Solution to Cannon spam

[Sleektshadow]

Cannons as we all know, rule the EU4 battlefield and are kinda op. A way to solve this problem would be creating a modifier that would hurt your military tactics if you had a certain ratio. Like we have with cavalry, which is useless for cavalry. (Because no one builds more than 2, the ai builds 4:1 inf to cal ratio). The ratio I had in mind would be 1 cannon for every 5 infantry maybe 4 infantry. The penalty for not meeting the requirements would be -40% to military tactics. Another idea would be to increase the cost to 40 ducats.
Yes, the ai would have to be adjusted to meet this new requirement. But, it would create a more historical and realistic army.
These changes would affect the current balance with forts. To deal with this, I would suggest the following changes: increase the cost of forts from 200 400 600 800 to 200 500 750 1000. Change level 6 forts to level 21 mil tech and level 8 forts to level 28 mil tech. Maybe with each fort upgrade increase the build time by 3 months. So, that a level 8 fort would 39 months to build instead of 30 months.
Most ai nations take economic ideas which would reduce the cost of the forts.

If any suggestions or comments please leave them.

 

[grommile]

Have you considered the simplest thing to try, which is to simply tone down the Artillery damage multipliers?

You'd still want to build lots of artillery for various reasons, but its impact on combat would be reduced.

 

[Sleektshadow]

Have you considered the simplest thing to try, which is to simply tone down the Artillery damage multipliers?

You'd still want to build lots of artillery for various reasons, but its impact on combat would be reduced.

It may be the simplest thing to do, but it doesn't fix the problem. Yes, you can cut down the value in half but people will still build it. This will cause battles to last longer, since less lives are being lost.
Yes, that is the easy solution but it will not fix the core problem, which is the amount of artillery in battles. Weaken combat stats will make battles last longer and less damage dealt. A simpler solution is to just raise the cost of art. The current ratio of 2inf to 1 art is broken and kills any historical accuracy and realism. Art is suppose to be deadly and expensive to own. Yes, people will min/max, but with a fix ratio of 4 or 5 inf for every art will force even inf to be built more which will take up force limit and reduce the amount of art a nation owns. This change with the fort change will create a more balanced system. If this is not enough then nerfing art damage would be looked at. Another problem would be the change would increase merc spam, which could be fixed by cutting mercs available in the late game to a small amount.

 

[Viktor Vaughn]

i think the danger with creating a ratio is it means less cannons get produced, which means fewer cannons for sieging. which is bad.

 

[jdavis86]

Most help would be a better way to model their production and the resources needed to produce them.

Maybe make them cost more. Maybe make them greatly slow down armies. Maybe have them count for more supply in a province.

In 1775 Henry Knox miraculously moved cannon across the snow from Ticonderoga to help the siege at Boston. Some 300 miles? I don't recall the exact number of guns, but they were far less than the numbers represented in game. The impact on the siege was profound.

So throughout the period of the game, small numbers of cannon had great impact. They were very expensive to produce, difficult to move, and took skill to use well on the battlefield.

As an aside, managing mid/late game armies IS NOT FUN for the player. But, since we know maxing out back row with artillery is most efficient, that is how we'll play. It sure isn't fun shifting and splitting those stacks around though.

 

[Sleektshadow]

i think the danger with creating a ratio is it means less cannons get produced, which means fewer cannons for sieging. which is bad.

That is the point behind the ratio. They did it to cal, so it wouldn't be too much of stretch to apply here . The fort changes i suggested would off set that to some degree. A siege is not suppose to be quick but something that took time. Yes, the amount of forts in game is not realistic.

 

[YuriiH]

it will not fix the core problem, which is the amount of artillery in battles.

Why do you consider the large numbers of artillery a core problem?
Personally I don't really see a problem with artillery number in the back row. Instead, I'd like to have more use of cavalry (e.g. if it could attack the back row with 0.5x or 0.25x modifier).

 

[Regaccio]

I get what you're trying to say, I really do. 50,000 guns taking part in a single battle, or professional armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands in the 1600s, isn't really historical. But honestly, I don't think EU4 is that kind of game. I think it's more of a sandbox and the developers probably aren't keen on changing gameplay mechanics to make certain numbers fit more historical ones. If historical accuracy or realism were paramount goals of this game, we wouldn't have Paper/Bird/Sword Mana, or Stability you can raise by pushing a button, or the ability to tell your nobility where they're most powerful and where they aren't, or the ability to assign land to the church when your ruler doesn't control that anyway, or the power to instantly upgrade your entire army to new equipment and tactics. In the end, the EU series is originally based on a board game, and thus is highly abstracted. Believe me, I like historicity in games, I like when developers strive for accurate historical simulations, but EU is not a simulation, it's more of an abstracted sandbox version of the period with historical flavor. So I wouldn't expect combat mechanics to change in order to make artillery numbers more "realistic" anytime soon.

 

[Rocketskates]

i will still bring 40 cannons to a lvl8 fort no matter what until the bonus changes
arti is just so good 20/0/20 or 16/4/20 and fire phase comes first

 

[Vulkandrache]

Cannons as we all know, rule the EU4 battlefield and are kinda op

Can give an actual reason for making such statement and some vague suggestion?
If both sides of a fight just go with 40/0/8 or what ever "ratio" we choose then nothing changes in the overall outcome of the fight.

The games combat system is balanced around the idea that cannons become ever more important as tech increases
so what exactly is this cannonspam you are talking about and why do you think its a problem?

 

[YuriiH]

50,000 guns taking part in a single battle

It's not 50000 guns:
1) Max combat width is 40.
2) 40k troops serve a way less amount of big guns.

 

[Rikissa]

Raising an artillery regiment uses up 1k manpower, so it is indeed 1k soldiers, not 1k big guns

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

There is a certain level of abstraction that needs to be done when looking at EU4s combat system as a whole. Battles last longer and contain more troop numbers, but not every person would actually be fighting and the battle is made up of skirmishes and retreats that are not shown by the combat engine. The engine grinds out the numbers over a number of days, and then you move on with your own picture of what took place.

I certainly don't think there are 1000 cannons in an artillery unit, as it is more likely that there are 1000 total men involved in transporting, maintaining, repairing and then firing the weapons. I've also never considered the 1000 men that make up an infantry unit to entirely be a fighting force either.

 

[Drachenfels]

To sum up OP proposal: How to solve non-existing problem and create more problems in the effect.