"After the victorious Battle of Waterloo, the British and Prussian armies saw their chance to end Napoleon once and for all and ordered the march to Paris, right into the heart of France. However, despite their overall brilliance the 2 generals forgot about the level 4 fortresses in Rethel and Calais, allowing the little corporal to re-organize his troops. Blücher's Prussians were beaten back November 3rd after months of fighting against magic toysoldiers, and Wellington found himself unable to re-inforce his ally as some voodoo magic only allowed him to retreat back into Dutch territory, not eastward towards Rethel.
Three days later Napoleon faced the Duke of Wellington again, and with his superior guards was now able to achieve victory. With the invasion of France an utter failure, the coalition quickly fell apart. Hostilities would resume in 1818 with the formation of an Eight Coalition in response to Napoleon's invasion of Italy."
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I think it is safe to say that lategame warfare in EU4 is currently way, way too siege-focused. While sieges stayed the norm of combat until around 1750 or so, the following decades saw a steady decreasy in fortress effectiveness, and Napoleon pretty much ran through Europe without really caring about hostile forts, which his enemies soon copied.
The most important reason for this was that fortress technology kind of stagnated after Vauban and Van Coehorn, while artillery steadily advanced and the nascent industrialization of society led to more and more artillery pieces being fielded. EU4 pays hommage to the first fact by making fortresses available in 1715, but those things remain scary up until 1821, which wasn't the case at all IRL. I managed to lose tens of thousands soldiers to one Livonian lvl 4 fort once (no blockade + divine ideas + full defensive + harsh winter ... feels bad man). Also, by spamming lvl4 forts nations get tens of thousands of magical soldiers.
I would like to see the following changes made to forts and sieges:
Three days later Napoleon faced the Duke of Wellington again, and with his superior guards was now able to achieve victory. With the invasion of France an utter failure, the coalition quickly fell apart. Hostilities would resume in 1818 with the formation of an Eight Coalition in response to Napoleon's invasion of Italy."
- - - - -
I think it is safe to say that lategame warfare in EU4 is currently way, way too siege-focused. While sieges stayed the norm of combat until around 1750 or so, the following decades saw a steady decreasy in fortress effectiveness, and Napoleon pretty much ran through Europe without really caring about hostile forts, which his enemies soon copied.
The most important reason for this was that fortress technology kind of stagnated after Vauban and Van Coehorn, while artillery steadily advanced and the nascent industrialization of society led to more and more artillery pieces being fielded. EU4 pays hommage to the first fact by making fortresses available in 1715, but those things remain scary up until 1821, which wasn't the case at all IRL. I managed to lose tens of thousands soldiers to one Livonian lvl 4 fort once (no blockade + divine ideas + full defensive + harsh winter ... feels bad man). Also, by spamming lvl4 forts nations get tens of thousands of magical soldiers.
I would like to see the following changes made to forts and sieges:
- Forts now reduce the maximum manpower pool by their maximum garrison size. The soldiers in the forst have to come from somewhere. Change the garrison size modifier to make the conversion from MP to fort-MP more effective (i.e. each 1k men in forst only need 750 MP) - it might even become somewhat useful then.
- Likewise, reinforcing forts now costs manpower
- There should be Siege Effectiveness on multiple lategame military techs, to show that artillery was winning out on fortresses at the time
- Likewise, a lategame tech should remove ZoC, because Napoleon, Wellington, Gneisenau, Bonny, Ney, and all the others who fought during the early 19th century didn't give a **** about forts. Maybe only for generals with a high maneuver stat
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