just remove manpower from the game
- Thread starter darth254
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Wow, what you quoted of mine wasn't very well stated by me. Sorry.
I should have said that your mercenary force limit doesn't keep up as your country expands. That is, it's 20 + 1/3 force limit for available mercenary units. So as your get larger you have a smaller percentage of available mercenaries compared to your total force limit. And that what is infinite is the mercenary manpower pool.
As long as you have money and provinces to recruit in, you can have an army. I must admit, the person who said that "infinite merc manpower" is very helpful to the AI and weaker players is true. I lost almost my entire British Continental Army (had a few scattered troops in colonies and Africa) to a shockingly superior Austrian Army. Better generals and unit bonuses crushed my and my allies' forces. So I had to raise an entire army, artillery included, of mercenaries. Good thing I had a massive economy as I had a few thousand ducats extra.
Well, considering I have this quote in my signature I shouldn't be saying this but... That would be painfully historically inaccurate on all levels. Mercenaries were more expensive than levied peasants and they were battle-hardened and disciplined. And making them weaker would still not solve the problem, just look at horde swarming. Let's see how the condottieri play out in Mare Nostrum.
If people need to waste their WS on money, they didn't looted (if they did at all) provinces in an efficient way.
I never asked anything else than war reparations, and this is mostly to cripple a bit juggernauts like PLC and Ottomans. Not forgot to mention, this is far more profitable than spending more than 10 WS to get less money and rise your inflation.
Aside this, as someone said, the problem might be on loans side.
Everytime I test mods and have a look at a IA controeld countries, it has a huge amount of debts. and yes, this money goes the mercenaries. But that's the AI income that needs to be fixed, not the mercs.
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In most situations the way it works for expanding in the early game by the group he mentioned:
Take War reps and/or money + spend rest of WS on provinces.
Rationale: those provinces don't really net you all that much early on and the immediate cash flow A) puts the enemy country in debt and B) gives you an upfront cash flow to invest into the infrastructure in your country and let's you snowball faster. This was true in 1.13 and 1.14. 1.15 estates make it a bit worth taking the extra provinces, but arguably you're still better off with the money early on.
That said as I mentioned it varies on situation.
Allow yourself to think outside of the box and why people do certain things instead of instantly dismissing it because it does not fit with your standard of efficient play. For the most part people are daft and play very inefficiently. However there sometimes is a diamond in the rough in their line of thinking that allows you to come up with better strategies.
When it comes to top level players this is even more true. These are people that usually have a very solid rationale and reason to doing things. Dismissing them off hand without even thinking about it is frankly daft.
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basically that's why I started this thread in the first place, is because of the stupid idea of mercs forming an infinite merc manpower pool.
it just doesn't make sense that they limit the merc pool size but then go let mercs reinforce forever. what the heck kind of logic is this.
mercs were prevalent? fine, but use a better model for reinforcing mercs.
it just doesn't make sense that they limit the merc pool size but then go let mercs reinforce forever. what the heck kind of logic is this.
mercs were prevalent? fine, but use a better model for reinforcing mercs.
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i agree, the problem is really big, simply because u dont need to focus on economy/trade to get loads of infite troops..
i can tell a good example, i played a multiplayer with custom nations and random world:
i was a pseudo-Netherlands hardly focused on trade and i managed to get a 250 gold total income around 1600-1700 exatly to get infinite mercenaries pool but with less military ideas, of course my basic forcelimit was a bit low and i had no manpower/good generals, but my main focus was to keep wars longer to win with mercs spam against lower economies IF i coud let the war last enough;
well one player playing a pseudo-France took full military ideas (with obviusly economy-religion for military policies) and managed to keep AT to 80-90 so he had good forcelimit/ manpower, good morale/discipline and permanent 3stars generals, so it was ok that my army will lose almost every battle but you think "i'm able to spam mercs and wait his manpower depletion if i can hold enough my forts, if he spam mercs too he wont be able to sustain them as i can do with my income" well i was wrong, he simply didnt spend a CENT for 50 years, occasionally farming near OPC for money and keeping his army maintenance as lower as possible so he had a 50'000 gold reserve..
wich means nearly 4'000-5'000 REGIMENTS of mercenary infantry, thats like 5'000'000 possible manpower you can use as a full military focused country who doesnt need to build or manage trade or anything belonging to gold income,
this is not fair and is so frustrating for a player that doenst want to take always the same ideas to prevent to be steamrolled by discipline/AT stacking, so you HAVE to take military ideas as soon as you can, or you CAN'T manage to win a war, because every country can just stack gold without limit and wars will last forever.
There is another bad example on the same game: the "pseudo-France" player was finally almost totally occupated during a war because his troops were elsewere, well he still managed to mantain his 250k mercs army thanks to the occupied provinces he had in the balkans, WE was not a big problem because he had innovative, a custom national idea and a good king, he simply had that 50k gold reserve and keept spamming troops even if his country's economy was totally down and 90% under enemy control...
gold now works like manpower so you NEED a limit on maximum amount of gold you can stack like manpower has maybe depending on your adm development
i can tell a good example, i played a multiplayer with custom nations and random world:
i was a pseudo-Netherlands hardly focused on trade and i managed to get a 250 gold total income around 1600-1700 exatly to get infinite mercenaries pool but with less military ideas, of course my basic forcelimit was a bit low and i had no manpower/good generals, but my main focus was to keep wars longer to win with mercs spam against lower economies IF i coud let the war last enough;
well one player playing a pseudo-France took full military ideas (with obviusly economy-religion for military policies) and managed to keep AT to 80-90 so he had good forcelimit/ manpower, good morale/discipline and permanent 3stars generals, so it was ok that my army will lose almost every battle but you think "i'm able to spam mercs and wait his manpower depletion if i can hold enough my forts, if he spam mercs too he wont be able to sustain them as i can do with my income" well i was wrong, he simply didnt spend a CENT for 50 years, occasionally farming near OPC for money and keeping his army maintenance as lower as possible so he had a 50'000 gold reserve..
wich means nearly 4'000-5'000 REGIMENTS of mercenary infantry, thats like 5'000'000 possible manpower you can use as a full military focused country who doesnt need to build or manage trade or anything belonging to gold income,
this is not fair and is so frustrating for a player that doenst want to take always the same ideas to prevent to be steamrolled by discipline/AT stacking, so you HAVE to take military ideas as soon as you can, or you CAN'T manage to win a war, because every country can just stack gold without limit and wars will last forever.
There is another bad example on the same game: the "pseudo-France" player was finally almost totally occupated during a war because his troops were elsewere, well he still managed to mantain his 250k mercs army thanks to the occupied provinces he had in the balkans, WE was not a big problem because he had innovative, a custom national idea and a good king, he simply had that 50k gold reserve and keept spamming troops even if his country's economy was totally down and 90% under enemy control...
gold now works like manpower so you NEED a limit on maximum amount of gold you can stack like manpower has maybe depending on your adm development
I wonder whether the mercs pool could increase/decrease depending on country's treasury. After all, mercs go where gold is. Once they learn you're short of gold, they quickly move elsewhere.
I admit that would require some adjustments to a bunch of related mechanics. Ultimately the core of the matter lies in AI being too stupid to manage. Could it be taught to accumulate cash while being short of manpower?
From my amateurish point of view it should be possible quite well. It's all about turning facts into numbers, after all. I believe the problem lies in the fact that the developers have accumulated (and turned into numbers) so many factors over time that now it's pretty difficult (and time-consuming for testing) to change even a few variables. (And much less cash-rewarding than adding new entertaining features, adding provinces, tags, selling new sprites, etc.)
That makes me present a proposal: Move as much as possible into defines (and other moddable points). Modders will happily do the testing and balancing for free.
I admit that would require some adjustments to a bunch of related mechanics. Ultimately the core of the matter lies in AI being too stupid to manage. Could it be taught to accumulate cash while being short of manpower?
From my amateurish point of view it should be possible quite well. It's all about turning facts into numbers, after all. I believe the problem lies in the fact that the developers have accumulated (and turned into numbers) so many factors over time that now it's pretty difficult (and time-consuming for testing) to change even a few variables. (And much less cash-rewarding than adding new entertaining features, adding provinces, tags, selling new sprites, etc.)
That makes me present a proposal: Move as much as possible into defines (and other moddable points). Modders will happily do the testing and balancing for free.
I agree the mercenary system is currently quite bad and it makes attrition warfare next to impossible against the AI but removing manpower isn't the solution.
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A fairly radical suggestion, but why not just replace the existing mercenary system entirely with the new condottieri system? Then all mercenaries have to come from some other country, and would drain some manpower pool (and would be reinforced from some manpower pool). Then, all the mercs in the world have to come from someone's army, instead of just some generic endless supply, and it adds a whole new diplomatic element to the game.
That would be another mechanics the AI would be too stupid to use properly, I'm afraid.
In respect of mercenaries? Sure. Mercenary cavalry and artillery are ruinously expensive to support even if they're not taking attrition.
Right, so then what are you going to use for artillery and horses if you have no manpower, and those types of mercs ruin you...?
Not recruit regular infantry in the first place, so that my manpower is conserved for artillery use.
Mercenary artillery and cavalry do not magically become affordable just because you've removed non-mercenary soldiers from the game.
Not trying to give you a hard time or be a jerk here, but the question remains; how do you conserve a resource if it doesn't exist?
The dude said he wants manpower removed, but also that the mercenary varieties of cav and arti aren't worth using....
So with no manpower (and no ability to raise troops of his own) where does he plan on getting affordable artillery and cavalry?
The person who brought up the unaffordability of mercenary cavalry and artillery is not the OP.
I feel like the force limit really limits the usefulness of mercenaries.