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EU2 source code released

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Wreck said:
Toio, although I agree with you it seems like armies had a lot of attrition, I do think that they had more when moving -- easier to desert, then, for one thing. But in any case, the point of this rule is not only about historical accuracy. Rather, by making movement costly it induces players to keep armies still, and thereby cuts off a particularly unpleasant kind of MM. If there was no cost to movement, a player would do best by keeping all of his armies in motion all the time, so that they were essentially covering two provinces at all times. We don't want to make the optimum behavior for a player a MM-intense nightmare.
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Thats true in that desertion happens more in movement, but the problems for our game is a combination of these

1. lack of attrition when static

2. manpower is too high, according to the book, War and society in renaissance Europe, by John Hale. the size of armies till 1540 was no greater than 30,000 and when the war was finished most armies would drop down between 10000 to 15000 in size as all armies used a high % ofmercenaries

Maybe the answer as per BurningEGo is to leave attrition as it is and lower all the manpower events or remove these manpower bonus events.

But I still maintain a flat % be it 1 , 2, 3 or whatever , attrition per month per army be it static or mobile might work just as well

My 2 cents worth
 
I agree with you that army sizes are way out of range for the time period. I always laugh when I play France and get the "creation of the first permanent army" event. But changing army sizes (presumably by monkeying with manpower, maintenance levels and costs, etc.)... well, that would be a pretty serious change in the game, which I don't think is appropriate, at least for a "1.10" release.

Putting in a small, flat per month attrition, and then also having movement attrition on top of that, would solve several problems. I'm not sure I'd like the flat attrition thing, mind you, but I do think it would be more realistic.

BurningEGO, if you don't think movement MM is a problem, that is fine. But if you've ever used "monthly movement", then you ought to agree that it is a silly form of MM (at best), and hopefully you would at least not be saddened to see it squelched by a rule change. As for myself, I very much do think fixing anything that causes the gameplay to be tedious and annoying is of the highest priority.
 
Toio said:
2. manpower is too high, according to the book, War and society in renaissance Europe, by John Hale. the size of armies till 1540 was no greater than 30,000 and when the war was finished most armies would drop down between 10000 to 15000 in size as all armies used a high % ofmercenaries
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According to the book, The rise and fall of Great Powers, by Paul Kennedy, the size of permanent armies in the renaissance Europe was as follows:

Code: 
Year             Spain     United Provs.   France     England    Sweden

1470s          20,000          - - -        40,000       25,000      - - -

1550s         150,000          - - -        50,000       20,000      - - -

1590s         200,000          20,000       80,000       30,000     15,000

1630s         300,000          50,000      150,000       - - -      45,000

1650s         100,000          - - -       100,000       70,000     70,000
 
Terminator, with all due respect, that information is absolute bollocks.

England, a 25,000-strong standing army in the 1470s?

There were small permanent forces - all the King's - the rest being feudal retainers & levies called up in times of war. Most were disbanded straight after, and by law were only required to do so many days' service per year, after which they were well within their feudal & legal rights to disband themselves and return home for the remainder of the year.

This happened on several notable occasions, including just prior to Hastings.

1650s...70,000... you have to remember the B.E.F. was only 100,000 men...
 
mandead said:
England, a 25,000-strong standing army in the 1470s?
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That's what Paul Kennedy writes. It is your right to believe him or not
 
mandead said:
England, a 25,000-strong standing army in the 1470s?
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The War of the Roses in England between 1455 and 1485. 25,000 men at arms looks plausible for that period of time. On both sides
 
The Battle of Towton alone had more then 80.000 participants if memory serves...
 
BurningEGO said:
The Battle of Towton alone had more then 80.000 participants if memory serves...
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That's an exaggeration (not a dig at you, simply a common misconception regarding the size of medieval armies) - however, there were a lot at Towton, between thirty-five and sixty thousand at least. Eighty thousand is possible, but very unlikely - the population of England was around 3,500,000 at this time, so you need to think about how high a ratio that would be.

The important thing is that these were feudal retainers, drawn into the fray in service of their feudal overlord - from local knights & squires (maybe a dozen or more) to dukes, earls and eventually the king himself, at which point you're looking at certain individuals bringing hundreds of armed men and horses. There are plenty of stats from the HYW and WotR period regarding this, particularly in Ross' books on Edward IV & Richard III, for example.

My point is, these were men called up in times of conflict - the Wars of the Roses and the Hundred Years' War being prime examples from the medieval period. They were not a standing army or anything approaching one. As mentioned in an earlier post, they were only compelled to remain under arms for so many weeks a year, which is one of the reasons why individual campaigns were very short during this period.

On top of that, every man had to be paid of course. The Crown simply could not afford to do this - much of England's early successes during the HYW were only possible thanks to the Crown being financed by pillaging and looting.

It really wasn't until the Civil War that what we know as standing armies became familar, and even these were essentially glorified versions of the conscripted armies of the centuries prior.

I'd say the first true permanent standing army in England was James II's, which was mainly composed of poorly-armed and trained Irish Catholics infused with a small number of British regulars. This right of the monarch to field & maintain his or her own private army was abolished by the Bill of Rights, however.

But in the 1470s... you're looking at a few hundred men-at-arms, maybe a thousand or two at certain points in time, but certainly no more. It was both illegal and financially impossible.
 
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Doesnt seem an exageration to me. The exact numbers are unknown, but its known that about 20.000-30.000 men perished in that battle.

Sources like Wikipedia say (and countless others) that 1% of the english population died in that battle.
 
I'm not going to debate numbers with you; my main point was the differences between short-term feudal armies and standing armies.

As for numbers, my books state less than 80,000 - Wikipedia is fine, but only if real 'hard' information is unavailable.

Anyway, regardless of numbers, Towton is still the single biggest loss of English life in a single day (a record commonly held by the Somme, but this doesn't take into account population ratios) and the single bloodiest battle fought in the British Isles. It's also another reason Edward IV was so cool. :D
 
Is it possible to make the Ledger a bit more user friendly? It does take a while to find the right page, even with the help of the tabs (Economy, Military etc.). Perhaps make a list (like the one in HoI2) next to the ledger?

I don't know if it has been mentioned before, but it should be possible to organize your armies within enemy territories in war. It's frustrating to wait for a province to be captured before you can for example merge your armies.

By the way, have we got an explanation from Johan why it is so much "secretiveness" around the work with the source code? It would be nice to get some feedback on how the work is going, ETA for release and so on...
 
Wreck said:
I agree with you that army sizes are way out of range for the time period. I always laugh when I play France and get the "creation of the first permanent army" event. But changing army sizes (presumably by monkeying with manpower, maintenance levels and costs, etc.)... well, that would be a pretty serious change in the game, which I don't think is appropriate, at least for a "1.10" release.

Putting in a small, flat per month attrition, and then also having movement attrition on top of that, would solve several problems. I'm not sure I'd like the flat attrition thing, mind you, but I do think it would be more realistic.

BurningEGO, if you don't think movement MM is a problem, that is fine. But if you've ever used "monthly movement", then you ought to agree that it is a silly form of MM (at best), and hopefully you would at least not be saddened to see it squelched by a rule change. As for myself, I very much do think fixing anything that causes the gameplay to be tedious and annoying is of the highest priority.
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attached is an interesting article on the way armies operated, ie, very small garrison armies in peace and larger 50% mercenaries armies in war, very good article on all aspects of the renaissance wars as well as good links at bottom, note: also has naval wars

http://www.drizzle.com/~celyn/jherek/16thMilSci.pdf
 
Olav said:
Is it possible to make the Ledger a bit more user friendly? It does take a while to find the right page, even with the help of the tabs (Economy, Military etc.). Perhaps make a list (like the one in HoI2) next to the ledger?
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Do you know you can already make a right click in the ledger and directly choose the page you want in the displayed list?

Olav said:
I don't know if it has been mentioned before, but it should be possible to organize your armies within enemy territories in war. It's frustrating to wait for a province to be captured before you can for example merge your armies.
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Good point.

Olav said:
By the way, have we got an explanation from Johan why it is so much "secretiveness" around the work with the source code? It would be nice to get some feedback on how the work is going, ETA for release and so on...
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It is obvious we can't talk about the source code and this is part of the licence agreement anyway. For the rest, of course it could be nice but ask Paradox directly. We can't answer without approval but I asked if it could be possible to do so (approved diary, for example).
 
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This is new information for me. Oh well, one always learns. ;)

Edit:
We can't answer without approval but I asked if it could be possible to do so (approved diary, for example).
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This sounds nice! Have you got an answer yet?
 
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YodaMaster said:
And better ask than nothing!
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or does he mean changing the bottom tabs of the ledger to whatever he wants permanently?
 
YodaMaster said:
I can't agree more but, as I said, we have to take general performance in account and keep it in mind.
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I hope you will at least try out daily attrition to see if it really does hog up things.

By the way, shouldn't movement attrition in the winter be higher than in the summer?

@BurningEGO: There are a lot of SP'ers around who do manage their movement attrition. Making it daily would change the game experience significantly for them: finally we'll be free to move our armies whenever we like! (Not to mention the fact that moving several provinces will become so much less tedious!)
The fact that things are different in MP doesn't mean the option shouldn't be added in SP...
 
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