just remove manpower from the game

[nkibilko]

The person who brought up the unaffordability of mercenary cavalry and artillery is not the OP.

Ah my mistake, i saw the stack of red x's on both and assumed that it was the same person with 2 crazy bad ideas, lol.

 

[Floatserve]

One of the reasons why mercs are so powerful is probably the fact, that battles in EU4 are extremely deadly. Losing a battle with over 50% casualties is quite normal in this game, whereas in reality 25% was already very high and battles were much rarer. Also, battles were (usually) just fought to force an enemy to leave the area. Howver, due to the relatively high reinforcement speed and morale recovery, an enemy army can come back before you finish even a single siege.

 

[guachi]

I used to think mercenary cavalry and artillery were too expensive. Then I, as Britain, had a disastrous battle against a stronger than expected Austria some time in the 1600s.

My manpower was already low and now it was gone. So I raised an entire army of mercenaries (infantry, cavalry, artillery), about 50 units, and got enough WS to take some provinces off some HRE member Austria was defending.

Now, in a different Britain game, it's 1730. I have standing armies of nothing but mercenaries and others that are all mercenary infantry and cavalry with my own artillery. Waging war with my own troops some seems crazy to do voluntarily.

 

[Sunbro BigBoss]

One of the reasons why mercs are so powerful is probably the fact, that battles in EU4 are extremely deadly. Losing a battle with over 50% casualties is quite normal in this game, whereas in reality 25% was already very high and battles were much rarer. Also, battles were (usually) just fought to force an enemy to leave the area. Howver, due to the relatively high reinforcement speed and morale recovery, an enemy army can come back before you finish even a single siege.

Casualties should be way smaller, morale much more fragile, and forts somewhat faster to fall, but cheaper. The losing country should surrender because of a strain on it's resources, not a total inability to fight and the winner should accept the peace for the same reasons.
Right now a country can obliterate and occupy another one if only it wins that decisive battle and wipes the enemy's army, which makes mercenaries that much more powerful.

 

[klinkvon13]

That would be another mechanics the AI would be too stupid to use properly, I'm afraid.

Still, the notion is very interesting.

We cannot disregard an idea just because we assume no one will care to code propre AI. It does not seems to me that it would be so hard for the AI to handle this. It can evaluate how much of manpower it cannot devote to this according to simple factors (being threatened, planning a war, etc).

One thing is sure, it'll probably mean that much much less of mercenaries will be available. That might make the game much harder for rich low manpower countries.

 

[Incompetent]

There's certainly an argument for cutting down the base merc pool (i.e. mercenaries you can summon from the ether) once Condottieri come into the game.

 

[raikaria]

Mercenaries are far more expensive and the pool of available mercenaries doesn't keep up as your country expands.

It also allows countries who focus on money a way of fielding an actual army. Although perhaps not having an infinite pool of mercenaries would be a good idea. When you can run +300 ducats a month and it's only 1650, you can basically bury your enemies in mercenaries and never lose a war (although it might not be worth waging the war in the first place given other options)

With certain nations; they can have mercs for cheaper than regular soldiers.

 

[grommile]

With certain nations; they can have mercs for cheaper than regular soldiers.

It's the maintenance, not the recruiting charge, that kills your budget, and I don't think you can get -150% mercenary maintenance.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

It's the maintenance, not the recruiting charge, that kills your budget, and I don't think you can get -150% mercenary maintenance.

IDTS but the ammount of money you can make is such that it makes the merc cost/maintenance all but irrelevant. Maybe this will change in 1.16 but somehow I doubt it very much.

 

[Haccoude]

If the problem is how willing the AI is sink it's own country to win a war through mercenaries, there's a much simpler solution: Add loans as a factor that pushes them to accept peace terms.

The ideal would of course be for wars to have some concept of "Escalation" that measures how dangerous a war is to the continued existence of a state, and then governs how dedicated they are to winning it and how many resources they are willing to spend. Two 18th century blobs fighting over 3 provinces are not dedicating as large a portion of their resources to the war as a minor trying to survive a blob or an emperor who wants to reform the HRE and therefore needs to win the religious war.

That is however a much more complicated solution and one that would require a lot testing, making the realm of possible DLC rather than a fix delivered in a patch.

 

[joe9594]

There's certainly an argument for cutting down the base merc pool (i.e. mercenaries you can summon from the ether) once Condottieri come into the game.

I would suspect that is exactly what the devs are going to do. Wait a bit to see how condottieri work out then change mercs accordingly.
At the moment mercs feel like retinues used to be in CK2. They should be a supplement but they end up dominating warfare. I suspect the solution is quite similar as well. Not a mechanical change but instead just big number tweaks to make them more expensive and less available.

 

[Sunbro BigBoss]

If the problem is how willing the AI is sink it's own country to win a war through mercenaries, there's a much simpler solution: Add loans as a factor that pushes them to accept peace terms.

The ideal would of course be for wars to have some concept of "Escalation" that measures how dangerous a war is to the continued existence of a state, and then governs how dedicated they are to winning it and how many resources they are willing to spend. Two 18th century blobs fighting over 3 provinces are dedicating as large a portion of their resources to the war as a minor trying to survive a blob or an emperor who wants to reform the HRE and therefore needs to win the religious war.

That is however a much more complicated solution and one that would require a lot testing, making the realm of possible DLC rather than a fix delivered in a patch.

It already is, IIRC. At least it's a factor in wether they accept a call to arms or not, it appears as "is x in debt". The AI should compare how much the enemy asks and how big their amount of debt is compared to their maximum.

 

[grommile]

Make War Exhaustion count as two points of negative enthusiasm per point, instead of one point of negative war enthusiasm per two points.

 

[Haccoude]

It already is, IIRC. At least it's a factor in wether they accept a call to arms or not, it appears as "is x in debt". The AI should compare how much the enemy asks and how big their amount of debt is compared to their maximum.

That's the thing, debt is a factor in whether they want to start wars, but IIRC it is not in whether they want to end them.

 

[Thrake]

I mean the game portrays the mercs like robots. consistent pricing, infinitely replaced. These are freakin sellswords. They aren't loyal like a national army. They wanna get as much $$$ with as little risk as possible. Yet this game dumbs down mercs to simply "if you can afford it, mercs are all yours and you win". If a lot of mercs die in war, the asking price should go up, and way up based on the risk. If a lot are dying, they should also mutiny or take off or something.

I quite like the idea of an increase in cost depending on the state of war. A multiplier for maintenance depending on WS would do a great deal to stop the endless merc spam. It was even possible to bribe ennemy mercenaries to get them out of a war, but I'm not sure I would like France to be able to outbuy my mercenaries anytime.

And at same time they help more big and rich countrys.

Countrys that can barely afford 10k troops don´t get much benefit of mercenarys. A Spain, France, Ottomans from day one can get as many as 10k mercenearys and already save a lot of manpower making that merc army "tank" the most costly battles.

Income should not be part of the equation. Rich italian cities sometimes had more mercenaries hired than they had standing armies, yet they were not big. Just filthy rich.

I hope the Condottieri coming in the next patch/expansion do something about this.

What is this going to do? Old mercenary system will still be there, it will just add another option to instantly click to get a magical 20k stack of men with a general to destroy the ennemy, without even having to pay an upfront cost to hire them. Only thing it could do is to allow rich nations (Venice,...) to actually do something with their money if it doesn't count towards FL. But it won't prevent big blob from using its infinite ressources the same way though.

 

[Doppler221]

Are you saying that they should remove manpower because no one builds actual armies?

 

[Grand Historian]

I'd prefer it if mercs would be much cheaper than normal infantry, but would also have significant disadvantages, like lower discipline, military tactics and morale.

This would require making states dependent on the individual regiments instead of armies. Which I'm not really opposed to, as I think it would open up a lot of room for strategy, realism and future expansion.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Make War Exhaustion count as two points of negative enthusiasm per point, instead of one point of negative war enthusiasm per two points.

Neither changes much given that the AI will just buy it down. Reducing WE is a high priority for them and they'll only start building up WE if they don't have any spare Diplo MP; which means all in all WE is basically pointless except for a really long wars.

 

[Thrake]

I see almost every state getting loans on almost every single war, sometimes multiple loans and nothing really is happening to them. Few years and they're back on their feet. Also I feel inflation is completely unimportant in EU4.

That's a stigma of the press button and forget inflation mechanic.

 

[grommile]

That's a stigma of the press button and forget inflation mechanic.

No, it's a result of the fact that 6% "inflation" is not actually a problem unless you are under severe pressure from opponents who are your equals in skill as well as numerical power.

Unlike EU3, where 6% inflation meant +6% stability cost and +6% tech cost.