After having read a number of posts on all of these things, it occurs to me that there is some misunderstanding on the manpower as presetned in EU, the badbboy system as it would relate to the period covered in EU2, and war exhaustion as presented in EU. Let me explain what I am talking about.
1) Many people have complained that massive recruiting does not hurt the economy. They could have a valid point, but the manual for EU makes it very clear that the available manpower for your country already takes into account how many young lads you may draft before it hurts your production. That means the available manpower is literally "the extra folks" who can be drafted without hurting the all important production of agriculture. So, technically, we are not even given full access to the manpower of our country, but rather only the surplus manpower. Now, the complaint of massive recruiting not hurting the economy is linked to the game balance issue of fielding ridiculous armies of incredible size that do not in any way fit the era of warfare you are in. In order to fix this, lowering manpower is not the best ansewr. I say, if someone really wants an army of 500,000 men and 1,000 cannon, let them have it. The game needs to have a far higher cost of maintenance, so that you will go into debt trying to support such a huge army, but you can raise one if you really want to. Also, by giving harsher supply penalties to units of lower tech levels, you will see that huge army waste away due to attrition if you try and create it in 1500. On a side note, I would love to see the penalties for lower than 100% maintenance be far harsher, including increased desertions during peacetime if you leave it at 50%.
2) There have been many loud complaints about the Bad Boy rating and its performance. The Bad Boy system in EU actually works very well, given the limitations of the AI. Even in the Napoleonic period, a Bad Boy rating makes sense as you will notice that there were constant coalitions against him, and he only got allies by essentially doing military vassalization on countries like Austria rather than annexing them. In fact, Napoleon did historically what we do in EU all the time: keep on winning despite being such a bad boy (at least, until the Russian Winter got the best of him!). The weakness of the system lies not in the Bad Boy rating itself, but rather in the lack of a concept such as a "coalition war". There is no way in EU right now to make a "coalition", which would be a really big alliance, whose only purpose is to wipe out a bad boy country. Also, as far as I know, 2 countries that are not allied with each, but at war with the same power, do not in any way get friendlier to each other. There is no "my enemy's enemy is my friend" effect, which I think would help the AI and Bad Boy wars immensly. One great failing of the lack of coalition wars is that I can purposely ignite a general war in Europe as a bad boy, then turn around and buy peace with the countries I really do not want to fight, then wipe out the ones I do. The fix for this is to lower the amount of money floating around in the game. For an example of how this worked, I took the Ottoman Empire in the late 1750's, and provoked war with the remains of Poland-Lithunia. I had a BB of 154, so everyone in the entire world DoW. I had so much moeny, though, I was able to buy off every alliance, and the other memebers of Poland-Lituania's alliance. Then, I annexed Poland-Lithuania before the 5 year time limit was up. A good strong coalition concpet and improvement of the AI, combined with less money in the game, would make that impossible. And this leads right into my next item, which is....
3) War exhaustion. Perhaps I have misunderstood war exhaustion, but war exhaustion is not just "Peasants are mad at being drafted and having their provinces looted." War exhaustion has to do with the invisible aspects of war that we do not interact with in EU. These would include : decreased government attention to domestic problems while the war is on, unahppiness at seeing large numbers of young lads die, disruption of the normal way of life for noble and peasant alike, and the effects of "friction", as the army and navy start to eat up far more resources than they normally would. This is a normal by product of war, and is not the same as "Raising War Taxes", which would imply the government is seriously taxing the people and economy in order to raise extra forces. With this in mind, it makes sense that war exhaustion affects all provinces, not just those that are looted or sacked; however, there is one great weakness of the current set-up of war exhaustion that badly needs to be fixed. If you end all wars you are fighting, and the next day you get into another one, your war exhaustion is back to 0! This makes no sense, and I would like to see a decline in war exhaustion while you at peace, not the outright elimination of war exhausiton. As it stands now, the system is easy to abuse by both human and AI alike. This also ties in with Bad Boy wars, as you may end up at peace for only a month before another war starting. If war exhaustion carries over after the end of the war, declining rather than just going away, suddenly that huge empire of yours gets a little harder to retain, and you may be far more willing to negotiate a reasonable settlement quickly.
I hope this helps to clear up some of the misunderstanding surrounding these issues. I am also apologize if I stole a suggestion of someone else's, as I know I didn't make them all up myself. I just forgot who I took them from...
1) Many people have complained that massive recruiting does not hurt the economy. They could have a valid point, but the manual for EU makes it very clear that the available manpower for your country already takes into account how many young lads you may draft before it hurts your production. That means the available manpower is literally "the extra folks" who can be drafted without hurting the all important production of agriculture. So, technically, we are not even given full access to the manpower of our country, but rather only the surplus manpower. Now, the complaint of massive recruiting not hurting the economy is linked to the game balance issue of fielding ridiculous armies of incredible size that do not in any way fit the era of warfare you are in. In order to fix this, lowering manpower is not the best ansewr. I say, if someone really wants an army of 500,000 men and 1,000 cannon, let them have it. The game needs to have a far higher cost of maintenance, so that you will go into debt trying to support such a huge army, but you can raise one if you really want to. Also, by giving harsher supply penalties to units of lower tech levels, you will see that huge army waste away due to attrition if you try and create it in 1500. On a side note, I would love to see the penalties for lower than 100% maintenance be far harsher, including increased desertions during peacetime if you leave it at 50%.
2) There have been many loud complaints about the Bad Boy rating and its performance. The Bad Boy system in EU actually works very well, given the limitations of the AI. Even in the Napoleonic period, a Bad Boy rating makes sense as you will notice that there were constant coalitions against him, and he only got allies by essentially doing military vassalization on countries like Austria rather than annexing them. In fact, Napoleon did historically what we do in EU all the time: keep on winning despite being such a bad boy (at least, until the Russian Winter got the best of him!). The weakness of the system lies not in the Bad Boy rating itself, but rather in the lack of a concept such as a "coalition war". There is no way in EU right now to make a "coalition", which would be a really big alliance, whose only purpose is to wipe out a bad boy country. Also, as far as I know, 2 countries that are not allied with each, but at war with the same power, do not in any way get friendlier to each other. There is no "my enemy's enemy is my friend" effect, which I think would help the AI and Bad Boy wars immensly. One great failing of the lack of coalition wars is that I can purposely ignite a general war in Europe as a bad boy, then turn around and buy peace with the countries I really do not want to fight, then wipe out the ones I do. The fix for this is to lower the amount of money floating around in the game. For an example of how this worked, I took the Ottoman Empire in the late 1750's, and provoked war with the remains of Poland-Lithunia. I had a BB of 154, so everyone in the entire world DoW. I had so much moeny, though, I was able to buy off every alliance, and the other memebers of Poland-Lituania's alliance. Then, I annexed Poland-Lithuania before the 5 year time limit was up. A good strong coalition concpet and improvement of the AI, combined with less money in the game, would make that impossible. And this leads right into my next item, which is....
3) War exhaustion. Perhaps I have misunderstood war exhaustion, but war exhaustion is not just "Peasants are mad at being drafted and having their provinces looted." War exhaustion has to do with the invisible aspects of war that we do not interact with in EU. These would include : decreased government attention to domestic problems while the war is on, unahppiness at seeing large numbers of young lads die, disruption of the normal way of life for noble and peasant alike, and the effects of "friction", as the army and navy start to eat up far more resources than they normally would. This is a normal by product of war, and is not the same as "Raising War Taxes", which would imply the government is seriously taxing the people and economy in order to raise extra forces. With this in mind, it makes sense that war exhaustion affects all provinces, not just those that are looted or sacked; however, there is one great weakness of the current set-up of war exhaustion that badly needs to be fixed. If you end all wars you are fighting, and the next day you get into another one, your war exhaustion is back to 0! This makes no sense, and I would like to see a decline in war exhaustion while you at peace, not the outright elimination of war exhausiton. As it stands now, the system is easy to abuse by both human and AI alike. This also ties in with Bad Boy wars, as you may end up at peace for only a month before another war starting. If war exhaustion carries over after the end of the war, declining rather than just going away, suddenly that huge empire of yours gets a little harder to retain, and you may be far more willing to negotiate a reasonable settlement quickly.
I hope this helps to clear up some of the misunderstanding surrounding these issues. I am also apologize if I stole a suggestion of someone else's, as I know I didn't make them all up myself. I just forgot who I took them from...
