Making Marines a must-have unit

[Grand_Strategy_Gamer]

The community seems to agree that something needs to be done to make marines more useful.

Spoiler: Current Marines

Currently Marines have the following attributes:

• Require Golden Century OR the Rule Britannia Immersion Packs.
• Marines are infantry only.
• Marines use sailors instead of manpower when built and reinforce.
• The amount of Marines you can build is a fraction of your force limit, and the default is 0%.
• Naval Ideas gives you 5% of your force limit as Marines.
• The Recruiting Act Policy gives 5% of your force limit as Marines.
• The Portuguese Naval Doctrine gives 10% of your force limit as Marines.
• English Red Coats National Idea gives 5% of your force limit as Marines.
• British Britannia Rules the Waves gives 10% of your force limit as Marines.
• Marines land at +200% disembarking speed.
• They ignore crossing penalties, so if your army is 50% marines, and you cross a straight, its -1 penalty instead of -2, and if you land with 100% marines, you have no penalty.
• Marines however take 25% extra damage in the shock phase, as their drawback.

So we have marines now, but they seem pretty useless in their current state. You lose their bonuses if they are intermixed with standard units, but there isn't really a way to have enough to run them on their own? They take extra shock damage, suggesting that they are implied to be used in the late game, but at that point, the armies are so massive compared to the piddly amounts of marines you can have that you have to intermix them with normal troops so they don't immediately die. However, as said, this negates their bonuses.

I really think the amount you can have needs to be relooked at, perhaps doubling the ideas and policies that give you marine limit.. It's a neat concept and I like that we are finally getting some more unit variety aside from just a few tags, but they just don't seem worthwhile in anyway to me.

Not to mention that if you use them as regular units they burn through your sailor pool in seconds.

They are too few and too weak to be used alone, and loose all their usefulness if not used alone. They have literally no purpose whatsoever.

I understand elite units having a small cap, but imagine weaker than normal units having a small cap as well... Literally makes no sense to even train them.

If only their maintainance was paid by the naval budget, they could have a niche purpose to defend colonies from natives without going bankrupt from sustaining the maintainance of your entire army.

So according to these two much-liked posts by @Dakka and @Bandua_of_Gallaecia, Marines have the following problems:

• Marines lose their bonuses if intermixed with standard units.
• Their small unit cap size makes them too rare to use.
• They use up regular force limit, forcing you to choose between situational marines and stronger regular infantry.
• They take too much shock damage (too weak), which negates their other bonuses.
• They use the regular army budget.
• The sailor pool is too small for building them.

I think I've come up with changes that would take marines from being a "flavor" in EU4 to a must-own unit for colonial empires and maritime powers. How?

• Let's start with making them more universal, with all countries with Diplomatic Tech 11 (1544) and a coastal province gaining a +5% Marine Force Limit.
  • This is due to Spain's first naval marines being formed in 1537 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Marine_Infantry#History).
• To make them more useful, we'll separate this from the regular army FL and make it an additional force limit. In this way every Marine FL increase acts as an overall increase in a country's military might.

But what about their weakness as units and needing to maintain them with the army maintenance slider?

• We fix this by doing five things:
  • Marines will use the Naval Maintenance slider, making them a relatively cheap force for limited overseas wars.
  • The shock damage taken modifier is nerfed to +10%.
    • This is completely negated in coastal provinces, making marines a superior form of coastal infantry.
  • Marines feature +10% Morale versus normal infantry, reflecting their higher standards of training.
  • Transports carrying marines will see their shock attack double.

At this point, you might object, feeling they are too good, which is why I've added a slight negative:

• Marines will cost 11 ducats to recruit and are of course 10% more expensive to maintain than regular infantry.

To address the too-small sailor pool issue:

• Double the number of sailors from coastal development from +30 to +60.

To make marines more useful to colonial nations, I also added in a buff to Exploration Ideas' ambition:

• +25% naval force limit, +5% Marine Force Limit

To make marines more useful to maritime powers who take Quality Ideas, I renamed and buffed its 6th idea:

• Idea 6: Expeditionary Warfare
  • -25% Naval Attrition
  • +5% Marine Force Limit
  • +5% Marine Morale

There are a few other buffs to Marine force limit I added to both national ideas and Maritime Ideas:

• Castile: Castilian Traditions (+5%->+10%)
• Netherlands - Dutch Idea 4: Instructie voor de Admiraliteiten (+5%->+10%)
• Maritime Ideas - Idea 7: Marine Corps (+5%)
• Naval Ideas: Ambition (+5%->+10%)
• Pirate Republics: Marine FL +5%

So what does this all mean in terms of gameplay? Imagine your Castile got mauled when England called you into a war with France. You desperately need to recover manpower, but still have plenty of sailors and need to conquer the Aztecs to turn Neuvo Castile into a bigger power. You have an army force limit of 50. You have completed Exploration ideas (+5% Marine FL) and your traditions (+10%) give you an additional 7 marine units. Your marines allow you to declare war on the Aztecs without employing your regular army or garrisoning any forts. This stops you from bankrupting your country or using manpower. The marines prove up to the task and Nuevo Castile annexes the Aztecs, transforming your colony into a 10+province country. Now, flush with more money and manpower, you are well-prepared to take on France, this time with a 15% larger army! By the time you hit Diplomatic Tech 11, your force limit will be boosted +5% further to a minimum +20%.

In short, your marines could soon prove critical to expansion of your colonial and overseas empire on the cheap, while being rarely employed by major land powers like Russia or the Mongols. Feel free to sound off and let me know if you'd use these new marines, and if not, what would make you change your mind.

Spoiler: Summary of Marines Changes

A number of people have complained that they are too niche and have too many drawbacks. To address those problems I propose the following attributes aside from DLC access:

New
Improved
New Drawback

• Marines are infantry only.
• Marines use sailors instead of manpower when built and reinforce.
• Addition of a standalone Marine Force Limit in addition to regular Force limit, but which is only a fraction of it the latter's size.
• Marines maintenance costs are funded by naval maintenance slider.
• Marines cost 11 Ducats instead of 10 Ducats like normal infantry.
• Marines land at +200% disembarking speed and also have +200% embarking speed.
• They ignore crossing penalties, so if your army is 50% marines, and you cross a straight, its -1 penalty instead of -2, and if you land with 100% marines, you have no penalty.
• Marines however take 10% extra damage in the shock phase, due to being light infantry.
• Marines have +5% Morale versus your normal infantry, which reflects their higher training standards.
• Marines do not take attrition in sea zones, whereas normal army units take 1% in coastal areas and 10% in deep ocean.
• Transports carrying Marines see their shock damage given double.
• Sailors per coastal province development doubled to compensate (+60 per development versus +30 currently).
• Default Marine FL is 0% until Diplomatic Tech 11, when they are enabled for all coastal nations and given a minimum 5% of FL limit.
• Nations/Ideas/Policies/Doctrines/Buildings/etc with +10% Marine Limit modifiers (as % of Army FL)
  • Castile: Castilian Traditions
  • Spain - Spanish Idea 3: Treasure Fleet
  • Great Britain - British Idea 7: Britannia rules the waves
  • United States: American Traditions
  • Australia - Australian Idea 4: The Diggers
  • Netherlands - Dutch Idea 4: Instructie voor de Admiraliteiten
  • Portuguese Marines Naval Doctrine
  • Naval Ideas: Ambition
• Nations/Ideas/Policies/Doctrines/Buildings/etc with +5% Marine Limit modifiers (as % of Army FL)
  • Venice (post-mission)
  • Maritime Ideas - Idea 7: Marine Corps
  • England - English Idea 5: Redcoats
  • Exploration Ideas: Ambition
  • Maritime-Economic Policy: The Recruitment Act
  • Pirate Republics
  • Quality Ideas: Idea 6: Expeditionary Warfare
    • Additional bonuses include:
      • -25% naval attrition
      • +5% Marine Morale
• Nations/Ideas/Policies/Doctrines/Buildings/etc with +2% Marine Limit modifiers (as % of Army FL)
  • Trade Company - Governor General's Mansion

If this was implemented, here's how this would make a difference:

• You would be able to use marines to fight colonial wars without having to use maintain your regular armies at full strength.
• The bigger your overseas empire, the more marines you will have to help protect it and expand it.
  • Imagine a Spanish campaign where you took Exploration Ideas and have 5 colonial nations
    • Exploration Ideas (5%) + Diplomatic Tech 11 (+5%) + Spanish Idea 3 (+10%) = 20% Marine FL (or regular FL)
    • If you have an Army FL of 100, you would be able to also have up to 20 Marines in addition to your regular Army units. Not bad!
• Marines will provide big naval powers with a new way to increase their army's size.
• The doubling in the Sailors pool would trim allow more to be employed.
• Docks and Dry docks would allow bigger armies, increasing their value.

Please see "The Master & Commander Complete Naval Overhaul" thread for how marines would fit into a complete naval overhaul!

The Master & Commander Complete Naval Overhaul

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is the name of a well-received naval war movie set in the Napoleonic Wars: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/master_and_commander_the_far_side_of_the_world. It seems appropriate to name a complete...

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[Titanius Puffin]

My read on marines is that they're not there to stand toe-to-toe with regular armies. They're raiders, and they're really best for attacking soft targets, and making quick getaways.

I think about flushing fleets out of ports, or taking a coastal war goal that's not being minded properly.
The purpose is less to fight directly than to force a slower land military to spread out it's forces to coastal provinces - and weaken the enemy that way.

I don't think marines are perfect, I suspect they're bugged because sometimes they take too long unloading.
However, I think they often do more or less what they're supposed to.