The Military System, Its Flaws, and Some Solutions

[OhioAstro]

Because with faster manpower recovery the combat system would just turn into EUIII, and the same problems of armies often having no hope of escape from an approaching enemy would remain. As Muscowy I had a 5k stack on the border of Lithuania, and a Lithuanian 23k stack was approaching. As I could not reach any other province before the Lithuanians arrived, I had no choice but to delete my army in order to avoid warscore losses. This makes no sense. Why, realistically, could my troops not evade them either by sneaking out of the province or entering a walled city? Same problem occured with an enemy army retreating from me in the direction of Moscow. I had a 1k artillery regiment there that had been just built. It also had no way to evade or escape, so it was instantly destroyed.

Essentially, the problem is fortresses and armies are entirely separate entities in EUIV, and Paradox does not represent the symbiotic relationship between the two. That's what should be changed.



Jomini is exactly right to say that the problem is that warscore from battles are too low and that the AI is too slow to make peace. I was going to make that point earlier but I figured my initial post was far too long to begin with. The problem is balancing it so that the higher warscore from battles doesn't encourage the chasing of enemy armies deep into their territory in order to repeatedly defeat them. Hence the need for many of the protective measured mentioned in my initial post.

The best system would be one in which an attacking country has to go to great lengths to take the province(s) they're fighting for, but that once they are taken they are likely to get them in a peace deal before very much time has passed. Wars should not often result in the complete destruction of one side's armies.

You're proposing a series of changes that make it much harder to catch defending armies and much harder to defeat them. Field battles have a large luck component, so basing too much war score on them could have bizarre consequences (an utterly defeated nation, with no surviving armies or provinces, has a large positive war score because it did well in the initial field battles). Unless there is some major compensating factor - e.g. much higher warscore from completed sieges - this will cause severe balance problems. I do like the idea that a defeated defending field army becomes sieged - presumably making direct assault very difficult, but also presumably accelerating the "starve them out" factor. This makes a lot more sense than chase-across-the-map. But I very much dislike the prospect of having to do click-and-cancel repeatedly as a large defending army repeatedly threatens to engage my sieging armies - especially if I can't catch them if they run away. That sounds like extremely fiddly game play that the AI won't be able to do nearly as well as a person would.

 

[Jomini]

You're proposing a series of changes that make it much harder to catch defending armies and much harder to defeat them. Field battles have a large luck component, so basing too much war score on them could have bizarre consequences (an utterly defeated nation, with no surviving armies or provinces, has a large positive war score because it did well in the initial field battles). Unless there is some major compensating factor - e.g. much higher warscore from completed sieges - this will cause severe balance problems. I do like the idea that a defeated defending field army becomes sieged - presumably making direct assault very difficult, but also presumably accelerating the "starve them out" factor. This makes a lot more sense than chase-across-the-map. But I very much dislike the prospect of having to do click-and-cancel repeatedly as a large defending army repeatedly threatens to engage my sieging armies - especially if I can't catch them if they run away. That sounds like extremely fiddly game play that the AI won't be able to do nearly as well as a person would.

You are just encouraging the evisceration of the AI here. I need sieges to make high war score. Okay, then obviously the most cost effective method to get through wars is to have lots of sieges. Okay, what is the most cost effective way to siege everything? Killing the field armies so I can siege in peace.

So with heavy weight on sieged provinces, the player (and hence a competent AI) will still be vastly encouraged to kill the field army and siege a bunch of territory (maybe all of it) at once to get cost efficient gains.

This leads EXACTLY to the ahistoric behavior currently seen - wars are unlimited affairs and the losing AI quickly is pounced upon by other states.

You want to have just a couple of sieges and perhaps one big battle in a war - that was much more historical than sieging Paris to take Liguria.

Dmarrow: The problem is that raising siege cost doesn't change the fact that you need lots of sieges for basic war gains. Making war more expensive means that you should only go to war when you can score BIG, scoring big in a zero sum war means that the other guy is completely trashed. So again we end up back with ahistorical wars and major countries imploding for losing just one war.

Attrition won't balance the issue either. Again, right now you need warscore to get what you want. Getting warscore mostly revolves around sieges. Sieges mean that you need to beat down the AI. If you have to spend some manpower on attrition doing that, well so be it.

You can raise the cost of how to conduct warfare however you want, the problem is it will always be most cost efficient to win BIG in one war if the gap between what it takes to get anything useful from the AI is small compared to what it takes to get maximal returns from an AI. All such cost changes do, because they are symmetrical, is ensure that it is even more important to score big from your investment of manpower or gold.

Having the AI give up limited gains sooner goes to the root problem, pretty much anything else is just tinkering with how a bitter ender AI arranges its long term suicide pact.

 

[DeathSheep]

Your forgot to mention that he was also Duke of Huéscar, Marquis of Coria, Count of Salvatierra de Tormes and Count of Piedrahita, Lord of Valdecorneja, a Grandee of Spain, and an Illustrious Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

Seriously, what did he do in sieges?

Well, not him personally, but the forces under his command in what was the Spanish Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War. Philip II made the Duke of Alba governor in 1567 to deal with the Dutch Protestants. Alba started with executing a few Protestant nobles for treason and heresy. Then you have the Spanish Fury at Mechelen, the sieges of Zutphen, Alkmaar, and Naarden, and finally the Spanish siege of Haarlem, where the Duke had the entire Dutch garrison of 2000 men executed after the city surrendered.

Mind you, Philip eventually recalled Alba after it became clear that mass executions were not helping the cause of Catholicism and Spanish rule in the Low Countries.

 

[208]

Well, not him personally, but the forces under his command in what was the Spanish Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War. Philip II made the Duke of Alba governor in 1567 to deal with the Dutch Protestants. Alba started with executing a few Protestant nobles for treason and heresy. Then you have the Spanish Fury at Mechelen, the sieges of Zutphen, Alkmaar, and Naarden, and finally the Spanish siege of Haarlem, where the Duke had the entire Dutch garrison of 2000 men executed after the city surrendered.

Mind you, Philip eventually recalled Alba after it became clear that mass executions were not helping the cause of Catholicism and Spanish rule in the Low Countries.

Doesn't that generally fall under the "Harsh Treatment" option for suppressing revolt risk?

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I agree with those saying that we need more decisive battles and wargoal-relevant sieges. Ideally, the warscore for each of those would be greatly increased, and the AI made more likely to settle for peace, despite their gains, after they meet their wargoal.

So, basically a wargoal system like in CKII and V2, where you can ONLY demand what you declared war for, or added as a concrete, limited goal partway through the war. Perhaps a bit anachronistic, but I really think it's what EUIV needs.

Unfortunately, we of course can't mod that. We'd need to do some sort of workaround in which achieving the wargoal and winning big battles provide obscene amounts of warscore, but it also takes obscene amounts of warscore to demand anything outside of the scope of the wargoal. That way, even though someone can reach 100% warscore relatively quickly, they can't do much with it, depending on their wargoal.

 

[Berlichingen]

read the first couple of pages of this and got to agree with the OP. Very good suggestions, hope paradox implements at least two ideas: 1) CK2 style siege events and 2) ability for army to retreat into fortresses (although only really should be lvl 3 forts and higher)

 

[Emre Yigit]

Well, not him personally, but the forces under his command in what was the Spanish Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War. Philip II made the Duke of Alba governor in 1567 to deal with the Dutch Protestants. Alba started with executing a few Protestant nobles for treason and heresy. Then you have the Spanish Fury at Mechelen, the sieges of Zutphen, Alkmaar, and Naarden, and finally the Spanish siege of Haarlem, where the Duke had the entire Dutch garrison of 2000 men executed after the city surrendered.

Mind you, Philip eventually recalled Alba after it became clear that mass executions were not helping the cause of Catholicism and Spanish rule in the Low Countries.

Oh, that old technique. Thanks for the answer - it gave me an idea for a mod.

 

[Chamboozer]

Another idea I brought up in an earlier PM, I may as well post it here to see what people think.

Have you played The Old Gods in CKII? It has a looting system where an army present in enemy territory could drain the tax value of the province. Implementing such a system in EUIV could work perfectly to both make smaller armies useful and to simulate the idea of Bellum se ipsum alet - allowing the soldiers to live off the land in order to pay for their own maintenance. Rather than taking the money for one's own treasury, armies in EUIV could toggle a loot option in order to drain the value of the province they're in (friendly or enemy). This would, perhaps, directly lower their maintenance costs but at the same time gradually lower the supply limit and increase attrition. Smaller armies would drain the land more slowly and thus take less attrition.

Perhaps all armies should drain the land to some degree, but only do it systematically if the option is toggled on.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

This made me think about the TOG loot system as well. Though I think the full looting should be automatic when you enter enemy territory, at least beyond the border provinces (counting controlled enemy provinces as your own) - would it really be possible to support any expedition deep into enemy territory with your own resources without motorized supply trains?

 

[milman]

almost all proposals are good in this topic. But question is how would AI use those new "rules". And do paradox have time to completly change how AI decides about moving armies. This is more realistic for EU 5 than for EU 4. Too much job for devs.

 

[doulos05]

Well, it's a start. I've put a mod called "Better Forts" on steam. It applies the "severe winter" attrition modifiers to a province under siege. I need playtesters to see if that's a good amount or not. And if anybody knows how we could tie that to fort level, then it would be even better

 

[NightKev]

You should be able to test for fort level, and apply additional modifiers per each level of fort that reduces supply more and more (it would be up to 7 modifiers for a max fort level province, but oh well).

 

[Patshnish]

I definitely agree that it's quite difficult to recover from a war after your entire army is destroyed. The manpower death spiral is devastating. I'm not sure if there's already an idea for this in-game, but possibly Paradox should add an idea for faster manpower recovery.

 

[Emre Yigit]

I definitely agree that it's quite difficult to recover from a war after your entire army is destroyed. The manpower death spiral is devastating. I'm not sure if there's already an idea for this in-game, but possibly Paradox should add an idea for faster manpower recovery.

Already appears in plutocracy and quantity, AFAIK?

 

[amah]

the op has some great suggestions . especially the role of fortresses in the early time period was historically much more than what it is in the game (i also think 2xfortlvl army should be the minimum needed to even start the siege). also one change utterly important

when relieving a siege and trying to save my own province i do not need a -5 penalty

 

[Chamboozer]

when relieving a siege and trying to save my own province i do not need a -5 penalty

If there's any one suggestion of mine that I hope Paradox will put into practice, it is this one.

 

[Olaf the Unsure]

Good points here. I wish fortresses could inflict some damage on attackers. It's been awhile since I've played CK2, but doesn't it have a random event that occurs during sieges where the defenders sortie and inflict (and receive) some damage? Sieges at present are essentially automatic if you can wait long enough.

 

[macd21]

Good points here. I wish fortresses could inflict some damage on attackers. It's been awhile since I've played CK2, but doesn't it have a random event that occurs during sieges where the defenders sortie and inflict (and receive) some damage? Sieges at present are essentially automatic if you can wait long enough.

Yes, but the damage is minimal and doesn't really make a difference to the siege, so those events are mostly just a game-play annoyance.