Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 25th of January 2022

[Dunderscore]

What about removing backrow morale damage, or at least tie it to casualties ratio instead of morale damage?

for the third time this would make battles last forever

 

[Xary Moft]

also changing daily morale dmg to apply to deployed units but NOT reserves would lead to doomstacking. its applied to reserves specifically for that reason. if they change daily morale hits to not apply to reserves but keep in this boneheaded plan to allow cannons to retreat itd certainly cut down on the micro by eliminating it entirely. youd just have 1 giant army swinging around the map with no reinforcement timing necessary

You know, in other games you prevent doomstacking by using attrition. A mechanic that actually makes sense. I played a mod that removes the moral damage on reserves and you don't use doomstacking. The attrition cap was moved from the irrelevant 5% to 25%, sources of attrition were also increased. Manpower is also rarer. Doomstacking is really bad.
We don't need to keep that mechanic to prevent "doomstacking" when there's a more effective tool for that. A mechanic that should be way more relevant than currently is. I would even encourage to make bigger armies slower than smaller ones.
Needles to say that moral damage on reserves not only is unnecessary at preventing doomstacking it also creates the reinforce meta, a unitencional meta that gives us the gameplay loop of constantly reinforcing 1 battle forever. It doesn't make sense and the AI was never design to handle (and should not be) to time reinforcements into battle. Reserves in battle were made for a reason and yet we are encouraged to avoid using them.

 

[grommile]

Finnish, Sami, Estonians and Karelians making their own group, maybe with hungarians (it's to hard to be in their own, i know)

While putting Finns, Sami, Karelians, Estonians, and Permians in one group may make sense, my gut feeling is that throwing the Hungarians in with them probably doesn't make sense.

Culturally, the Hungarians of the 15th century were probably a lot further from the taiga- and tundra-dwelling peoples of their language family than they were from the peoples living near the Pannonian basin.

Game-mechanically, being so far from anyone else in your culture group, and those cultures being small to boot, is practically indistinguishable from not having anyone else in your culture group in the first place.

 

[gigau]

Finnish, Sami, Estonians and Karelians making their own group, maybe with hungarians (it's to hard to be in their own, i know),

Culture is not limited to language... especially in game terms, it's how people of a culture accept another one. For example, if you have Transylvanian Saxons in the game, they are Germans, but i'd put them in the same group as Hungarians, despite the language barrier.

Hungarian, despite language proximity, should not be in the Finnish/Karelian group, in my opinion.

 

[Eolath]

I would love to see a culture re-map, like making historical borders (Greeks in Anatolia in 1444 for example)

You should probably roll back to the launch version then Many of the culture changes, like removing the Greeks from Anatolia, were made to promote game balance. EU4 is a history simulator second and a game primarily. The current culture system isn't great but overhauling it will have to wait until EU5 I suspect.

It was considered too easy to cripple the Ottomans in the earlier versions FYI. That's why the Greeks are gone.

You know, in other games you prevent doomstacking by using attrition. A mechanic that actually makes sense. I played a mod that removes the moral damage on reserves and you don't use doomstacking. The attrition cap was moved from the irrelevant 5% to 25%, sources of attrition were also increased. Manpower is also rarer. Doomstacking is really bad.
We don't need to keep that mechanic to prevent "doomstacking" when there's a more effective tool for that. A mechanic that should be way more relevant than currently is. I would even encourage to make bigger armies slower than smaller ones.
Needles to say that moral damage on reserves not only is unnecessary at preventing doomstacking it also creates the reinforce meta, a unitencional meta that gives us the gameplay loop of constantly reinforcing 1 battle forever. It doesn't make sense and the AI was never design to handle (and should not be) to time reinforcements into battle. Reserves in battle were made for a reason and yet we are encouraged to avoid using them.

This is because the AI cannot handle attrition properly. Even in the current version the AI doesn't take as much attrition as human players do, it's cheating the attrition slightly because it's not smart enough to cope with attrition mechanics. If you'd add an aggressive attrition mechanic human players would rightly feel like the AI cheats too hard, players losing 25% a month while the AI takes a mere 1% would be too much to bear I think.

A lot of the design decisions don't drop out of thin air and I don't think Tinto can just fix this 1, 2, 3.

 

[Xary Moft]

This is because the AI cannot handle attrition properly. Even in the current version the AI doesn't take as much attrition as human players do, it's cheating the attrition slightly because it's not smart enough to cope with attrition mechanics. If you'd add an aggressive attrition mechanic human players would rightly feel like the AI cheats too hard, players losing 25% a month while the AI takes a mere 1% would be too much to bear I think.

A lot of the design decisions don't drop out of thin air and I don't think Tinto can just fix this 1, 2, 3.

Yeah Im aware of it. The cap used to be 10% but it was moved to 5% some years back because the AI couldn't handle it (instead of improving the AI), making the mechanic pretty much irrelevant. Still tho, it's not like the AI can also understand how to reinforce battles too at the moment, so not much changed, I would argue it's a even worse situation. I do have hopes that tinto team can eventually teach the AI how attrition works and maybe we could that 10% attrition cap back.
I would be more impressed if you told me a mechanic where the AI doesn't cheat xD.

 

[Dunderscore]

You know, in other games you prevent doomstacking by using attrition. A mechanic that actually makes sense. I played a mod that removes the moral damage on reserves and you don't use doomstacking. The attrition cap was moved from the irrelevant 5% to 25%, sources of attrition were also increased. Manpower is also rarer. Doomstacking is really bad.
We don't need to keep that mechanic to prevent "doomstacking" when there's a more effective tool for that. A mechanic that should be way more relevant than currently is. I would even encourage to make bigger armies slower than smaller ones.
Needles to say that moral damage on reserves not only is unnecessary at preventing doomstacking it also creates the reinforce meta, a unitencional meta that gives us the gameplay loop of constantly reinforcing 1 battle forever. It doesn't make sense and the AI was never design to handle (and should not be) to time reinforcements into battle. Reserves in battle were made for a reason and yet we are encouraged to avoid using them.

again i dont disagree with trying to move away from the current meta to something more dynamic or interesting BUT this specific change (artillery retreating) absent any other fundamental changes to land warfare mechanics is just introducing more tedious micro

i would love to build ramparts and lvl 8 forts along the alpine wall and have that be effective but that isnt on the table here

 

[poodle doodle]

Are there any plans to change the AI war strategy? Right now the game just feels like the AI is hardcoded to abandon their nation and carpet siege your obscure 3 dev provinces, it's neither fun nor effective. There's a lot of times where if the AI just banded up they could probably fight me, but instead they choose to siege Siberia.

A simple bandaid fix is to severely decrease the chance of AI granting military access, and also reduce the chance of smaller AI allying distant nations.

I've had to resort to using "make war great again" mod just to make the game a little more bearable

 

[Gnivom]

Are there any plans to change the AI war strategy? Right now the game just feels like the AI is hardcoded to abandon their nation and carpet siege your obscure 3 dev provinces, it's neither fun nor effective. There's a lot of times where if the AI just banded up they could probably fight me, but instead they choose to siege Siberia.

A simple bandaid fix is to severely decrease the chance of AI granting military access, and also reduce the chance of smaller AI allying distant nations.

I've had to resort to using "make war great again" mod just to make the game a little more bearable

I think this might in practice be a bit better in 1.33 than before, although it hasn't been addressed directly.

 

[Gnivom]

The AI does have a tendency to suicide, but it is when it is usually when part of a larger alliance. The below screenshots demonstrate this with Muscovy and vassals in the early game.

This is true. In 1.33 I fixed one specific bug causing suicide attacks by small armies, and the general improvements to understanding quality have improved this as well. That's not to say there aren't still issues where the AI will suicide. Especially when they are relying on nearby troops (I'm looking at you, players) or when it overestimates troops due to not understanding army composition. But as for the "AIs run away to Siberia", that is specifically to avoid suicide.

 

[Gnivom]

Do the "army quality" changes also solve the issue with armies automatic rebel hunting being scared of rebels that are equal-ish quantity but (much) lower quality then the army itself ?

Yes! At least it's supposed to. With AI, sometimes two issues that look the same really have different causes though, so it's hard to know for sure.

 

[Gnivom]

Also, I've been reading the comments about the combat changes.
First, I was misreading the code when I said that artillery doesn't fire when it's out of morale. I have updated my comment, sorry about the confusion that caused.

Although it's true that MP meta will change in unpredictable ways with these changes, I think there are significant advantages still. We will go through with the changes for the beta, but if people in general don't like playing with it, we could either tweak it further or revert it. The main tweak I'm thinking of is introducing a define that scales morale damage taken by backrow, and set it to something like 0.2-0.6, but we're open to more suggestions.

 

[NIborGER]

The main tweak I'm thinking of is introducing a define that scales morale damage taken by backrow, and set it to something like 0.2-0.6, but we're open to more suggestions.

If you change it like this, wouldn’t it be good to then allow surplus inf/cav again to the backrow so player micromanagement gets rewarded in the early game (aka pre tech 13) while overstacking as practiced by AI gets less punished. A 2x inf stack will still win handily against a army that just meets the combat width. However in a battle between armies of even size, the side that goes the extra mile to reinforce in time and not just piles everything in day 1 gets rewarded for microing.

 

[Pavía]

Also when i touched Far East Asia topic i have one more question regarding Confucianism and their missionaries.

Is it possible to make Confucian nation harmonize each religion separately? Example, when you harmonize Sunni immidietly entire Islamic faith becomes harmonized.

And about Confucian missionaries, is it possible to use CM in a way like instead of converting, promoting either harmony gain or harmonization process? Basically the better province is developed faster harmonization or harmony you get, depending on your action.

We've been thinking about this proposal. For the moment we're testing thoroughly how the changes to Harmonization goes on, and then we'll see if further changes to harmonization time and missionaries may be required.

 

[Angelic Burrito]

tired is not morale, and gun emplacements didnt abandon their positions because the crew wanted a nap

also artillery dont take direct damage in the back. there is no strength lost unless they deploy to the front line and get shot.

them suffering morale damage isnt a problem, as the battles wouldnt end if they didnt, them retreating is a problem for reasons ive described several times now

also changing daily morale dmg to apply to deployed units but NOT reserves would lead to doomstacking. its applied to reserves specifically for that reason. if they change daily morale hits to not apply to reserves but keep in this boneheaded plan to allow cannons to retreat itd certainly cut down on the micro by eliminating it entirely. youd just have 1 giant army swinging around the map with no reinforcement timing necessary

Funny exaggeration, but launching mortars and watching their countrymen die for 288 hours on end wouldn't make them want a nap; they would lose the ability to stay conscious and function like a normal person. But I agree that they shouldn't necessarily retreat: make it so they lose combat ability at 0 morale instead. I know you wouldn't be satisfied with that change because reduced combat ability is still worse than a fresh reinforcement, so you would still feel the need to still micro artillery, but (1) it doesn't make sense for morale to not affect artillery at all [<--my main reason for supporting their arty change], and (2) it's a middle ground from what was proposed in the dev diary.

I know they don't take direct strength damage, but they take direct morale damage. The wiki uses the same word whether talking about morale or strength damage—"casualties". If I understand it right, back-row artillery take direct morale casualties from the enemy unit(s) that attacked the front-row unit directly in front of it. As you seem to agree,

Historically speaking artillery regiments didnt just abandon the field because they observed men dying.

back-row artillery probably shouldn't take the same mental beating as the unit that actually got attacked on the front lines.

I'm aware of what the daily morale damage is for, but applying it only to reserves doesn't make sense (again, what's the IRL difference between waiting in reserves and waiting a city away; also, why are units that are peacefully sitting around losing a constant amount of willpower to fight each day while units that are fighting don't), and there are better, more intuitive ways of dealing with doomstacks. I've used either the same or a similar mod that Xary Moft talked about, and its fantastic: no micro, just strategy...well, except when you have to play merry-go-round with a bunch of small, enemy vassals across a big space. Your wording about "no reinforcement timing necessary" gives the impression you like the micro-heavy reinforce meta but don't like the idea of more micro. If you like the reinforce meta, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

All that said, I really appreciate your valid bemoaning of their change because it shows them a need for bigger changes with the combat. In a vacuum, I know the arty change will increase necessary micro in the meta—but it doesn't have to be in a vacuum. You said other changes aren't on the table here, but I think the current proposed changes came out of nowhere; I don't see why they couldn't/wouldn't make more changes.

a define that scales morale damage taken by backrow, and set it to something like 0.2-0.6

thumbsupx2

 

[Dunderscore]

Funny exaggeration, but launching mortars and watching their countrymen die for 288 hours on end wouldn't make them want a nap; they would lose the ability to stay conscious and function like a normal person. But I agree that they shouldn't necessarily retreat: make it so they lose combat ability at 0 morale instead. I know you wouldn't be satisfied with that change because reduced combat ability is still worse than a fresh reinforcement, so you would still feel the need to still micro artillery, but (1) it doesn't make sense for morale to not affect artillery at all [<--my main reason for supporting their arty change], and (2) it's a middle ground from what was proposed in the dev diary.

I know they don't take direct strength damage, but they take direct morale damage. The wiki uses the same word whether talking about morale or strength damage—"casualties". If I understand it right, back-row artillery take direct morale casualties from the enemy unit(s) that attacked the front-row unit directly in front of it. As you seem to agree,

back-row artillery probably shouldn't take the same mental beating as the unit that actually got attacked on the front lines.

I'm aware of what the daily morale damage is for, but applying it only to reserves doesn't make sense (again, what's the IRL difference between waiting in reserves and waiting a city away; also, why are units that are peacefully sitting around losing a constant amount of willpower to fight each day while units that are fighting don't), and there are better, more intuitive ways of dealing with doomstacks. I've used either the same or a similar mod that Xary Moft talked about, and its fantastic: no micro, just strategy...well, except when you have to play merry-go-round with a bunch of small, enemy vassals across a big space. Your wording about "no reinforcement timing necessary" gives the impression you like the micro-heavy reinforce meta but don't like the idea of more micro. If you like the reinforce meta, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

All that said, I really appreciate your valid bemoaning of their change because it shows them a need for bigger changes with the combat. In a vacuum, I know the arty change will increase necessary micro in the meta—but it doesn't have to be in a vacuum. You said other changes aren't on the table here, but I think the current proposed changes came out of nowhere; I don't see why they couldn't/wouldn't make more changes.



thumbsupx2

i actually dont like the current reinforcement meta or honestly even the development meta or the "always take quantity, economic, quality, trade in that order or you will get demolished" meta. im not here to defend the status quo of stale, largely repeated nation building choices whereby the only real difference between mp campaigns is who you do diplomacy with and their own skill levels regarding the meta.

if you read my other posts you will see where i have suggested other ideas to try and introduce some other mechanic to cause cannons to leave the battle (allowing them to take strength damage from cavalry, for example. you could even tie their morale damage to the casualties they suffer directly instead of the infatry in front of them), my main point of contention is that causing cannons to retreat without changing anything else about land warfare will only lead to having to time two different categories of reinforcements.
id love it if they changed the mechanics such that timing reinforcements wasnt the king of warfare. that is not present in these changes.
and just to clarify, i am basing all of this on the assumption that cannons retreating is not moddable. the morale damage sure but modding the morale damage will either cause battles where cannons slowly but innevitably retreat (and thus does not fix the extra micro problem), or you mod the morale dmg to nothing and your army group morale never trends to zero.
with other aspects of the meta like idea groups or dev cost reduction all that is moddable. i dont think you can mod a core aspect of battles (like you cant mod in a third row or change the deployment algo, paradox has to do it). if its possible to mod the game such that backrow units dont retreat at zero morale, fine. but to be like "cannons retreat now and you cant do anything about it" is an awful decision

 

[CthulhuTactical]

Another case for splitting MP and SP game modes and allowing them to use their own custom-set rules, or PDX adding different rules for MP. As SP player i don't really care about MP and it's balance, only care about AI and normal ironman game balance.

 

[SebasR]

Also, I've been reading the comments about the combat changes.
First, I was misreading the code when I said that artillery doesn't fire when it's out of morale. I have updated my comment, sorry about the confusion that caused.

Although it's true that MP meta will change in unpredictable ways with these changes, I think there are significant advantages still. We will go through with the changes for the beta, but if people in general don't like playing with it, we could either tweak it further or revert it. The main tweak I'm thinking of is introducing a define that scales morale damage taken by backrow, and set it to something like 0.2-0.6, but we're open to more suggestions.

I know Paradox don't usually like thinking about "meta". But the meta usually is obvious just by seeing the dev dairies. What is hard to find is the "optimizations" to that meta. Just by seeing the changes you can have a pretty good idea how is going to affect the game. And at least you must make sure it is not game braking I hate when you said “will change in unpredictable ways” because it makes it very likely that is unbalance and maybe game braking and the players will have to discover how to fix it. Using mods or reporting to the forums so same day you fix it.

Respect the backrow damage, you also said that "- Previously the main reason for having artillery was to make sure your inf and cav didn't go into the backrow. Now they won't do that anyway, so the main reason is the firepower they bring" i don’t agree (after technology 16 they are a constant damage you need especially in MP, in my opinion) but that doesn’t matter, from your point of view you are removing the "main reason for having cannons" by don’t allowing infantry and cavalry in the backrow, i agree having to micro this is unnecessary and annoing and can help the IA, but you are also making cannons retreat from the backrow, this is clearly also make a cannon less important since you will need more cannons instead of just the combat width, there will be more situations where paying the extra cost of cannons will not justify that extra damage. So you are nerfing your "main reason for having cannons" (preventing infantry in the backrow) and my main reason for having cannons (dealing constant damage). While i agree that is reasonable that you reduce micro by not allowing infantry and cavalry in the backrow and if cannons are less important in exchange for less unnecessary micro is a good trade. But the other change, cannons being able to retreat, I don’t see how this will beneficiate the player experience. This change will only affect MP since SP battlers hardly will be big and long enough to be affected so for this change you must think for multiplayer rather singleplayer and its consequence. I think at this point is clear that one consequence is cannons will be worse. You think cannons need to be worse? I don't think so. i also think the majority of the MP players will agree that cannons are OK like they are now, and needing to reinforced cannons will be only more annoying rather than fun

My propose is that you introduce a define like you said for the damage in the backrow so modders can change it, but you left the vanilla damage of the backrow in 0 for default so cannons important will be only affected by the other change and not by this one.

 

[Dunderscore]

to add to that, even the dev's conclusion that "now the main reason is the firepower they bring" is only half the story because as everyone knows cannons add half their defensive pips to the front line. if you dont have cannons behind your infantry they are taking more casualties than they otherwise would, causing you to have to reinforce faster (or just get stackwiped/retreat).

i just really cant wrap my head around this desire for cannons to retreat for "balance"?
there is no scenario past tech 16 where you would ever want to engage the enemy's sizable armies (im not counting wiping out tiny little ai carpet siegers here) without a full backrow of artillery because not only will you do less damage (and probably not win the engagement before the ai reinforces) but you will lose more men than you otherwise would have.
and i dont accept the argument that this doesnt matter for single player; do you think people dont fight out numbered? or win coalition wars?
again, if you want to make cannons less important you can certainly do that but nothing about this patch makes them less effective/powerful, just more tedious to utilize properly.

 

[MatthewP]

Although it's true that MP meta will change in unpredictable ways with these changes, I think there are significant advantages still. We will go through with the changes for the beta, but if people in general don't like playing with it, we could either tweak it further or revert it. The main tweak I'm thinking of is introducing a define that scales morale damage taken by backrow, and set it to something like 0.2-0.6, but we're open to more suggestions.

My question on this would be what happens if the front line runs out of morale but the backline is still at 60%? If it means the backline artillery redeploy to the front and keep fighting, that doesn't seem like a good outcome. If it means that the backline doesn't redeploy forward and just keeps firing while not getting attacked, that also seems quite bad. The right outcome seems to be that the army retreats, which I'm guessing is why the backline currently takes full morale damage.

Anyway, I will say this all sounded fine to me in the dev diary. But I've been pretty thoroughly convinced by the comments that the apparently nonsensical setup of the backline taking full morale damage but never retreating is actually well designed within the constraints of the battle system, and changing it is going to cause more problems than it solves. But hopefully testing and a beta will shake all that out.