EU4 - Development Diary - 26th of March 2019

[Seaweed and Mayonnaise]

In general, I would like EU4 to better recognise trade offs rather than opportunity costs.

Mercs should reflect the historical trend in this regard. In the early years of EU4s timeframe mercs should be more representative and professional armies less. Towards the end, it should reverse. Why this occurred is up for debate, but some abstraction should be implemented to represent the trade off between using mercs against using professional armies.

Their strengths/weaknesses should be asymmetric not unequal - better/worse depending on situation. Conscription should also be a thing during the age of revolutions - more quantity but less quality.

 

[Bearjuden]

It can be no fun to simply sit on your thumb for manpower to recover for a war you want to fight if you find no other options available to you

I can't help but remark that this dynamic is something the community has been requesting you address for years, without any real solution ever being given, so that kind of makes this your fault, but...sigh. Enough has been said on this topic by all that I won't descend into three paragraphs (or essays) berating you for this just now.

Mercenaries themselves are just an extreme example of how warfare itself has stagnated. Before you can rethink mercenaries, rethink warfare.

You don't have to do it the way I am about to detail, since I realize this is a drastic departure from how it's been in EU4 (less so in CK2; it's Paradox's best game and I cannot for the life of me understand your reluctance to use it for inspiration), but I think this would be really neat and I would like to see it.

1) Mercenaries are made of pre-composed army compositions and allocated by region; when hired they appear in one of your provinces in that region randomly selected (you are barred from hiring them if you do not own anything in that region) and they cannot leave an area encompassed by that region and all adjacent regions.
2) Manpower is distributed on a state basis.
3) Armies reinforce from the manpower of the state around them, at a rate dependent on culture, religion, national cores, war exhaustion, national army modifiers (both DLC and otherwise, so a high discipline army reinforces more slowly as well as an army with whatever that CoC mechanic was), army tradition, and other applicable modifiers.
4) Mercenaries come with their own inherent modifiers for combat - they do not use your own, and they do not change over time, meaning that as the game goes on your army will tend to improve beyond the ability of mercenaries to effectively match them.
5) Unit recruitment costs manpower upfront; mercenary hiring does not, as the mercenaries are assumed to already be in the company. This is already the case but it's good to state it outright, just to be safe. To be clear, however, mercenaries and regulars alike cost manpower to reinforce.
6) Manpower depletion in a state reduces its economic output multiplicatively.
7) Garrisoning a fort in your cored territory costs manpower from the region; garrisoning a fort you conquer and that is not cored costs manpower out of the army that captures it.
8) Adjust the formula to reduce manpower overall, but give the ability to call in your estates, letting their armies come in on your side at the expense of granting them political power. And give them some teeth, for crying out loud. No one likes a choice that isn't a choice, and if the estates are as they are now, then you've no reason not to call them in.
9) Ideally, give us the option of automating our armies a bit: your generals have personality, so let us set broad theaters of war and tasks ("defend forts in this region", "defeat armies in these states", etc) but let the AI general actually execute the strategy (with their exact decisions affected by the type of general they are and how much they've learned). I'm not going to say this should be required by any means, just that I would like the option. It'd be good for multi-continent wars when you can't be bothered to keep an eye on some fronts, as well as good for those who want better roleplaying (since the king can't simultaneously be in India, America and Europe to give tactical commands).

This would be even better if you expanded development out to have actual population and instead of a reduced prosperity bar for recruitment and all you could just show the conscriptable population going down, but it'd be a start.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

Since we're talking mercs, can we also talk condottierri?

Why is a country with a perfectly good coast, rejecting help from a country with a strong navy? It makes even less sense once one considers that military access is obtainable by default. Also even when I have direct military access to their capital, I can't offer them. Why was this system even added to the game if it is only meant to be used with neighbors that aren't rivals?

Also, why not combine the mercenary system and condottierri system into one consistent system? There can be AI companies from which one can recruit to supplement their armies as well as condottierri from existing countries.

 

[Nassau]

Binding the number of available mercs to a nations manpower or force limit makes no sense.

Firstly, if your argument would be about feeding the army, which a small nation couldn't do as easily as a larger one... Armies took most of the food from the land they conquered or occupied.
Secondly, mercs were ideal for the smaller, but richer, nations to throw some punches.
Thirdly, if a nation is rich enough to buy mercs, they should be rich enough to buy anything necessary to support these mercs.

Also, why not have a European manpower pool for mercs, which is affected by the total manpower of all nations. If all are at war, manpower will go down overall, meaning fewer mercs are available as well.

Peaceful nations with loads of idle young men were ideal breeding grounds for mercenaries.

And lastly, soldiers cared a lot about their pay. Whenever a nation goes bankrupt, the soldiers of that nation would be more likely to become mercs. Some as when a rebel army was defeated, being more experienced fighters without a home.. they had no other choice but to become a mercenary.

 

[jman24171]

One of the easiest ways to help make the system more expensive, while at the same time more interactive, would be to allow a type of bidding for mercs. When I think of mercenaries I think of inevitable betrayal because they only work for who gives them the most coin. While this would be hard to implement, an easy (if possibly easy to break and abuse) way would be to allow mercenaries bought and trained to still be available on the open market, for a higher price than their current pay. This way you wouldn't have to flood the market with mercenaries for longer wars to still have them be relevant, and with the back and forth of pricing they would more organically become a bigger resource problem over time. I'm not sure if this should be a player only power, tied to an idea group, or just natural but I think it has merit.

 

[purplephoton]

I think that, if PDX wants to make professional armies more viable late-game to substitute for mercs, there would have to be a major change in how much mercs take away from professionalism.

In 1500 it's "ok I can hire 20 mercs to compensate for lack of manpower; it's gonna cost me 3 professionalism but I can spend 150 mil on generals to not only get it back but also get a nice general out of it"
In 1700 it's "ok I can hire 200 mercs to compensate for lack of manpower, but it's gonna cost me 30 professionalism, and I'll probably have to hire 200 more in the future which will eat the remainder... at this point might as well slacken for manpower, since pretty soon I won't have any professionalism anyway"

The current system would actually be pretty great for balancing (don't want to hire too many mercs late-game since it will eat so much professionalism) except for one thing: troops are way more important than professionalism (think about it: how good is +10% damage and 20% siege ability if you have only half as many troops?), so if you're gonna lose professionalism you might as well get rid of it all, at least you'll get cheaper mercs at lower professionalism.

 

[Swerdtfeger]

Overall the mercs situation requires some more fixes than just a fast fix. In unmodded MP you are going to lose most of the wars if you dont hire your merc cap at the beginning of a war which makes the meta at that point rather stale.
As I suggested on the Lan Party before:

1) You can fix merc problems with simply reducing / limiting their reinforcements. Halving it can already slowly fix it. Even the Lan Party had a big problem with lategame merc spam and most players (me included) were to lazy to develop properly.
2) Make them more expensive. Sweddit uses a cool mod for it
3) Nerf the amount of Mercs avaiable overall. EUBoar (EPP MOD) has a pretty good solution for it.

Mercs are certainly a big problem in EU4 - but there are things that need to be taken into sight if you want to fix them. Defensive advantage and a subpar META build disallows a truly great MP exp without mods. The best solution would be an option in the menu that would make MP and SP modes. This could please both communities.

 

[TRex1983]

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..

The religion aspect is an important one. Crusades? Cant hire mercs (or hire them with a penalty) from a region because of religion. Like those ideas a lot.
This could limit the ability of Ottomans to hire mercs from Christian nations/regions, if for example, The Papal Controller called the Crusades on them. That balances well with the fact that the Ottomans hired some mercs from Greece, the Balkans and Bulgaria (ie Orthodox), but later decided to recruit in their professional army the Christian nations and provinces that were conquered by them (lack of manpower dictated it and they had to train+convert them to Sunni).

On the other hand, the HRE had a professional army after the Peace of Prague and the Treaty of Westphallia full of Hungarians, Croats, Serbs of different faiths fighting or them (amongst other German that were also fighting on the Protestant league side). Obviously they did win the Leagues War in some shape or form (debatable), but havent they not (ie completely lost to Sweden or Denmark or too weakened by France), then I'm not so sure they could hire mercs as easily or hire for their standing army in the following century from other religions (source: For God and For Kaiser, Richard Basset - a good read!).

I saw another post that discussed faith and personal views of Generals. It could have the same implications (revolt, switching sides). What if a Bohemian General from Catholic faith switched to the Protestant League during the 30 years wars with their troops to piss-off the Archd. of Austria? You could see it coming as a player, but maybe that General was a 3 star, and you really needed him for the first couple of years of the war. That also comes to mind another diverging point about mercs and their generals, could we "sell", "send" or "gift" a 3 star general to another nation that liked us or needed it? There's that nice event that pops up from the consort ties, flipping a 3 start General could be another option if the other country had the Military Tradition to support it.

Okay, I did sidetrack alot, but these are also features that need to be implicated in the merc re-work.

The reason I keep coming back to EUIV and have been putting that many hours into it is the historical aspect/events that is somewhat modelled into the game as the time evolves. Otherwise I would be a very un-educated North American about what happen in Europe during that time frame. Thanks Paradox to keep working on this one as you progress on other projects.

 

[purplephoton]

You can fix merc problems with simply reducing / limiting their reinforcements. Halving it can already slowly fix it.

If you mean reinforce speed, then you can just consolidate and re-hire, so this by itself is no good. I am a huge fan of the MP/SP two mode idea though.

 

[PWAAAA]

Will mercs be made more viable for early game? I often find myself only being able to afford enough to the point where they could actually replace my infantry by mid game, and by that point my manpower regen is already high enough to the point where it very very rarely is an issue.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

Consider giving combat bonuses in provinces of a nation's primary culture.

This needs to happen tbh.
Also, this should be a possible modifier for national ideas and such, for those countries which were very cappable at defending themselves from larger, stronger invaders, but not particularly effective in offensive wars of conquest.

 

[Steel_atlas]

Unpopular opinion, remove mercenaries and let conderratti fill that gap.

I honestly think that would fix most of the problems with mercenaries.

 

[Greece stronk]

If you make region-based manpower pools, please don't make it static like a country using the European pool even when it is next to the Asian of African border. I think it'd be much more realistic (and probably enjoyable) if there is something like a "mercenary range".

 

[Rule Britannia]

A potentially cool feature would be if an enemy’s mercenaries could be bought. E.g. you are in a battle with an army that has a contingent of mercenaries in their ranks and you are cash rich but low on troops in this battle. You should be able to bribe the mercenaries to switch side for a large sum of money. This sum should be affected by the mercenaries loyalty to their current employer, which in turn could be linked to length of service and cultural affinity relative to their currrnt employer and you. Thus if an enemy has recently hired a bunch of mercenaries from a culture and religion different from theirs, but closer to yours, then it should be fairly cheap to bribe them to come to your side. However, if the mercenaries have served their employer in many battles over a long time and is of their religion and main culture, it should be extremely expensive to get them to switch sides. Potentially there could be two options, get them to desert (cheaper) or switch sides (more expensive).

You mention something about mercenaries not adopting your national ideas and traditions strait away, which I think would be a great ide. I would suggest making it contingent on length of service modified by affinity (culture and religion, and perhaps your tolerance of other religions and cultures if applicable.

These two features combined would greatly enhance the value of regular troops compared with mercenaries, as they get all of your bonuses strait away and can be depended upon.

 

[Steel_atlas]

All of these complex systems to fix something .

Is that something worth fixing, would the game lose anything positive if mercenaries were just removed?

 

[Ypulse]

first, make combat enjoyable

i do not care about any patch or dlc for eu4, when the reason i stopped playing it, is the war system
eu4 has one of the worst combat/war in any rts game
it is tedious and way to micro heavy for what it is, especially late game in eu 4 is nightmare

(it is a shame imperator rome got the same battles, not gonna buy it for that reason only)

"Province-level recruitment will probably have to go"- this is good, and regular army should work like that too

 

[fr-rein]

The key problem is with armies themselves.

Right now armies are ahistorical - they aren't "standing armies", but rather simplified versions of modern regular armies. Which is fine for a game, but only up to some point.

Point is, armies should become less regular:

• There should be core standing army, always maintained; expensive to keep, thus used as a core unit, but having more powerful units - one of the examples would be Janissaries
• Cavalry and artillery should always be a maintained standing army
• Main bulk of army, infantry essentially, should be ""mobilized"" aka just banded together for a war, having lower military stats and kinda being canon fodder
• This changes over time and by increasing army tradition, doing military reforms and such, you will in the end achieve the modern regular army;
• Thus, manpower bleeds soldiers which are mainly prepared for a war (and should be easier to prepare and maintain); standing army would bleed less, be a core to your troops (artillery and cavalry especially)
• Drilling becomes a way to turn yesterday's peasants recruited into army into good soldiers, being critically important;
• War maintanence is no longer ad sliceable: you maintain standing army fully and bigger mass of recruited army only at war (and not as costly as standing army as they traditionally required less pay)
• Underpaying standing army could result in a palace coup or other revolt

But what about mercenaries?

• Mercenaries become a standing army replacement - temporary hired to boost your core army, like add artillery, to not keep standing army all the time
• Merc system could follow CK2, but with only limit - attaching mercs to certain armies and sending them there instead of spawning in capital
• Condottiere could be integrated into it? Or at least give an option to allow to send some soldiers into merc mode, bringing you income.

Standing armies would change balance. They would empower economically powerful nations that could maintain standing armies, Ottomans and Hordes. However, small nations could still have enough power/coalitions to fight off. And these armies could also be a challenge to stability - like in case with Janissaries. So, perfectly the best way to deal with army would be having plenty of army tradition and other military buffs.
Naturally, corruption could reduce army tradition. Although, I would change corruption first before that.

One could also consider having standing and recruited armies as "mothballing" armies - and it would be a correct thing to do.
Recruiting army for a war wouldn't require to click there. You could make state interface and rally points per state. For example, like historically setting Stambul as a rally point for Ottomans before going to Vienna.

Mercs would definitely benefit from this. They would stop being a cannon fodder (which they weren't) and become a relevant "elite", which is needed to make up for lack of disciplined corps, artillery, add more core to your army so it wouldn't turn around running and so on.

In short, yes, it is closer to retinue and "summonable army" of CK2. But I believe it would make armies way better, as well as make mercs matter.

 

[purplephoton]

Unpopular opinion, remove mercenaries and let conderratti fill that gap.

I honestly think that would fix most of the problems with mercenaries.

Condottieri are extremely unreliable, both in their behavior and in your ability to hire them; in fact, the current system is the way it is because previously the ability to acquire mercenaries was too unpredictable and you're suggesting make it ten times worse than it used to be.

would the game lose anything positive if mercenaries were just removed?

The whole point of mercenaries is that you do not have to wait 15 years in between wars for your manpower to recover, so yes, you would lose a lot of time doing absolutely nothing on speed 5 (and people with bad PC's would likely just quit altogether since this would mean about an hour not doing anything on speed 3).

 

[Steel_atlas]

first, make combat enjoyable

i do not care about any patch or dlc for eu4, when the reason i stopped playing it, is the war system
eu4 has one of the worst combat/war in any rts game
it is tedious and way to micro heavy for what it is, especially late game in eu 4 is nightmare

(it is a shame imperator rome got the same battles, not gonna buy it for that reason only)

"Province-level recruitment will probably have to go"- this is good, and regular army should work like that too

I think they should honestly get rid of individual units and create army templates that would fillup.

And cap the amount of armies a nation can have

 

[Steel_atlas]

Condottieri are extremely unreliable, both in their behavior and in your ability to hire them; in fact, the current system is the way it is because previously the ability to acquire mercenaries was too unpredictable and you're suggesting make it ten times worse than it used to be.



The whole point of mercenaries is that you do not have to wait 15 years in between wars for your manpower to recover, so yes, you would lose a lot of time doing absolutely nothing on speed 5 (and people with bad PC's would likely just quit altogether since this would mean about an hour not doing anything on speed 3).

Just loosen the opinion range to hire them.

They do the job allowing more wars with out the whole 50000 hessians appearing out of the aether in the hinterlands of england