(small) Military rework

[Spike05]

Hi fellows senators, I'm here to propose a motion to increase fun by playing small tags, without removing the intended actual (im)balance.

As always my suggestion as kept as simple as possible and could be integrated in the game by the devs with relative ease.

I've a couple of suggestion, one regarding city states and the other regarding tribes (in the wait of a major tribes overhaul somewhere in the future)

CITY STATES:
They should access to more powerful units, not just more levies. City states should be wealthy and the cornerstone of civilizations.
So levy bonus for them should be increased (bringing the base levies to 25% before modifiers) but not only that!
Levy composition should be different for city states.
They should access to much more heavy units than normal states ('cause people are more wealthy!) so they should get a bonus like always get a 30% of the levy as heavy infantry.
At least for Hellenic city states that would make more sense, and make them more dangerous to take lightly (particularily if they form leagues)

TRIBES:
They all have too few pops, and therefore too few units (and let's not speak about military techs...)
They are never a threat to anyone.
How to fix it?
First they should be able to levy A MINIMUM of 2x the troops from pops compared to normal nations (the x2 is BEFORE all modifier to keep a minumum of balance)
So, a 45 non-slaves pop tribe will be able to rise around 5000 or 6000 troops.
Their troop quality should also not depend on pop types, but on regional avarege civilization value.
More civilization, more heavy infantry/chariots/heavy cavalry.
Less civilization, more light infantry/light cavalry/horse archers.
So gallic tribes (that do have a somewhat decent civilization value) would get around 20-25% heavy infantry/cavalry/chariots and the rest archers/light infantry, while steppe nomads will get massive amounts of troops, but few of them would be heavy/advanced (preferring horse archers as advanced troops rather than heavy infantry for instance)

LEADERS AS LEGION COMMANDERS:
Thinking about Epirus here, but also about the Roman consuls (that did lead Legions a lot of times)

Since I can have my Co-Consul serving as Legate, I don't see any reason why a Consul, or a King wouldn't.
Just add the option.
Then if the player rise the levies from the Capital Region, the Ruler get removed from the Legion, and command goes to the first sub-commander. If there's no one else assigned to that army, the Legion will stay commander-less (it already happens in case of death, so no biggie)

What do you think Senators?
Vote!

 

[IsaacCAT]

Liked and upvoted.

However, on city states now it is already like this. You have access to heavy units by the POP class composition. If you have a city full of freemen you should not access heavy infantry/cavalry. And the type of units is function of your culture.

 

[Spike05]

You have access to heavy units by the POP class composition. If you have a city full of freemen you should not access heavy infantry/cavalry. And the type of units is function of your culture.

True, but right now they are too hopeless against a bigger tag.
More advanced troops would give them more power (heavy infantry/cavalry have better discipline, morale and bonus against other troops across the board)
And more levies are a necessity to keep them relevant, even as subjects.

The multiplier to advanced troops should be calculated on the base troop types decided by culture.
So for instance Athens gets right now 40% HI 50% LI and 10% AR
I see too much light infantry here for a wealthy mini nation.

I suggest to add a modifier for city states like that: 30% increase on advanced troops (HI in this case) reducing basic troops (LI in this case) by the same amount.
So it will be a 5 HI 5 LI and 1 AR instead of 4 HI 6 LI and 1 AR.

The larger the pop numbers, the more that 30% will become relevant.

 

[IsaacCAT]

True, but right now they are too hopeless against a bigger tag.

Instead of making an exception for city states, I would like to make them viable by existing mechanisms.

IMHO City states should be able to use mercs. Small states should be able to hire mercs for a smaller fee than bigger states. At least a 50% reduction, because a city state cannot possible compete with bigger tags on POPs numbers. To keep up financially they can get many small tributaries. And to keep them loyal the player would have to increase the cohort numbers.

I am waiting to see how Danistoned performs in his own achievement city state:

 

[Spike05]

Instead of making an exception for city states, I would like to make them viable by existing mechanisms.

IMHO City states should be able to use mercs. Small states should be able to hire mercs for a smaller fee than bigger states. At least a 50% reduction, because a city state cannot possible compete with bigger tags on POPs numbers. To keep up financially they can get many small tributaries. And to keep them loyal the player would have to increase the cohort numbers.

I am waiting to see how Danistoned performs in his own achievement city state:

Indeed that could be good too...

And thanks for the insight on Danistoned! I'm now curious to see how he'll fare too!

Yes please. But I'd like to add something based on EU4 military tab that I think would work extraordinary well with IR.

Especially as I'd like to see Pikemen and varying classes of tribal infantry vs mediterranean infantry.

Currently light infantry is light infantry and based on traditions, techs you get varying modifiers you can get combat bonuses in hills, flat terrain etc. This is good but I'd like a variation in 'base stats' as follows; in EU4 you upgrade the type of infantry you have based on tech;



I would like if this 'preferred unit' implemented in IR so that a Greek preferred unit was 'Pikeman' and a Roman's would be 'Principes', and it would be as easy to change as clicking on the unit type and changing;



Without mixed heritage a Greek would be excluded from choosing Principe and a Principes stats would be different to a Pikeman, with varying performances on terrain types. You could add modifiers later but the base quality will always be determined through traditions, culture.

A Roman 'archer' unit would be Velites, an Iberian tribe would have 'Balaeric slinger'. Therefore an Iberian tribe will nearly always have better missile units, and Romans would be forbidden from using Balaeric slingers unless they hired Iberian mercs.

It will be very interesting, but it will also be a lot of work.

As I said all my suggestion are for modifications that can (and should! ) be implemented even through an hot-fix, that's the reason I make them so simple.

 

[Spike05]

strange, I got 4 likes, no disagree and yet no one upvoted? confused...

 

[thibeault]

Instead of making an exception for city states, I would like to make them viable by existing mechanisms.

IMHO City states should be able to use mercs. Small states should be able to hire mercs for a smaller fee than bigger states. At least a 50% reduction, because a city state cannot possible compete with bigger tags on POPs numbers. To keep up financially they can get many small tributaries. And to keep them loyal the player would have to increase the cohort numbers.

I am waiting to see how Danistoned performs in his own achievement city state:

Also let them recruit mercenary's at full or at least half morale with higher morale recovery rate and make the ai be able to recruit them not black flagged in territory the they have mil access through.

LEADERS AS LEGION COMMANDERS:
Thinking about Epirus here, but also about the Roman consuls (that did lead Legions a lot of times)

Since I can have my Co-Consul serving as Legate, I don't see any reason why a Consul, or a King wouldn't.
Just add the option.
Then if the player rise the levies from the Capital Region, the Ruler get removed from the Legion, and command goes to the first sub-commander. If there's no one else assigned to that army, the Legion will stay commander-less (it already happens in case of death, so no biggie)

Fucking pleeeeaaaassse yes.

And a suggestion of my own: to unlock a new mil tradition let multiple cultures of the necessary culture group/s count towards the needed pops. Because if you get big
you would have to grow a barbarian culture from at best 380 pops to 500, witch if I already own all of Gaul is kind of stupid. Or make pops reasonably quickly assimilate into a culture of their group that you have already accepted.
Also instead of having to go through another tradition group let me unlock a new group in the tradition interface itself. Perhaps even make me pay 100 exp for every side. Because the system now is a real mess. As Pyrrhus or any Greek (looking at you Siceliote and Italiotian) I can't learn the italic tree and as a Persian I can't learn from those Greeks that conquered my empire, or as a migratory tribe I can't learn from the people's whose land I have settled in without going through god knows how many hoops.

 

[thibeault]

strange, I got 4 likes, no disagree and yet no one upvoted? confused...

fixed it

 

[Nostalgium]

On city states, I agree with @IsaacCAT that I'd rather make them viable by existing mechanics, and give them bonuses to mercenaries to buff up their armies.

On tribes, I kind of disagree here. As you race to civilize, you inevitably end up with very high civilization values - I had over 90 in my capital less than 100 years in! - and usually, you can conquer pretty fast for your area. If the bonus is a flat one solely related to your tribal status, you'd end up in this weird spot that by the time you could civilize, you'd have 0 incentive to do so, since your tribal status and high civilization values would give you an enormous, high-quality levy that you'd lose upon reforming. I could see something like centralization and civilization scaling so you get fewer, but more advanced troops, but this makes no sense to me intuitively. As you build up your tribe to be a civilization, better mechanisms to draft men for war would surely be part of that? Organization, infrastructure, maybe even warehouses for state gear, whatever. Mechanically, I think individual tribes are in a fine place, but I want to see them have more mechanisms to unite in the face of external threats, so a Roman invasion of Gaul would see the smaller tribes able to unite behind powerful/charismatic leaders of the region.

As for rulers and legions, I am way for this and outlined a proposal for military regencies here.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/military-regencies-on-rulers-and-legions.1459245/