There is an untapped source of increased depth to warfare in eu4.

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fdr_guy

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I'm talking of course about more terrain specific modifiers for combat.

We get a little bit of this with the base modifiers of some terrain, horde mechanics, and the age bonus in age of discovery.

But there is so much more that could be done.

Like giving nations in Arabia a gov reform that gives them -10% shock and fire received, but ONLY in desert, coastal desert, or drylands terrain. Perhaps take advantage of climate modifier and have it apply to any provinces with the arid climate.

Or giving nations like Georgia or Armenia a permanent +1 in mountain as a national idea.

With the new SEA content coming up it'd be the perfect time to add new modifiers for tropical warfare specifically.

Even if these would remain a very rare modifier in vanilla, it would be such a gift to modders to be able to play around with those kinds of numbers, as there really isn't a way to mod this kind of terrain specific bonuses into the game right now.

Please help neondt or whoever is in charge of eu4 content right now see this.
 
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I'm talking of course about more terrain specific modifiers for combat.

We get a little bit of this with the base modifiers of some terrain, horde mechanics, and the age bonus in age of discovery.

But there is so much more that could be done.

Like giving nations in Arabia a gov reform that gives them -10% shock and fire received, but ONLY in desert, coastal desert, or drylands terrain. Perhaps take advantage of climate modifier and have it apply to any provinces with the arid climate.

Or giving nations like Georgia or Armenia a permanent +1 in mountain as a national idea.

With the new SEA content coming up it'd be the perfect time to add new modifiers for tropical warfare specifically.

Even if these would remain a very rare modifier in vanilla, it would be such a gift to modders to be able to play around with those kinds of numbers, as there really isn't a way to mod this kind of terrain specific bonuses into the game right now.

Please help neondt or whoever is in charge of eu4 content right now see this.
It would be good if it wasn't just attrition buff or Fort defense that these nations had yeh, Vietnamese get bonus fighting in jungles?
 
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I'm talking of course about more terrain specific modifiers for combat.

We get a little bit of this with the base modifiers of some terrain, horde mechanics, and the age bonus in age of discovery.

But there is so much more that could be done.

Like giving nations in Arabia a gov reform that gives them -10% shock and fire received, but ONLY in desert, coastal desert, or drylands terrain. Perhaps take advantage of climate modifier and have it apply to any provinces with the arid climate.

Or giving nations like Georgia or Armenia a permanent +1 in mountain as a national idea.

With the new SEA content coming up it'd be the perfect time to add new modifiers for tropical warfare specifically.

Even if these would remain a very rare modifier in vanilla, it would be such a gift to modders to be able to play around with those kinds of numbers, as there really isn't a way to mod this kind of terrain specific bonuses into the game right now.

Please help neondt or whoever is in charge of eu4 content right now see this.
And, done correctly,

It would slow down Ottoman / Western European rampage. (Otto surrounded by "Desert Mameluke" and "Mountain Hungary"; Western European power having it less easy in the colonial warfare.

I totally support that idea, even if we should try to avoid the clichés; for instance of the Arabic people fighting well only in Desert.

I also think that something representing the War Academies of the western power, in the end of the game time frame, should be able not only to counterbalance, but even to dominate those modifiers. But it should be both expensive (especially to massive armies country) and late game.
 
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Good idea. I think that some specific units should have modifiers on specific terrains, for example, Polish-Lithuanian winged hussars could have increased rolls/shock damage on steps/grasslands/farmlands, but reduced on marshes/other terrains.
 
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Eh, there are twofold problems with this idea.

1. Increased micro - in addition to having to juggle around a dozen different armies moving around during war, paying attention to mountains, hills and river, one would also have to pay attention to all the other terrain features AND to the fact of whether or not the enemy stack contains some units from some country that may have this bonus (eg. in a stack of 20 HRE minors there may also be 1000 Armenian troops when I try to attack a mountain province, which could result in them getting an extra bonus).

2. "why cant haz I haz same bonus as haz other nation" "arguments", that is, if the Devs would add e.g. a bonus to desert combat to Arabian nations, there wold be a flood of people complaining that obviously their Norwegian troops should have the same bonus because they colonized a desert province at some point in the game. Sadly, this usually leads to the Devs caving to the pressure and making these bonuses available to everyone, completely removing the point of having them.
 
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I don’t fully think this would solve much. In Georgia VS Ottomans, this would mean Georgia would live a year longer during a war (or something along those lines). Eventually the numbers will against them. I do hope that they’ll implement this possibility for modders, so that modders can fiddle with it and find a way to something that works. I wouldn’t even mind if that feature would be DLC locked. Anyway, the main reason I don’t see these terrain moddifiers do much, is how ending a war works. A battle doesn’t matter much in sense of war score, and most wars are total wars where one party gets fully sieged. There are no small skirmishes over a little bit of territory between fractions of both countries’ armies. In the example of Georgia VS the Ottomans, the 15k Georgian troops may maybe win the first confrontations, but eventually the sheer amount of Ottomans (60k or more) will overwhelm them. In conclusion, these modifiers will likely end up being an extra source of troop losses like the winter modifier, nothing more.
 
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First I'd like to say thank you all for both the positive feedback, and for the critiques that could help this idea become even better.

Firstly to the user @Me_ , personally even MORE micro to be done during war sounds amazing to me, and to a lot of other players, but I suppose that is a matter of opinion. Now to your other concern about a regiment giving one side a huge advantage, I believe it'd still work like discipline/ combat ability/ etc. where only the appropriate regiments would get the bonus. Therefore one Armenian regiment in a battle in say the Carpathian mountains wouldn't make or break the battle unless it was a very small engagement. I can't speak much to your other concern, but I am confident that pdx would keep it within reason. I'm sure there is another terrain type that'd be more appropriate for Norway anyway, if they were to get one at all.

Next to @Lavilledieu at the very least an extra source of troop losses would slow down the major expansion of the AI, and maybe let another rival strike more often while they are hurting, as long as you aren't playing on very hard or something, where AI troop losses don't matter. But anyway this isn't so much about simulating natural growth for the AI (although I do think this would help that just a little), but moreso about giving the PLAYER more tools to take advantage of their land in defensive warfare, in certain countries, and to stretch the value of a province beyond it's economic utility, and the existing terrain modifiers, which imo, feel not as fleshed out as they could be.
 
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Firstly to the user @Me_ , personally even MORE micro to be done during war sounds amazing to me, and to a lot of other players, but I suppose that is a matter of opinion. Now to your other concern about a regiment giving one side a huge advantage, I believe it'd still work like discipline/ combat ability/ etc. where only the appropriate regiments would get the bonus. Therefore one Armenian regiment in a battle in say the Carpathian mountains wouldn't make or break the battle unless it was a very small engagement.
If that would be the plan, then modifiers like "giving nations like Georgia or Armenia a permanent +1 in mountain as a national idea." should go, because +/- to dice roll is entirely binary. Either the whole side gets it or not. Sure, it could be added, but it could easily end up being confusing for the player when the bonus is applied and could end up feeling arbitrary.
On the other hand +10% combat ability in desert or similar could be applied directly to a specific unit or proportionally to the side with little problem and in an easy to understand way.
 
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Great idea. You could even add stuff like +x morale on cored provinces to enhance defender's advantage.

Edit: tied to an idea group, national ideas or some kind of mechanic I mean.
 
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I don’t fully think this would solve much. In Georgia VS Ottomans, this would mean Georgia would live a year longer during a war (or something along those lines). Eventually the numbers will against them. I do hope that they’ll implement this possibility for modders, so that modders can fiddle with it and find a way to something that works. I wouldn’t even mind if that feature would be DLC locked. Anyway, the main reason I don’t see these terrain moddifiers do much, is how ending a war works. A battle doesn’t matter much in sense of war score, and most wars are total wars where one party gets fully sieged. There are no small skirmishes over a little bit of territory between fractions of both countries’ armies. In the example of Georgia VS the Ottomans, the 15k Georgian troops may maybe win the first confrontations, but eventually the sheer amount of Ottomans (60k or more) will overwhelm them. In conclusion, these modifiers will likely end up being an extra source of troop losses like the winter modifier, nothing more.

Pardon but i'll answer as i was one of the first to speak of the Ottomans.

The idea is not to make any weak neighbours of the Ottoman a lethal danger to them; just to make their conquest a bit more complicated.
For instance, IRL, as you probably know, Albania wasnt conquered in a single year.
You are right, in the end the Ottomans will prevails, its both legitimate and wishable (the game would be non sense if minors nation couldnt be beat by powerful AI). Yet, as said by OP above; thewar might be slightly longer, slightly more painful for the Otto (or the western powers in America), which might lead, in the long run, to a kind of weaker Ottoman / WP.


What's more, but this is a total change in game, we could imagine that, as it was the case IRL, conquering countries could hire for their armies the former soldiers of the place that were conquered. Hence, it would allow them to unlock specials / expensive units.

Not sure if this would be a good plan though, to keep the Ottoman example, not sure id like to hire 50kGeorgian troops because i plan to attack Mountaineous Balkans.
 
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Terrain bonuses should definitely be a thing, and it should also affect unit type (cavalry could have a bonus in Steppe, Grasslands and Drylands, but a penalty in hills and mountains. Artillery should have a bonus in hills and a penalty in woodlands, jungles and forests).

I would also add combat bonuses in coastal provinces, and Marines should have a bonus in coastal provinces. (Naval ideas should also have a Coastal Province combat modifier, maybe it would make them slightly more competitive)

I would also add a combat modifier on Core provinces of the Main culture (All Core Provinces alone would be too helpfull for huge blobs) and add it to defensive ideas (while nerfing the +20% morale accordingly).
 
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I also agree that this would be a welcome addition to the game, but let's not forget that mountains used to reduce combat width - until Paradox scrapped it. So unfortunately, we have to assume that the direction they want to go is toward a simplification of combat mechanics, rather than the opposite.
 
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I also agree that this would be a welcome addition to the game, but let's not forget that mountains used to reduce combat width - until Paradow scrapped it. So unfortunately, we have to assume that the direction they want to go is toward a simplification of combat mechanics, rather than the opposite.

See above. Combat width in defensible terrain was an early iteration of this that got patched away, probably because someone couldn’t fight Switzerland in multiplayer.
 
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Eh, there are twofold problems with this idea.

1. Increased micro - in addition to having to juggle around a dozen different armies moving around during war, paying attention to mountains, hills and river, one would also have to pay attention to all the other terrain features AND to the fact of whether or not the enemy stack contains some units from some country that may have this bonus (eg. in a stack of 20 HRE minors there may also be 1000 Armenian troops when I try to attack a mountain province, which could result in them getting an extra bonus).

2. "why cant haz I haz same bonus as haz other nation" "arguments", that is, if the Devs would add e.g. a bonus to desert combat to Arabian nations, there wold be a flood of people complaining that obviously their Norwegian troops should have the same bonus because they colonized a desert province at some point in the game. Sadly, this usually leads to the Devs caving to the pressure and making these bonuses available to everyone, completely removing the point of having them.
Wish we had a levvy system, that could solve the problem (levvies from the same region has bonuses in that region and levvies from a culture that historically fought well in desserts and such could have modifiers).
 
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It's a great idea, but the issue is the AI. There used to be more terrain modifiers than there currently are, with more realistic attrition rates, but the AI couldn't handle it.
 
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Pardon but i'll answer as i was one of the first to speak of the Ottomans.

The idea is not to make any weak neighbours of the Ottoman a lethal danger to them; just to make their conquest a bit more complicated.
For instance, IRL, as you probably know, Albania wasnt conquered in a single year.
You are right, in the end the Ottomans will prevails, its both legitimate and wishable (the game would be non sense if minors nation couldnt be beat by powerful AI). Yet, as said by OP above; thewar might be slightly longer, slightly more painful for the Otto (or the western powers in America), which might lead, in the long run, to a kind of weaker Ottoman / WP.


What's more, but this is a total change in game, we could imagine that, as it was the case IRL, conquering countries could hire for their armies the former soldiers of the place that were conquered. Hence, it would allow them to unlock specials / expensive units.

Not sure if this would be a good plan though, to keep the Ottoman example, not sure id like to hire 50kGeorgian troops because i plan to attack Mountaineous Balkans.
We already have merc groups having various bonuses to that sole merc stack, so it wouldn't be too remiss to give that to certain nations, might also incentive vassal play, and make rebels a bit more dangerous
 
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I also agree that this would be a welcome addition to the game, but let's not forget that mountains used to reduce combat width - until Paradow scrapped it. So unfortunately, we have to assume that the direction they want to go is toward a simplification of combat mechanics, rather than the opposite.
Was so sad to see them get rid of combat width and have it tied solely to tech. Especially when they kept manoeuvre as being the main source of naval combat width
 
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