Europa Universalis IV

As long as the AI does not make Castile-Moscovy alliances in 1410, I'll be set

 

what's wrong with a 1410 castile-muscovy alliance?

 

It ruins my immershun as a scheming archbishop of Novgorod having 10k squid-eaters on my back porch

 

Combat changes sound awesome to me. Shatter + Disorganise basically removes ping-pong, and mirrors real life combat in the sense that you couldn't pack up the day after a pitched battle then chase them down to press your marginal numerical advantage 10 times over. It does depend on siege times, though - I can imagine a situation where you win a decisive battle, it takes them 2-3 months to retreat 3 provinces then return, but that still wasn't enough for you to win a siege, so you have to fight them off again, etc., and you can't really chase after them. I suppose that also mirrors real life better, but just hoping it doesn't create a different form of ping-pong.

Slower, costly reinforcement & lower manpower also makes a big difference, and it's something a lot of EU2/3 mods have been doing to good effect.

Really looking forward to this.

 

Game starts in 1444 so I guess we can safely say that an 1410 castille-muscovy alliance is out of the question.

 

I don't think I've used mercenaries once in EUII or III. This stands sharply in contrast to CKII where they're very useful and often even vital until your kingdom reaches a large size.

 

I hope we don't have sieges that last years anymore. UK can pack up their regiments in the homeland and get all the way to australia before a siege is over.

With the beta's heavy manpower nerf they can be useful for small nations or nations that need manpower fast.

 

sieges actually could last years.

 

I only used them in vanilla EU3 to soften up enemy armies or keep them down until my main forces arrived.

They were only useful for gamey shit like that.

 

Yes, but in EU3 every siege lasts years unless you are heavy on your defensive sliders and your enemy isn't.

 

what about bringing numbers and assaulting? never tried that?

 

Lv 4 Fort and beyond that means tens of thousands dead over nothing until the walls are breached.

 

I like to LARP as a enlightened monarch so I loathe grinding the seeds of the Kingdom for a few months of peace.

What if the would-be level 5 philosopher dies in a ill-concieved plot? I wouldnt be able to live with myself

 

Now you are fighting a country with 20 provinces. You still need to siege 19, and they still take years.

And yeah, anything beyond lvl 2 forts is useless to assault. Not that I've ever even played the game long enough to see lvl 2 forts.

 

Fuck that. One does not deal with the Sranc, one kills the Sranc.
Be like the Nansur Emperors, slaughter everything including your own legions. Their blood will pave the way for glory and prosperity.

 

Fuck that. One does not deal with the Sranc, one kills the Sranc.
Be like the Nansur Emperors, slaughter everything including your own legions. Their blood will pave the way for glory and prosperity.

 

How many level 4+ forts were there on the field in EU3? I don't recall it being a common occurance, although they certainly were difficult to capture when you did come across them.

 

In before expansion extending start date to 1400 something to please byzfags.

 

Level 4 is the inevitable standard fort in the civilized world around the period when Imperialism CBs start being thrown about. Lv 5 and Lv 6 are the exceptions that the last expansion had as the province speciality building you could pick.

 

They cant expand the timeline in the other way since it goes into the revolutionary era and that means huge armies and events that cant be feasibly represented in the same game as renaissance. So yes, most likely target for expansion is 1356 or sometime after.

 

I've never played long enough to see level four forts, so I cannot say that I've had bad experiences with them. Perhaps this is why I think they're perfectly dandy, in any case I do not appreciate the arguments levied against them.

Their inclusion is necessitated by gameplay concerns. Without forts and their obligatory lengthy sieges the game would be unbalanced in all sorts of ways. The player could abuse the AI, by distracting it with one half of his army while running around with the rest, capturing all of it's regions with ease. The AI's wars against itself would become chaotic flashes, as one country would simply overpower the other and proceed to dismantle it in a narrow space of time. This is just speculation, but undoubtedly the designers found good reason for designing the siege mechanics the way they did.

 

Other way around. When Castille fights France and loses, it's army loses in the first 5 months. Then for the next several years it's forts are sieged, it's war exhaustion is maxed out, it's getting no income, and it's stability goes to negative 3. Nearly a decade after the war was really lost Castille finally capitulates and gives France one province. It then takes another half decade of zero income and revolts everywhere to recover to the point where it can actually do something.

The AI was already fixed in recent patches not to let you put 1 man on all their forts while they siege one province with their whole army. The AI pulls their army back and wipes you out as soon as it sees you doing that. And in any case, Paradox hasn't exactly proven themselves to be masters of balancing the game, so let's not waste ourselves on appeals to authority here.

A good idea might be to reduce the siege time as war exhaustion accrues. 20+ exhaustion should practically give up as soon as your army arrives.

 

In your example, is the fault not with the warscore system rather than the siege system? Regardless of how sieges are handled, the issue seems to be that Castille will continue to fight, at major expense, despite having no hope of victory.

I like the war exhaustion idea though. I forget whether it already has an effect on morale, but if it doesn't then it should.

 

Giving much warscore directly for fighting just makes it easier for players to DoW on day 1, attack on day 2, declare a win a month later when the fight is over. One of the CK2 mods (CK2+ I think) makes it so you can gain significant warscore winning battles, and it turns it into a laughing stock as an unprepared AI will lose at the drop of a hat.

War exhaustion affecting morale would be a bad mechanic since it would turn the first battle into a snowball victory. Morale is too important to leave it at the mercy of such a volatile thing as war exhaustion. In any case, I see it as the civilian populace getting pissed at the war, not the soldiers losing morale.

 

It all depends whether we prefer realism to better balanced gameplay. Having high war exhaustion should have a minor effect on the morale of your troops, but an even higher effect on your available manpower, as people would be unwilling to serve in the military forces when they view the war as a meat-grinder. Forcing recruitment, a possible choice, should lower your stability/piss the people off and result in mutinies but guarantee a new supply of available troops.
And, of course, that's where mercenaries also come in.

On the other hand, the main problem would continue to be the A.I. Paradox are famously incompetent at having a good A.I. in any of their games. Sadly, I don't think this will change.