Dismantle forts at the negotiating table

[Riekopo]

I think that we should be able to force our enemies to dismantle their forts at the negotiating table. Anyone else agree? This is a function that is in Victoria 2, but it would also be historical and relevant for the EU4 timeframe.

Edit: I'd like to add another idea to my post. Along with being able to force your enemies to dismantle their forts. I would like to be able to force them to limit their army and navy size through a "disarmament" or "arms treaty".

 

[shinshin variety]

Everyone? in the late game the bigget complain is how people carpet their countries in lvl 8 forts, making wars insanley slow.

Could you guys at least de-tach fort level and maintenance in the game files? If you nerf forts to 2/3/4/5 you nerf their maintenance which in turn makes it easier to fort spam...

I was talking from a multiplayer perspective.

In my opinion and experience. Level 8 forts are way too cheap, and as a player you place them everywhere.

Well you need 1 fort per 50 dev, and after hundreds of years of devving you can need as many as 1 fort per 2 provinces to keep your +1 army tradition flowing. That contributes to it. And then there's the fact that money in the game goes up at a curve rather than a flat line, so late game you can be spending 4x per fort, but making 10x the money.

 

[Johan]

1 lvl 8 fort has the same price in maintenance as half of standing army (20k infantry) of smaller nation, assuming they don't have any discounts.

When you reach lvl 8 forts there are no smaller nations on the map in MP, and anyone below 200k standing army is irrelevant as a military power.

 

[Johan]

Could you guys at least de-tach fort level and maintenance in the game files? If you nerf forts to 2/3/4/5 you nerf their maintenance which in turn makes it easier to fort spam....

Like a seperate maintenance cost set in the building?

 

[Granathar]

Actually fort forcelimits seems like pretty nice idea to prevent fort spamming. But fort should not be THIS expensive in comparison to military units. Forts should be strategically placed rather than spammed. Maybe no-fort-in-another-fort-ZOC rule as addition?

 

[ruzen]

Before nerfing forts hard, try to buff siege bonus from cannons at first.
Try the 1 cannon = 1 siege bonus.

 

[Helperman123]

When you reach lvl 8 forts there are no smaller nations on the map in MP, and anyone below 200k standing army is irrelevant as a military power.

That's because as time goes on, Taxation, Production and Trade efficiency steadily increase, and mid-to-late game building are so profitable. Also, MP is unstable as already active volcano, you have dyncs and crashes everywhere, so using Multiplayer as a crutch to excuse, not lowering the cost, is just ludicrous.

 

[Gratak]

Before nerfing forts hard, try to buff siege bonus from cannons at first.
Try the 1 cannon = 1 siege bonus.

Number of cannon is not the problem. Unless you mean that this is supposed to be an unlimited bonus, that won't reduce the lvl 8 siege times except if you are low on cannons...

 

[Mann42]

I like the idea, because I feel late game AI gets way too fort happy and I'd like a way to halt the insanity. On the flip-side, I do see the potential exploits in MP (and even SP), so it may be more of an AI problem than a something that needs to be added to diplomatic options.

 

[Dracolithfiend]

Charge say. . . 10-20% warscore to dismantle one fort and prevent construction of a new one in that province for duration of the truce + 10 years. You may only dismantle one fort per peace treaty. It produces no aggressive expansion. It works with humiliation casus belli and all others.

As for the late game MP slowing to a crawl that is as much to do with fort spam as it does with mercenaries. Unlimited manpower needs to be addressed especially for non revolutionary countries.

 

[ruzen]

Number of cannon is not the problem. Unless you mean that this is supposed to be an unlimited bonus, that won't reduce the lvl 8 siege times except if you are low on cannons...

so basically you are saying: I don't want to put effort and strategize to break down forts I just want them to be cracked easily.
Current cannon siege bonus is 2 per cannon, I am saying to make it 1 per cannon.

Not being low on cannons is a strategy and army composition. If you plan your economy right you can easily support full combat width cannons.

 

[Dracolithfiend]

so basically you are saying: I don't want to put effort and strategize to break down forts I just want them to be cracked easily.
Current cannon siege bonus is 2 per cannon, I am saying to make it 1 per cannon.

Not being low on cannons is a strategy and army composition. If you plan your economy right you can easily support full combat width cannons.

Artillery. Adding artillery to a siege will add a 1 to 5 bonus.

• The bonus is equal to the total number of artillery regiments divided by (fort building level + 1)
• A single regiment of artillery will always give at least a +1 bonus, regardless of fort level.
• Each 1000 artillery soldiers count as 1 artillery. e. g. having 10 regiments with 100 artillery each is the same as 1 regiment with 1000.

• 
  http://www.eu4wiki.com/Land_warfare#Sieges

 

[Sadino]

How about instead of destroying forts, force-mothball them (for lack of a better term), so that they don't necessarily lose the forts (and as far as early game goes, the investment required for them), but are stuck with a smaller garrison if you declare war and start sieging them fast enough. Which would make doing so to border forts valuable (because you can actually reach them before the garrison recovers), but less so for more 'inland' forts, because they'll have more time to get back to full, nulling the point of depopulating them.

Just a random idea to try and balance "weaken border forts" and "not destroying balance from removing all forts".

 

[Riekopo]

I'd like to add another idea to my post. Along with being able to force your enemies to dismantle their forts. I would like to be able to force them to limit their army and navy size through a "disarmament" or "arms treaty".

 

[Gratak]

Before nerfing forts hard, try to buff siege bonus from cannons at first.
Try the 1 cannon = 1 siege bonus.

so basically you are saying: I don't want to put effort and strategize to break down forts I just want them to be cracked easily.
Current cannon siege bonus is 2 per cannon, I am saying to make it 1 per cannon.

Not being low on cannons is a strategy and army composition. If you plan your economy right you can easily support full combat width cannons.

Are you on drugs, drunk or simply sleeping? First you say you want the same siege bonus with less cannons. When I answer that the number of cannons are not the problem but the time it takes even with max cannons you tell me that I should have more cannons? WTF?

 

[Dracolithfiend]

Are you on drugs, drunk or simply sleeping? First you say you want the same siege bonus with less cannons. When I answer that the number of cannons are not the problem but the time it takes even with max cannons you tell me that I should have more cannons? WTF?

He clearly doesn't know how sieges function in game. When I quoted the wiki page on the subject he disagreed which is perhaps the silliest thing I have seen on this forum.

 

[chrnno]

I was talking from a multiplayer perspective.

In my opinion and experience. Level 8 forts are way too cheap, and as a player you place them everywhere.

Then introduce separate rules for multiplayer and change things in the actual game.

As a SP only player who rarely stays until level 8 forts are available I find forts far too expensive for what they provide(build especially, don't think I ever built one) and the bonuses/penalties introduced to make up for the cost and/or penalize you for not wanting to waste money on them kinda miss the point.

Or if you don't want to change things much make early forts less expensive and latter more expensive, while not a perfect solution it would certainly be better than the current situation.

 

[cordialgerm]

I think the fort balance for L2 and L4 forts is pretty good for SP and MP. L6 and L8 forts start getting a bit crazy because by the time you get them you've blobbed to the point where you have a high income and you can afford to just spam forts everywhere.

The game has addressed similar issues through the manpower and forcelimit concepts. As others have also suggested, why not have a (soft) fort limit that is a function of development + other modifiers (defensive could increase the limit). A L8 fort would cost 8 fort limit compared to a L2 fort which would cost 2 fort limit. You could also make garrison replenishment come out of your manpower pool so that you just can't maintain L8 forts everywhere

 

[Rebel1776]

I don't know why Paradox hasnt incorporated cannon tech progression in relation to their ability to blow stuff up.

Keep up in tech, you can maintain what you currently need to take out level 1 forts. If you have inferior cannon tech in relation to the fort level, then you get a progressive decrease in effectiveness.

This would be further resolved if we could actually have multiple types of cannons to use simultaneously, not pick one that has pips you prefer. Also a relook at actually assaulting the forts would be nice too.

 

[Incompetent]

I was talking from a multiplayer perspective.

In my opinion and experience. Level 8 forts are way too cheap, and as a player you place them everywhere.

I'd say they're too *tough*, rather than too cheap. It should be affordable to build some defence in depth when it comes to forts, but it shouldn't take years with full artillery to seize a single fort in the Napoleonic era. The besieging forces need more penetration power, for example:

1. Bonus to siege tick rate from mil tech
2. Bonuses to assault effectiveness in the late game (assaults were quite common in this period)
3. Increase the maximum amount of artillery bonus available in a siege, based on mil tech (+5 artillery bonus is great for level 2/4 forts, but just doesn't do the job against later forts)

 

[Nueva12]

I suspect, that at least part of the problem isn't forts in itself, but that money supply and costs aren't properly balanced throughout the game.

In the early game you are somewhat encouraged to manage your money, so you can use your surplus to develop your country with buildings. You are also conquering already developed provinces. But in the late game, the game would be over before your can get your return of investment on buildings. And there are also the very profitable trade nodes, which are well known to all players and they have migrated to one of them in the late game.

So you have this stupendous amount of money to burn, and what do you burn them on? Canals! No... You burn them on level 8 forts and mercs.

So before working on forts (and mercs), I would suggest that someone looks at the money problem, which I think is the root of the problem.

So I have no definitive suggestion on how to solve this, but things to consider:

• nerf to production buildings, which can currently quadruple production and trade income (+300%, while tax income is only +60%)
• add a mechanic for "monopolized" trade nodes, which significantly reduces trade value there (not only for collection nodes, but also pass through nodes).
  
• reduce the amount of money people can make lategame through a new modifier: bureaucracy, which starts roughly at 1700 and ramps up until the end of the game
  
• tweak the cost increase over time for advisors, ships and army maintenance