It still isnt fun to play with the reduced manpower pool

[st360]

Thats all I have to say since there isnt much to elaborate. Game adds more abritary manpower vampires and doesnt give us anything fun to compensate for them other then afk waiting.

Man just be honest and say you want to do a world conquest in 150 years. Im sick of these disingenious posts "oooh, I just want some mystical ill defined fun and engaging mechanics, the developers are so evil. Its totaly not that I want to non-stop blob for 300 years"

EU 4 is not for you. Play Call of Duty.

 

[I like wars and maps]

Man just be honest and say you want to do a world conquest in 150 years. Im sick of these disingenious posts "oooh, I just want some mystical ill defined fun and engaging mechanics, the developers are so evil. Its totaly not that I want to non-stop blob for 300 years"

EU 4 is not for you. Play Call of Duty.

You seem to get very upset at online comments. I would recommend logging off it you feel yourself getting angry at them.

 

[Dunderscore]

lol imagine thinking you have to sit and wait for manpower to recover

 

[Vulkandrache]

I want to non-stop blob for 300 years

Thats actualy exactly it.
But let me explain differently.
Your manpower pool should be like the extra lifes in a platformer.
As long as you play properly it does not move. Its a buffer against mistakes.

If you play well enough you should recover manpower even with constant warfare.
Only if you take bad fights or take too much attrition from bad micro does it start to go down.
How quickly it goes down depends on how many mistakes you make compared to the combination
of difficulty setting and choosen country.

The game changed.
You must change too.

I could also just stop playing.
The new mercs are unfun in every possible way.
And the ways to preserve manpower have become so unfun to use
compared to their tiny payoff that i find myself just resorting to the afformentioned console
to squezze atleast some fun out of the game.

 

[necro84]

Thats actualy exactly it.
But let me explain differently.
Your manpower pool should be like the extra lifes in a platformer.
As long as you play properly it does not move. Its a buffer against mistakes.

If you play well enough you should recover manpower even with constant warfare.
Only if you take bad fights or take too much attrition from bad micro does it start to go down.
How quickly it goes down depends on how many mistakes you make compared to the combination
of difficulty setting and choosen country.

In real life winning side also had losses in battles. If you don't want to take any losses make a mod for yourself - give everyone infinite manpower and war exhaustion reduction.
Just look at 30 years war

Battle of Breitenfeld (1631) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Battle of Lützen (1632) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

one year later main Swedish army was much smaller

 

[Opanashc]

Thats actualy exactly it.
But let me explain differently.
Your manpower pool should be like the extra lifes in a platformer.
As long as you play properly it does not move. Its a buffer against mistakes.

If you play well enough you should recover manpower even with constant warfare.
Only if you take bad fights or take too much attrition from bad micro does it start to go down.
How quickly it goes down depends on how many mistakes you make compared to the combination
of difficulty setting and choosen country.


I could also just stop playing.
The new mercs are unfun in every possible way.
And the ways to preserve manpower have become so unfun to use
compared to their tiny payoff that i find myself just resorting to the afformentioned console
to squezze atleast some fun out of the game.

I take it you are not good enough.
And manpower is not like extra lives, but more like stamina - you use it up, and let it recover. It's dynamic, not static.

 

[Zaddy]

I think there's a very specific player that was hurt by this change, namely players that:

1) Like to fight lots of wars and play in an expansionist manner
and
2) Don't enjoy/are unwilling to do manpower micro
and
3) Don't play majors

I'm pretty sympathetic, because the choice is either click intensive, mindnumbing micromanagement of armies (when warfare already trends towards tedious micro), or sit on speed 5, spam generals, slacken, and watch manpower tick up. Given mercs are hardly an actual solution (if you've used them for more than 5 minutes you surely must agree! what a terrible mechanic.) you're kinda caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of not-awful solutions.

In theory said downtime from low manpower would be okay, because the player would have things to do during the peace. In reality there's not much fun to be had during peacetime. This, I think, comes down to a fundamental flaw in EU4's design, ie there are lots of mechanics to limit your time at war (manpower, reinforcement cost, AE, etc) but simultaneously the gameplay is hyperfocused on war.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

I think there's a very specific player that was hurt by this change, namely players that:

1) Like to fight lots of wars and play in an expansionist manner
and
2) Don't enjoy/are unwilling to do manpower micro
and
3) Don't play majors

I'm pretty sympathetic, because the choice is either click intensive, mindnumbing micromanagement of armies (when said micromanagement already tending into towards that category), or sit on speed 5, spam generals, slacken, and watch manpower tick up. Given mercs are hardly an actual solution (if you've used them for more than 5 minutes you surely must agree! what a terrible mechanic.) you're kinda caught between a rock and a hard place in terms of not-awful solutions.

You forgot to add
4) Players that mainly play in regions where attrition is much more prevalent than Europe. Enjoy being surrounded by arid or worse... tropical terrain with monsoons (Thats +4.5 attrition without modifiers. +1 from sieging, +2 from tropical, and upto +1.5 from severe monsoon. Oh and here is free -30% supply limit reduction from tropical to really drive home the point.)

Tropical with severe monsoon is worse than severe winter, only those who have to deal with a capital with lvl 2 fort (minimum 10k to siege) early game know how much the manpower nerf hurts.

 

[FishieFan]

You forgot to add
4) Players that mainly play in regions where attrition is much more prevalent than Europe. Enjoy being surrounded by arid or worse... tropical terrain with monsoons (Thats +4.5 attrition without modifiers. +1 from sieging, +2 from tropical, and upto +1.5 from severe monsoon. Oh and here is free -30% supply limit reduction from tropical to really drive home the point.)

Tropical with severe monsoon is worse than severe winter, only those who have to deal with a capital with lvl 2 fort (minimum 10k to siege) early game know how much the manpower nerf hurts.

Play with more vassals then as tropical places in eu4 often have vassal swarms in multiple start dates

 

[FishieFan]

The local merc companies (free company, grand company & independent army) should not cost professionalism, as they are soldiers from your own country led by your own leaders. And mercenary professionalism cost should be proportional to the amount of force limit they occupy when the are recruited.

Loans are your people but still give de buffs
Estates are your people but can give bonuses and maluses to being catered to
Rebels are from your country yet oppose you

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

For someone who hasn't played in a while. What was changed about manpower?

 

[ArtFart]

I personally think the change was good, I didn't really need to adjust my gameplay style much to accomodate it but it's a noticable change. After a while you will be swimming in manpower again anyway so it's only really the early game that has issues. Even then it's manageable and makes it more fun rather than spewing out troops like no ones business.

 

[brifbates]

For someone who hasn't played in a while. What was changed about manpower?

They reduced all of the +manpower bonuses from policies, ideas, etc. and changed mercs to no longer be infinite manpower. They also altered attrition to armies at sea (other than marine units). It still refills at the same rate and there are some controlled ways to gain chunks of it but it is now something that you need to pay some attention to.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

They reduced all of the +manpower bonuses from policies, ideas, etc...

No, they just nerfed Quantity, Aristocratic idea groups and slacken recruitment. They didn't touch policies, aristocratic-exploration and espionage-plutocatic give +33% national manpower, while quantity gives +25%. And they also didn't nerf national ideas (many nations have +25% to +33% manpower). That's my cause of complain.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Drilling, general spam, mercs, vassals

Drilling is a meme, the other things are actually useful though.

 

[Bohemian_warlord]

The local merc companies (free company, grand company & independent army) should not cost professionalism, as they are soldiers from your own country led by your own leaders. And mercenary professionalism cost should be proportional to the amount of force limit they occupy when the are recruited.

Mercs should not cost professionalism in general, because Mercs are quite literally professional soldiers.

 

[Lord Sheogorath]

Mercs should not cost professionalism in general, because Mercs are quite literally professional soldiers.

I was advocating some middle ground here, since the devs designed mercs as substitute for a professional army. My explanation for foreign mercs costing professionalism is that suddenly hiring a bunch of soldiers and generals from foreign countries creates confusion and friction with your own military due to difference in tactics. Since local mercs are mostly soldiers from the area and led by your own generals there is more coordination with the existing army.

 

[FishieFan]

Mercs should not cost professionalism in general, because Mercs are quite literally professional soldiers.

You're not relying on your own professional forces that's why

 

[Blindbohemian]

Mercs should not cost professionalism in general, because Mercs are quite literally professional soldiers.

Professionalism is a measure of professionalisation in your regular army.

Thats all I have to say since there isnt much to elaborate. Game adds more abritary manpower vampires and doesnt give us anything fun to compensate for them other then afk waiting.

This is a git gud issue.

 

[WhiskyGlen]

Ive found that manpower is still perfectly manageable after the nerfs, the only issue is when i do several wars in a row and have instability with rebels. But IMO thats how it is supposed to work, any nation in a permanent war economy would run out of manpower.

I rarely run out of manpower after the first 100 years. And if I do, it comes back pretty quickly. I think the issue I have is that in those days, one or two major battles was often decisive enough to end the war. In this game, unless you can trap them on an island with a superior navy, it's extremely hard to wipe stacks no matter how decisive a major battle is. That leads to exploits post war such as not making a decision on an event that spawns rebel stacks so you can move your army to the province first and gain a defensive advantage.