Historically navies played an important role in sieges of coastal cities and there are multiple nations in the EU4 time frame which heavily relied on this fact like Portugal, the Netherlands or Venice. From a gameplay perspective there is also a good point to be made to improve upon this role as it gives a deeper connection to two areas of gameplay (naval and land combat) which leads to more interesting interactions. Here are three mechanics which integrate navies and the new coastal defense buildings better into the current system of siege warfare without the need of reworking it.
(i) Admiral siege pips also affect sieges or more precisely when laying siege to a fort in a coastal province the general (leading a besieging army) or the admiral (leading a naval unit blockading the province) with the highest number of siege pips contributes its pips as leader siege bonus.
As admiral siege pips are of very limited use right now this should make them more important.
(ii) Ships blockading a province contribute to the artillery bonus to siege. Similar to the ability of naval barrage the number of cannons on ships can substitute for artillery regiments when calculating the artillery bonus. As an example for every (100* fort level) cannons on blockading ships the artillery bonus could increase by 1 (the number is obviously up to balance). The maximum bonus you can get this way by artillery and ships combined is still limited by the maximum artillery bonus vs forts.
Example: If a castle (lvl 2) is besieged by 3 artillery regiments and blockaded by 6 early carracks the total artillery bonus would be 2 as 3 artillery give a bonus of 1 and 6 early carracks have 240 cannons which is larger than 200 (100* fort level) but smaller than 400 (2*100* fort level) and therefore also give a bonus of 1. If the castle is instead besieged by 10 artillery regiments blockading would not increase the artillery bonus as it is already 5.
A balance problem with this could be that it is too strong before mil tech 7 as artillery is not yet available. Therefore it could be a consideration to lock this behind either mil or dip tech 7.
This mechanic would help out marines a lot as they could be used to effectively siege while still retaining their full bonuses and not being slowed down by artillery.
(iii) Coastal defense buildings increase the malus one gets for besieging an unblockaded fortified coastal province. The malus which is normally 2 could be increased to 3 by the coastal defence and to 4 by the naval battery. This could be locked behind maritime or naval ideas and would improve the strategy of specializing on coastal forts and maintaining a navy to support them.
(i) Admiral siege pips also affect sieges or more precisely when laying siege to a fort in a coastal province the general (leading a besieging army) or the admiral (leading a naval unit blockading the province) with the highest number of siege pips contributes its pips as leader siege bonus.
As admiral siege pips are of very limited use right now this should make them more important.
(ii) Ships blockading a province contribute to the artillery bonus to siege. Similar to the ability of naval barrage the number of cannons on ships can substitute for artillery regiments when calculating the artillery bonus. As an example for every (100* fort level) cannons on blockading ships the artillery bonus could increase by 1 (the number is obviously up to balance). The maximum bonus you can get this way by artillery and ships combined is still limited by the maximum artillery bonus vs forts.
Example: If a castle (lvl 2) is besieged by 3 artillery regiments and blockaded by 6 early carracks the total artillery bonus would be 2 as 3 artillery give a bonus of 1 and 6 early carracks have 240 cannons which is larger than 200 (100* fort level) but smaller than 400 (2*100* fort level) and therefore also give a bonus of 1. If the castle is instead besieged by 10 artillery regiments blockading would not increase the artillery bonus as it is already 5.
A balance problem with this could be that it is too strong before mil tech 7 as artillery is not yet available. Therefore it could be a consideration to lock this behind either mil or dip tech 7.
This mechanic would help out marines a lot as they could be used to effectively siege while still retaining their full bonuses and not being slowed down by artillery.
(iii) Coastal defense buildings increase the malus one gets for besieging an unblockaded fortified coastal province. The malus which is normally 2 could be increased to 3 by the coastal defence and to 4 by the naval battery. This could be locked behind maritime or naval ideas and would improve the strategy of specializing on coastal forts and maintaining a navy to support them.
- 1
Upvote
0