the reason I move 20,000 men to the New World is because colonial nation AI is idiotic and natives spawn thousands of troops to siege all my things all the time.
Huge armies too easy to move too far (especially overseas)
- Thread starter William Shakens
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Jomini overstates how easy/cheap it was to supply a field army in the days before industrialization, to some extent.
Yes, it was easier, but then again, states of the era were much less capable. This was also hugely variable, as he stated. Some armies/campaigns did mostly live "off the land" (which is a polite way to say they looted the hell out of the areas they passed), some carried a huge logistic train, some did a little bit of both, some could buy provisions from the local population (instead of looting). It all varied, depending on the army, the commanders, the ground they were covering, the era, the diplomatic situation, etc.
Having said that, ANY army that started, say, with 20k troops and marched as little as a couple hundred miles (a few provinces in EU IV terms, or perhaps even one big-ish province) would arrive much dimished, specially if it was carrying a sizable artillery train. A quick look at the Spanish Habsburg era will show just how much did it cost for the spanish crown to support armies in the Neatherlands, Italy and Germany. It was ruinously expensive, even to the richest, most powerful state of the era.
But jomini's overall point is very well taken. Reality was hugely complicated and it's difficult to model in the game. In reality, for example, France and Spain fought a number of wars, either directly or by proxy, but rarely military action happened at their frontier in the Pirineus. It was often in Italy or the Low Countries and even Germany that these wars were fought. This is difficult to replicate. The main factor is that there's no way, currently, to model limited wars, or the fact that it was often much easier to recruit people to defend something then to go off to war in distant lands (or vice versa, on ocassions!). I do think this is something that's a "flaw" in the game and could be adressed in a way that's understandeable to the AI and acceptable to the more casual player. The new expansion is probably a major step in the right direction, with the zone of control thing for forts. That solves A LOT of the problem of armies marching all over the place willy nilly.
There's a few things I would do, as well. Like, war score is calculated differently depending on the type of CB you used to declare. I would make that effect more pronounced. If you're fighting as a ally in a war (specially a offensive one), ANY casualties should have large impacts on your war exhaustion/war score. You shouldn't have to siege OPM allies from a big country to drive them off a war. In general, the system should encourage both the players and the AI to peace out easily with weak CB's (like Claims or diplomatic insult). OTOH, it SHOULD be possible to fight a war for, let's say, the Duchy of Milan or the Crown of Bohemia in one single conflict, instead of eating things a few provinces at a time. In essence, there should be minor and major wars, and the system should be able (trough CB types, WE, WS, etc) to make both players and AI fight them differently. Also, the AI should be MUCH more inclined to enter into a Guarantee then an outright Alliance (representing a defensive alliance, historically). Also, alliances should be targeted. For example, I, as Spain, can be allied with the Papal States against France, but not against Venice, for example. The whole mechanism of Coalitions was kind of trying to achive this, but more needs to be done.
Finally, on the issue of overseas deployment of troops, I have to disagree here. The main reason europpean powers didn't send huge armies to America/Africa/Asia was not the fact that they would be leaving the home ground undefended (though that certainly played a role). It was just VERY, VERY difficult to do so. During the golden era of portuguese conquest in Asia, around the first half of the 1500's, it took almost all the resources that Portugal was capable to muster to send a few thousand man each year to Asia. The casualty rate on the sea voyages could be as high as 30% just to get there. Then there was a huge wastage of troops in Asia, due to disease, desertion and combat losses. And no, it was not possible to make up these casualties by recruiting locally (though local collaborators were a essential part of their sucess, of course). Portugal managed to conquer several places, from Mozambique to Mallacca and Indonesia, in a few decades, but they managed to do so with a total of troops that rarely climbed above a few thousand (and that includes garrisons and ship crews) in Asia at any one time. And no, they couldn't have sent more. That's as much as they could manage, even when their only land border (with Spain) was not under threat. Historically, it should be really difficult to mount overseas voyages. OTOH, europpeans should kick ass much, much more then they do against the rest of the world. OTOH, it should be really hard for them to subdue large territories, precisely because they had so few man. While they could reliably kick the ass of any given local army, they didn't had the manpower to effectively occupy anything more then crucial fortified places.
Yes, it was easier, but then again, states of the era were much less capable. This was also hugely variable, as he stated. Some armies/campaigns did mostly live "off the land" (which is a polite way to say they looted the hell out of the areas they passed), some carried a huge logistic train, some did a little bit of both, some could buy provisions from the local population (instead of looting). It all varied, depending on the army, the commanders, the ground they were covering, the era, the diplomatic situation, etc.
Having said that, ANY army that started, say, with 20k troops and marched as little as a couple hundred miles (a few provinces in EU IV terms, or perhaps even one big-ish province) would arrive much dimished, specially if it was carrying a sizable artillery train. A quick look at the Spanish Habsburg era will show just how much did it cost for the spanish crown to support armies in the Neatherlands, Italy and Germany. It was ruinously expensive, even to the richest, most powerful state of the era.
But jomini's overall point is very well taken. Reality was hugely complicated and it's difficult to model in the game. In reality, for example, France and Spain fought a number of wars, either directly or by proxy, but rarely military action happened at their frontier in the Pirineus. It was often in Italy or the Low Countries and even Germany that these wars were fought. This is difficult to replicate. The main factor is that there's no way, currently, to model limited wars, or the fact that it was often much easier to recruit people to defend something then to go off to war in distant lands (or vice versa, on ocassions!). I do think this is something that's a "flaw" in the game and could be adressed in a way that's understandeable to the AI and acceptable to the more casual player. The new expansion is probably a major step in the right direction, with the zone of control thing for forts. That solves A LOT of the problem of armies marching all over the place willy nilly.
There's a few things I would do, as well. Like, war score is calculated differently depending on the type of CB you used to declare. I would make that effect more pronounced. If you're fighting as a ally in a war (specially a offensive one), ANY casualties should have large impacts on your war exhaustion/war score. You shouldn't have to siege OPM allies from a big country to drive them off a war. In general, the system should encourage both the players and the AI to peace out easily with weak CB's (like Claims or diplomatic insult). OTOH, it SHOULD be possible to fight a war for, let's say, the Duchy of Milan or the Crown of Bohemia in one single conflict, instead of eating things a few provinces at a time. In essence, there should be minor and major wars, and the system should be able (trough CB types, WE, WS, etc) to make both players and AI fight them differently. Also, the AI should be MUCH more inclined to enter into a Guarantee then an outright Alliance (representing a defensive alliance, historically). Also, alliances should be targeted. For example, I, as Spain, can be allied with the Papal States against France, but not against Venice, for example. The whole mechanism of Coalitions was kind of trying to achive this, but more needs to be done.
Finally, on the issue of overseas deployment of troops, I have to disagree here. The main reason europpean powers didn't send huge armies to America/Africa/Asia was not the fact that they would be leaving the home ground undefended (though that certainly played a role). It was just VERY, VERY difficult to do so. During the golden era of portuguese conquest in Asia, around the first half of the 1500's, it took almost all the resources that Portugal was capable to muster to send a few thousand man each year to Asia. The casualty rate on the sea voyages could be as high as 30% just to get there. Then there was a huge wastage of troops in Asia, due to disease, desertion and combat losses. And no, it was not possible to make up these casualties by recruiting locally (though local collaborators were a essential part of their sucess, of course). Portugal managed to conquer several places, from Mozambique to Mallacca and Indonesia, in a few decades, but they managed to do so with a total of troops that rarely climbed above a few thousand (and that includes garrisons and ship crews) in Asia at any one time. And no, they couldn't have sent more. That's as much as they could manage, even when their only land border (with Spain) was not under threat. Historically, it should be really difficult to mount overseas voyages. OTOH, europpeans should kick ass much, much more then they do against the rest of the world. OTOH, it should be really hard for them to subdue large territories, precisely because they had so few man. While they could reliably kick the ass of any given local army, they didn't had the manpower to effectively occupy anything more then crucial fortified places.
- 3
- 3
Sorry, but no. The thing to remember here is that shipping costs back then were by far the most expensive part of the costs of the provision. Sending foodstuff overland was expensive (about 5 times as riverine transport which was similary more expensive than deep draft sailing). Marching soldiers up the Spanish road cost far more to supply the provisions (as they weren't usually pillaging as the army marched) than buying sufficient food for a from Seville to Cuba. Anything you had to haul in a wagon was expensive, anything you could send in a ship's hull was not.
I'm not saying that military operations were objectively cheap, just that ones supplied from the sea were cheaper. Some of the most expensive marches were things that EUIV makes simple. For instance marching in the Low Countries was actually quite cost prohibitive if you were marching orthogonal to the major waterways (particularly if the good crossings were guarded or contested). Marching East-West across a province could be an order of magnitude more expensive than North-South (even at equal distance). Overland fighting was expensive, but it was reliable and didn't require a massive capital investment.
Now there were complications. First EUIV does a horrid job of modeling the interplay between shipping and troop transport; historically the biggest cost was that you impressed a lot of shipping to move soldiers that could be used for moving valuable cargo. In EUIV the ships that provide income can't transport troops so, of course you, there is no opportunity cost for moving troops for a few months. Likewise, historically you had major risks that ships would simply vanish in rough seas or to enemy action (with no convenient instantaneous, global notification of hostilities).
Getting even some semblance of these complicated things in the game would be both hard on the AI and frankly not worth a lot. Sure troop counts in America and SE Asia are off, but on the other hand there were repetitive, major conquests that took under a regiment. Spanish isn't one of the most popular languages in the world because Spain couldn't conquer massive amounts of land and expand through huge swathes of the globe.
I haven't read most of the thread (for which I apologize), but thinking about this, I wonder if a decent solution (and one that could actually be implemented relatively easily, I think) would be to just increase the rate of attrition ticks on armies aboard transport ships. Combined with no replenishment of armies during transport, this would cause armies to arrive after long voyages in a much more depleted state. This would mean, for example, a British army sent from the Isles to India would arrive with a decent hit to his troop count (and a notably larger hit than say, the same army moving from the Isles to Gibraltar). This would cause such transfers of armies to be a bigger issue manpower wise and cost-wise (due to the reinforcement cost). Would probably take some work to figure out the appropriate number of attrition ticks to get a result that is a decent mix of historical and good for gameplay.
More elaborate changes would probably be for the better, but are much harder to actually implement in a way that adds to the fun of the game, doesn't break the A.I even more than this simple change would, never mind the actual difficulty of coding such a system.
More elaborate changes would probably be for the better, but are much harder to actually implement in a way that adds to the fun of the game, doesn't break the A.I even more than this simple change would, never mind the actual difficulty of coding such a system.
high sea attrition for both navies and armies would be a very good solution if the ai knew how to work with it...
but since sea attrition is the spot in which the ai acts dumber then everywhere else (right now, it's even disabled for them because they don't know how to work with it)...
every other solution or no solution would be better then high attrition.
- 1
In one of my MP games Brazil has released from Portugal and had taken Beleares in separate peace from Aragon. From now and then they participated in most European wars on Castile's side, sending around 25-30k troops =)
Last edited:
The question is whether your proposed change would meaningfully improve game play. I don't see how it would, and because the AI is notoriously bad at handling attrition, your proposed change is likely to have all sorts of unforeseen complications.
That's the bottom line with this thread and so many others. EU4 is a war game with an emphasis on historical flavor, but it is a game, first and foremost -- a heavily abstracted and oversimplified game, by design.
This forum fairly overflows with suggestions based on nothing more than vague historical misgivings; a good half or more seem to be motivated more so out of posters' desire to assert moral or intellectual superiority than out of any genuine desire to improve the game. Realism is not an end in itself, and as in the case of this thread, what at first seems most realistic often turns out to be the opposite of historical reality.
Yes, it is unrealistic on its face that EU4 countries can transport tens of thousands of troops over the ocean without suffering massive losses, but as Jomini so ably pointed out, overseas conquests usually didn't require tens of thousands troops. So which is better; the current, unrealistic but self-consistent system by which countries conquer almost exclusively through direct conflict of massed armies, regardless of distance, or a system that arbitrarily penalizes overseas attackers without even attempting to take into account all of the various advantages they might have employed in real history? Do you think the game should make overland transport 10 times more difficult too? Should our units be required to follow rivers? And if we go that far, isn't it only realistic to implement guerrilla warfare? How would you do that?
The problem isn't that any one of the above is a bad idea, per se; the problem is that none is a particularly good idea on its own, and all of them together would render the game unrecognizable, to say nothing of the potential cost of implementation. More to the point, there's no obvious game play benefit in the whole mess, even if we could wave a magic wand and implement everything perfectly on the first go.
Any pro-realism argument or suggestion must be tethered to a clear understanding of how it relates to the game play experience, else you're left with an ever-receding goal and a hopelessly overcomplicated game. Accept that a regiment needn't necessarily represent 1,000 soldiers in all contexts; accept that a single cog doesn't literally carry 1,000 soldiers or that a single boat probably isn't blocking the strait of gibraltar. You'll enjoy the game more that way.
Last edited:
- 2
I don't disagree. Gameplay should take priority over historical accuracy. I noted that balance between historical accuracy and, well, 'fun', would have to be looked at; and the result could very well be 'nope, not a fun/useful mechanic, scrap it'. As for the AI.. that is an important aspect to be considered. The EU AI is indeed notoriously bad at handling just about anything at sea, and certain 'cheats' and accommodations have been made to off-set that (such as the AI not taking naval attrition). I won't even pretend to understand how or why that area is so hard to code an AI to deal with, just that it has been and I trust the Devs enough to accept it.
My comments regarding attrition were only directed towards the troops on transports, not the ships themselves, and while to someone such as myself (being almost completely clueless in regards to coding and scripting anything, let alone AI) it seems fairly simple to have the AI add up the number of attrition ticks the army would suffer and compare it to the number of troops an enemy has in India (or wherever) and decide if the attrition reduced army would have a chance of survival (based on doing the maths of tactics levels, morale, discipline, etc.) and thus whether or not the army should be shipped is in actuality far from 'simple'. I have no idea if it is actually feasible, or whether it would be a good idea or not. It was just a thought I had towards the problem (and it is, imo, a problem, albeit merely one part of the problem of how EU IV handles logistics in general being inaccurate, almost non-existent and contributing little gameplay flavour).
Lastly, in regards to ships.. personally, I've always considered ships to be abstractions of fleets (i.e., that single cog representing the fleet required to transport and supply one regiment). It does help a lot with the portrayal of the naval system.
Can't really say about overland but for overseas, I see two possible solutions (or both of them can be used):
1.) Make transport ships its own force limit separate from naval force limit and impose very low base for it, to be slowly increased over time, making it harder to raise large transport fleet without cost penalty.
2.) Increase cost for transport ships to make them more expensive to build and maintain than even ships of the line.
These are not perfect nor the last one may be historically plausible but I think these may help make transporting large armies overseas pretty difficult and more expensive.
1.) Make transport ships its own force limit separate from naval force limit and impose very low base for it, to be slowly increased over time, making it harder to raise large transport fleet without cost penalty.
2.) Increase cost for transport ships to make them more expensive to build and maintain than even ships of the line.
These are not perfect nor the last one may be historically plausible but I think these may help make transporting large armies overseas pretty difficult and more expensive.
- 2
- 1
Both of these are going to create massive headaches for the AI. How will Denmark, Norway, Aragon, Venice, Genoa, etc. have a historical hold on their island holdings? We need islands to be such that the Crete can be both invaded by the OE with a large fleet, but also not something where Cyprus can use a bottled up Venetian fleet to one cog over enough men to have unshakeable grip on both islands. Given the recent boost to OPMs, you need to be able to ship a lot of guys around to do hostile island landings against a good number of men or Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Sardinia, Corsica, and any other island state won't fall to regional powers (as should happen). Likewise, an independent Sardinia needs to be able to ship troops off the island in decent quantity. And let's not even think about horridness that would result from colonial states not being able to afford transports when rebellions break out.
Again, why is this such a problem? Western armies managed to conquer the most lucrative territories in the world, often with single regiments. Just "making it harder" through some horrid path dependent process is a recipe for bad AI cost/benefit analysis and making the game easier. I mean with the right idea sets you can march freakishly large distances (just avoid a white peace with a single naval battle or a suicide merc landing) with hefty use of open borders.
Picking out an efficient path from A -> B is hard. It is harder when doing things like befriending a random state at a transit point (e.g. Mamelukes), a sudden declaration of by a large navy stops the use of a sea zone, a sudden annexation completely changes the cost of the endeavor.
What is easy for the AI is just making it less lucrative in the first place. As long as shipping off manpower to fight over there is more reliable and efficient way to expand than fighting a never ending grudge match in Europe ... the AI (& players) would be stupid not to go to Asia or the Americas for expansion.
I just don't see the reason to do anything here. Oceanic shipping was by far the cheapest way to move soldiers once you had the hulls. Western countries exploited the hell out of the RotW and lost very few sustained campaigns. So 20K troops are buggering around SE Asia; it is not like France (Spain or whomever) can't just raise all those as mercs in a tight war nor like they should be beaten back from taking some lucrative trade port.
You can have an intelligent AI that is as challenging as it can be against a human with historical foreknowledge.
You can have an historical AI that doesn't do ahistorical things.
You cannot have both.
- 2
The problem is that France can win against the OPM and return its 95% of its army to fight yours before you even begin to take a province. Don't even bother to start a battle with your 100% army that is 10X or more than that 5%.......because that battle will take so long to finish the OPM will be defeated and the 95% army will reinforce the 5% before the battle ends.......
Jomini makes an excellent point in that I think too many of us keep thinking of this in terms of current warfare when we haven't had enough time with the new Forts to see how it works, because I can see how just building a few strategic forts could make the Inca potentially a nightmare for any European country.
The essential point here is that EU4, like its predecessors, does not model supply and logistics. You cannot leave that out of a military model and achieve reasonable results.
Alfred Thayer Mahan pointed out that the value of sea-power was the ability to use the waters as the 'broad common' for cheap and speedy transport of goods. As late as the American Revolution it was said that it cost more to transport a ton of goods inland 100 miles than to move it across the Atlantic. Even in a 'developed' country like France, there was no way to supply the naval bases at Brest and Cherbourg except by sea.
And consider this: The US Army considered that before the Transcontinenal Railroad it cost about $1000 (in 1870 dollars, that's a lot) and six months to ship a soldier to the West Coast. Nations did not form or send large expeditionary forces abroad because they could not pay for shipping and supplies. The 30,000+ troops Britain sent to New York at the start of the Revolution made up the largest expeditionary force in British history - and one of the largest forces moved overseas by anyone at that time. Even for Britain, who had more than her share of money and shipping, that was an enormous strain and an effort that could not be repeated.
A previous poster made the point that Europeans did not take down overseas empires single-handed; like Cortez (or the British in India) they allied with local forces, using the locals for bulk and their own troops as a high-quality core. That's exactly right, and most European powers were reluctant to arm and train the natives because they knew who the next target would be.
Alfred Thayer Mahan pointed out that the value of sea-power was the ability to use the waters as the 'broad common' for cheap and speedy transport of goods. As late as the American Revolution it was said that it cost more to transport a ton of goods inland 100 miles than to move it across the Atlantic. Even in a 'developed' country like France, there was no way to supply the naval bases at Brest and Cherbourg except by sea.
And consider this: The US Army considered that before the Transcontinenal Railroad it cost about $1000 (in 1870 dollars, that's a lot) and six months to ship a soldier to the West Coast. Nations did not form or send large expeditionary forces abroad because they could not pay for shipping and supplies. The 30,000+ troops Britain sent to New York at the start of the Revolution made up the largest expeditionary force in British history - and one of the largest forces moved overseas by anyone at that time. Even for Britain, who had more than her share of money and shipping, that was an enormous strain and an effort that could not be repeated.
A previous poster made the point that Europeans did not take down overseas empires single-handed; like Cortez (or the British in India) they allied with local forces, using the locals for bulk and their own troops as a high-quality core. That's exactly right, and most European powers were reluctant to arm and train the natives because they knew who the next target would be.
- 3
Armies should have their Reinforcement Speed based on Supply Distance, like how Navies suffer Attrition based on Supply Distance.
Beyond a reasonable distance from owned provinces, you simply can't Reinforce.
Beyond a reasonable distance from owned provinces, you simply can't Reinforce.
- 1
Is there not a distance check in the engine for things like coring range? Could supply limit not be based off a coring range type system, aka supply limit is inversely proportional to coring range?
The other thing is that if we are going to have vastly reduced supply limits for armies abroad, like mentioned earlier wae definitely do need some kind of "local interests" system, or interaction with natives, of some kind. Perhaps a series of events that can cede provinces or start wars based on factors such as your trade power in the node, the provinces local autonomy, revolt risk, whether you have military access and have some troops present. Perhaps when you first meet a country or region you have to first "open trade" with the country that controls the trade node? Until then you suffer a large penalty in trade power in that node.
Then perhaps you could model the take over of India particularly Bengal, as a kind of rebel event? So say you have two regiments there, an event fires and you support the "rebel" uprising, and these rebels are friendly to you. This is the kind of system that we need in my view. The same sort of thing could be done with native american tribes, or mesoamerican empires, if you win the rebel war then they become a protectorate? Then with the new mechanics you could simply ask for provinces. To be able to have troops in mesoamerican empires I would suggest that troops with a conquistador alway have access to primitive lands.
The other thing is that if we are going to have vastly reduced supply limits for armies abroad, like mentioned earlier wae definitely do need some kind of "local interests" system, or interaction with natives, of some kind. Perhaps a series of events that can cede provinces or start wars based on factors such as your trade power in the node, the provinces local autonomy, revolt risk, whether you have military access and have some troops present. Perhaps when you first meet a country or region you have to first "open trade" with the country that controls the trade node? Until then you suffer a large penalty in trade power in that node.
Then perhaps you could model the take over of India particularly Bengal, as a kind of rebel event? So say you have two regiments there, an event fires and you support the "rebel" uprising, and these rebels are friendly to you. This is the kind of system that we need in my view. The same sort of thing could be done with native american tribes, or mesoamerican empires, if you win the rebel war then they become a protectorate? Then with the new mechanics you could simply ask for provinces. To be able to have troops in mesoamerican empires I would suggest that troops with a conquistador alway have access to primitive lands.
Where are you referring to? Native Americans? Because in India there was an effort to train locals? The British and French administrations even helped with the introduction of foreign tactics and mercenary groups during the seven years war. Bayly argues that it was in fact the increasing cost of warfare in India and China due to these new more western methods of war that made financial difficulties so great for these nations during the period of "great revolultions".
They did to a limited degree, yes - to as limited a degree as they possibly could, since the local rulers wanted their armies modernized as a first priority. But there were social (and financial) costs to changing the old ways, so most of the overseas 'native' forces remained of poorer quality than full European units.