How to limit Europeans outside of Europe

[CSARebel]

I have heard a lot of grumbling from those who like playing non European powers about the number of troops European powers send overseas. I have been doing some brainstorming to come up with a game mechanic that will realistically solve this issue, while remaining fun and simple. Here it is for review...

Increase the maintenance cost for units overseas or on ships. Perhaps count any unit overseas as being beyond the force limits. If the player is already beyond his force limits then have the units overseas suffer an even greater penalty.

This will probably require a few extra lines of info in the user interface to make the player aware of why military maintenance is so high.

Not sure how this would effect the AI. Not sure if this has been suggested before. I'm not even sure if it has already been implemented or not. If so, I am missing the info in the game.

Thoughts are welcome as to the idea or the values assigned to the penalties. Thanks.

 

[Wildcat_PL]

increasing maintenance in overseas provinces is a very good idea.
late tech or ideas should reduce the maintenance
perhaps lowering province supply limit in overseas provinces too. increasing maintenance cost for over province supply limit units would be nice too.

 

[grommile]

Given that the AI already routinely fails to live up to historical expectations in India, I'm not convinced that making it harder for it to do so is a good idea.

 

[SignedName]

You could make supply lines a thing. If you haven't gotten control of the sea route to your troops, they starve and suffer massive attrition. Unfortunately this would screw the AI and players would be annoyed because suddenly navies would actually mean something.

 

[Pigeoncount]

I have not seen the colonizers set foot onto Asia for about my last twenty games, unless I decided to take down the Asian powers. The AI doesn't need to be crippled anymore, as it can't figure out how to win these wars as it is.

 

[Wildcat_PL]

true - this would fuck mup the game balance even more for AI.

still - just because something is not working it doesn't mean we swhouldn't demand it fixed and more balancing features included.

supply lines are more of a 20th century thing - it's not hearts of iron with its' "supply and fuel convoys" thats what province supply limit is for.

 

[zeredek]

"How to limit Europeans outside of Europe"

...Are we talking about the same game here?

 

[grommile]

You could make supply lines a thing. If you haven't gotten control of the sea route to your troops, they starve and suffer massive attrition. Unfortunately this would screw the AI and players would be annoyed because suddenly navies would actually mean something.

In EU4's timeframe, you don't generally feed your armies on foreign soil by shipping them food from home. (You don't even ship them things like cannonballs and gunpowder from home unless you're (a) actually fighting (b) mostly fighting people who don't know what gunpowder is.)

You feed your army by them buying or stealing food from the local inhabitants of whatever province they're in. That's why provinces have a "supply limit" restricting how big an army you can keep there without attrition.

 

[SignedName]

In EU4's timeframe, you don't generally feed your armies on foreign soil by shipping them food from home. (You don't even ship them things like cannonballs and gunpowder from home unless you're (a) actually fighting (b) mostly fighting people who don't know what gunpowder is.)

You feed your army by them buying or stealing food from the local inhabitants of whatever province they're in. That's why provinces have a "supply limit" restricting how big an army you can keep there without attrition.

In that case, looting should massively reduce the supply limit.

 

[Wildcat_PL]

afaik looted status does reduce supply limit. not as much as scorched earth and it shouldn't. Some sort of scorching enemy territory would be nice too. AFAIk a lot of wars were simly a raid to terrorise neighbour, preventing them from attacking us, or a revenge after previous raid. f.e. hussites war vs brandenburg/saxony/bavaria/silesia were simply raids to terrorise them, burn their villages etc.

Remember that it's your or allied units who are looting - you should think of looting as taking gold from palaces, churches, town halls etc. Not actual stealling all of local grain, live stock and horses etc.

 

[CSARebel]

"How to limit Europeans outside of Europe"

...Are we talking about the same game here?

I'm speaking in regards to the players who are complaining about 50k European armies hitting the shores of the non-western world. If it is occurring then it is a bit of a problem as the European powers couldn't support armies of such size outside of Europe; at least not that I know of.

This leads to players who play non European powers requesting that the westernization mechanics be removed or made easier.

Not sure if any of this is real issues, I play as European powers almost exclusively. But my idea is simply a possible solution to what appears to be a problem to much of the EUIV community.

I don't want to limit Europeans to Europe at all. I just wish for the game to reflect the cost of troops stationed overseas as opposed to troops close to home; with the hope that this will settle down some of the disagreements in the community.

 

[Franz Limit]

You are talking about America I think? The European AI doesn't attack Asia enough. I never see Europeans in Japan / China / India. In very few games a colonial power takes on modern day Vietnam or fight something in the Malaysan region and Russia usually attacks the hordes but that's it. So those Asian regions shouldn't get nerfed further for Europeans.
About the American regions.. Well yeah maybe but I am not sure. It is true that Europe didn't send that many troops to the new world but they did conquer it. If you nerf them in that way we might see Aztecs and Incas in most games which is kind of silly too.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Given that the AI already routinely fails to live up to historical expectations in India, I'm not convinced that making it harder for it to do so is a good idea.

Not to mention that trading one arcade mechanic for another doesn't really solve the issue here.

I'm speaking in regards to the players who are complaining about 50k European armies hitting the shores of the non-western world. If it is occurring then it is a bit of a problem as the European powers couldn't support armies of such size outside of Europe; at least not that I know of.

It's not that they couldn't, but that they probably concluded that shipping large portions of their army halfway across the world might not be an ideal situation if someone next door decided their crown would look nice on someone else's head. The game doesn't model this; rather between truces and alliances it basically averts this consideration entirely.

I don't want to limit Europeans to Europe at all. I just wish for the game to reflect the cost of troops stationed overseas as opposed to troops close to home; with the hope that this will settle down some of the disagreements in the community.

What you suggest doesn't fit how armies were typically supplied in the period though. It also doesn't fix what's really ailing ROTW/westernization stuff which is the monarch point inefficiency + resulting hit to game pacing. During the -point/month era and now, for different reasons, the westernization decision has been a false choice for most patches. Previously, you did it because your late game units were trash otherwise and you'd lose points every month. Now, it's the only way to get to administrative efficiency without the cost being prohibitive. In both cases, the costs involved force a player who's trying to optimize to do some pretty wild stuff to westernize fast, generally pre-1550 if you want ADM 17 in time and to still have any ideas.

It's not a problem you can solve by making units cost more abroad. I can trivially hammer down European invasions as anything but the utterly gutted mesoamericans, which are more luck based if you want a good game rather than an average one. But no amount of 100k soldiers slaughtered will improve point efficiency, so westernization it is.

From the perspective of a colonizer, most conquests are pretty easy, but that's in large part because the western majors have juiced development, far superior NIs, and fast early tech progression. That's not really the problem though, it's by-design these nations have advantages. What isn't working is the monarch point progression throughout the world + ROTW incentives.