Why hasn't starting manpower be buffed? (ROTW issues)

[klingonadmiral]

What I'm interested in knowing is how this will play out in the first 100 years of the game, the period when I find manpower to be the most scarce and important. I doubt that buildings will make any difference early on and you will still have to either merc up or slack recruitment if you want to be at constant war.

I think it will mainly make assembling vassal-swarms even stronger than it is now, as those represent +5000 manpower minimum for every single vassal, which is a pretty significant amount earlygame.

In India, this will easily make Bahmanis the strongest starting country as you can easily partition Malwa together with Mewar (unless they ally either Jaunpur or Bengal), giving you their three vassals for free. It also starts with 3 hell-forts under either direct or indirect control, meaning you won't have to siege down these attrition traps. In SEA Ayutthaya will have Sukhothai and Ligor to exploit.

But I'm certainly not looking forward to playing in Mexico as you are forced to stay small, your vassals will be highly unruly and there are quite a few hell-forts around.

That way you are forced to rely more on mercs early on which is realiatic, and go toward a more manpower relying professional army as time moves on

Then the armies in 1444 should be adjusted so you can easily slot in mercenary companies without going horribly over your FL. And few countries start with 9 under the FL.

 

[EarlKonrad]

I think it will mainly make assembling vassal-swarms even stronger than it is now, as those represent +5000 manpower minimum for every single vassal, which is a pretty significant amount earlygame.

In India, this will easily make Bahmanis the strongest starting country as you can easily partition Malwa together with Mewar (unless they ally either Jaunpur or Bengal), giving you their three vassals for free. It also starts with 3 hell-forts under either direct or indirect control, meaning you won't have to siege down these attrition traps. In SEA Ayutthaya will have Sukhothai and Ligor to exploit.

But I'm certainly not looking forward to playing in Mexico as you are forced to stay small, your vassals will be highly unruly and there are quite a few hell-forts around.



Then the armies in 1444 should be adjusted so you can easily slot in mercenary companies without going horribly over your FL. And few countries start with 9 under the FL.

I was thinking about getting the Sunset Invasion achievement in 1.30, but I'm dreading to play in the New World after seeing the merc rebalance. Guess I'll just have to the changes to merc will impact that region.

 

[Arizal]

To be honest, I'm scared by the mercenary mechanic, which doesn't look friendly at all. Mercenaries are expensive huge blocks of armies that you cannot standardize nor merge with your troops. Additionally, you have to go through a list to find ones that are suited to the region you are in. I like the idea that when you don't have manpower, you can't have an infinite armies, but it will be a problem when you previously just recruited a few mercenaries to take care of places occupied by rebels...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To be honest, I'm scared by the mercenary mechanic, which doesn't look friendly at all. Mercenaries are expensive huge blocks of armies that you cannot standardize nor merge with your troops. Additionally, you have to go through a list to find ones that are suited to the region you are in. I like the idea that when you don't have manpower, you can't have an infinite armies, but it will be a problem when you previously just recruited a few mercenaries to take care of places occupied by rebels...

AI can't permamerc any longer either, so expect some interesting opportunities that we haven't seen in years where a large AI is mostly tapped out on manpower.

 

[Bayes]

Manpower mattering is a high point of the update to me, if anything I am worried that you can get around it with manpower buildings.

 

[Arizal]

AI can't permamerc any longer either, so expect some interesting opportunities that we haven't seen in years where a large AI is mostly tapped out on manpower.

I’m certainly not against that! It might make the game more believable if we adjust our way of thinking as well.

I think they could make mercenaries like the loyalty mechanic in Imperator : mercenary armies can be broken down, but they belong to a group that must be paid and have their specific advantages.

 

[Andy_Dandy]

I'm glad if starting manpower haven't been increased. It's the same for everyone - and I don't want to see end game manpowers in the millions. Anyways, (unfortunatly) support limits in provinces are increased so you'll lose less manpower that way now. If it was up to me support limits would have been decreased. Seeing 15.000 swedish troops marching through Jãmtland to Trøndelag is just so emberressing unrealistic and immersive breaking, especially the first 350 years of the game.

 

[Regaccio]

imo, the problem isn't so much that starting manpower is too low or attrition is too high, but rather that early game sieges are too long. Sitting on an OPM's capital for 2 years because the maximum 28% chance decided not to roll in your favor isn't exactly riveting gameplay. Sieges in general are pretty bad and have barely changed on a basic level all the way from EU1 (hell maybe even the board game had dice rolls to take provinces). Things like wall breaching, artillery barrages, assaulting etc. have improved it somewhat, but I hope one day sieges can be thrown out and redone as something more interesting.

 

[Lightwell]

AI can't permamerc any longer either, so expect some interesting opportunities that we haven't seen in years where a large AI is mostly tapped out on manpower.

As someone who loves playing attrition strats, this is a dream come true for me.

 

[Manwe_Sulimo]

To be honest, I'm scared by the mercenary mechanic, which doesn't look friendly at all. Mercenaries are expensive huge blocks of armies that you cannot standardize nor merge with your troops. Additionally, you have to go through a list to find ones that are suited to the region you are in. I like the idea that when you don't have manpower, you can't have an infinite armies, but it will be a problem when you previously just recruited a few mercenaries to take care of places occupied by rebels...

They are not expensive, to the contrary, recruiting them costs the same as your regular army which is a massive reduction (see screenshots in this Dev Diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/euiv-development-diary-25th-of-february-2020.1339919/

There is also a great variety in their size, so no they are not huge blocks of armies, but you can pick the size you need. Yes its less flexible than now obviously but on the other hand its also simpler to execute. I think the list will be quite short especially in the beginning and only be very long when you play say Portugal and are already spread over 5 continents in which case the localty also starts to play a big role.

The single mercenary stack to take back occupied non-fortified provinces is probably indeed one the major losses of the change but I don't think its that big an issue.

Obviously strategies will need to adjust but to me the new system looks friendly enough and definetly more interesting.

 

[Piotrzeci]

A 5 province large country with no autonomy fields far less forces than 5 OPMs. Base manpower and FL are already quite significant and buffing it, would further result in buffing decentralized nations.

 

[Arizal]

@Manwe_Sulimo Ok for the price, I didn't realize they were so cheaper. However, I like standardizing my armies, and I used to make a "mix" of regular infantry, mercenaries infantry and cannons in them. I like that special units will now be buildable in the macrobuilder. It would in principle allow me to integrate them to this mix. However, the mercenary companies are a step back as they remove the previous possibility I had. I don't care if they are variable in size. I just don't want to have an odd formed army in the middle of my stacks. In one of the presentation, I saw that the mercenaries had massively less cannons than I usually pick for my stacks.

Placement is probably not that much an issue, especially if you come to know where your hotspots are, but it's still annoying that there is not really a way to quickly know where the mercenaries can spawn.

 

[Manwe_Sulimo]

Well than keep your regular troops artillery heavy and throw the mercenaries in the mix to bolster the infantry when the war starts- isn't it what you do now?

Edit: I get that it requires some changes in how to organize your armies and so on, but for me the benefits clearly outweigh that.

 

[El_Cid_]

They are not expensive, to the contrary, recruiting them costs the same as your regular army which is a massive reduction (see screenshots in this Dev Diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/euiv-development-diary-25th-of-february-2020.1339919/

There is also a great variety in their size, so no they are not huge blocks of armies, but you can pick the size you need. Yes its less flexible than now obviously but on the other hand its also simpler to execute. I think the list will be quite short especially in the beginning and only be very long when you play say Portugal and are already spread over 5 continents in which case the localty also starts to play a big role.

The single mercenary stack to take back occupied non-fortified provinces is probably indeed one the major losses of the change but I don't think its that big an issue.

Obviously strategies will need to adjust but to me the new system looks friendly enough and definetly more interesting.

The costs seen in that dev diary look out of date compared to the pre-release build.
Have a look at this:

They look pretty expensive to me - but that's not to say it's not nicely balanced. I can see it being something you really need to think hard about.

Some people have been saying it's an instant 5% hit to Professionalism too if you hire a company. Which is a lot considering you'd have to hire >30 merc regiments in 1.29 to lose that much.

 

[Manwe_Sulimo]

Interesting. I agree the numbers in the dev diary appear to be too low in my opinion, those numbers seem to be very high on the other hand. I wonder though if it depends on the number of mercenaries you already hired (like now you get 1 % extra cost per regiment), because apparently he already got hired some already. The 5 % hit to Professionalism seems too much as well. I am looking forward to tommorow Guess then we are all smarter. I am sure there will be a need for some balance changes with all those new features anyways.