Military Access is still the worst mechanic in the game and the #1 problem to be fixed.

[Stratagyfan101]

This broken by design mechanic needs to be a top priority. This is the third year I think I've made this thread, and each time I've made it, despite the other broken mechanics or bugs, it still remains the worst element of the game. Watching Frenchmen march through Spain, Morocco, the Sahara, Timbuktu and into Mali because Mali attacked a colony in Africa is absurd and detrimental to the experience of playing in sub-Saharan Africa. Watching Italians march through Austria, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Crimea into the Black Sea to protect Caffa while I have controlled the Dardanelles is detrimental to the experience of playing hordes. Watching Spain march its armies from Spain all the way around the Mediterranean to reach Morocco because they don't control Gibraltar is detrimental to the experience of the game in North Africa. Watching Poland give military access to the Ottomans through Bessarabia so that the Ottomans can march all the way around the Black Sea is detrimental to the experience of playing in the Balkans or Anatolia. Watching Spain march its armies through France and a number of Italian minors to reach Italy is detrimental to the experience of playing in Italy. It makes sense for places like Italy and Germany to allow for military access given they are technically a single realm. It makes no sense for thousands of miles of terrain to be covered by an army. And this is instance where the AI can seemingly manage this mechanic and use it to its advantage. This isn't even discussing the nuisance that is the AI retreating to Siberia in almost every war. Or the AI spreading its armies thinly across the entirety of the European continent as it oscillates between potential objectives, none of which it ever commits to all while the country is swallowed whole by the enemy.

Shattered retreat wouldn't be a major issue if it weren't for military access. In fact it would likely work as intended, a means for a losing army to get behind its fortifications, or another friendly stack and regroup. Instead, it means there is no risk to these cross globe expeditions. The lack of attrition wouldn't be a major issue without military access either, because wars would be more localized where armies would be within their supply lines. Hell, AI army management would be better because their armies would be bottlenecked into the actual front of the war instead of the entire alliance being split across Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Lithuania, Austria, and Crimea when the war goal is Albania. Even just giving like a 3-5 province flex zone would be better than the current mess. Wars aren't fun. Offensive wars are tedious and defensive wars are best likened to herding cats, as you either try to get the AI to attach, attack player designated provinces, or the player attaches to an AI in the hopes that it does something productive (hint, it won't). Instead those armies scatter across the map.

I'm going to use the Ottoman attacks on Albania to illustrate the point. The Ottomans normally win this war, as they should, but Venice, Albania and any other potential allies usually perform well enough to not get completely steamrolled in this war and sometimes even win. Why? The reason is the avenue for the war is kept tight. Military access is only through the territories of Yugoslavia. There aren't a ton of places for the AI to go run off to. So what happens is, while the AIs siege race each other, if Venice finds itself in a battle, Skanderbeg is nearby to assist, and because of his stats can usually turn the tide in a battle. Just a few wins in battle and the Albanian alliance can control the Balkans. In larger wars though, Skanderbeg would be off in the Black Sea chasing some minor province and both Albania and Venice would get picked off. The point is, the AI allies keep their armies together because the rules force them to, which is a fine substitution for actually teaching the AI to keep its armies together. They still do get picked off most of the time, but by not being spread as thin as possible, they have a chance.

This by no means fixes all the issues with the game or with the AI, but it is a huge starting point. This was one of the worst changes made to the game, and I still cannot understand the rationalization behind it. Military access is the keystone to the more if not most frustrating elements of warfare in this game, and removing it crumbles that bridge of frustration.

 

[Terixis]

I'd rather have them change an AI ally's absolute unwillingness to accept a white peace even though I've killed their entire army and am sieging down their capital. The "ally in war" and "months at war" modifiers are too powerful, to say nothing of the surprise cheeky fierce negotiator.

The military access problem is a lost cause that gets handwaved away by mentioning ZoC, even though in Imperator (RIP) forts have ZoC but military access is still only given normally and not conditionally and it works just fine.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

I'd rather have them change an AI ally's absolute unwillingness to accept a white peace even though I've killed their entire army and am sieging down their capital. The "ally in war" and "months at war" modifiers are too powerful, to say nothing of the surprise cheeky fierce negotiator.

The military access problem is a lost cause that gets handwaved away by mentioning ZoC, even though in Imperator (RIP) forts have ZoC but military access is still only given normally and not conditionally and it works just fine.

This is less of a problem for me. I understand your point, but also understand the game's interest in not having allies knocked out of the war in the first 30 seconds. By allowing for the siege to happen there is the possibility of the siege being lifted. There are definitely wars where the months at war and ally modifiers have allowed the minor to be brought back into the war because I moved on and because of military access.

 

[MatthewP]

What's the specific fix you're proposing?

I would say the other extreme of no/very limited military access would be worse for gameplay and no better for realism.

Military access that doesn't convey to other war participants seems...idk, not a disaster, but doesn't really solve the issue, just makes things more finicky and probably harder for the AI.

I think there's probably a good answer though. What is your suggestion?

 

[Stratagyfan101]

What's the specific fix you're proposing?

I would say the other extreme of no/very limited military access would be worse for gameplay and no better for realism.

Military access that doesn't convey to other war participants seems...idk, not a disaster, but doesn't really solve the issue, just makes things more finicky and probably harder for the AI.

I think there's probably a good answer though. What is your suggestion?

Honestly, reverting back to the old system would work better. Bilateral rather than universal military access. Additionally making military access more difficult to get obtain, say a baseline 50 relations, instead of the current 0 relations. It reduces the odds of Italian minors of getting access to the Black Sea.

For the HRE, make it a free military zone, as though the Emperor were in the war. Then add something like a 3-5 province incursion zone for everybody else. All the Italians could still have their Italian wars, the Empire can be a complete disaster, and India and Indochina can still have meaningful wars. What it would hopefully eliminate though is the existence of these massive highways around the Mediterranean, across the Eurasian steppe, or around the Red and Persian seas.

 

[MatthewP]

Honestly, reverting back to the old system would work better. Bilateral rather than universal military access. Additionally making military access more difficult to get obtain, say a baseline 50 relations, instead of the current 0 relations. It reduces the odds of Italian minors of getting access to the Black Sea.

For the HRE, make it a free military zone, as though the Emperor were in the war. Then add something like a 3-5 province incursion zone for everybody else. All the Italians could still have their Italian wars, the Empire can be a complete disaster, and India and Indochina can still have meaningful wars. What it would hopefully eliminate though is the existence of these massive highways around the Mediterranean, across the Eurasian steppe, or around the Red and Persian seas.

That seems reasonable. The incursion zone idea sells it for me. It lets you sort of wiggle around many annoying limitations of just not being able to get access, but as you say restricts the great roaming adventures of the AI.

Also it seems like with that system you could still use a similar alliance AI to what we have now just with some tweaks to the distance formula. No doubt all this would take some fine tuning but I like it overall.

 

[Runite Drill]

Maybe make it so that you can move into another country's province without mil access but you get a relations penalty, aggressive expansion, CB's or similar. Then, if you get mil access you can avoid these diplomatic penalties.

 

[Alyosha]

Get rid of it entirely. I have. It’s awesome.

 

[Sargent Q]

I disagree strongly with the idea of removing conditional military access. I have fought wars where it bugged and one of my enemies had access and i didn't. In my opinion fighting a war where large amounts of enemies can disappear into the FoW without you being able to follow or get to their homeland is worse than what you are describing.

On the other hand i would not object to reducing the amount of military access treaties given out. Making the AI actually have the same rules of access as the player would go a long way towards fixing this issue.

 

[Dlin369]

Maybe make it so that you can move into another country's province without mil access but you get a relations penalty, aggressive expansion, CB's or similar. Then, if you get mil access you can avoid these diplomatic penalties.

I think armies moving around land should cause local devastation/damage at lower professionalism, which could give more incentive for countries to avoid giving military access unless they actually have something to gain from it

 

[EarlKonrad]

I think armies moving around land should cause local devastation/damage at lower professionalism, which could give more incentive for countries to avoid giving military access unless they actually have something to gain from it

That would lead to the death of Prosperity for pretty much all AI countries, meanwhile players would be unaffected. Another way of saying that you'd be introducing a mechanic that disproportionately punished the AI and the player can easily bypass.

Think about it, even a 0.001 devastation will tick down Prosperity, which isn't the easiest to keep up. As is the AI already struggle with keeping any semblance of prosperity which would only get much worse if you also didn't changed how the AI weight military access.

And that's to say nothing of players abusing it in order to drive devastation up on nations that they wish to weaken.

 

[JangoBunBun]

I say make it so that you can always enter another nation's territory, but at the cost of relations penalties. Getting "official access" removes those penalties.

In EU4's time period nations went from titles held by monarchs to nation-states with inviolable borders. Perhaps sometime around the end of the league wars you could gain a CB on another nation for having troops in your territory, or have the option to join their war enemy if they continue to violate your borders.

This means that early on you piss off the nation, but as the game progresses you run the risk of dragging more enemies into your wars.

 

[Blk82]

I say make it so that you can always enter another nation's territory, but at the cost of relations penalties. Getting "official access" removes those penalties.

In EU4's time period nations went from titles held by monarchs to nation-states with inviolable borders. Perhaps sometime around the end of the league wars you could gain a CB on another nation for having troops in your territory, or have the option to join their war enemy if they continue to violate your borders.

This means that early on you piss off the nation, but as the game progresses you run the risk of dragging more enemies into your wars.

The AI will never be smart enough to know when and when not to violate the sanctity of a border. It could be easily abused to trick the AI into violating borders, and provoking wars against itself. The most likely solution would be for the AI to never risk starting a war, which will effectively allow the player to hide in the fog of war and sally forth at his convenience.

 

[Pandrea]

Yesterday was pretty funny (irony detected): me Ottomans vs Crimea allied with Nogai and Kazan. Golden Horde was in between and I thought it never give MA to my enemies because they're all its rivals. Out of the blue tons of furious nomads attack me.

Why? My useless vassal with 1k army asks for MA to basically any country in Middle East and Russian Steppes

 

[MatthewP]

Yesterday was pretty funny (irony detected): me Ottomans vs Crimea allied with Nogai and Kazan. Golden Horde was in between and I thought it never give MA to my enemies because they're all its rivals. Out of the blue tons of furious nomads attack me.

Why? My useless vassal with 1k army asks for MA to basically any country in Middle East and Russian Steppes

This is an interesting example though. The steppes are very wide. I suspect if there was any real world reason for the allies not to help in this war it would be distance more than concerns about violating some border.

 

[LukasYork]

Yesterday was pretty funny (irony detected): me Ottomans vs Crimea allied with Nogai and Kazan. Golden Horde was in between and I thought it never give MA to my enemies because they're all its rivals. Out of the blue tons of furious nomads attack me.

Why? My useless vassal with 1k army asks for MA to basically any country in Middle East and Russian Steppes

That's the main reason to consider putting your vassals on scutage before some wars.
Honestly could be very neatly solved with additional vassal interaction "allow/disallow military access" - in honestly overlord should have control of who can access his vassal lands and by extension, since we have "conditional military access" from whom his vassal requests military access
the interaction should prevent granting or asking for military access from anyone and revoke any that are already set up when set to disallow

 

[Stratagyfan101]

I say make it so that you can always enter another nation's territory, but at the cost of relations penalties. Getting "official access" removes those penalties.

In EU4's time period nations went from titles held by monarchs to nation-states with inviolable borders. Perhaps sometime around the end of the league wars you could gain a CB on another nation for having troops in your territory, or have the option to join their war enemy if they continue to violate your borders.

This means that early on you piss off the nation, but as the game progresses you run the risk of dragging more enemies into your wars.

The AI will never be smart enough to know when and when not to violate the sanctity of a border. It could be easily abused to trick the AI into violating borders, and provoking wars against itself. The most likely solution would be for the AI to never risk starting a war, which will effectively allow the player to hide in the fog of war and sally forth at his convenience.

Not only what Blk82 said, but also, that still leaves us with the problem of the AI wandering around the world aimlessly. The AI performs better in when there are restrictions on it, because it forces it to put its armies near each other. Like I've stated before, I think the game could use a soft system that allows places like Italy, Germany, and other areas where only small strips of land are in the way to have meaningful combat. The current system however is abhorrent to immersion and strategy. I'm currently in a game where I built a built a wall of forts from the Baltic to the Black Sea. One would think this would suffice to protect my land in Eastern Europe. Nope. they walked through the Ottomans, around the black sea, and up into the unprotected Caucus. In a war that centers on Poland and Germany. Now I have an unbroken fort wall running from the Baltic to the Adriatic.

 

[Daelh]

I dont really have an opionion on the matter more than its annoying AF to chase around the AI who always seems to be just a little faster than you.

Here's a screenshot of half of Europe chasing a 7k Austria stack all the way down to western sahara.

 

[Word_Smith]

Anyone remember how back in EU3 the AI actually used naval invasions if it was more convenient than marching troops across half the world?

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

One of the issues with military access is that it renders a decent war-time fleet useless.

What's the point of investing my treasury in galleys as Byzantium if the Ottomans have allied Gazikumukh and therefore have access through the whole Caucuses?

The problem is that this is not easy to fix. If you remove military access all together, what do you do if you're say France attacking Brittany who has allied Aachen and can't get military access anymore?

One idea I've had, but not sure how it would be implemented, is that attrition is extremely heavy the further away you get from your 'home' provinces. Walking through the Caucuses, Crimea and then round the Balkans should kill a lot of men with attrition.