EU4 - Development Diary - 26th of March 2019

[Dasmani]

Just one, but it has to be @DDRJake


The system contemplated draws on a different (and at least partly foreign) manpower pool that can also be depleted. If trade value is slightly boosted by the payments for mercenaries, it also routes wealth to other states that have power in the trade node; raising mercenaries in your "home" trade node would reduce, but not eliminate this. There are certainly lots of "secondary effects" to consider, but I think they should all be soluble.


For the (relatively few) situations where "supply trains" were used over long distances, I think the current system with some mechanism for "supply cap sharing" should suffice. In the case of cavalry, for instance, perhaps they could draw on extra supply cap from adjacent provinces that are not occupied by or adjacent to enemy forces or forts? Similarly, perhaps "supply train" units could connect adjacent province caps, and transport ships could link ports in the same way, if assigned to a route? X amount of cap per ship or train unit, maybe?

While I don't disagree with the potential efficacy of these ideas, and they are more realistic in their simulation, I also believe they are more complicated than they need to be from a design standpoint. For the mercenary manpower pool in trade nodes, for instance, we already have a system to recruit special units like Streltsy based on conditions in certain regions which could be used to both differentiate the mercenaries in each region and provide one of the necessary functions of mercenaries, and putting the action to spawn the units on a cooldown with a monarch point cost prevents exploitative use cases just as easily as a separate manpower pool. I like the idea that clicking this would distribute extra money to other nations with power in the node based on their share of power, but I would also like an event that, if a nation who is ahead of time on military tech or has a lot of army tradition uses the mercs, other countries in the node get a tech and tradition bonus from returning soldiers bringing back knowledge.

Since the other primary function of mercenaries is to maintain momentum by replacing manpower with money, the effect of mercenaries can be emulated by letting us buy manpower. For instance, if there were a slider under army maintenance for "Mercenary Contracts" to pay a monthly amount of ducats for additional manpower and manpower recovery based on total trade power/value in all nodes with an active merchant, and then allow a trading policy to increase this in an individual node, which is in essence trading the trade power from maximize profits for extra manpower (which is similar to the proposed system) and it also requires actually having an envoy present in the region to negotiate mercenary contracts (something I very much like), and gives merchant republics a small early game advantage in using mercenaries, since they have more merchants to place.

How I would imagine it is that that trade value of the node would determine how much manpower it sends out each month, and that would be distributed to countries with an active merchant based on trade power multiplied by the mercenary contract slider, so at 50% slider you use half your trade power to calculate how much you get. I think this would add a lot of strategic depth. For instance, if you were Venice and you saw the Ottomans attack the Mamelukes, you could move your merchants to starve the Ottoman manpower.

As for the supply trains, we currently have a system that allows an army to "project" a zone of rebel suppression that reduces unrest, so it shouldn't be too difficult to allow an army/navy to "project" a zone that reduces attrition/raises supply limit and raises reinforce rates, and if cavalry could get a bonus to these two actions, and got their increased movement speed back, it would be worth keeping a few cavalry support armies that could reinforce key battles if needed. The attrition cap would need to be much higher though, and the AI would need to learn how it works.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

I suggested these in @Florryworry_ stream and everyone, including Florry, were like:

What was his reasoning?

 

[BlackPrince]

What was his reasoning?

I suggested that it's slightly unrealistic to hire 30k mercs from a single 3dev province in Tibet and I said that it should be changed, but it would simply make him impossible to play as he currently does, where he abuses the merc system to the limits.

 

[Stepkick]

With all due respect. This game fails to address the main trait of mercenary infantry. They are unreliable. They are sell swords. End of the day they have no loyalty. Mercenaries seldom fight for the losing side, they are opportunists looking to make a quick fortune through plunder.

Here are somethings I think should be included to mercenaries. Perhaps this community can help me out as well.

1. Mercenaries should be easily available to stronger nations, Mercenaries should be harder to get when losing a war. After all, they seldom side with losers.
2. Espionage Ideas can receive a buff in which a country is able to turn Mercenaries against they paymasters, cause there have been many instances in which Mercenaries have flipped sides and back stabbed those that employed them. This makes a standing army more reliable more loyal, easier to control and less volatile in nature. Perhaps swayed mercenaries can turn into rebels, that appear friendly to the nation that swayed them, kind of like local rebels who turn on their master, when an invader arrives.
3. Mercenaries should be finite, and the region should have Mercenary manpower pool that all countries share. Of course the biggest bidder wins the band of mercs or in the case of EU4 the regiment of mercenaries.
4. Fighting with mercenaries requires you to grant some of your war reparations and ducats from wars to them. Failing to do so will cause them to rebel against you, and will make hiring future mercenaries further difficult as your reputation for not holding up your end of the bargain will precede you. This leaves the player with less warscore to take more land. With a standing army you are paying them a fixed salary, it is their job and they are also interested in the benefit of the nation, therefore, you can spend more warscore on grabbing land for the glory of the country without upsetting them for not sharing plunder, as much as you would mercenaries. Again this is an indirect nerf to mercenaries as it indirectly adds a province warscore malus.
5. Mercenaries retreat from the main force during a battle they are losing. Making it easier for the enemy to crush your standing army. This should create the aversion towards relying on mercenaries too much. Again mercenaries do not fight to the death, they are opportunist who tuck tail and run at the first sight of defeat. They aren't so easily exploitable on suicide missions, and the more men they commit to your cause the more money they want. Sell sword mentality
6 Standing armies should outshine mercenaries on the field of battle during the latter stages of the game. And manpower should be plenty in the late game, because the world was getting more militarized towards the end of the game, and also the world was shifting from a habit of relying on the unreliable and providing for their own loyal soldiers. Soldiers should be more expensive at this point of time of the game but much more superior to mercenaries. Also it would be nice to have the ability to hire local regiments like the British did with the Indian Sikh regiments, Gurkhas, Sepoys etc. and let them have special bonuses to unrest reduction, in the region they hail from. Using the natives to reel in the unruly natives, while preserving your own manpower for combat elsewhere in the world.
7. Last but not least, you should be able to control the armies of your vassals, especially if they are a march. The English used the Irish to fight the Scots, they used Hannoverians (is that right?), Indians, Australians, Kiwis to fight their wars.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Ruian]

With all due respect. This game fails to address the main trait of mercenary infantry. They are unreliable. They are sell swords. End of the day they have no loyalty. Mercenaries seldom fight for the losing side, they are opportunists looking to make a quick fortune through plunder.

Here are somethings I think should be included to mercenaries. Perhaps this community can help me out as well.

1. Mercenaries should be easily available to stronger nations, Mercenaries should be harder to get when losing a war. After all, they seldom side with losers.
2. Espionage Ideas can receive a buff in which a country is able to turn Mercenaries against they paymasters, cause there have been many instances in which Mercenaries have flipped sides and back stabbed those that employed them. This makes a standing army more reliable more loyal, easier to control and less volatile in nature. Perhaps swayed mercenaries can turn into rebels, that appear friendly to the nation that swayed them, kind of like local rebels who turn on their master, when an invader arrives.
3. Mercenaries should be finite, and the region should have Mercenary manpower pool that all countries share. Of course the biggest bidder wins the band of mercs or in the case of EU4 the regiment of mercenaries.
4. Fighting with mercenaries requires you to grant some of your war reparations and ducats from wars to them. Failing to do so will cause them to rebel against you, and will make hiring future mercenaries further difficult as your reputation for not holding up your end of the bargain will precede you. This leaves the player with less warscore to take more land. With a standing army you are paying them a fixed salary, it is their job and they are also interested in the benefit of the nation, therefore, you can spend more warscore on grabbing land for the glory of the country without upsetting them for not sharing plunder, as much as you would mercenaries. Again this is an indirect nerf to mercenaries as it indirectly adds a province warscore malus.
5. Mercenaries retreat from the main force during a battle they are losing. Making it easier for the enemy to crush your standing army. This should create the aversion towards relying on mercenaries too much. Again mercenaries do not fight to the death, they are opportunist who tuck tail and run at the first sight of defeat. They aren't so easily exploitable on suicide missions, and the more men they commit to your cause the more money they want. Sell sword mentality
6 Standing armies should outshine mercenaries on the field of battle during the latter stages of the game. And manpower should be plenty in the late game, because the world was getting more militarized towards the end of the game, and also the world was shifting from a habit of relying on the unreliable and providing for their own loyal soldiers. Soldiers should be more expensive at this point of time of the game but much more superior to mercenaries. Also it would be nice to have the ability to hire local regiments like the British did with the Indian Sikh regiments, Gurkhas, Sepoys etc. and let them have special bonuses to unrest reduction, in the region they hail from. Using the natives to reel in the unruly natives, while preserving your own manpower for combat elsewhere in the world.
7. Last but not least, you should be able to control the armies of your vassals, especially if they are a march. The English used the Irish to fight the Scots, they used Hannoverians (is that right?), Indians, Australians, Kiwis to fight their wars.

What are your thoughts?

Are you not already paying mercenaries an obscene amount of money to use them? Why would anyone ever use mercenaries after 1500 if those were the rules? The early game and the late game are the best times for mercenaries. You need to win your first few wars without running out of manpower and at the end you need to conduct many wars without running out of manpower. The problem with mercenaries is manpower is awful. I don't really want to take 10 loans to use 3 mercenaries in 1446 but what choice do I have? 10k manpower is gone in a flash and recovers very slowly.

Sure, you could reduce their availability. I would be more than fine with that if manpower weren't horribly broken. Then your AI Ottomans or Ming can lay down after you defeat them in a few battles. The war is over any way if you can defeat them in 1 or 2 battles.

 

[Ruian]

The AI is as broken as it can possibly be and that should be the main priority for devs to fix. Bohemia declares this war against Brandy and I get called in defensively along with Austria. They promptly march through Poland and Muscovy to go all the way up to Norway while Austro-Hungarians 100% siege them down along with their ally Nuremburg who has decided trying to siege me is a better idea. Brandy goes to siege down Brunswick while they follow suit up to Scandinavia. I mean what is the strategy here? If Norway is played by an AI they could siege them down and peace out Norway. Ok. Then what? They are going to be 100%'d by the time they make it back to Germany.

 

[rimworld inbox]

What was his reasoning?

well, we actually play the game, for one

In general, I've observed that people that don't play / rarely have an impressive ability to theorycraft gigantic solutions that don't really work and introduce more problems than they solve.

for a concrete example:

The primary issue with regionally differentiated mercs is that you must create meaningful choices with them. If the differences are too small, the mechanic is pointless, too large, the mechanic creates false choices.

(Another option is to make questionably balanced weird stuff that allows you to play the game in super different ways. It's why pirate republics despite being a meme were imo some of the strongest features released in modern eu4.)

This isn't easy, and requires the correct knowledge and feedback. But primarily balance is done right now based on forum consensus (aka pls nerf ottoman) and lower level multiplayer games, and it shows, since current dev statements about the game do not bear much resemblance to reality. GIGO

Lets use dharma as an example, which introduced a set of no brainer govt reform choices ('hi would you like some advisor cost reduction or 5 discipline man this is real tough'), an infinite monarch point engine due to desire for variety for varieties sake, simplified all conquest strategies to target literally the same 5 superregions each game, etc etc.

So - I can't wait for the 'choice' of hiring 7/5/0 swedestacks because the AI decides building cav with 20 ICA trad is A+ idea.

Adding complexity without accounting for their interactions with other systems is like interior decorating with gasoline

 

[onlybradparker]

The primary issue with regionally differentiated mercs is that you must create meaningful choices with them. If the differences are too small, the mechanic is pointless, too large, the mechanic creates false choices.

This made me think and want to expand even further on my long post from a few pages back.

Basically I suggested that there should be a militia system to complement the mercenary system. The exclusion of militia is ahistorical, as is being able to hire mercenaries from your own provinces (the link I included in my other post explains how mercenaries are neither residents or citizens of the country hiring them).

Why is that relevant to your comment here? Well, if a system whereby militia are hired in home provinces and mercenaries are hired from foreign provinces is implemented, it would give the player the ability to make that meaningful choice.

How would it provide meaningful choice? Well, if those mercs are hired from a Prussian province, they could come with Prussian discipline and morale. If they come from French provinces then they could have French discipline and morale. Prussia or France respectively would receive a percentage of the cost you paid to hire them. Likewise, if people hire your mercenaries, you'd receive income from that. You should only be allowed to hire mercs from countries you have good relations with.

Now, if you're playing as Austria, do you want to hire mercs from Prussia or France knowing that you're going to be giving them an income boost? Or do you want to hire mercs from a OPM knowing that they're not likely to be a threat? If you spend 4,000 ducats on French mercs and the French crown gets 25% of that then the French get a 1,000 ducat boost from you. If whoever you're fighting is doing the same, then suddenly France is absolutely rolling in money that could come back to bite Austria in the ass later. Neutral countries could essentially profit from other countries' wars... just like they should.

Additionally, as I said in my earlier post, a choice between militia and mercs would open up lots of options regarding the Ideas system. The player and AI could choose to invest in militia ideas which would benefit their own defence, or in mercenary ideas (i.e. ideas that make your mercs more appealing to hire) that would benefit them economically.

 

[Abnormalmind]

Ming's military was predominantly a mercenary force in the late 16th century and onward. Late Ming used lots of Mongols, too.

 

[Ruian]

How would it provide meaningful choice? Well, if those mercs are hired from a Prussian province, they could come with Prussian discipline and morale. If they come from French provinces then they could have French discipline and morale.

I like just this part. It could add strategic depth to where mercs are hired which could be useful. If something like this were done I would think it needs to be done in a sieged down province from that country. i.e. Prussia must exist, you must be at war with them, and you must have one of the provinces occupied to hire from. It could be a specific reason to attack them. That is a good thing, it gives the player choices. It could also be a huge factor in hiring merc cav from horde provinces as merc cav and artillery are currently useless. If you could hire Manchu banners it would be amazing.

All the cost increases/merc loyalty/other country getting money stuff is needless (and I'm not sure which if any of those you suggested). If anything they should take a penalty for you sieging them and taking their mercs, that could help out players that struggle against AI Ottomans just spamming mercs. If you hire all their mercs they can't hire more.

The questions become, 1) can the AI be taught to take advantage of this system, 2) how will the game handle such a system?

Each culture group has some arbitrary pool value, and then each country within said culture group has possible merc units sub-divided out? It sounds resource hungry but I don't know a lick about game programming.

The problem with this system: mercs become even more powerful than they are now. The solution (my opinion): fix manpower. Mercs are expensive, people might only use them if they are Prussian/French, etc if they have a choice (the manpower).

 

[dowzy]

I think it would be nie to have a system for buy and sell regular manpower from and to other nations.
so if you run out of manpower and you fulfill certain requirements you can keep the war going.
for example, the nation you want to buy manpower from needs to be friendly, have min. over 80% of its manpower and the ruler must be administrator or something like that.

 

[Balesir]

While I don't disagree with the potential efficacy of these ideas, and they are more realistic in their simulation, I also believe they are more complicated than they need to be from a design standpoint. For the mercenary manpower pool in trade nodes, for instance, we already have a system to recruit special units like Streltsy based on conditions in certain regions which could be used to both differentiate the mercenaries in each region and provide one of the necessary functions of mercenaries, and putting the action to spawn the units on a cooldown with a monarch point cost prevents exploitative use cases just as easily as a separate manpower pool.

You can call it 'manpower pool' or 'merc unit pool' or whatever - the point is that there needs to be some tracking of availability, I think, for these reasons:

1) It's a shared resource. If one state hires the mercs, they aren't available to anyone else. (There is a slight issue here in that the AI would need to be taught how to exploit it).

2) The resource should change with time and events. In order to be most interesting, choices and conditions should change the pool size. Nearby wars should increase the mercenary availability; peacetime should deplete it. You could almost say that the mercenary pool should work almost opposite to the country ones: it has a "manpower minimum" that it replenishes to if it drops too low, but disbandments and casualties nearby should feed it above this "cap" and it should then decay to the cap over time.

3) The resource should maybe accrue some other traits that come and go as it changes - see below.

There is a general issue with manpower at present that mercenaries are providing a sticking plaster for. This really needs to be addressed at the same time. It might work to leave battle casualties as they are now, but have some (even most - 60% would mirror history fairly well) casualties return as manpower. This would make battle losses a transitory problem, unless your army is cut off from reinforcements (for which, see the stuff on "supply lines" and "lines of communication").

I like the idea that clicking this would distribute extra money to other nations with power in the node based on their share of power, but I would also like an event that, if a nation who is ahead of time on military tech or has a lot of army tradition uses the mercs, other countries in the node get a tech and tradition bonus from returning soldiers bringing back knowledge.

Maybe not transfers of ideas (although that would be possibly good, too), but mercenaries in a node pick up bonuses from those that hire them for a time (decaying as the pool resource is lost/replenishes). This could make mercenaries from specific nodes particularly attractive to hire, since they have nice bonuses; it also gives some disincentive for particularly advanced states to hire mercenaries, since that will give others access to their bonuses by proxy.

Since the other primary function of mercenaries is to maintain momentum by replacing manpower with money, the effect of mercenaries can be emulated by letting us buy manpower. For instance, if there were a slider under army maintenance for "Mercenary Contracts" to pay a monthly amount of ducats for additional manpower and manpower recovery based on total trade power/value in all nodes with an active merchant, and then allow a trading policy to increase this in an individual node, which is in essence trading the trade power from maximize profits for extra manpower (which is similar to the proposed system) and it also requires actually having an envoy present in the region to negotiate mercenary contracts (something I very much like), and gives merchant republics a small early game advantage in using mercenaries, since they have more merchants to place.

The idea of a separate merchant focus that routes some mercenary MP to you is an excellent one - and much simpler than cross-pool transfers, etc. You get extra cash from the trade or boosted manpower proportional to the merc pool - nice. Hired mercenaries might still boost the trade value in the node, so some of the wealth circulates to potential enemies - an important downside of mercenary hires.

How I would imagine it is that that trade value of the node would determine how much manpower it sends out each month, and that would be distributed to countries with an active merchant based on trade power multiplied by the mercenary contract slider, so at 50% slider you use half your trade power to calculate how much you get. I think this would add a lot of strategic depth. For instance, if you were Venice and you saw the Ottomans attack the Mamelukes, you could move your merchants to starve the Ottoman manpower.

I don't like the idea of a slider, much (sorry). Seems like too micromanagey. Just a merchant focus for extra MP instead of "maximise profit". The amount of manpower I think should be linked to the current pool size - with the "cap" and replacement rate affected by total trade power in the node.

On the topic of pools/caps - there are already manpower caps and running totals for every state in the game, and data for the trade nodes, too. I don't really think adding caps and pools to the trade nodes is going to add too much load/complexity. If you like, the "mercenary pool" number that is shown on the trade node window could be divided by 1000 (to show "regiments" rather than "men").

As for the supply trains, we currently have a system that allows an army to "project" a zone of rebel suppression that reduces unrest, so it shouldn't be too difficult to allow an army/navy to "project" a zone that reduces attrition/raises supply limit and raises reinforce rates, and if cavalry could get a bonus to these two actions, and got their increased movement speed back, it would be worth keeping a few cavalry support armies that could reinforce key battles if needed. The attrition cap would need to be much higher though, and the AI would need to learn how it works.

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I have in mind (although cavalry being used as supply train strikes me as a bit of a waste). Maybe supply train has the power to "project" supply cap from its current location into adjacent provinces, while cavalry can "borrow" supply cap from adjacent provinces? Forts and depots count as trains - in fact, maybe just give them the ability to project supply cap and you won't need trains at all? A depot with line of communication could do the job? Transport ships able to share cap by sea would be nice (and give targets to attack/defend in naval war).

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

But primarily balance is done right now based on forum consensus (aka pls nerf ottoman) and lower level multiplayer games, and it shows, since current dev statements about the game do not bear much resemblance to reality. GIGO

That is my opinion too. The game and the AI are going to end up FUBAR if they touch the mercenary system without actually solving the issues that force players and AI to use them so much. In order to fix those issues they would have to really understand the game but unfortunately over the recent patches they´ve shown they don’t. Needless to say that I am extremely sceptic.

 

[lolada]

Regional mercenaries? So there are some limited # in pool - i go take loans buy them all and screw everyone in region because they can't buy it anymore making the game even easier? Nation that want to start war buy mecernaries and go to war, gg. That or you need super smart system to somehow stop all mercenaries joining one country, mercenary loyalty eegh.

My real concern is that almost every feature makes game easier or more annoying due to AI inability to use it properly. Take charter companies.. as players its super op for expanding. AI just abuse it to spam guarantees and join useless distant wars.
Governments - player picks strongest reforms easily.. AI picks dumb choices intentionally.
Absolutism? Super op for player - AI has no idea what absolutism is. There's plenty more list goes on and on.

 

[I like wars and maps]

I would be happy about this announcement if it was said before patch 1.24 but with the current EU4 dev team we have I can already tell how this will end up. The devs will balance Mercs primarily around multiplayer since that is the only place where they even bother playing EU4 nowadays. Singeplayer will obviously suffer from it and it will lead to certain playstyles becoming less viable or even unplayable. Then we wait for 2 patches for the devs to create a band-aid solution wich doesn´t fix anything.
I just hope that the Merc rework won´t lead to silly results like the Ottomans buying all of the aviable mercs and you not being able to do anything against that.

 

[hdhhshdsh<s]

Make mercenaries into unique bands/armies instead;
Bands rise and grow in areas with military conflict
The more war, the more bands
Bands roam the map when not hired
Bands can only be hired by one nation at a time
Once a band is hired other nations can still bid on them, opening up for backstabbing
Bands do not travel too far from their last area of contract and less likely the further away from their country/area of origin
Bands cannot be split up
Bands will be AI controlled but can be given directions in a similar manner to how vassals can
Bands might reject orders or flee more easily because of low moral
Bands will have to be continually paid and will take loot during battles
Bands will cause devastation/unrest and ravage one's own land as well
Once a contract end with a country, the band might still roam the country causing devastation
Bands makes demands based on their power in relation to the power of the country
Bands will have leaders
Bands will grow in experience and size according to how often they are in combat
Mercenaries or would-be mercenaries flock to bands which either is famous or not taking too much damage
A band which is annihilated or suffers large amounts of casualties will be impossible to replenish without it being very famous (Mercenaries want gold not death)

 

[Mangraz]

Province-level recruitment will probably have to go. Reducing click-fatigue while we're at it should be a priority

Sounds a lot like you recruit mercs in CK2. It works pretty well there, even though the game's UI is simply horrible.

 

[chaserockstar]

The mercenary system in my opinion should follow history more accurately. Perhaps make a system that slowly evolves. Make mercenaries more crucial in the early to mid-game as they were historically and then make it where states are forming huge non-mercenary armies by the Enlightenment. This was historically the case in Europe as most European armies heavily relied on mercenaries during the vast majority of the game’s period. This is currently not represented in the game.

 

[Ruian]

The mercenary system in my opinion should follow history more accurately. Perhaps make a system that slowly evolves. Make mercenaries more crucial in the early to mid-game as they were historically and then make it where states are forming huge non-mercenary armies by the Enlightenment. This was historically the case in Europe as most European armies heavily relied on mercenaries during the vast majority of the game’s period. This is currently not represented in the game.

Problem is mercs are already important in the early game. If you aren't an unstoppable force by 1600 you aren't trying. At that point mercs are more of a convenience to not drive yourself crazy micromanaging manpower. By the time 1700 rolls around I don't even watch my giant deathstacks move, I just click a fort and move to the next army as I'm conducting 3+ wars simultaneously.

 

[lolada]

Something also needs to be done with attrition, forts and manpower recovery, lets just not focus on mercs. Mercs are doing fine, but they are overused because manpower is crap.

Its imbalanced to have manpower pool of 10k men and 10k army - which means when your army dies you are totally out of luck when you rebuild - zero manpower. And recovery is balanced in a way that you need 10k to fill the manpower pool? Meanwhile in hard wars its easily possible to lose 3-10x more units than your manpower pool total is.

So here you have several problems:

1. too low manpower pool
2. too big force limit compared to manpower pool
3. slow manpower recovery
4. high battle casualties
5. attrition is real killer on forts - forts take too many many to siege and they are too random.. can take a month to 3 years to take them down

The way i see this:
- manpower pool needs to be somehow in relation with force limits.. proportional
- manpower pool needs huge buffs.. in total # and recovery speed
- battles need to be less bloody - % of war casualties to return to manpower pool when war ends (or to have significantly increased recovery after war end, like revanchism)
- forts need huge nerf in # of men needed to hold siege; remove such big randomness from forts rng

Then we can talk how to change mercenaries to complement this system.