EU4 - Development Diary - 26th of March 2019

[Kukumarro]

• We still want them to exist as a way to supplement one's army strength for ducats.
• Province-level recruitment will probably have to go. Reducing click-fatigue while we're at it should be a priority.
• The system should respect geopolitics: Mercs in India should be functionally different from Germanic ones.
• Mercs must be finite to some degree. As an example, a prolonged 30 years war should drain Central Europe of available mercenaries, and said merc units should find themselves no longer able to reinforce.
• Player involvement in the system must be greater than it is today
• Late game multiplayer must be diversified from all out merc-on-merc warfare.
• The system should be robust, feel alive, and enjoyable

I would solve the clicking problem by stop recruiting the mercs by regiments. Instead, they could be recruited as an army (in the same way as the condottieri armies).

Each region could have different merc armies available and draw manpower from a region-based manpower pool. The size (limited at 20 regiments) and number of these armies and the size of the manpower pool would be related to the development of the region, and the composition and tech-level of the armies be based on and cultures and average tech in the region (so a merc army from central asia would be more cavalry focused than a european one). The easiest way would be to have each province contribute manpower and a float number of inf/cav/art regiments to the region, then distribute them in different merc armies.

In this way, a merc army would have a dynamic personality, so in 1500 mexico your would be recruiting armies of mesoamerican spearmen, while in 1600 Italy you would recruit mixed armies of reformed tercios, gallop cavalry and leather cannons.

 

[Blackwhitecavias]

A cost increase will not balance mercs because of the absurd amount of money you can make with production+trade stacking.

Mercs should not only be looked at in a vaccum, but the high income you can get ever since buildings became stackable by not costing MP is also part of the problem and needs fixing, too.

Cost limiting shouldn't be the only measure used to balance, but if there is a finite number of mercs the prices should go up as the merc pool gets smaller.

 

[freegoleet]

I would like to see some kind of mercenary manpower pool that would work like normal manpower. But instead every pool would be tied to something like a region or superregion and be based on the region's total development.

 

[Pellucid]

I would do all of the following:

1. Mercenary armies are hired en masse like Crusader Kings. You cannot hire one mercenary unit.
2. Mercenary armies have their own traditions and bonuses which have no tie to your nation.
3. Mercenary armies come with their own commander. You cannot switch it out or merge them into another army, although you can merge your army to that commander.
4. Mercenary armies are controlled by the AI, functioning as freelance Condottiere. You may give them things you wish them to do using the drop-down menu just as you can with any other ally, but you cannot force them to do it.
5. Different regions have different available mercenaries with different traditions. Italian mercs should be high quality infantry specialists, while steppe mercs should be cavalry specialists, and native American tribes should be low quality infantry-only armies until Europeans appear. You should have the full merc pool available in the region with your capitol, and a limited merc pool from other regions where you have a presence. The mercenary army should appear in that region.
6. The condottiere system should be rolled into the mercenary system; nations should be able to hire out their own armies to the highest bidder if they so desire to serve exactly like any other mercenary in the system. They should lose control of these units when hired, however. Nations like Hesse and Venice might even be given some kind of bonus in this regard.
7. Raise the default manpower recovery speed slightly so that proper management of one's own forces can allow a player to avoid these downsides.

 

[Brainblow]

On the main topic of mercenaries, perhaps some system that for every 1000 manpower in mercs you lose, your pool of available mercs decreases by 1 for, say, ten years, as the reputation of your kingdom is that if you fight there you'll get killed and the number of willing soldiers decreases. You'll last longer than if you are a manpower-only player, but you'll still eventually run out of soldiers to fight for you.

Not a terrible idea. Mercenaries were historically no particularly happy about dying in great numbers. Replacing dead men was a pain, and the profit motive came first before anything. They'd often happily flee or surrender or even turncoat if things were going bad. It was also common for mercenaries to just be let go when taken prisoner.

I would very much like for roads to play a part in the supply game.

Same. Part of why it's so easy to beat Russia in the game and why defensive ideas suck so much is because there's basically no such thing as supply lines.

 

[hab]

First I'd like to commend the development team for requesting input on this topic well in advance of its implementation. It gives you the chance to gather a variety of ideas and fashion a solution. However, I think if you are going to use this chance to make major changes in the game mechanics then you have to make sure to get it right as you probably won't have the opportunity again. As a teacher I often have to stress to my students when working on a complex project to define the problem(s) involved and make sure they know what an acceptable solution would look like.

So far from reading the DD and the forum responses I can see several elements being touched upon.

1. Single Player vs Multi-Player - do you have to have a single solution that works for both? The descriptions seem to suggest that the nature of the problem (and therefore the solution) is different in these scenarios

2. Early vs Late Game - do you want mercenaries to be the same throughout the game? You already have the Ages mechanic to separate the game into different periods with some have different mechanics (Papal Controller commands, Absolutism, etc). Could different mechanics be used for instance to make mercenaries become less common in later stages?

3. Optional vs Required - many players like the Option choices present in other Paradox games (CSII, HOI4, Stellaris) and adding this pre-cursor to a game might allow you to "solve" many other problems in which the players seem to want opposite solutions.

4. Nature of a "Mercenary" - what role is a mercenary to play? Are mercenaries better than regular regiments (with or without drill/professionalism) or are they just hired bodies to throw at a battle? Historically many of the mercenaries were actually more like the game's Condottieri and not elite free-lance fighters for hire. Should Mercenary cavalry or cannons even be an option? Are mercenaries just something to allow rich countries to use their ducats to ignore manpower and attrition? What impact would a mercenary have on the country that hired them other than just their cost - do they increase AE, increase war exhaustion, cause unrest, increase autonomy, decrease diplomatic reputation, etc? Do merc costs (not just the ducats) change? Do mercs reinforce during war or only at peace? Do mercs ever desert or revolt? Do mercs have the same pips as the regular line troops or do they deviate over time (get worse later for instance).

5. What does a solution look like in terms of game play - once implemented how should a successful solution change the nature of the game. Currently you will often seen in the later game rich countries fielding an army of all merc infantry and saving their manpower for their artillery while in the early game they may only be able to temporarily afford a few (if at all) for things like a siege or to take on a bigger opponent . What would that army look like once your solution is put into place.

Respectfully my advice to you is to decide on the parameters you are willing/want to use for a solution and let the players give you feedback that fits within those parameters rather than just asking for unguided brainstorming.

 

[jaybriel1]

You have to change all recruitment system. It is broken and unrealistic. For example:

1. Play European country with fleet force limit of 1 ship! And don't build any!
2. Have only one fresh province (with population of only 1000) in America (does not event have to be a core!).
3. Declare war against Great Britain! Your ports are now blocked!
3. Still, recruit (in this province) as many soldiers as country's manpower, force and mercenaries availability lets you.
4. Conquer whatever you want.
5. Everytime you loose mercs, you can disband a unit and recruit new fresh one without any penality.

So you can 'summon' as many as you want (like a necromancer), not having any ships, with comfort that mercenary availability is infinite. What about supplies, its range? Need for fleets? Etc.
I love EU4 but recruitment is totally broken. It should be about population, its loyalty and than about tech and buildings. Similar to CK2 maybe? PLEASE REPAIR THAT!
Also about military access: Marching army should drain province supplies so it shouldn't be for free! This diplomatic action should cost. That would have and impact on alliances. And every army should have range limit.

Geopolitics and geostrategy fool!

 

[purplephoton]

My thoughts on this:

• We still want them to exist as a way to supplement one's army strength for ducats.

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

• The system should respect geopolitics: Mercs in India should be functionally different from Germanic ones.

Agree with this, but I gotta ask. First, will this lead to the ability of training mercs in occupied territory, and second, how much would the India/Germany merc difference impact things?

Mercs must be finite to some degree. As an example, a prolonged 30 years war should drain Central Europe of available mercenaries, and said merc units should find themselves no longer able to reinforce.

Strongly agree here, though I do agree that the war actually has to last for a while and have many casualties for this to be the case; a small affair on the scale of, say, the Franco-Dutch War shouldn't suddenly make all the mercs in Poland and Hungary disappear.

Player involvement in the system must be greater than it is today

The system should be robust, feel alive, and enjoyable

Yes, please.

the variables involved are plenty and could be adjusted: rising cost of mercs, restricting their availability, perhaps reigning in how easily they adapt to all of your country's military traditions, fostered for centuries, within a few days.

I don't think increasing mercenary costs will change very much unless the current financial system of EU4 is completely changed. Limiting their availability is probably going to have more of an impact, at least late-game.
So one possible solution is to make mercs ignore idea groups and national ideas? That is certainly a very intriguing possibility, and I think it will likely improve the game. It's certainly more elaborate than something like giving all nations a flat -10% merc discipline base, and would make it so that nations with ideas for professionally trained armies would have an incentive to not use mercs (as professionalism is currently not an incentive since even 100% professionalism is pretty much garbage compared to actually having troops).

Once one's economy is in good shape, the go-to for a nation is to flesh out their army mercenary infantry and, should they feel decadent, mercenary artillery and keep that as a permanent solution for all aspects of warfare.

So I actually disagree with some parts, of this, particularly with the mercenary artillery part. Even in the most all-in MP late-game wars that completely drain the manpower pools of both sides, you can easily run four full regular artillery backrow stacks, each suffering 3.3% attrition, as this will only cost you 5280 manpower/month, which is quite easy to regenerate; in SP you'll generally be taking less attrition due to smaller stack size and have no need for mercenary artillery unless your war is going disastrously poorly (and also because in SP you probably won't have any all-out wars late-game). The most mercenary artillery in MP I've ever seen used was like 10-15k to fill the backline in a war where the country started with over 1 million troops and was down to roughly half a million, as in general there is enough manpower to not only avoid merc artillery but to still be able to run some regular infantry, at least as long as one bothers to micro the attrition. Which brings me to...

Late game multiplayer must be diversified from all out merc-on-merc warfare.

Yes, but keep in mind that the merc-on-merc warfare is largely due to inefficiency by players rather than an irremovable part of the game. it's actually quite possible to run a diversified army on a properly built country. The average MP player to survive and prosper but who hasn't really focused on his military too much (will have maybe half his manpower/FL buildings built, devved a bit but not that much...) will probably get to 5k manpower/month by the mid-1700's, which is enough for all the cannons and for a few infantry stacks. On the other hand, a well-built country with edicts, near-full manpower buildings, and that focused specifically on devving mil should be able to get to 10k manpower/month by that time. This is enough to run perhaps a quarter of its infantry as manpower, maybe more, which already diversifies the merc meta considerably. However, you can actually do much better than that, as evidenced by this Prussia in 1703:

In fact, this Prussia started as an OPM Hamburg yet is projected to reach up to 25-30k manpower recovery by 1800 due mostly to developing with sword mana. What's more impressive, though, is that it's not even running away with the game because everybody else is not that far behind due to similar efficiency in how well they have developed with mil mana (and also because of a ban on Prussian ideas).
However, this isn't even the most I've ever seen: a fairly recent Russia was able to reach 20k manpower recovery (potentially as much as 25k if it were to run an advisor and do some other things), and that Russia was able to win a war against a country about 2/3 its size without using a single mercenary. The problem there wasn't a nation having too many mercs, it was the ability to stack development costs (could be partially fixed by nerfing economic to -10% dev cost) - but that's a discussion for another time.

 

[Quasien]

Tie the mercenary pool to religion and only partly to region.

Hear me out here;
- Tieing to region sounds logical, as per the Swedish example during the 30 years war, however in case of the Ottoman-Hungarian struggle the garrisons of the latter were constantly filled with Iberian and German mercenaries due to religious devotion partly.
- This would encourage the player to support their religion's spread even more outside their empire, or side with the big guys whenever possible.
- A lift on this limitation could be available to all through and idea or at least for the British, who can end up with a small Anglican sphere and would hire mercenaries from their colonies anyway irl.
- Devastation or the combined manpower pool of the religion in the given continent could serve as a base to limit the available amount.
- Naturally this would work very well with the 30 year war, nations getting support from their brethren even if they ended up outside of the conflict, which would fit the expansion's theme nicely.

 

[blackchoas]

I mean this was an obviously problematic system for a very long time

would have been nice to hear the actual solutions, rather than suggestions that may lead to solutions, this DD basically has no useful information other than the old Merc system is bad which anyone who has ever went to war against the Ottomans could have told you.

 

[Basileus Basileo]

I definitely think the mercenary system should be reworked. Personally, I rarely use them as they rarely outweigh the cost. A major problem that I see is that in the early to early mid-game mercenaries are simply too expensive. Unless you are England, France, Spain, Holland, and maybe one of the Italian minors, who have access to profitable trade nodes, it is already a struggle to maintain an army of regular soldiers close to your force limit. Once the mid-game is reached quantity ideas is usually enough to make sure that manpower is basically a non-issue. In that case there is no reason to go for a more expensive mercenary army with worse morale than build a normal army. Sure, mercenaries would let you build more armies in the late game, but at that point there is very little point to building more armies (in single player), so you might as well just keep your money and spend it only buildings. The main problem that I see is that currently in single player mercenaries are mostly only good as a last resort while in multiplayer where you will need much larger armies, they are vital. Simply said game balance for multi and single player are very different and I honestly don’t know how they should be reconciled.

 

[Cincinnatus358]

How about old fashioned demand and supply?

When mercenaries are used excessively their price keep increasing including reinforcements. Every region could have their own prices.

 

[purplephoton]

They had over a billion casualties?

I think it would be closer to half a billion but yeah, your point is completely valid.

 

[TheGoldenFluzzleBuff]

Not a terrible idea. Mercenaries were historically no particularly happy about dying in great numbers. Replacing dead men was a pain, and the profit motive came first before anything. They'd often happily flee or surrender or even turncoat if things were going bad. It was also common for mercenaries to just be let go when taken prisoner.



Same. Part of why it's so easy to beat Russia in the game and why defensive ideas suck so much is because there's basically no such thing as supply lines.

I think that a good fix would be to bump up attrition after getting far away from home, unless there is a direct line of occupied or neutral provinces connecting the army to the capital. Alternatively, occupied ports and light ships could also supply armies. It would make navies actually worth while

 

[jrgen3]

I think it would be closer to half a billion but yeah, your point is completely valid.

He said late game, so I assumed late 1700's or early 1800's. The population of earth hit 1 billion around 1804.

 

[Major Malfunction]

Great! Mercs were the cancer of mid-to-late EUIV game

 

[Dmitrius]

This sounds great, but for me, the thing that needs to be introduced into EUIV warfare mechanisms is some sort of notion of supply train, to stop the ludicrous game of "chase the fuck-off stack" around the map. An example of how it could be implemented would be if your army is in a province that is not connected to your capital, through your own provinces, occupations, or transport ships nearby, that army should be taking massive attrition and have a massive speed penalty!

Yeah, tactics in the current system boil down to catching an enemy besieging a fort and humping them. Not that I want that mechanic gone, but deepening the combat mechanics would be very much appreciated.

So far as mercs go, I think the balance should come from how they react to being defeated. Merc regiment should have a chance to disolve after a heavy defeat. That plus a fixed region limit would make regulars a more valuable proposition late game. E.g. I won't use mercs for this as I'll be too far away from home to recruit more should I fail.

Also, please expand eatates and trade companies. They should be subjects more so than fully integrated elements of the empire. The companies especially were powerful entities with their own agendas. Right now the estates can largely be ignored which is a crying shame given the potential to build on internal stability as a core mechanic.

 

[purplephoton]

Mercs were the cancer of mid-to-late EUIV game

More like diarrhea than cancer. They won't kill you and are mostly just an inconvenience, but they're annoying, there's too much of them coming out, and it's disgusting.

 

[Keizaal]

Well, like how you mentioned about 30 years of war depleting region of ablebodied men to work as mercs, could devastation also play a role?
Like, if devastation is low it would increase the amount of availeble mercs, because some people would be now trying to earn a living as a merc. But if that devastation goes on for long enough it wouldn't grant boosts anymore since every able-bodied and willing to work as merc has already joined.

 

[burnhill10]

This sounds great, but for me, the thing that needs to be introduced into EUIV warfare mechanisms is some sort of notion of supply train, to stop the ludicrous game of "chase the fuck-off stack" around the map. An example of how it could be implemented would be if your army is in a province that is not connected to your capital, through your own provinces, occupations, or transport ships nearby, that army should be taking massive attrition and have a massive speed penalty!

This is an good idea, maybe we have to look at the trade too. if you have a nation with a capital over 50 dev and a big nation over 1000 dev . there are a lot of humans to be feed. why is the trade still going away. where there are humans there is trade. Where there are the most humans there is the most trade.

For example, if Hormoz is your capital and you have India Persia middle east and mamluks with the horn of Afrika as border of your nation you chance history so you chance the routes of trade that go with them. I understand that making end trade nodes is little bit OP maybe but when there is a big nation eventually you chance the direction of the trade routes to your own trade nodes.

Trade nodes directions are now fixed BTW