Please fix overseas supply

[LAF1994]

Currently, it's quite common to see Europeans sending armies of 20-30k troops into the Americas in the 16th or 17th centuries without any problem. This is ridiculously unrealistic- the logistical capabilities to do so did not exist at the time. There should be substantial supply and attrition consequences for large armies overseas.

 

[Runite Drill]

1. How would you implement this without penalising local countries or having arbitrary modifiers due to different continent?
2. What's to stop me sending 30k troops but split it across 5-6 provinces?
3. How do I conquer the natives like they did in history if I can't have an army there?
4. What happens later in the game when I have lots of land overseas?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Supply was less of an issue than the fact that sending 40k somewhere else meant that those 40k couldn't defend the route to your palace for months. Too much risk that other nations would be aware of that fact and take advantage.

Would be non-trivial to give the AI an algorithm for stabbing others when their troops are out of position and/or properly balancing distance wars. It'd be nice to see but the game has many larger issues.

 

[Oporto]

Actually, the supply of land troops is itself quite strange in EU4 and in CK2:you can move huge stacks of armies far across the continent and so far from your bases, simply asking related countries for a millitary access...
Remembering HOI games, where your armies can simply decompose without a strong land or overseas supply line far across the globe or in encirclements, it seems very weird to see some french colonial troops arriving from Canada to Europe and asking me (as Russia) a millitary access to fight some Mamluks in Anatolia (not to mention the joyful and bloody brawls in a neutral territory,because no one gives a damn about millitary access when you really need to fight for goodness knows what and where).
As i know,the matters of supply were quite a hurtful question especially in the era of EU warfare. We all remember that a former peasant turned to cannon fodder,scarcely paid,fed and clothed,resolved into pillaging the countryside just to survive.
So i guess,at least a modicum of HOI supply mechanics should be implemented in game.

 

[LAF1994]

1. How would you implement this without penalising local countries or having arbitrary modifiers due to different continent?
2. What's to stop me sending 30k troops but split it across 5-6 provinces?
3. How do I conquer the natives like they did in history if I can't have an army there?
4. What happens later in the game when I have lots of land overseas?

Historically, European colonial powers were often dependent on local mercenaries or allied troops. This isn't really practical under the current mechanics.

 

[EarlKonrad]

1. How would you implement this without penalising local countries or having arbitrary modifiers due to different continent?
2. What's to stop me sending 30k troops but split it across 5-6 provinces?
3. How do I conquer the natives like they did in history if I can't have an army there?
4. What happens later in the game when I have lots of land overseas?

1. You can only have troops in the new world if they are attached to a conquistador. 2 times X (where X is the number of maneuver pips that said conquistador has; the multiplier to X could increase based on diplo tech) is the total amount of troops that the overlord can have on the Mew World in uncolonized provinces. Troops without leaders can only be sent once a CN has popped.

2. See 1 above.

3. I think that there could be more event chains for peacefully integrating natives and/or integrating their nations once their capital has been occupied. Moreover, it would be interesting for both CN and overlords if there were more events pertaining to the treatment and integration of natives (because, you know, they didn't dissapear alien style once they got conquered and they were integral for the colonies to flourish in both Americas).

4. TC land and CN land, in my humble opinion, should have slightly different mechanics when it comes to territory management and army deployment as I've alluded in my previous points.

I know that all of this is wayyyyyy out of EU 4's scope and that may be unnecessary convoluted, but still I think that it is an interesting idea to toy around

 

[Laurent1944]

The main issue in EU4 time are was to bring large number of troops by ship without them being decimated by disease or a storm. There were few attempts and most ended in disasters. In the game you can routinely carry 100k men from England to China and back without much attrition.

Also there is far more money available in EU4 than there was in the real history, as least in the governments' pockets. Most players won't ever have money issues after 1550. In history, Great Britain has so much debt after the Seven Years Wars that in 1763 it had less than 50k soldiers worlwide.

Also there is no modelization of EU4 of tropical diseases that kill so much Europeans in Africa and America during the EU4 time frame.

So you're right that it is unrealistic to see Europe send large armies everywhere in the world in 1600 (or by the way the other way around, as I just send 150k men from Korea to invade France) but actually army supply was not the main issue. Most of armies in EU4 time frame were living on the land. Attrition came from diseases and desertions (to come back to the Seven Years War, Royal Navy lost 1500 men KIA or DOW in battle, 60 000 dead or incapacited by disease and 40 000 desertors) rather than from hunger. And even ammunitions were not a big issue.

 

[Laurent1944]

One thing to remember also is that when you compare EU4 number of troops to historical numbers, you should consider both armies and fort garrisons.

A good part of the oversea forces in European empires were static, defensive forces that will never sail to another part of the empire. For example in 1803 the British East India Company had around 260 000 soldiers in India, but none was sent to fight in Europe or elsewhere, contrary to what will be done in the 20th century. And contrary to what will be done in EU4.

Also the British has to keep soldiers in Ireland because IRL separatism does not disappear in some decades but remains for far longer, if not forever is the cultures and religions are different.

So IRL you had less troops (because of less money), more needs for garrison (no possibility to send all your army overseas) and far more costly moves accross big seas (another example: most horses carried accross an ocean died onboard, meaning that it was hardly possible to move cavalry units, but also artillery ones, as guns were horse-drawn).

 

[SuperCrumpets]

The horrible lack of logistics, mil access spam and ability to just march 200k troops through the sahara desert without even caring is why i always end up playing island nations only.

 

[Jomini]

1. The logistical capabilities to feed your forces from home territory didn't exist 100 miles past the border in Europe either. Bulk shipment of food was only, marginally, possible with dedicated ships. Oceanic transport of bulk grain was possible, but pretty challenging, there are exceedingly few examples of this being attempted as it was exceedingly expensive. Riverine transport was not as efficient at moving bulk calories, it was used to supplement foraging particularly sieges, but again the cost was an issue. Wagon supply was used on only a handful of sieges and was utterly impossible on the scale of many EU province sizes. Armies, more than 95% of the time, were supplied from the front. You might be sending out bands of roving soldiers to "procure" grain and cattle or you might have sutlers travelling in front of the army buying supplies ... but nobody in Marlborough's army was eating British or even Dutch victuals when he marched to Austria. Places in the new world that had plenty of agriculture (e.g. the corn belt in Mexico) could easily supply an army larger than anything in Scotland.
2. Pretty consistently, historical empires could field about 1/10th of their total forces overseas. There were transportation costs, but once in the field, these troops were often cheaper to maintain than their continental counterparts (e.g. colonial armies typically required far less powder). Army sizes in EUIV are pretty terrible across the board. Small states often could field several multiples of their current force limits in defense of home territory while the bottomless manpower pools of the majors were rarely that deep. It seems odd to be highly concerned about troop counts in secondary theaters when the primary ones are not too representative.
3. As always, the real problem is that rivals and opportunistic foes provide no real balance in game. AIs feel free to send huge percentages of their forces overseas. Truces are close to inviolate. Lack of CBs is also AE prohibitive. Neither the AI nor the player routinely faces the threat of invasion and dismemberment if they send off the whole army. Worse, even when miracles happen, the peace mechanic make it impossible for the player, let alone the AI, to force a quick concession before the army can brought home. AIs can, and do march from Korea back to Poland before you can force the Russians to give up real territory. Navies can sail from Japan to Great Britain before you can free Ireland. When everything is forced to be slow, you lose a lot of the real historical impetus for limited deployment.

So no, everyone should be able to field armies everywhere at very close to the same cost. They should just be scared to do so because leaving the home territory unprotected should provoke quick and deadly wars.

 

[mergele]

Can we please stop calling everything "fix" if it isn't really broken just wrongly/badly/not to our liking designed? Where has the good old "rework" or "change" gone?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Actually, the supply of land troops is itself quite strange in EU4 and in CK2:you can move huge stacks of armies far across the continent and so far from your bases, simply asking related countries for a millitary access...
Remembering HOI games, where your armies can simply decompose without a strong land or overseas supply line far across the globe or in encirclements, it seems very weird to see some french colonial troops arriving from Canada to Europe and asking me (as Russia) a millitary access to fight some Mamluks in Anatolia (not to mention the joyful and bloody brawls in a neutral territory,because no one gives a damn about millitary access when you really need to fight for goodness knows what and where).
As i know,the matters of supply were quite a hurtful question especially in the era of EU warfare. We all remember that a former peasant turned to cannon fodder,scarcely paid,fed and clothed,resolved into pillaging the countryside just to survive.
So i guess,at least a modicum of HOI supply mechanics should be implemented in game.

Different periods, different army requirements.

In some parts of EU 4 timeframe armies could "live off the land" (including just taking stuff from enemy peasants etc) and sustain for ages. However, equipment advancements in the world wars made that impractical. You can steal food from people, but it's a lot harder to steal tank tracks, materials for repairing tanks + support vehicles, fuel, and bullets off civilians in world war times. In that sense the supply abstraction difference between the games makes some sense. EU 4 *does* model attrition, even if it got hammered down ridiculously by the nerf bat.

At one point in EU 4's patch history, it was possible to have 15% attrition or even more in some early patches! This was not dependent on "supply lines" (where we'd need to model shipping/river transport to do the period justice) but rather local terrain, which is also appropriate to period.

Pdox has emphatically reduced the importance of tactical control in EU 4. ZoC forts, attrition changes, changes to retreating all served to make a person's actual positioning and movement of units matter less. Introducing supply would require a rework just to do justice, and would go against what is apparently an intentional design choice (level off tactical influence). I don't agree with it, but that's the longstanding direction EU took...don't see it changing now.

 

[Northernwwater]

A player in the recent lan party stream said the attrition mechanics were grossly unrealistic. The response from the Paradox rep: people cry when realism is introduced into the game.

The bottom line is an important part of EU4 is letting people feel good about painting the map. It's not about playing a game of difficult strategy.

You won't see any change.

 

[Northernwwater]

Different periods, different army requirements.

In some parts of EU 4 timeframe armies could "live off the land" (including just taking stuff from enemy peasants etc) and sustain for ages.

Your use of the term "armies" is a meaningless.

As Napoleon found out what you said is not true. "ages"? LOL Common sense would tell you the carrying capacity of the land is severely limited and seasonally dependent.

More soldiers died through out history from starvation, exposure and disease than ever died in battle.

 

[Ruian]

EU4 isn't setup to handle attrition properly as is. You could argue that a European might have attrition issues fighting in Indian jungles. But why would a guy that lives in the Indian jungles suffer the same attrition when fighting another guy in a jungle one province away? Start as Tripura and attack Manipur. Enjoy losing 7k of your 10k manpower to attrition on a 6k unit stack. It makes no sense.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Your use of the term "armies" is a meaningless.

As Napoleon found out what you said is not true. "ages"? LOL Common sense would tell you the carrying capacity of the land is severely limited and seasonally dependent.

More soldiers died through out history from starvation, exposure and disease than ever died in battle.

Napoleon was exceptional for several reasons, and also at the very end of the game's > 3 centuries. Napoleonic tactics and logistics are not a good refutation of, say, war in 1520.

More soldiers died through out history from starvation, exposure and disease than ever died in battle.

This already happens in EU 4 often, despite all the attrition nerfs.

 

[Oporto]

Different periods, different army requirements.

In some parts of EU 4 timeframe armies could "live off the land" (including just taking stuff from enemy peasants etc) and sustain for ages. However, equipment advancements in the world wars made that impractical. You can steal food from people, but it's a lot harder to steal tank tracks, materials for repairing tanks + support vehicles, fuel, and bullets off civilians in world war times. In that sense the supply abstraction difference between the games makes some sense. EU 4 *does* model attrition, even if it got hammered down ridiculously by the nerf bat.

That's quite understandable. But there's only so much the land and countrymen could "provide" the troops even at that time, not to mention that not every peasant was willing to provide for his or other armies (and that would be putting it mildly).
We all remember how swedish armies were exhausted because of the neverending marches through the scorched land of Ukraine and had to fight near Poltava after all that...

And I do agree that logistic's aspect is quite hard to model considering the direction that game took some years prior, and some aspects already exist in the form of attrition (although, as far as i've noticed, attrtion hits player much harder than AI, even in it's nerfed condition, and I couldn't agree more on death toll during the sieges).

Especially when talking about armies, there's no definition on combatants and non-combatants (like cooks, servants etc.), only the fighting men...

 

[Laurent1944]

Attrition depended heavily IRL of where the troops were. It was still the case in end 1944 when most African troops in French troops who had fought in Italy and southern France during the spring and the summer were replaced by French men (most coming from the Resistance unit) for the winter campaign. It was also the main cause why European colonizers heavily used local troops for conquering Africa, and so on.

As for Europe, the main attrition factor was the winter, and in EU4 time frame most military campaigns will last from spring to fall and then everybody will seek shelter for winter. Winter attrition in EU4 is far too weak to need this.

 

[Northernwwater]

Napoleon was exceptional for several reasons, and also at the very end of the game's > 3 centuries. Napoleonic tactics and logistics are not a good refutation of, say, war in 1520.

We are talking stack size not whether attrition exists or not. In 1520 there were even more problems with attrition than in the early 1800s. Attrition was far worse in 1520, adjusted for army size, than in 1820.

 

[Northernwwater]

Attrition depended heavily IRL of where the troops were. It was still the case in end 1944 when most African troops in French troops who had fought in Italy and southern France during the spring and the summer were replaced by French men (most coming from the Resistance unit) for the winter campaign. It was also the main cause why European colonizers heavily used local troops for conquering Africa, and so on.

As for Europe, the main attrition factor was the winter, and in EU4 time frame most military campaigns will last from spring to fall and then everybody will seek shelter for winter. Winter attrition in EU4 is far too weak to need this.

Agreed. You can basically ignore winter in EU4 using simple unrealistic techniques.