Naval landings: stronger, relevant, and fun.

[Titanius Puffin]

NAVAL LANDINGS (because seriously they're awesome)

Historically, naval landings (a.k.a. amphibious assaults, amphibious landings) were difficult to pull off successfully. In EU4's time frame they were usually undertaken to raid, or temporarily occupy towns or ports. Soldiers/sailors had to disembark as quickly as possible, from as many ships as possible, all at once. The operation had to be fast. The attacker had to seize the initiative, and often depart before land-based reinforcements could arrive.

Currently, EU4's naval landings are slow. The player loses the initiative the moment they order the soldiers to disembark from a fleet onto an enemy province. Disembarking can take a week or more. Add another month of waiting to capture a single province, and the defender has heaps of time to reorganise and regain the initiative. That's not a good naval operation; it's an awful mess.

Two weeks to raid Holland - not worth it. Click to expand(1440p).​

The embark/disembark mechanic seems to be unmodified from EU3. It could be from an even older game. But land warfare in EU4 has changed radically since EU3. Most importantly, EU4 now has area-denying forts.

Forts - a game changer for naval landings

A fort's zone of control is as important for sea-born armies as they are for land-based ones. An army that lands on a foreign shore should (usually) be hemmed in by enemy forts. (If a player is doing without forts, then it's the player's/AI's fault should they be overrun). In a well-fortified land, a disembarking army may not be able to move at all. Being hemmed in changes everything. The sea-born army can no longer march across the enemy territory at will, crush the enemy army, carpet-siege provinces, take the capital, and declare victory. Forts have indirectly 'nerfed' naval landings. That is fine.

Thanks to forts, naval landings are best used for quick actions in non-fort provinces. The goals can vary:

- to capture the province and seize the port so a larger transport fleet may dock.
- to capture the province to flush out ships anchoring in port (the EU4 equivalent of port raiding).
- to capture a coastal war-goal province (that doesn't have a fort).
- to distract enemy forces away from a main offensive.
- to surprise a (very) small force in a coastal province.
- to (slightly)reinforce a battle occurring in a coastal province.
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So I'm going to propose mechanics that makes naval landings faster, but also smaller. These mechanics might improve the combat ability of the army performing the naval landing (in the best of conditions), but my suggestions will do nothing at all to combat forts.

The main mechanic to simulate a fleet's embark/disembark ability is the 'fleet embarking ratio'.
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Fleet Embarking Ratio

The fleet embarking ratio is the number of regiments a fleet can carry divided by the number of regiments it is actually carrying. If each ship is carrying fewer soldiers, embark/disembark tasks are shared out among a larger number of ships. This mechanic assumes that the fleet can find a large enough cove or inlet to embark/disembark large armies (and the commanding naval officer is knows what he/she is doing).

Putting fleet embarking ratio as a formula:

Raw_fleet_embarking_ratio = fleet_carrying_capacity/carried_army_size Raw_fleet_embarking_ratio will be modified later by other numbers

A fleet with 1 transports carrying 1 regiment has a raw embarking ratio of 1 (100%).
A fleet with 3 transports carrying 1 regiment has a raw embarking ratio of 3.
A fleet with 5 transports carrying 1 regiment has a raw embarking ratio of 5.
A fleet with 10 transports carrying 0 regiments has a raw embarking ratio of 'Error - divide by zero exception' .
If a fleet is not carrying an army, the game doesn't need to calculate the fleet embarking ratio - there is no point.

I would suggest that a fleet embarking ratio of 5 should be the upper limit. Therefore, a 10 transport fleet carrying 1 regiment should be counted as only having a fleet embarking ratio of 5. There should be limits to the benefits of a very high ratio.

The first outcome based on the embarking ratio is embark/disembark times.​

First mechanic: embark/disembark time

The higher the fleet embarking ratio, the faster the carried army can embark or disembark.

Putting this in into a formula would look something like this:
Final_embark_disembark_time = Normal_embark_and_disembark time / Fleet_embarking _ratio.

And here are examples:
-For a fleet with an embarking ratio of 1, the army embarks/disembarks in the standard amount of time (100%).
-For a fleet with an embarking ratio of 3, the army embarks/disembarks in 33% of the normal time .
-For a fleet with an embarking ratio of 5, the army embarks/disembarks in 20% of the normal time .

I think 20% of the normal time is an reasonable lower limit for embark/disembark time. An embarking ratio of 5 would require a small army and a large transporting navy. A fast landing with a moderately sized army (20 regiments or more) would be much harder to pull off.

I'll get to the effect of flagship modules such as 'Integrated marines' or Portuguese fusiliers, later, but they'll be complimentary to this mechanic.

Second mechanic: combat effectiveness

Landing ashore quickly has a second benefit: it provides time for the landing army to organise (or at least out-organise the defenders). However, a slow disembark in the face of a ready enemy (i.e. a contested landing) is courting disaster.

Therefore, a transporting fleet's embarking ratio, affects the morale, and cavalry and artillery combat ability of the landing army should it fight a contested landing. These modifiers only last for the one battle when the landing army arrives in the province. In any subsequent battles, it fights normally.

The landing army can have -60% percent morale to +20% morale depending on fleet embarking ratio. The landing army's cavalry and artillery get from -100% combat ability to +0% combat ability (i.e. normal ability), depending on the fleet's embarking ratio.

In formulae:
Landing_Army_Morale = normal _morale_percentage - 100*(0.8-0.2*fleet_embarking_ratio)

Landing_Army_Cav_and_art_effectiveness = normal_combat_percentage - 100*(1-0.25*(fleet_embarking _ratio-1))

And here are examples:
-For a fleet with an embarking ratio of 1, a disembarking army fights with a -60% morale deduction, and -100% combat effectiveness deduction for cavalry and artillery.
-For a fleet with an embarking ratio of 3, a disembarking army fights with a -20% morale deduction, and -50% combat effectiveness deduction for cavalry and artillery.
-For a fleet with an embarking ratio of 5, a disembarking army fights with a +20% morale addition, and 0% combat effectiveness deduction for cavalry and artillery.

This reinforces the point that large-scale naval landings are best avoided unless a lot of resources (i.e. transports) can be brought to bear. Naval landings when there is little (or no) opposition, are ideal.

For landing armies that are providing reinforcements for a battle in a coastal province, it's not clear to me how land morale is calculated during a battle. If possible, I'd suggest a landing army should reinforce with it's own morale and combat effectiveness determined by the fleet embarking ratio. That may not be possible, in which case I can only ask the developers to use their best judgement.
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Army losses when transports sink

If a fleet gains a greater capability from having more transports than regiments, it's fitting that losing those transports should come with a corresponding penalty.

If a fleet carrying soldiers loses some transports for any reason, a proportional number of the transported army should also be lost at sea.

Putting this in a formula:
Soldiers_lost_in_transport = number_of_transported_soldiers *number_of_fleet_transports_lost / total_number_of_transports_in_fleet.

So if a navy of 5 transports carrying 2 regiments is attacked (or suffers attrition), and loses 3 transports, then 3/5th's the total soldiers would go down with the ships. In this example 1200 soldiers would be lost.

EU4's current fleet transport mechanic would have no soldiers lost. However, if a player is going to benefit from having more transports than absolutely necessary, there should be a penalty for losing those transports as well.

Personally, I think losing 1200 soldiers should mean the loss of one whole regiment, and 200 soldiers from the other. However, there may be an argument for just deducting 600 soldiers from each regiment.
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Fleet Embarking Efficiency

A fleet an embarking ratio should also reflect the skill and preparation of a fleet, as well as the number transports. A smaller, well-run transport fleet can operate with the efficiency of a larger one.

Each percentage point of of embarking efficiency adds that percentage to the embarking ratio.

Final_fleet_embarking_ratio = Raw_fleet_embarking_ratio*(1+total_fleet_embarking_efficiency)

This formula assumes that total_fleet_embarking_efficiency is written as a decimal: +33% efficiency is written as 0.33, +50% is written as 0.5, +75% as 0.75 and so on.

Fleet embarking efficiency is gained two ways.

Firstly, each point of naval tradition provides 0.33% fleet embarking efficiency. This is goes to a maximum possible +33% fleet embarking efficiency.

Secondly, a flagship with an 'integrated marines' module will give a further +33% fleet embarking efficiency, and a Portuguese flagship with a 'Portuguese fusiliers' will give an a further +66% fleet embarking efficiency.

If, at any point, weather is introduced for sea tiles in EU4, it might be interesting to deduct fleet embarking efficiency if the weather is stormy in the fleet's sea tile. Weather is fickle, and the sea is a cruel mistress, as the mariners of early-modern Europe knew all too well.
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Conclusion

Thanks for reading this far. I put a lot of effort into this post because I like playing EU4, but I think the naval game is a bit lacklustre. It's disappointing, because navies were becoming increasingly important during EU4's time frame. This suggestion on naval landings is my attempt to remedy this naval deficit.

There are other naval-focussed suggestions for EU4 which are made in the same spirit. Grand_Strategy_Gamer has an enormous scatter-shot suggestion that advocates changing almost everything about the naval game.

His post does not, however, have a section on naval landings.

I hope you'll agree that this is a huge oversight .​

 

[Canute VII]

Not sure about the specifics, but I fully agree: disembarking 1 regiment should be much faster than disembarking 50 regiments. Maybe also the terrain of the province could play a part in disembarkment speed?