremacy against the ottos to block the strait. So what now? You would think you would block their access, but no, they will still cross and get you since they own both sides of one strait or they will just ask military access to all nations in the north (crimea etc) walk all that way to get to you.
-Here is another example, you are Portugal AI and england gets declared by burgundy, your navy combined with england achieved navy supremacy and you think you would be safe. Worry not, burgundy got military access to all western europe, even your ally castile to get to you.
-You are the papal states ande declared war on venice, you managed to get naval supremacy while their army was still on their island, one person would think you managed to trap them. But they still crossed to the mainland since they owned both sides of the strait, despite not having naval supremacy.
-You are the PLC and declare war on denmark (that has a holding in latvia), now you probably need to use your navy to get into denmark, but no need, the denmark AI asked most of the northern HRE military access so you can just walk to mainland denmark and enforce your demmands.
I believe you can see where I'm driving at, military access is one major problem. Military access in eu4 allows your army to enter enemy land from neutral parties AND on top of that it's so easy to get them. But eu4 doesn't stop there, there's the "conditional access" mechanic, if one party gets access everyone in the war gets it. The results are usually that the player doesn't even need to ask military access, the AI (even if it is the enemy one) does it for the player.
The moment eu4 military access becomes something hard to get, something that isn't always a guarantee or be abused by the AI, or simply making it impossible to invade someone from a neutral party, navies suddenly become a necessity. You now would want to use one of the biggest advantages of navies, which is the transport of personnel (at the moment only colonizers have some use for that) to certain places.
A counter point to this is the AI(it's always the AI, I can't cout how many good things were cut bc of the AI) doesn't know how to naval invade or transport troops, the eu4 devs showed in the dev diaries claim that the AI can now naval invade properly in 1.32, if that's the case I no longer see any reason not to change military access. It would help so much the importance/use of navies for non-colonizers.
The other major problem is blockading crossings and straits. Should owning both sides of a crossing make it possible to always cross it? I do like to hear people thoughts on this one. The current way it's a double edge sword, while it gives the players some strategic reason to take the straits, it makes the navies more useless. But on the other hand if we make navies able to block straits even tho you may own both sides of it, it makes the crossings lose strategic value. I don't have any ideas on how to improve this one, I can only say that personally I would prefer that navies could block the passage of troops even tho you may own both sides, it will make navies feel more important and the crossing can still maintain their uniqueness, which is to allow troops to pass one side to another without the use of transport ships.
If we wanted to make navies even more important, it would be the supply system. Sadly EU4 doesn't have a supply system and probably never will, since the devs said adding new mechanics are out of the picture. It is something we can hope for eu5, "Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics".
Here are some examples:
-Imagine you are Byzantium and managed to gain naval supremacy against the ottos to block the strait. So what now? You would think you would block their access, but no, they will still cross and get you since they own both sides of one strait or they will just ask military access to all nations in the north (crimea etc) walk all that way to get to you.
-Here is another example, you are Portugal AI and england gets declared by burgundy, your navy combined with england achieved navy supremacy and you think you would be safe. Worry not, burgundy got military access to all western europe, even your ally castile to get to you.
-You are the papal states ande declared war on venice, you managed to get naval supremacy while their army was still on their island, one person would think you managed to trap them. But they still crossed to the mainland since they owned both sides of the strait, despite not having naval supremacy.
-You are the PLC and declare war on denmark (that has a holding in latvia), now you probably need to use your navy to get into denmark, but no need, the denmark AI asked most of the northern HRE military access so you can just walk to mainland denmark and enforce your demmands.
I believe you can see where I'm driving at, military access is one major problem. Military access in eu4 allows your army to enter enemy land from neutral parties AND on top of that it's so easy to get them. But eu4 doesn't stop there, there's the "conditional access" mechanic, if one party gets access everyone in the war gets it. The results are usually that the player doesn't even need to ask military access, the AI (even if it is the enemy one) does it for the player.
The moment eu4 military access becomes something hard to get, something that isn't always a guarantee or be abused by the AI, or simply making it impossible to invade someone from a neutral party, navies suddenly become a necessity. You now would want to use one of the biggest advantages of navies, which is the transport of personnel (at the moment only colonizers have some use for that) to certain places.
A counter point to this is the AI
The other major problem is blockading crossings and straits. Should owning both sides of a crossing make it possible to always cross it? I do like to hear people thoughts on this one. The current way it's a double edge sword, while it gives the players some strategic reason to take the straits, it makes the navies more useless. But on the other hand if we make navies able to block straits even tho you may own both sides of it, it makes the crossings lose strategic value. I don't have any ideas on how to improve this one, I can only say that personally I would prefer that navies could block the passage of troops even tho you may own both sides, it will make navies feel more important and the crossing can still maintain their uniqueness, which is to allow troops to pass one side to another without the use of transport ships.
If we wanted to make navies even more important, it would be the supply system. Sadly EU4 doesn't have a supply system and probably never will, since the devs said adding new mechanics are out of the picture. It is something we can hope for eu5, "Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics".
Regardless if we make navy important, we need to improve the naval combat so it doesn't feel broken and unbalanced. Naval combat saw many improvements over the years. In 1.30 it was addressed the biggest complain about navy combat with the added mechanic of "Ship disengagement chance". But the power creep and balance of naval combat remains to be fixed.
If you have any experience in naval combat you know what I'm talking about and this is generally the reason why people say "navy is broken".
A lot of people argue the main culprit of the problem is Global naval engagement. If you don't know, unlike the combat width of land warfare, the naval engagement width of the two participants are independent, that means one participant could have wider engagement width than the other. The results are obvious, the guy with the most width has the best advantage so he wins, since he has more ships in the fight. The naval game is so determine by how much ships are in a fight that it was only natural when galleys were changed to 0.5 width they became the kings of the high seas.
You may ask me, are there any modifiers or any disadvantage to this... the answer is no. I remember in one game, Portugal had 400 heavy ships while France only sent 100 to battle, it was a diference of 4 to 1, but since France had better global naval engagement it destroyed Portugal ships and on top of that it captured most of them. France advantage of more heavies in battle was enough to win. If this was land combat, Portugal would had won.
I'm yet to see a strat that overpowers someone having more width. Which is why the biggest feedback and the solution people come up with is to make naval engagement the same as land, both sides should have the same engagement width. Strait up remove all modifiers and make both sides have equal amount of global width in battle. The theory goes It would make naval warfare more accessible for common naval nations. It's the easy fix problem that people come up with, "oh that thing is a problem? REMOVE IT" but I doubt it can be that simple to solve it and I think it would create some unforeseen side effects (like maneuver pips would be useless in battle). And what if PDX doesn't want to remove it? In my honest opinion, you don't even need to remove that modifier and make it work the same as land combat, you can just nerf most of those modifiers and make them really hard to get and stack. This is a power creep problem, lests try balacing it first before going into the idea of "removing it".
For example:
Admirals maneuver pips should only give 5% or less (3% or 2% are ideal), also all 20% global naval engagements should be cut to more than half to a maximum of 10% while all others that had 10% would get 5% or removed.
If are wondering "woah those values look so low" you are right, but don't forget, its a enormous advantage 1 more ship engaged in battle against your opponent and you need to consider that those are all % modifiers (and that naval engagement width increases by tech), so it is actually quite balanced.
For example lest's use 3% pur pip:
A 2 maneuver admiral that would give 6%, at dip tech 12 gives he would add 3 width, that's 1 heavy. A 6 pip (18%) would add 9 width, 3 heavies. If we compare to old values a 6 pip admiral would add 30 width (10 heavies). That's a dip tech 12, imagine at dip tech 24...
You still maintain maintain your higher quality from having good admirals but it wont be a power creep. Some may argue it does not resolve the "problem", after all one side still has more ships engaged than the other. But it wont be a giant diference of more than 10 heavies, that's beyond overkill and can only be countered if you had the same modifiers. This way I think it would maintain the integrity of the naval combat system while allowing weaker naval nations not to get trashed so hard they enter into another dimension.
Of course this requires testing, I did not test this. It's all theory and math. I don't have the time to do a mod and test this stuff. If you wanna do it for the funs of it, go right ahead and please share the results. I may be wrong here, and the best solution may be to strait up remove it. Just remember when doing the tests to give the side with less width double the ships of more.
Now we are moving on to naval ideas. If you take naval ideas, no one can beat your navy, even GB, they need naval ideas. That's a fact and has been proven. The power creep of naval ideas is insane, it has moral, naval engagement and heavy/galley combat ability. Those alone are enough and yet we aren't even counting the rest of the idea group and its policies. While I do agree that if you have more quality you should win, I don't think you should annihilate your enemy because he didn't had naval. That doesn't happen when you select quality ideas, nor in the land combat. You can get neat buffs but they don't make you be able to preform 10 heavies against 60 and somehow annihilate them. There's no other idea group in the game besides naval ideas that makes someone take that certain idea so he wont get trashed. Naval ideas need to get it's naval modifiers nerfed. The naval engagement width could/should be remove, the heavy/galley combat ability be reduced by 5% or 10%. You could even trade some naval modifiers with a simple army bonus like "marine training 10% ICA". This way you could keep some pretty minimal army quality while focusing on your navy. And although naval ideas makes you win battles thanks to superior naval quality, it wont trash everyone ships that didn't got naval ideas. Hopefully.
Before GB needs a nerf, their naval modifiers are too powerful. It's a bit tiring hearing people complain about that. The national ideas guarantee more than 20% naval moral and god tier admirals, this should be enough but GB gets more. I know the memes of "GB rules the waves" but look, they weren't invincible and it's not healthy for the game balance to have Doom ships that are unable to be sink patrolling the seas. My suggestion would be to strait up remove one modifier, for example heavy ship combat ability (20% moral is too iconic). If changes were to occur on global naval engaged width, it would be an indirect nerf to GB (their god tier 6 maneuver admiral wouldn't increase their combat width by 60%) so maybe its possible to just nerf the modifier by -5% instead of strait up removing it. This still requires some testing.
Other stuff like naval theocracies should have their naval moral reduce to 10%. Naval theocracies are a bit overpowered at the moment. There's probably more balance complains I could write, but I can't remember everything.
I have other complains for example on why cannons are the only thing that does damage in both fire phase and shock phase (this created the meme of the natives canoes having 1 cannon). I believe this system could be innovative like land combat, where fire phase is the actual fire phase (cannons or arrows go brr) and the shock phase is the moment where your crew boards ships. But alas that probably is asking too much, it probably falls into the trap of reworking something/add new mechanic. The devs stated they don't want to add new stuff until everything is fixed/balanced so this can wait. But at least it sounds like something cool on paper.
If you have any experience in naval combat you know what I'm talking about and this is generally the reason why people say "navy is broken".
A lot of people argue the main culprit of the problem is Global naval engagement. If you don't know, unlike the combat width of land warfare, the naval engagement width of the two participants are independent, that means one participant could have wider engagement width than the other. The results are obvious, the guy with the most width has the best advantage so he wins, since he has more ships in the fight. The naval game is so determine by how much ships are in a fight that it was only natural when galleys were changed to 0.5 width they became the kings of the high seas.
You may ask me, are there any modifiers or any disadvantage to this... the answer is no. I remember in one game, Portugal had 400 heavy ships while France only sent 100 to battle, it was a diference of 4 to 1, but since France had better global naval engagement it destroyed Portugal ships and on top of that it captured most of them. France advantage of more heavies in battle was enough to win. If this was land combat, Portugal would had won.
I'm yet to see a strat that overpowers someone having more width. Which is why the biggest feedback and the solution people come up with is to make naval engagement the same as land, both sides should have the same engagement width. Strait up remove all modifiers and make both sides have equal amount of global width in battle. The theory goes It would make naval warfare more accessible for common naval nations. It's the easy fix problem that people come up with, "oh that thing is a problem? REMOVE IT" but I doubt it can be that simple to solve it and I think it would create some unforeseen side effects (like maneuver pips would be useless in battle). And what if PDX doesn't want to remove it? In my honest opinion, you don't even need to remove that modifier and make it work the same as land combat, you can just nerf most of those modifiers and make them really hard to get and stack. This is a power creep problem, lests try balacing it first before going into the idea of "removing it".
For example:
Admirals maneuver pips should only give 5% or less (3% or 2% are ideal), also all 20% global naval engagements should be cut to more than half to a maximum of 10% while all others that had 10% would get 5% or removed.
If are wondering "woah those values look so low" you are right, but don't forget, its a enormous advantage 1 more ship engaged in battle against your opponent and you need to consider that those are all % modifiers (and that naval engagement width increases by tech), so it is actually quite balanced.
For example lest's use 3% pur pip:
A 2 maneuver admiral that would give 6%, at dip tech 12 gives he would add 3 width, that's 1 heavy. A 6 pip (18%) would add 9 width, 3 heavies. If we compare to old values a 6 pip admiral would add 30 width (10 heavies). That's a dip tech 12, imagine at dip tech 24...
You still maintain maintain your higher quality from having good admirals but it wont be a power creep. Some may argue it does not resolve the "problem", after all one side still has more ships engaged than the other. But it wont be a giant diference of more than 10 heavies, that's beyond overkill and can only be countered if you had the same modifiers. This way I think it would maintain the integrity of the naval combat system while allowing weaker naval nations not to get trashed so hard they enter into another dimension.
Of course this requires testing, I did not test this. It's all theory and math. I don't have the time to do a mod and test this stuff. If you wanna do it for the funs of it, go right ahead and please share the results. I may be wrong here, and the best solution may be to strait up remove it. Just remember when doing the tests to give the side with less width double the ships of more.
Now we are moving on to naval ideas. If you take naval ideas, no one can beat your navy, even GB, they need naval ideas. That's a fact and has been proven. The power creep of naval ideas is insane, it has moral, naval engagement and heavy/galley combat ability. Those alone are enough and yet we aren't even counting the rest of the idea group and its policies. While I do agree that if you have more quality you should win, I don't think you should annihilate your enemy because he didn't had naval. That doesn't happen when you select quality ideas, nor in the land combat. You can get neat buffs but they don't make you be able to preform 10 heavies against 60 and somehow annihilate them. There's no other idea group in the game besides naval ideas that makes someone take that certain idea so he wont get trashed. Naval ideas need to get it's naval modifiers nerfed. The naval engagement width could/should be remove, the heavy/galley combat ability be reduced by 5% or 10%. You could even trade some naval modifiers with a simple army bonus like "marine training 10% ICA". This way you could keep some pretty minimal army quality while focusing on your navy. And although naval ideas makes you win battles thanks to superior naval quality, it wont trash everyone ships that didn't got naval ideas. Hopefully.
Before GB needs a nerf, their naval modifiers are too powerful. It's a bit tiring hearing people complain about that. The national ideas guarantee more than 20% naval moral and god tier admirals, this should be enough but GB gets more. I know the memes of "GB rules the waves" but look, they weren't invincible and it's not healthy for the game balance to have Doom ships that are unable to be sink patrolling the seas. My suggestion would be to strait up remove one modifier, for example heavy ship combat ability (20% moral is too iconic). If changes were to occur on global naval engaged width, it would be an indirect nerf to GB (their god tier 6 maneuver admiral wouldn't increase their combat width by 60%) so maybe its possible to just nerf the modifier by -5% instead of strait up removing it. This still requires some testing.
Other stuff like naval theocracies should have their naval moral reduce to 10%. Naval theocracies are a bit overpowered at the moment. There's probably more balance complains I could write, but I can't remember everything.
I have other complains for example on why cannons are the only thing that does damage in both fire phase and shock phase (this created the meme of the natives canoes having 1 cannon). I believe this system could be innovative like land combat, where fire phase is the actual fire phase (cannons or arrows go brr) and the shock phase is the moment where your crew boards ships. But alas that probably is asking too much, it probably falls into the trap of reworking something/add new mechanic. The devs stated they don't want to add new stuff until everything is fixed/balanced so this can wait. But at least it sounds like something cool on paper.
Now a sad flaw about the navy is the lack of ship diversity in game. All ships designs are european. This makes the navy the same everywhere, it's bland, borin, you know there's a lack of flavour and there isn't nothing unique about it. You may well be China but your ships will be european, only things preventing this is the skins packs. But we know the Chinese didn't build ships like the portuguese, nor did the Indians and the natives etc. Different types of ships should be unlock with tech (like how land armies work) depending on your tech group you would get a certain type of ship. Tech groups exist for a reason. Furthermore some nations could/should even get special type of ships. Iberian nations should have the latin caravel as their special unit. And you know you want the "turtle ship" for Korea. Those are only a few example for unique ships types. This would immediately create a feel of unique ships and make navies more diverse than ever, just like land armies are. I know this is something possible to do, I remember seeing mods do it. While this might be something a bit awkward to implement and I do admit personally I'm not a fan of the army system of selecting unit types, I dislike more that everyone uses the same european style type of ship design and there's no variation of ships. Also if we have a system like this and we aren't getting a new one, might as well use it. By using it, it would be more creative, unique and fun to have different kind of ships for each tech groups battleing between each other. Skin packs don't count. The special ship desings for certain countries is something Im toying around because it has great potencial, but probably not necessary.
If you are wondering on what grounds would different ship types be, there's some stuff, for example the sailor cost, the ducats/maintance for the ship, the width of the ship, the amount of cannons, hull size and speed. There's actualy a lot of stuff to make different ship designs.
The main problem is that the only source of damage for ships are cannons. So I can see that it would be hard to balance it out or if it is impossible to work. I'm also not sure if this goes too far from the devs agenda on not pushing too far and breaking the game. And the community may not like the idea of different ship types for countries and actually prefers that everything remains the same for the sake of balance and simplicity. Although that would be rather strange, keeping tech groups for the army and making their army units late game weak compared to western ones but for ship warfare everything is the same... for me we are better of using the system already in-game. What are your guys thoughts?
If you are wondering on what grounds would different ship types be, there's some stuff, for example the sailor cost, the ducats/maintance for the ship, the width of the ship, the amount of cannons, hull size and speed. There's actualy a lot of stuff to make different ship designs.
The main problem is that the only source of damage for ships are cannons. So I can see that it would be hard to balance it out or if it is impossible to work. I'm also not sure if this goes too far from the devs agenda on not pushing too far and breaking the game. And the community may not like the idea of different ship types for countries and actually prefers that everything remains the same for the sake of balance and simplicity. Although that would be rather strange, keeping tech groups for the army and making their army units late game weak compared to western ones but for ship warfare everything is the same... for me we are better of using the system already in-game. What are your guys thoughts?
EU4 tech's are a bit weird and institutions are already changing them to the better. But I want to point out that eu4 technology tree is "wrong". Ignoring the fact that the eu4 wiki has the dates when you unlock each tech in game wrong (for example dip tech 7 is supposed to be in 1492 but in game its set to 1479), the historical dates when you unlock ships are also wrong. For example the portuguese caravel was first use in 1450, but in eu4 we unlock the caravel in 1500s. I can only guess the reason for this was because while iberian nations were using it (like Portugal and Castile) most of western and the rest of the world wasn't? I have no idea. But this is no excuse for wrong dates and only proves my point that we probably need unique ship types. Furthermore it isn't just the caravel wrong, stuff like carrack and galleons are also wrong. I'm no expert in naval history but I know for a fact that most naval units in the tech tree are wrong, so If a kind soul that knows more could be enlighten us on what are the actual dates of the ships, it would be great. This way we may help PDX to get some of the dates fixed.
I believe some people may be thinking now "this doesn't look like a big flaw" well compared to others before (like the power creep of naval combat) it isn't, but it is still a big error to only be able to unlock a ship more than 50 years later of it's creation. Also while PDX is at it, I suspect that the in-game tech's should correspond to the eu4 wiki, since dip tech 7 unlocks the extra colonial range. If thats the case, eu4 wiki makes sense for claiming to be in 1492 (discovery of the new world), but in game it is set to 1479, there are other tech's in other dates too. I don't have the time to list all of them. Im not sure if this qualifies as a "bug" but the tech's need to get checked and get their dates fixed.
I think no one has complains about the need to fix the dates in the technology. But if you have voice your concern down there.
I believe some people may be thinking now "this doesn't look like a big flaw" well compared to others before (like the power creep of naval combat) it isn't, but it is still a big error to only be able to unlock a ship more than 50 years later of it's creation. Also while PDX is at it, I suspect that the in-game tech's should correspond to the eu4 wiki, since dip tech 7 unlocks the extra colonial range. If thats the case, eu4 wiki makes sense for claiming to be in 1492 (discovery of the new world), but in game it is set to 1479, there are other tech's in other dates too. I don't have the time to list all of them. Im not sure if this qualifies as a "bug" but the tech's need to get checked and get their dates fixed.
I think no one has complains about the need to fix the dates in the technology. But if you have voice your concern down there.
That about sums up. Don't ask me why the tech tab has more space between it and the others, I dont know how to fix it. Please be respectful and I would like to hear people thoughts about this and their suggestions on the issues I presented. Maybe you can write others flaws which I forgot or didn't had time to write. Also some feedback on the new suggestion would be great, I took a lot of time to reflect about them but Im no lord genius that will get everything right. Even if they sound good, they can have some obscure drawback that could make stuff worse than the current state (most stuff is theory and from personal experience, I do not have the time to mod and test this stuff).
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