Europa Universalis IV

Sure, the sliders were shit, but at least they forced you to make choices. Right now with the derpy national idea groups you can be a living contradiction, with Quantity and Quality, Offensive and Defensive, Religious and Innovative, all at the same time.

 

The problem with sliders was that they were extremely inflexible as a system. They favoured extremist states and left anything less than that worthless.

The key to understand is that the current national idea system does NOT equate the same as the extreme end of a slider, or any slider for the matter. The sliders have no bearing on the idea group system. The idea groups are supposed to represent a nation's valued focus areas in various things, and thus their advanced capabilities. A nation with Quality and Quantity for example is clearly a lot more militaristic than one without any such. And this represents a much more nuanced view of (in this example) militarism on a national scale, as the country does not make a binary choice picks the course from a large variety of options. Extremism is possibly, and it has much more far-reaching consequences as going all-Military with ideas will hinder your technological and construction progress in that category.

Now, a real problem with the idea group system is how it interacts with religion. Namely, the fact any non-Christian groups will have a dire shortage of missionary strength without Religious idea. It just doesn't really represent things like proselytism now. There's also no way to have a truly multi-religious state, but that's something you shouldn't worry about without Dei Gratia adding minorities.

 

Problem with current system is that nation with Quality and Quantity has way outdated army compared to nation without.

 

Untrue, every single one of my militaristic imperialist states with four or more Military Idea Groups has held the edge in Military tech. Only a moron who tries to make just one thing and one thing only will lag behind... And well, that's generally how it ends up. Sparta collapsed like a little bitch.

 

Well you need to simulate two ideas which will prevent each other. Can a state prefer both quality and quantity, which in context of EUIV means a few but quality equipment and high training, vs a lot of soldiers with equipment which doesn't cost arms and leg to manufacture, yet it's still high end. vs few cheap tanks which will work well against rebels which don't have quality anti-tank weapons.

The above can be solved by having a proper slider and simulating long term effort with respect to army. Quality equipment will not appear overnight, and delays are chronic for US system, which needs to be simulated as well. (Actually US doesn't have a quality equipment, some stuff is from 60 years. It has expensive equipment. Part of that is from theirs overinflation of education and private schools.)

So simulating of military system, which simulation is critical for EU IV, is doable when the system is simulated in somewhat deeper details, and most importantly they put some thought into it, which they don't.

Monarch points are mostly fine. The inflation of the Adviser's cost is bad idea. However because the monarch points represent government, they should slowly rise with competent monarchs, and go down after events and long term ruling of average monarchs. Bad monarchs and bad administration should have bad events from first table, a bad monarchs and great administration should have events from other table.

Bad monarch bad administration - everything went into shitter, but country is ruling itself somehow. Perhaps some mafia boss stopped criminality, because he didn't wanted to be robed every day on street, and used his influence to move someone competent into the government.

I guess you can imagine examples of other combinations yourselves.

 

Yes but if you read what ideas in idea group actually represent you can easily have both quality and quantity. Lets take an idea from quantity "the young can serve". It increases manpower due to lowering of the age of potential recruits. Cant young recruits be excellent soldiers? Of course they can as child soldiers show us.

 

Even those with 50%+ penalties to research?

 

Sure, whatever you say, but no matter how militaristic a state is you just can't make "quantity" and "quality" appear out of thin air. Want a quality army? OK, no problem, no expense involved, no slower recruitment, no stringent entry requirements (ergo less manpower available) -- "quality" soldiers appear out of thin air. Add the quantity idea? Sure, no quality sacrificed, no penalties for having the young and elderly joining the ranks, no reduced morale and/or fighting ability, you just get a huge mass of quality troops. Just like that. This is made worse by the fact that nearly all the groups overlap at some point with similar but slightly different bonuses, so in the end they are all just slightly different kinds of buff that all end up contributing in one way or another to make your armies bigger and stronger. Defensive is, ironically, one of the best ideas for offense.

And having to choose more or less MIL ideas is a moot point, as right now MIL tech idea groups are among the best save exceptions. The only idea groups worth saving in the two other fields are Religious ideas (Economics got nerfed after they allowed anyone to reduce inflation and Innovative is underwhelming -- lol -5%. Espionnage is only really useful for multiplayer) and Diplomatic for coring and claims (Exploration optional). The rest can safely be invested in MIL without missing out on anything much.

 

I agree ideas could use better balance, in big part due to there being much less synergy between Diplomatic (aside from Naval ideas, but only island nations have real use for Naval ideas) and Administrative ideas. Everything in military adds up to one thing, Admin and Diplo just use scattershot buffs.

Where on earth are you going to get +50% in penalties without either overteching or by not being white?

 

You could try to tell to Napoleon, who created the most quality army of his time and then tried to zerg rush Russia with 600k soldiers, that it is living contradiction to create both quality and quantity army. Well there may be a problems with telling him that or anything else. But it isn't a point.
The only sliders, that had any sense, was religious, centralization and serfdom. And I really want to know, where Paradox found free trade in 15 century.
Also you still had a choice. But that choice isn't between quality or quantity, but between quality quantity and any other idea group.

You don't understand the point. There should be cost and consequences for it. But lack the ability to interact with your monarch is bad both from historical and gameplay perspectives.

 

I see your point. But in my opinion, EU4's gameplay is too abstract (in present form at least, expansions to the game's functions with expansions might change that) for increased monarch/advisor interactivity. It'd need a touch of CK2 to its underlying mechanics.

 

I channelled Napoleon's ghost and told him about it, we had a good laugh. Mainly because it isn't true. In fact, Napoleon's armies are a perfect example of quality vs. quantity. The 600,000+ strong Grande Armee that crossed the Niemen in 1812, as a whole, was absolute crap compared to his earlier armies. Lacklustre performance at Borodino, near-disaster at Berezina, and the battle of Leipzig really highlighted the weaknesses of that huge, bloated, dysfunctional and incoherent mess of a multinational force, especially as Reynier's VII Corps Saxons defected to the Coalition during the battle, as did the Württenberg cavalry. With such reluctant and unreliable allied forces, how can you claim that this was a "quality" army?

When did Napoleon have the best-quality army of his time? Easy. When it was small. 1805 -- the Ulm campaign. Capturing 60.000 Austrians at the loss of only 2.000 of his men. The Austerlitz campaign. Now that's quality. Outnumbered 2:1 by the Austians and the Russians, he out-marched, out-manoeuvered and out-fought them at every turn. 1806 -- the battles of Jena and Auerstedt. Auerstedt was particularly brilliant -- Davout, with a single corps, defeated the Prussian main army. Motivated, well-led and effective -- now that was a quality force.

 

Napoleon was more the Offensive idea than anything else. Forced march especially. I'd say:

Defensive + Quality: Britain
Offensive + Quality: France
Defensive + Quantity: Russia
Quality + Quantity: Prussia

 

Even if you eliminate all allies troops from "quality" part, french troops only still greatly outnumbered regular russian army, despite the fact, that Russia had a larger population.
And where you get that 2:1 number for third calition war? Both Russia and Austria army had a smaller armies than French one, and only together outnumbered Napoleon. If it isn't "quantity", then I don't know what quantity means.

 

No. Napoleon had about 270,000 French troops in Russia; the Russian OOB had a first line of defence (175,000 Russians + 15,000 Cossack troops) that could be reinforced by a second line (130,000 Russians and about 8,000 Cossacks), so the the amount of regulars they could draw from was greater. To this we must add about 160,000 militia troops they could draw from, for a grand total of about 500,000.

Because at Austerlitz, the Russians and Austrians did not only have the strength that actually participated in the battle (85,000), they also were expecting more forces underway from Merveldt (a reserve brigade of 4,000 Austrians) and Essen (12,000 Russians from Benningsen's army) that would have brought their strength to over 100,000. It was only Napoleon's decisiveness that prevented them from arriving on time. And keep in mind that they could still muster these forces after the Ulm campaign, which had severely drained the Austrian forces by pretty much destroying general Mack's army.

 

1. You compared all, that Russia could amass against Napoleon, against what Napoleon actually bought into Russia. And he brought hardly half of what he had, since at that point of time he already overextended his own empire. With all that troops placed all over Europe French army would greatly outnumber Russian one. And that with smaller population. So my point still stands.
2. Even after disasterous Russian campaign, Napoleon was able to replenish his losses. That army wasn't equal in quality to his previous one, due to limited time, but amount of his reserves was impressive.

Even with 100k troops Russian-Austrian side wouldn't outnumber French troops in two times. So I still don't know from where you take such numbers.
And there wasn't all Napoleon troops, that managed arrive in time also. So you again compare what Napoleon enemeies could have against what Napoleon actually had.

 

It is estimated that they brought most of those troops to bear, except for garrison troops that were manning fortresses, and they raised more soon afterwards. Keep in mind that the size of the Russian forces grew dramatically after the invasion. During their 1812 recruitment drive, they increased the recruitment rate from 0,8% to 4% and lowered the recruitment age.

Yes, but France had been one of the most demographically dynamic countries during the modern era. If anything, the casualties he suffered wrecked the country by leading it into a long and drawn-out population crisis.

Also, the 1813 recruits were nothing to shout about, and the 1814 Marie-Louises were really scraping the bottom of the barrel. The fact that he promoted entire regiments to Young Guard status doesn't mean they were actually quality troops, as their performance showed.

Davout's III Corps 8,000 troops were far south, in Vienna, so Napoleon's 72,000, at the eve of the battle, were actually more like 64,000, and they only had 139 or so cannons to the enemy's 278. Why did Davout's III corps manage to force march from Vienna to Austerlitz (110 km) in 48 hours whereas the Russian and Austrian reinforcements were unable to? Again, quality.

 

I think "ideas", military and otherwise, were not something semi-permanent, but changed a lot depending on need and ruler/generals skill and whim. Suvorov was Offensive, Kutusov was Defensive, Napoleon was Quality before 1812 and Quantity (Quantity = "draft everyone", not "have big army") after.

 

The point is France under Napoleon used both quality armies and had quantity of troops. So both idea sets. They are not exclusive. If you have time and resources you field great armies, if you dont you field what you have.

 

Or Prussia managing to have both a very large army for its population (quantity) -and- a well-trained and disciplined one (quality).

 

I agree. I think this is also very nicely represented by military tradition in the EU series.

The point about the Prussian army is interesting, because it did have quality and quantity for a while, but it became decadent shortly afterwards. The Prussian army Napoleon faced in the 1806 campaign was a far cry from the army of Frederick the Great.

 

Can't we just go back to discuss which turk is better and why?

 

Does anyone have any impressions or suggestions on my scenario?

 

Fixed.
And no.