For the love of god, PLEASE F***ING NERF FRANCE

[Violent AI]

I'm not sure why the OP is complaining about this. France has only two military bonuses in the early game (the +20% manpower tradition and +20% morale from Elan). The discipline comes much later. Meanwhile Castille has 15% morale from it's tradition so, manpower and forcelimits aside, it's army is almost at par with the french. Both France and Castille are also lucky nations, so France doesn't have that advantage.
So if France is running over rivers, into mountains, and then winning, it is more due to the dice rolls than anything else. Also, it may be a case of them having better prestige/AT or the Last Jousting Tournament even which gives a +15% morale bonus. Military-wise the French ideas themselves are not top tier like Ottomans/Brandenburg/Poland/Nepal

 

[Sunspawn]

Wait, what HYW? OP posted yesterday, right? There is no such thing, how can he say he lost the HYW on purpose, when even AI manages to hold onto it's continental holdings and eventually roll over France if they manage to ally someone like Castille or Aragon.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

France wins and loses sometimes this patch, they don't strike me as an aberration.

Lithuania having >300 development? Yeah, that's nonsensical, pure fantasy for the 1444 position and pretty egregious given the impact on the progression of Muscovy + Ottomans. Muscovy got over-buffed and it's still weak compared to PLC because of that nonsense lol.

 

[Hethran]

Buff France you say?

Okay.

In all seriousness, please do.

I would second the suggestion to add back the Hundred Years War. Removing that war as an easy way for France to reclaim its cores has amounted to a serious de facto nerf to France, and I now never see AI France drive England out in the early game.

 

[Thrake]

what is your basis for france needing to be the steamroller of europe? it's completely unrealistic, the big blue blob represented in EU4 is not how france was in real life for the majority of the time period, it feels like paradox is trying to portray france as it was at the height of Napoleonic power through out the entire game, but that isn't how medieval/early renaissance france was

England and Castille were not really at the top of their strength in the early game... I don't think France deserve more nerfing, they already got hit badly by high starting autonomy, no more easy win against England at start to get cores back and Burgundy able to beat France on their own (if they aren't stupid and DOW Austria for Liege and get stabbed by France that is). You messed by letting France recover from its high autonomy and annex Savoy+bits of Aragon+some of Brittany while giving back their cores for free...

I'm not sure how you could loose given the odds you have given, but there must be more than just elan. Stacking artillery is an obvious mistake for exemple, it's only good at sieging and draining treasury in the early game.

 

[fleetothemoon]

so riddle me this, how the fuck is france single handedly beating the everlasting shit out of us?

We wouldn't know unless if you show us screen shots and tell us what was happening with the battles or show us your save. Were you losing dicerolls? Did France have better military ideas? Defensive/Offensive + Elan is a pain to deal with. Were your allies suffering from event-inflicted military penalties or bankrupcy? Maybe suffering a downward spiral of negative prestige from getting their ass kicked earlier by France (looking at you Castille). Maybe France has high prestige, high power projection and has a military advisor helping them.

and why does he have 3 3-star generals? why does he win EVERY battle? and how is this still an issue more than 2 years after release?????!?!?!?!

It may be due to simply luck. AI has been observed to be more willing to 'reroll' generals so they get a better one. Since there is quite a bit of RNG when it comes to rolling generals, it's not implausible for France to roll an extraordinarily good one. In addition, France may have converted both their ruler and heir to generals. The leader stats are less guided by army tradition, and more by the ruler/heir's military skill. All of this compounded by France's bonus from lucky tag, and the offensive idea, pretty much gives them a good shot at getting three max star generals.

what is your basis for france needing to be the steamroller of europe? it's completely unrealistic, the big blue blob represented in EU4 is not how france was in real life for the majority of the time period, it feels like paradox is trying to portray france as it was at the height of Napoleonic power through out the entire game, but that isn't how medieval/early renaissance france was

At the moment France is not a steamroller. You should know this since you played EU3, and would had known what a real steamrolling France was like. France has several contenders that can check their power:

->Burgundy (early on only; usually dies to France early-mid due to inheritance event or stupid AI Burgundy decisions)
->Austria (along with their numerous allies; rivalry is ensured especially if Austria inherits Flanders; Inevitable with Holy League War)
->Castille/Spain (Sometimes allies France, but war between them is inevitable; if Castille get Iberian wedding+inheritance of Naples and forms many CNs, they will be comparable strength... or even superior if they ally with Austria)

There is no denying that France is a powerful player in Europe. However, so is Austria and Castille/Spain. Like both of them though, there is also the potential for France to screw-up.

neither do i, which is the problem, France has won every battle even one were we were 60k against France's 30k, we were defending in the mountains, and France was crossing a river. i don't get it either, it doesn't make logical sense.

Were you guys using a crappy general, or already on low morale? (from previous battles unrecovered). No one will ever know why you lost, because you were playing Ironman.

Heck, for all we know, it could just be one ridiculous bug that one of the cleaners accidentally introduced when he tried to look up porn on a one of the dev's computers (that the dev forgot to shutdown before going home) and accidentally removed the semi-colon in the script somewhere before closing down the program to get down to the business of whatever cleaners do when covertly using the computers of the office they are cleaning at night.

If you want to truly demonstrate France's innate superiority and thus, provide some evidence for France to be nerfed, then you should play non-iron man with default game settings, and try to see if France always gets 3 star generals, or if France always wins battles against unfavorable odds despite being on offensive and striking a mountain position, and provide us the saves/screen shots etc

 

[grommile]

Removing that war as an easy way for France to reclaim its cores has amounted to a serious de facto nerf to France, and I now never see AI France drive England out in the early game.

Statistical blip. I've seen AI France do precisely that.

 

[vfmikey]

Statistical blip. I've seen AI France do precisely that.

IMHO removing fish and chips from the continent should be a rule, and English Normandy in 16th century rather an exception. Currently it's the other way round.

 

[Praetorian44]

France taking on all of Europe by itself....Sounds pretty accurate to me, no nerfing needed.

 

[Batzorio]

Honestly I miss beautiful blobby France, its place has been taken by the PLC in my eyes.

 

[FieldMedic]

I always support any call to nerf France or Sweden or any country that is blue. Especially those Ravensburg guys, they're off the wall OP.

#NerfBlue

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Statistical blip. I've seen AI France do precisely that.

Speaking of those, in one of the games I have going on now AI France has about 75% of the British Isles owned directly. They've been a smidge annoying to me lately, declaring for colonies in Alaska and other idiocy, enough to make me move them up the priority list of "get the **** out of the game" even though I have a friend using them as an ally. Hell to pay and whatnot, who cares if I'm Korea with quantity as my only military idea, baguette must fall if they get uppity.

I have to say the highlight of that war was 41000 French soldiers being trapped by my Alaskan CN, which was using 5 transports to do it.

 

[Megabear]

I think the current France is very reasonable compared to before. It still does however take pretty much 1.5x their numbers for me to beat them as Ottoman though LOL. Same tech, full offensive ideas, and I had terrain advantage to boot, but they usually have 3 star generals where I have 2 star generals at best. Sometimes I underestimate France and go with maybe 1.25x their number and sit on a mountain with river crossing, only to be defeated. What usually happens is when I do that, I lose but they also lose tons of manpower. They win due to morale, plain and simple. I usually use 15/4/10 stacks.

 

[flieslikeabrick]

i don't want france to unrealistically be able to steamroll the combined might of europe's other major powers

So... You don't want the game to be realistic for once? Because you described what happened quite a few times.

Anyway, from my experience, a great general will smash anything, and france does have that Elan! Idea giving them a huge morale boost(maybe they have it already?) Remember that battles are also about luck, if your rolls are bad, you're going to lose.

 

[Megabear]

So... You don't want the game to be realistic for once? Because you described what happened quite a few times.

Anyway, from my experience, a great general will smash anything, and france does have that Elan! Idea giving them a huge morale boost(maybe they have it already?) Remember that battles are also about luck, if your rolls are bad, you're going to lose.

France does win consistently unless up against huge numbers. That being said I think current France is fine.

 

[FloatingOrb]

France has basically almost conquered europe many times. The reason why they are rediculous in game is because they are rediculous in history as well.

THey were never quite roman, but pretty darn close.

 

[TingJonKi]

As england you should be able to win 1v1 againt france, why do you think england is supposed to lose the HYW?


in my voting streak game I had france in a PU by ~1453

EDIT: france doesnt need a buff, they are strong enough at the start date, the problem is AI isn't consistant with rivals so sometimes france goes no allies while other times It becomes a super blob

 

[Soviet Onion]

Actually, France could use a center of trade in Paris, since ATM getting trade power in Champagne is impossible without conquering half of Europe.

really it should be Bourgogne.

 

[Incompetent]

Radical suggestion: France should start with more total development than Lithuania. (The ratio of populations was something like 4:1 in the EU4 era.)

England's wealth and especially manpower is also somewhat exaggerated compared to France. That said, with England, unlike Lithuania, there is a case for keeping the tax/production values high to represent the English government, which from Henry VII onwards was unusually powerful and efficient by early modern standards, so could extract a relatively large proportion of the country's wealth.

France's NIs are top notch and don't need any further buffs, but the sheer size of France's population and economy is not adequately represented in EU4. Maybe in 1.14, France's provinces could get a buff, but in return France gets unusually difficult estate management to model the way the French state became hamstrung by the privileges of the nobility and clergy. (Then when the revolution happens, the power of these estates is crushed and France suddenly becomes much better at projecting its power abroad, as happened historically.) Making France high-development but inefficient will also mean that France has less need to blob everywhere, but is also less likely to get carved up in a couple of bad wars, as often happens now.

 

[Promanco]

Oh boy a buff for France? Honestly it was long overdue in too many of my games Spain eats at them and that is frankly unacceptable