Wreck said:
Michael, like others I have a whole list of things that I'd like changed about EU2, some of it being minor stuff like movement attrition but some other very big potential changes.
Thank you very much! I was sort of hoping you had a list.
Military access exploit squelch
* All MA will be autocancelled between two countries whenever they enter the state of war.
This seems like a very obvious thing to do (more of a bugfix), so unless anyone has a good reason not to do it, I think it will go in our to-do list.
* stability cost for doing this is done like RMs
Or maybe just a hit if you have armies in enemy territory? I don't think canceling access through an enemy sounds like a nation-affecting event, but maybe that's just me.
* also, remove ability of fleets to capture ports, regardless of MA.
Well... one might argue that fleets *could* capture undefended ports, but I agree that it's a problem that armies present in the province can't fight them.
Naval attrition fixes:
* make fleet recombination recompute months-at-sea realistically
Okay, that would be a bugfix.
* make fleet recombination not nullify attrition buildup; recompute it sensibly
Ditto.
* make a message that comes up whenever a fleet loses one or more ships via attrition
Ah, that's a good idea! I hate it when I send my 40-ship fleet to blockade an enemy port and then remember it three years later, when it gets down to 15 or 16 ships and heads for port.
Trade fixes:
Note that I think the CoT-based trade system should be completely overhauled in the long run. It doesn't make sense. But these are some fixes to make it less tedious, within the current design.
* remove current, broken autosend, as it can only do harm and no good.
* automate empty slot technique to replace autosend, as follows:
** add "autosend to this CoT" checkbox for each CoT. Default is off.
** only autosend to CoTs the player has turned on autosend for
** only autosend at the start of a month, and only when you've just gone from 5 to 6 merchants
** only autosend when there is an empty slot in at least one CoT
** never autosend more than one merchant per month
** do not autosend to a CoT if not enough money in treasury (duh)
** if multiple CoTs have empty slots, pick the target by simple cost-benefit: total trade currently in that CoT divided by cost-to-send.
for AIs and trade:
* make AIs use new autosend as above, with the set of target CoTs depending on:
** game play level (at lower levels, trade only close to home and in colonies)
** trade efficiency, both absolute and relative to the world
** maybe some sort of "trading aggressiveness" set in the AI file
A little harder to implement, but definitely a possibility (once more manpower shows up to help, probably).
Sieges:
* require an immobile siege force throughout the month to get advancement. I think an added variable here, to track the siege by days, then advance only after 30 days of siege would be best.
Hmm, another daily update. Probably not a big problem, but we don't want to have
too many things updated that often.
Tiny armies:
* Impose 1% monthly attrition on all armies of <500 men, unless they are passengers, or led by a conquistador, and use the minimum attrition rules to increase it on really small armies.
No elite commando forces?

Seriously, I'm not sure if this is really necessary if the looting rules you propose are implemented. Any army that small would be annihilated almost immediately if attacked, so they really would be of no use if not for looting.
Looting:
* disallow looting by all armies that are moving, fighting, or under a white flag. Only an unopposed, stationary army should be able to loot.
* require a minimum amount of men to guarantee looting happens. I'd suggest a flat 1000 men for a controlled province. (The no-looting-while-moving rule means that a cover force is necessary to loot uncontrolled provinces.) An army of less than 1000 men should be given a chance to loot, linear in the amount of men. So N men should have a N/10% chance to loot in that month.
Both good ideas.
* change time that the looted state persists on a city, from a known, fixed, player-exploitable time (12 months) to a variable amount of time averaging 12 months. For example, 6-18 months. This will make synchronized looting impossible other than the start of a war.
Reasonable and doable, but the subsequent discussion on looting makes me think it might not be necessary.
Toio's post is about what I was thinking. Maybe loot should just pay for the upkeep of the looting soldiers for that month or so, and not give the looting country anything? This would eliminate synchronized looting (no need to bother), and also stop loot-hyperteching.