Exasperated with EU4 combat system

[rob_mtl]

Hey guys,

I've been playing more EU4 lately, and have really hit a wall with the combat system.

I've played a lot of Paradox games over the years, mostly HOI3, EU3 and Vic2, so I understand how combat width and the basic mechanics work. What I struggle with more is the grand strategy aspect of warfare.

There are a few things that just endlessly frustrate me and almost make me want to just not play this game. Any suggestions are welcome.

The lack of any kind of coherent front in warfare: Because of the fort system and the way allies behave, I find it impossible to concentrate on one front during a large war. Example: I've conquered France as England and want to fight Burgundy. Austria and Hungary are allied with me, but Bohemia and the Commonwealth are on the opposite side.

I start the war with an advantage in terms of troops (something like 120000 vs 100000, but simply can't keep it:

1. If defend Austria against Bohemia/Commonwealth, Burgundy sieges down every single one of my French provinces before I can get the Eastern enemies out of the war. Austria usually offers terms and peaces out anyway. The war becomes unwinnable because of war exhaustion. Oh and also I'm basically locked out of my own territory because I have to siege down my own forts, or all my armies are exiled or whatever.
2. If I siege down Burgundy early, Austria and Hungary get sieged down and peace out and I'm on my own fighting the rest of Europe.
3. If I try to run after enemy stacks and defeat their army before sieging down provinces, the enemy army runs away and their forts won't let me get to them. Then my army is in the wrong position, Austria loses and peaces out and it's game over.
4. If I split my armies to cover multiple fronts, the enemy countries drop what they're doing and create a doomstack and wipe out each of my armies without exception.
5. If I keep my army clustered in a few provinces, it becomes nearly impossible to move them without taking massive attrition.

90% of the time there's simply no frontline in a ridiculous way. In a France vs. Spain fight, for example, France's army will be in Madrid and Spain's army will be in Paris and never the two shall meet until each country has sieged down a bunch of enemy territory.

Basically these types of situations make me want to avoid any wars involving countries I don't have borders with.

But let me know what you think.

 

[AlazkanAssassin]

I think you just described the AI doing exactly what you want to do, just they do it better than you.
And, yes, you should avoid wars that you can't win.

 

[JaxElite]

Frontlines are a really modern concept. In eu4 times war basically meant walking into enemy territory, occupy a few key cities along the way and then force a peace. Look at the whole era of napoleonic warfare. Supply lines weren't as important since armies either lived off the land or carried ridiculous amounts of food.

The key to winning wars against enemies on multiple fronts us realising that you dont actually need to win against all of them. A white peace is often enough for secondary targets and they ogten do accept one after losing a few key forts. In your england example you also severely underestimated the english navy. Land a few troops in gdansk, siege a gew polish forts including warsaw and you can peace out the commonwealth before most of france falla. Then quickly ship your troops back.

 

[brantodb01]

Unless you have an overwhelming majority of troops I find it best to never rely on allies, just fight elsewhere build up strength and come back later.
Or declare and someone burgundy is allied with and then force them to cancel alliance with commonwealth when done

 

[Maxxie42]

In case you wan some actual advice on how to handle the war you're describing :

You certainly know that if your armies are on foreign land when you declare war, they get black flagged. But if they're in the land of an ally you're calling into the war, they won't get black flagged. So park all your troops in Austria, and as soon as you declare rush to siege down Bohemia, keeping your armies close enough that they can merge if someone gets too close (ideally you'll be able to deter any attack altogether), but still trying to siege as many provinces as you can at once. If you can get Bohemia out before Burgundy has time to do too much damage in France, you should be good. Then depending on the situation, you can go relieve your sieged provinces in France, or if it's not too dire, ignore it and go siege down the Commonwealth.

On a more general note, there are so many threads here on the incompetence of AI armies that it's actually nice to see the opposite complaint for a change

 

[rob_mtl]

Frontlines are a really modern concept. In eu4 times war basically meant walking into enemy territory, occupy a few key cities along the way and then force a peace. Look at the whole era of napoleonic warfare. Supply lines weren't as important since armies either lived off the land or carried ridiculous amounts of food.

The key to winning wars against enemies on multiple fronts us realising that you dont actually need to win against all of them. A white peace is often enough for secondary targets and they ogten do accept one after losing a few key forts. In your england example you also severely underestimated the english navy. Land a few troops in gdansk, siege a gew polish forts including warsaw and you can peace out the commonwealth before most of france falla. Then quickly ship your troops back.

I'm not saying there should be modern frontlines like in WW1 or the American Civil War. I'm just saying that when Spain is sieging down Moscow but there are Russian troops in Madrid, there's something wrong.

Armies in the Napoleonic Wars moved as units as you say, with battles occurring at single locations more than along a front, but they wouldn't march halfway across the continent while their capital was under threat. Wars in Europe often had multiple independent theatres at that time, rather than armies marching to and fro over the entire continent. So while Britain was blockading the entire continent, Austria, Russia and Prussia were fighting the French on the land, sometimes together, but more often separately.

Obviously in EU4 this comes down to limited AI, but it also has to do with the military access and fort system, which pushes both the AI and the player to plan these ridiculous snaky routes around forts. I would actually be tempted to force the player and the AI to negotiate military access through every country they cross through EU3-style to resolve this problem. It's just too easy to 1) get stuck in neutral territory as the result of a treaty or 2) have AI armies march ridiculous distances.

 

[rob_mtl]

On a more general note, there are so many threads here on the incompetence of AI armies that it's actually nice to see the opposite complaint for a change

Oh the AI can be super dumb, but I find the following ahem paradox true of Paradox games in terms of AI:

On the one hand: the AI makes non-optimal decisions and is unable to use advanced tactics/exploits like the player.

On the other hand: Paradox games involve a lot of micromanagement, and a computer can issue more orders, more quickly in real time than a human.

So while the player has to pause, scan around the map, hover over provinces to see what army is arriving where on what time/day, issue orders to naval units and land units... the AI can do all of that instantly and issue orders to every single unit on the map simultaneously all while making other decisions.

I think some of my frustration comes down to impatience, for sure. I don't want to pause the game every 6 hours to check where the enemy armies are---which means that while I'm focussing on sieging down Warsaw, I fail to notice that there's a Polish army (and maybe a Papal States army--just for good measure) sieging down my fort in Brittany.

When the player does something surprising, all enemy units respond instantly and converge on that point--leading to me fighting all the armies halfway across the continent while allies are sieging down random provinces on the other side of the map.

It jsut feels like there's something off with the whole thing, compared to HOI3-style frontline combat. I'm just not sure they've come up with an adequate combat system to simulate the time period and make it fun to play at this point.

 

[Quickmelty]

The fact that the AI gets to seige down your forts in five seconds while it can take upwards of two years (with full army maintenance and fort defenses raised for almost three years) is a problem. Lucky nation should be removed from the game. It doesn't add "challenge". It adds impetus and frustration to many campaigns that would have gone slightly better without it. I should not have to rely on the fact that I have to overstack every modifier i can squeeze out just to barely survive against an AI that does not pay costs for its ships, does not take attrition, and flees immediatly from battle.

 

[Josar]

If think the best solution is to separate peace each co- beligerent nation. You can then focus on the primary target.

 

[rob_mtl]

If think the best solution is to separate peace each co- beligerent nation. You can then focus on the primary target.

I actually replayed the war against Burgundy that I originally posted about and won it essentially by letting all of my allies fail so that my warscore was high enough.

I just find it annoying how the fort ZOC system and the military access rules are combined to make warfare really wonky. If an AI nation is being attacked on two sides, they rarely ever split their forces. The entire AI alliance doomstacks to attack the weakest army. While this makes sense strategically in the game, it takes a lot of tactical nuance out of the grand strategy. So many of the battles are all or nothing--one alliance's combined army against the other's--rather than a variety of battles in several theatres. Then the losing army retreats (during which time they're impervious to attack) halfway across the continent and it all starts over again. These large battles rarely affect warscore more than 1 or 2 percent.

I actually miss chasing down armies to the adjacent province and stack-wiping them like in EU3.

One solution would be to make battles much more important relative to sieges in terms of warscore. I feel like sieges are too important. In the Napoleanic Wars, for example, major battles probably lead to peace treaties way more often than sieges, or at least they had a more decisive feel to them.


Oh and the army micro part of the game--merging and splitting armies, leaving small stacks to siege down provinces, assigning leaders, detaching/reattaching artillery for sieges, etc-- has always been a chore and not particularly fun. So all of these factors make me think the game needs less sieges and more decisive battles.

 

[Josar]

I actually replayed the war against Burgundy that I originally posted about and won it essentially by letting all of my allies fail so that my warscore was high enough.

I just find it annoying how the fort ZOC system and the military access rules are combined to make warfare really wonky. If an AI nation is being attacked on two sides, they rarely ever split their forces. The entire AI alliance doomstacks to attack the weakest army. While this makes sense strategically in the game, it takes a lot of tactical nuance out of the grand strategy. So many of the battles are all or nothing--one alliance's combined army against the other's--rather than a variety of battles in several theatres. Then the losing army retreats (during which time they're impervious to attack) halfway across the continent and it all starts over again.

I actually miss chasing down armies to the adjacent province and stack-wiping them like in EU3.

One solution would be to make battles much more important relative to sieges in terms of warscore. I feel like sieges are too important. In the Napoleanic Wars, for example, major battles probably lead to peace treaties way more often than sieges, or at least they had a more decisive feel to them.

I understand your point, but this can also hurt the AI. If the Ottomans are attacks by the Mamuluks and a major western country early game, they can almost never deal with the two front war.

However the death stacks get rediculous late game, with sometimes as much as 100k stacks taking Hugh attrition.

One major difference in EU3 is attrition is brutal, I don't find it fun, but some people liked it.

 

[ImAdrian]

On the other hand: Paradox games involve a lot of micromanagement, and a computer can issue more orders, more quickly in real time than a human.

Well... you just described yourself what is the solution for that problem: pausing the game. You can take all the time you want to make better decisions than the AI, so its not really an advantage. You only make it harder for yourself by playing in real-time.... You say you don't have patience, but that's one of the most important things in strategy games...

I'm not saying there should be modern frontlines like in WW1 or the American Civil War. I'm just saying that when Spain is sieging down Moscow but there are Russian troops in Madrid, there's something wrong.

I mean... it's a valid tactic if the enemy is stronger to avoid fighting and go for a siege race instead. Not sure how realistic that would have been, but hey, its a game.

To be honest im not really sure what the problem is, Im not that great at the game - I play very casually, and I find painting the map pretty easy. Just choose your wars carefully.

 

[klingonadmiral]

One solution would be to make battles much more important relative to sieges in terms of warscore. I feel like sieges are too important. In the Napoleanic Wars, for example, major battles probably lead to peace treaties way more often than sieges, or at least they had a more decisive feel to them.

And in basically every war on the continent before that sieges mattered far more than battles.

 

[Lavilledieu]

The focus of wars is indeed mainly focused on sieging instead of battling, which results into your listed annoyances of countries sieging each other's capitals and lack of front line. Thing is, to make demands, you need war score, and that's not achieved with battles. And to peace out allies of your enemy, you want to siege provinces ASAP to peace them out ASAP. So the AI is programmed to do exactly that, which is almost the optimal play. Even you and I do way more sieging than fighting. Giving vastly more weight to battles, and more weight to war goals, and a bit more to provinces sieged, wars will function totally different. They will go quicker, need less sieging and would much less result into total wars.

The troop advantage you listed is a minor troop advantage. It's an advantage that could help win a war, but doesn't guarantee it. I've won and lost wars with 1:2. In your case, I know the Commonwealth tends to have very good troop quality, while Austria doesn't tend to have that. Fort and capital placement is also important; especially those of Austria are poorly located in the back of their country. Burgundy has relatively good access to the rest of their allies (access through HRE thanks to the access the emperor has there), while you don't. With that in mind, I would say the enemy does have a minor advantage.

 

[Beagá]

Late game Commonwealth is a beast, specially with Offensive or Quality, but early Poland and Lithuania aren´t.

 

[iClipse]

I actually replayed the war against Burgundy that I originally posted about and won it essentially by letting all of my allies fail so that my warscore was high enough.

I just find it annoying how the fort ZOC system and the military access rules are combined to make warfare really wonky. If an AI nation is being attacked on two sides, they rarely ever split their forces. The entire AI alliance doomstacks to attack the weakest army. While this makes sense strategically in the game, it takes a lot of tactical nuance out of the grand strategy. So many of the battles are all or nothing--one alliance's combined army against the other's--rather than a variety of battles in several theatres. Then the losing army retreats (during which time they're impervious to attack) halfway across the continent and it all starts over again. These large battles rarely affect warscore more than 1 or 2 percent.

I actually miss chasing down armies to the adjacent province and stack-wiping them like in EU3.

One solution would be to make battles much more important relative to sieges in terms of warscore. I feel like sieges are too important. In the Napoleanic Wars, for example, major battles probably lead to peace treaties way more often than sieges, or at least they had a more decisive feel to them.


Oh and the army micro part of the game--merging and splitting armies, leaving small stacks to siege down provinces, assigning leaders, detaching/reattaching artillery for sieges, etc-- has always been a chore and not particularly fun. So all of these factors make me think the game needs less sieges and more decisive battles.

If you want battles to be more important, I suggest you take religious ideas and go with Deus Vult on everyone that's not your religion.

Anyway, winning wars in general is very easy if you follow a simple concept: Say you want to declare on Burgundy, who are allied with Commonwealth and Hungary. If Austria is planning to follow along in the war. Declare on Burgundy, but also ignore burgundy. Send all your troops to Commonwealth. Siege down some forts, with the highiest priority being the commonwealth capital. Once you have their capital and maybe some other provinces, see if they're willing to do a white peace. Send and accept. Rinse and repeat for Hungary. After that, it's 3 vs one vs Burgundy and it should be a peace of cake, even if they sieged some of your land down. As long as your allies don't have massive war exhaustion and some reserves left, they won't peace out (usually).

Some tips and tricks: don't make all your armies siege forts down. Keep 1-2 stacks for moving around. Use these stacks for keeping the enemy from splitting in 20x 1k stacks (and if they do, engage). With these seperate stacks, don't engage enemies, unless you're confident you can win (like if they're sieging mountaints). The main goal is just to slow down the enemy sieging down your stuff. Use the defensive edict. Use the defensive advisor (if necessary).

With this tactic you can win most wars.


Another strategy you can use is very simple: Declare on Burgundy. Don't call in any allies. Let the enemies come to you, to your forts. Make a giant deathball and destroy any army that's sieging down your forts. Only engage when there is a >0% chance of success. Kill them until white peace for all co-beligirents. Then only start sieging Burgundy.

 

[Quickmelty]

Well... you just described yourself what is the solution for that problem: pausing the game. You can take all the time you want to make better decisions than the AI, so its not really an advantage. You only make it harder for yourself by playing in real-time.... You say you don't have patience, but that's one of the most important things in strategy games...


I mean... it's a valid tactic if the enemy is stronger to avoid fighting and go for a siege race instead. Not sure how realistic that would have been, but hey, its a game.

To be honest im not really sure what the problem is, Im not that great at the game - I play very casually, and I find painting the map pretty easy. Just choose your wars carefully.

It being a game is fine and all but the AI will if fighting another AI just baserace eachother until one is dead. That's not a very fun strategy unless you enjoy watching endless hordes of your allies just swarming the enemy (which is fun) but I want more of a strategy aspect to it. Not lining the forts on my border and waiting for the AI to somehow get a mil access from another AI and carpet bomb me while I'm waiting for hunter killer stacks.

 

[rob_mtl]

And in basically every war on the continent before that sieges mattered far more than battles.

After reading your comment, I asked myself the question is this true (sieges more than battles prior to the Napoleonic Wars)?. It's not the easiest question to answer unless you're a specialist on early modern warfare,, but I did some rudimentary Wikipedia research.

Here are five of the largest European wars prior to the Napoleonic Wars covering most of the EU4 period (excluding civil wars):

Italian Wars (1494-1559):

List of battles of the Italian Wars - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Eighty Years War (1568-1648):

List of battles of the Eighty Years' War - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thirty Years War (1618-1648):

Category:Battles of the Thirty Years' War - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678):

Franco-Dutch War - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714):

Category:Battles of the War of the Spanish Succession - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Seven Years War (1756-1763):

Battles of the Seven Years' War - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't have time right now to read all the wiki articles in depth at the moment, but it strikes me that battles on the field are at least as important as sieges and in many cases more.

I do think it would be better if battles were given more emphasis (similar to Victoria 2 perhaps). That would create an interesting strategic and tactical choice. Don't think you can win on the field of battle? Siege down a vital province. Can't break through a particular fortified position? Draw the enemy out and fight them on the field of battle. Something along those lines.

 

[rob_mtl]

Well... you just described yourself what is the solution for that problem: pausing the game. You can take all the time you want to make better decisions than the AI, so its not really an advantage. You only make it harder for yourself by playing in real-time.... You say you don't have patience, but that's one of the most important things in strategy games...

If there was an AI control system where you could give particular armies objectives and let the AI handle it like in HOI3, I would use that quite often. I wish the armies could be put n AI control like the navies (ie. hunt enemy armies, agressive stance or cautious stance; siege enemy forts, etc.)

 

[Alyosha]

I don’t agree with many of the complaints but am all for battles meaning more for war score. I’ve always been curious about shorter battle duration as well.