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".

 

[grommile]

Supply is not just food, though?

The primary supply requirements of an Early Modern army are:

• Gunpowder... if you actually fight a battle. And even then you might be able to loot the enemy's stored supplies.
  
• Firewood, which you can often obtain locally.
• Clothing, which you can often obtain locally.
• Food for humans and military service animals (be they pack mules or cavalry horses) which you will pretty much always need to obtain locally.

This isn't the era of industrial warfare, where your army can't even move without a steady supply of machine parts, fuel, and lubricants.

 

[Czone]

The primary supply requirements of an Early Modern army are:

• Gunpowder... if you actually fight a battle. And even then you might be able to loot the enemy's stored supplies.
  
• Firewood, which you can often obtain locally.
• Clothing, which you can often obtain locally.
• Food for humans and military service animals (be they pack mules or cavalry horses) which you will pretty much always need to obtain locally.

This isn't the era of industrial warfare, where your army can't even move without a steady supply of machine parts, fuel, and lubricants.

Alright, then we don't use supply and do the same thing. Forts block movement on their province. If an enemy walks inbetween two to get into your land, you plop an army inbetween the two and they cannot go back without fighting you.

 

[Atlantians]

Evil!

@Johan, I think this is a great idea, and I would suggest making it mutually exclusive with Humiliate, and have it give maybe 1-5 PP for regular wars, and up to 20 PP against rivals.

 

[bbqftw]

This doesn't address the key problem, which is ridiculous siege timers in lategame.

Odds are if you have the warscore to dismantle forts, might as well take the forts and trucebreak.

 

[Sfan]

Are sieges so long lategame? I mean, with the high AT that allows you to have good siege pips, the infinite lategame money generator that allows you to have max bonus of cannons and the multiple breaches and the fact you should have naval superiority sieges usually take around a year. Before level 7, I often have sieges taking close to 2 years if I have no blocade, which can totally happen early game.
I don't feel like siege timers is the problem, the problem is more that you may have to pierce 20 sieges to siege a country entirely, and that a year in 1800 is around 10 times more precious than a year in 1480.

 

[bbqftw]

I guess it does not feel rewarding to take out 3 level 8 forts spammed in 1/1/1 trade company provinces for 2 warscore apiece

 

[Granathar]

Actually there are some reworks needed regarding attrition, supplies and other similar stuff. This would need some reworks in AI. What if we had "supply" bar for every stack? Another bar just like morale but decreasing with time. If it's empty - then it's the time when army will suffer attrition and morale loss. Looting should pump supply bar up and also having fort controlled by us with clear passage. If you for example entered Russia without securing forts on your way... You should be screwed badly. And right now - you suffer attrition, your reinforcements just spawn in your army, your land is like 400 km away from this place. How do they even know where to go? How are they not killed on their way? Forts should be "checkpoints" that we want to have in our country and that our enemy would want to take, because if we cut them off they should not be able to reinforce AT ALL. They should not suffer automatic attrition if they still have some supplies, but pillaging can't last forever for really big stacks. Supply lines should go from our lands (captured in middle of Siberia fort would give supplies, but no supply line, supply line needs to go from our land) OR from ports controlled by our fleet (hey hey hey! fleets would be useful!). Scorched earth would be viable tactics. It should work like looting our own lands (loot bar = 0) and then we should have no supplies (our armies should eat these too if they are too far from fort) but our enemy will not take anything either. And then Otto stack going for Moscow will have a really bad time if scorched earth tactics will be in use. Napoleon knows how it's like. But they could move slowly and take forts one after another, and then supply line would go from their lands or lands of their allies and keep them alive.

Also - army using supplies should cost more. Actually not army, but supplies per se. During peace time armies should be "mothballed". They have full morale and stuff, but minimal number of supplies, like 10% of maximum. It's enough to take rebels for example, but by no means enough for military campaign. Every battle should use some supplies (for example per day * regiments in use, with proper modifiers) so we can have 1-2 battles with rebels without getting attrition and morale loss, but would not last long in enemy territory if supply lines are not good enough. Supplying our armies would just need some money investment when they are in fort ZOC in friendly lands. In game mechanics that should be army maintenance bar. Bar is full = supplies are full, all the time ready for war, cargo carts all always packed and ready for orders etc. But it should not be this punishing to lower it, because it should not affect morale or ability to fight, but only in short term. 20% bar = 20% supplies, they can supress the rebels, they have enough resources for that, but in battle with fully supplied army they may use all their resources during battle and that would create massive morale loss and risk of stackwipe. War should be over when our armies have no supplies and we don't have money to provide them.

Player would manage this mechanics rather easily, question is if AI would manage it too.

 

[kakatua]

I found interesting people saying that armies could always obtain sources locally and supply lines didn't exist.

Looks like all readings about the Roman Empire and the wars on Germany, in England or against the Sassanids are wrong.
Looks like Caesar was the attacker against an army double his size in a bad terrain after the supply line be cut by the enemy just for the Lulz.
Looks like my readings about Charles of France having to rush back home fighting in a unfavorable terrain due to lack of supply and the line being cut by his enemies after his tour on Naples are wrong too. You know, the start of a little thing called Italian Wars.
Looks like all my readings about Spanish Succession War talking about the generals always trying to cut the enemy lines of supply are wrong too.
Looks like Sun Tzu is completely wrong in his Art of War book. You know, a completely unimportant book.

While the common sense is that lines were so important like in WW2, the counter-common sense is that ancient armies could sustain 100k armies in the same provinces for years. Also, remember, in allied provinces WE DON'T LOOT! Rome, Caesar, France, Spain, Austria, England, China, all of them are wrong! Who is right is the guy who truly believes that the farmers would continue planting in Industrial Age scale while the army takes their food for free.

 

[chrnno]

I found interesting people saying that armies could always obtain sources locally and supply lines didn't exist.

There is a confusion because supply lines refers to multiple different, though related, things. At the risk of simplifying too much I will split them into three basic categories.

The basic supply line, generally used by relatively small states and armies, is the army moves spread about and pieces of it forage for resources around the region as they go. Given a good region even if the army stays around the size means they can keep themselves going for quite a while as long as no one continuously engages the tiny groups as they attempt to forage. This is basically what EU4 represents if you squint a bit and assume production remains constant(which while not impossible is rather unlikely at best).

The next step so to speak(your examples are under here), generally the province of major nations and armies, is supply lines as in nearby places(remember naval is by far the best way to transfer resources so nearby is relative) that either forage or trade for resources and then sends them on to the army either because it can't gather enough on it's own or to allow it to partly forego doing so. These are significantly more vulnerable to enemy interference while carrying far greater risks and became increasingly common during the EU timeframe but while not entirely absent(though this might be giving a few simple modifiers too much credit) don't really have the place they should.

Lastly, basically 19th century and beyond, supply lines as in lines to the heart of the country(or a stand-in) that satisfy all resource consumption of the army and without which it soon loses most of it's effectiveness, grounds to a halt and then worse. This is what exists in the HoI series and what most people seem to use as definition of the term. You can find some examples of this in the EU timeframe but it was extremely costly, wasn't really sustainable and generally there would be better ways to use the effort.

 

[Gratak]

Are sieges so long lategame? I mean, with the high AT that allows you to have good siege pips, the infinite lategame money generator that allows you to have max bonus of cannons and the multiple breaches and the fact you should have naval superiority sieges usually take around a year. Before level 7, I often have sieges taking close to 2 years if I have no blocade, which can totally happen early game.
I don't feel like siege timers is the problem, the problem is more that you may have to pierce 20 sieges to siege a country entirely, and that a year in 1800 is around 10 times more precious than a year in 1480.

High AT lategame? Its easy to get high AT against lvl 2 forts with cannons but high AT late game is actually not that easy. Low level forts with very little ATs and high level forts take too long... And yes, you are correct that breaking lvl 8 forts with max cannons is slightly easier than breaking lvl 2 forts without cannons. But even late game forts should fall a lot faster against so many cannons...

 

[durbal]

Then maybe increase maintenance for every level of fort?

Huh? This already exists.

 

[Milan23]

Huh? This already exists.

Lol does it? I've never noticed despite having 2000+ hours maybe then increase it further? I don't know what the current level of increase is

 

[Gratak]

Lol does it? I've never noticed despite having 2000+ hours maybe then increase it further? I don't know what the current level of increase is

Well the problem is that maintenance is already too high to afford one lvl 8 fort per 50 dev... At the same time they are too cheap regarding how long it takes to siege them down...

My suggestion stays the same: They should be cheaper AND weaker

 

[Dracolithfiend]

The problem is not the cost nor the strength of forts. I have never had trouble sieging forts in single player. In multiplayer though the result is entire countries blanketed with them. Since both sides get unlimited mercpower you get WWI trench style clusterf***s that last 40~ years.

Maybe tie forts to manpower. Maybe tie them to force limits as well. Maybe have a limit of 1 fort per X. Maybe do nothing. I don't know but I know dismantling forts via a peace option is a cool idea and worth looking into. So maybe start a separate topic for fort spam/cost/benefit.

 

[BrokenSky]

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.

So what you're saying is that the game is balanced for blobbing? That makes very little sense. Blobbing is the mechanism by which one expands in an unstable manner (i.e. self-reinforcing growth). This makes it very difficult to balance static numbers for (e.g. the maintenance cost of forts etc) since small variation at the beginning is disproportionately significant on strength/size/economy/etc at any given point in time, making the appropriate cost difficult to predict and likely to change wildly from game to game (dependent on the number of players and on random chance, especially at small player numbers).

If you want to balance forts for this type of multiplayer, probably a better way you could do it is to impose something like a force limit (fort limit) on forts with maintenance increasing when the number of forts exceeded it. This limit would allow you to lower the base cost of forts while still making blanket forts sufficiently expensive at the point you feel is "too many", either based on development, number of areas controlled or some function of both. It may also be worth scaling the maintenance cost of forts to their level non-linearly.

 

[bbqftw]

Thanks Portugal. I'm pretty sure this did nothing except deprive Portugal of a bunch of ducats and cause severe annoyance.

Maybe a development requirement for higher level forts wouldn't be out of line. Like 30 minimum for a level 8 fort. Or 100. Or just remove them from the game, that's fine with me too.

 

[Martynios]

Thanks Portugal. I'm pretty sure this did nothing except deprive Portugal of a bunch of ducats and cause severe annoyance.

Maybe a development requirement for higher level forts wouldn't be out of line. Like 30 minimum for a level 8 fort.

In 100 years that will happen to every single island, brace yourself.

 

[K@meradenschwein]

I am still hoping for this idea beeing implemented. How many times did I had to fight over and over with an enemy which I had no interest or intention to take provinces from. Forcing him to take down a Fort at one of his chokepoints would have saved me some trouble and manpower for the next wars.
This should really be an option.

 

[celethiel]

I do like this idea,
and have been wanting to mention it for a while, and am glad someone else besides me thought of it.
Although i'd also recommend maybe changing it to, forcing them to not maintain forts on the border for a set number of years. Simply because Forts are such a huge investment as it is.

 

[Badesumofu]

Forts are really a lot less annoying than they were nearly a year ago when this was posted. Between Artillery Barrage and Napoleonic Warfare even level 8 forts go down pretty fast. That said I do still try to PU or otherwise subjugate/eliminate the other colonizers early on to avoid having to siege down a level 8 fort on every single island in the game.

I like the idea of requiring a minimum level of development for a given fort level. If not as an absolute requirement then at least as a consideration for the AI.