Even the AI thinks Maritime and Naval ideas are trash

[zincpl]

Basically the naval side of the game doesn't justify the groups, so they need other aspects to make them worth while.

An idea would be to make naval ideas interact more with exploration ideas. So you could reduce colonial range in general but have it boosted by maybe the third idea in naval - e.g. allowing an explo-range boosting flagship (and Portugal only gets its special bonus once it has that flagship). You could also give some buffs to distant diplomacy (e.g. boost in vassalisation acceptance for an overseas nation, or even access to a special overseas vassalisation CB akin to the deus vult idea in Religious which makes that group so attractive, e.g. as the policy with influence ideas). Something which would make it a good idea for France and the Netherlands who in real life didn't really go for 'expansion' as much as Spain and England, but rather played a more diplomatic/trade game.

edit: oh I've got a great one - instead of a CB - a twist on the 'intervene in war' mechanic where you can make an offer to a country at war that they promise to hand over their centres of trade to you (max of 3) if you help them survive the war they're in (with zero AE). This approach was key to european expansion so it would be great to have it in game. (in game it could be set up via a post-war event like the Danzig becoming a vassal one)

Also, being able to choose different colonisation idea group combinations could be interesting (the explo+expansion combo is pretty one dimensional atm)

For Maritime, I guess it's aimed at Venice/Genoa etc. but it's in competition with trade ideas (at least in a RP sense) there - I'd be tempted to make a merger of maritime-trade and then have a separate 'overland-trade' group which would be a mix of trade and the new infrastructure ideas. Maritime-trade could also have some fun military stuff based on making sieges of port cities harder for enemies (e.g. blockades don't boost sieges for enemies and/or a combat bonus in coastal ports). Something like CCR in coastal provinces would suddenly make it an interesting choice.

 

[cursorhiker]

Well if you want to improve navies, I think here are a few of the big changes you'd have to make:

• Kill the current military access system. Currently this turns every war into a land war and removes all mountains, deserts, and distance from the game.
• Make control of the seas the key to distant trade rather than controlling the land in a node.
• More far-reaching effects of blockades, ability to simulate things like the Portuguese Red Sea blockade and its devastating effects on the Mamluk Sultanate.
• Make merchant margines key to maintaining overseas trade.
• Make navies inherently able to project power ashore (seizing of coastal cities and ports)
• Make supply in distant regions and non-developed regions very low such that only small/local forces can fight at distance (look at the numbers for battles in America and Europe during the Seven Years War)
• Some form of visibility to make raiding and privateering fleets viable
  • Make privateers actual privateers - i.e. not controlled directly by the state
• Make limited or regional wars that can (initially) only be fought with naval actions.*
• Overhaul the peace deal system to be more along uti possidetis lines - if you occupy it you control and administer it and it's on the enemy to try to get it back at the peace table.
• Massively restrict where armies can march due to terrain, supply, and roads. Don't care how small an army or great a general you have, you're not marching from Mexico City to Georgia in 1700, or from Ceuta to the Gold Coast, or from Malaya to Bombay.
  • More advanced armies should require more advanced goods - you can forage across France without much in the way of supply depots in 1453, but not in 1753!

*If there is one thing I'd like from EU5 it is this. Nearly every war in the era was not a total war. Something like the following:

1. Trade War; Escalation level 1. Intended to represent smaller mostly naval confrontations between states. Can only fight fleets, privateer, blockade, can ask for money, end of embargos, etc.. Can't bring along allies with the exception of trade league partners. Examples: Portuguese-Ottoman Wars, Anglo-Hanseatic War.
2. Trade War; Escalation level 2. Larger confrontations, can also raid coasts, occupy ports, and capture colonies and demand the latter two in peace deals. Examples: Dutch-Portuguese War, Second Anglo-Dutch War

...and so on all the way up to big continent transforming conflicts like the French Revolutionary Wars. As you go, more advanced CBs could be unlocked and wars can be escalated further. Special cases like the Thirty Years War could be by event (though the 30YW should be less a single war and more an "imperial incident".)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's not the ideas that are trash, it's the usefulness of navies in general. There are some niche cases where naval power per ship actually matters but the vast majority of the time having a powerful navy is well down the priority list (in single player ofc).

That's the issue with naval based idea groups in a nutshell. Without straight up altering mechanics or making these groups give more ridiculous non-naval benefits, they can't really compete in SP because you don't need the naval advantage.

To a lesser extent, we observe this problem with espionage. To make it more attractive, developers have increasingly reduced the extent to which its benefits are related to spy actions. It still isn't competitive with the usual top 2 for SP, but it's at least closer...at the expense of only partially being about spying now.

 

[necro84]

Massively restrict where armies can march due to terrain, supply, and roads. Don't care how small an army or great a general you have, you're not marching from Mexico City to Georgia in 1700, or from Ceuta to the Gold Coast, or from Malaya to Bombay.

How did the Mongols travel when they started conquering? Even in ancient times armies of Alexander, Hannibal or Roman legions traveled a lot just by marching. And what about Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca? Even in South America Inca's had to travel long distances to build their empire, they didn't have ships or horses. We are so used to traveling by cars and planes that we don't remember what humans are capable of.
I agree that supply should have bigger impact on attrition and maybe seasons but marching long distances should still be possible


I agree with the rest of your points but changes to supply should also impact forts or you want be able to besiege level 3 fort in America

 

[Kurfürstin Adelheid]

I agree that supply should have bigger impact on attrition and maybe seasons but marching long distances should still be possible

To a certain extent yes, but I also think this should only be possible if you have some ideas to help you, or plan your march carefully e.g. by moving in smaller stacks, 'stopping' for supplies, and having a general with good maneuver, and I think terrain should have more of an impact. Glacial, Jungle and Desert terrain should cause more attrition than they do now.

 

[necro84]

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Army#Supply_limit

Maybe supply modifiers technology and climate could multiply instead of being additive
now tech 31 gives +300% supply so severe winter in arctic climate decreases it only to 230% - it's 330% of base supply. With multiplication it would be 400% * 0,3 so 120% base supply.
At the start of the game this province would have -70% supply limit so it's 30% of base supply.

 

[st360]

I said this countless times and Ill say it again: As long as you can march your army on top of the enemies capital, navies don't mean squat.

Boats giving +siege, faster landings, +trade power and all the other gimmicks are just not worth idea slots.

You could literary merge every single bonus of the trade, maritime and naval idea groups into 1, and it still wouldn't be a good idea group.

 

[brifbates]

I said this countless times and Ill say it again: As long as you can march your army on top of the enemies capital, navies don't mean squat.

Boats giving +siege, faster landings, +trade power and all the other gimmicks are just not worth idea slots.

You could literary merge every single bonus of the trade, maritime and naval idea groups into 1, and it still wouldn't be a good idea group.

It would be good, it just still wouldn't be useful/desirable in single player outside of the niche cases.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I said this countless times and Ill say it again: As long as you can march your army on top of the enemies capital, navies don't mean squat.

Boats giving +siege, faster landings, +trade power and all the other gimmicks are just not worth idea slots.

You could literary merge every single bonus of the trade, maritime and naval idea groups into 1, and it still wouldn't be a good idea group.

I can picture enough bonuses making them worth taking, but they'd be so extreme as to be game breaking, with the area in between very narrow.

Consider if boats with naval ideas could occupy coastal provinces (including forts) that lack land units, for instance. If that's not enough, require more land units than transport ships to prevent it. Or if 100% blockade with one of these groups gave you 100% of the trade power of the blockaded coastal trade nodes of target. Take naval, and go pitch a watery tent off the coast of China/Ottomans/Mamluks/whoever (who struggle to beat you because naval lul), and these groups would farm more flat income early game than any other group could match. Then you just use sailors as a 2nd manpower pool for infantry. Maybe you even coastal raid.

Still not enough? Allow both the blockade = trade power AND the occupations. Players can then use score from occupying coastal provinces to make and feed subjects inland provinces, in scutage, and 100% annex nations over a few wars with nothing but boats while their army does something else! weeeeeeeeeeeee

At some point, if you do enough nonsense like this, players would start taking naval ideas. It's at least conceivable to load them enough until that starts happening. The result would not be something healthy for EU 4 (it would be both mechanically and historically busted), but at least in PRINCIPLE, enough boosts from dominating the water would convince people to pick the group.

Heck, just merging maritime + naval together would give you enough special forces limit, sailors, and sailor recovery speed to compete with the nerfed quantity ideas lol. These are not good idea groups because there are consistently better groups, not because they don't give at least something of value.

 

[st360]

I can picture enough bonuses making them worth taking, but they'd be so extreme as to be game breaking, with the area in between very narrow.

Consider if boats with naval ideas could occupy coastal provinces (including forts) that lack land units, for instance. If that's not enough, require more land units than transport ships to prevent it. Or if 100% blockade with one of these groups gave you 100% of the trade power of the blockaded coastal trade nodes of target. Take naval, and go pitch a watery tent off the coast of China/Ottomans/Mamluks/whoever (who struggle to beat you because naval lul), and these groups would farm more flat income early game than any other group could match. Then you just use sailors as a 2nd manpower pool for infantry. Maybe you even coastal raid.

Still not enough? Allow both the blockade = trade power AND the occupations. Players can then use score from occupying coastal provinces to make and feed subjects inland provinces, in scutage, and 100% annex nations over a few wars with nothing but boats while their army does something else! weeeeeeeeeeeee

At some point, if you do enough nonsense like this, players would start taking naval ideas. It's at least conceivable to load them enough until that starts happening. The result would not be something healthy for EU 4 (it would be both mechanically and historically busted), but at least in PRINCIPLE, enough boosts from dominating the water would convince people to pick the group.

Heck, just merging maritime + naval together would give you enough special forces limit, sailors, and sailor recovery speed to compete with the nerfed quantity ideas lol. These are not good idea groups because there are consistently better groups, not because they don't give at least something of value.

At some point, if your capital is on the same AfroEuroAsian super landmass as me, I can occupy 100% of your land and get 100% of your warscore, boats occupying my coastal provinces or not.

 

[GrandEurypterid]

I wouldn't mind Trade Wars being made easier- for example, always being able to justify them against the strongest trade power in a node. I've had a lot of fun fighting asymmetrically using marines and navies against objectively greater militaries- Phillipines vs Ming was pretty funny, just stealing all their boats and money via tactical naval landings in undefended ports- but when I want to try it with (say) Madagascar vs Kilwa I find myself somewhat stymied by an inability to get the CB. Perhaps rewriting the CB conditions so you can fight anyone who's superior to you in a shared trade node (e.g 'if enemy > you > 5%/10% trade power') would help?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

At some point, if your capital is on the same AfroEuroAsian super landmass as me, I can occupy 100% of your land and get 100% of your warscore, boats occupying my coastal provinces or not.

We're talking about SP choices (mostly), not PvP.

That said, you can't get literally 100% while occupied. What I described would be an incredible group early on, easily the best military group and enough money and easy warscore vs AI to think about compared to normal groups.

 

[TK3600]

Naval buff is easy, just make naval supply a thing. Your army outside capital land connection take attrition/reduced supply if naval blockaded.

 

[grommile]

Naval buff is easy, just make naval supply a thing. Your army outside capital land connection take attrition/reduced supply if naval blockaded.

I'm the Ottomans. 98% of my provinces count as land-connected to my capital.

 

[brifbates]

I'm the Ottomans. 98% of my provinces count as land-connected to my capital.

Or France, China, Russia, Timurids, (Indian blob of choice), etc.. And then there are the other options where in the vast majority of cases the naval comparison is so lopsided that one side or the other was always going to spend the war in port anyway even if they could actually damage the enemy with blockades. Not that naval supply and interdiction thereof shouldn't be a thing but it really won't solve the problem with those idea groups.

 

[TK3600]

I'm the Ottomans. 98% of my provinces count as land-connected to my capital.

Then you dont need navy. Any other colonizer would need a strong navy.

 

[GrandEurypterid]

I wouldn't mind something like a 'supply depot' system- ie you use a little network of nodes to 'spread' supply, and sniping nodes to break the chain makes it harder to make use of supply (e.g -5 supply per node passed through, with ocean tiles' size making them very efficient so you can make supply a lot harder if you blockade an important location). It'd be a bit hard to do that sort of thing, though, so it might be more of a EU5 thing to do that sort of 'naval blockade = threat to army supply'.

 

[TK3600]

Why dont we merge naval and marinetime, and throw in a nice trade buff too.

 

[grommile]

Then you dont need navy. Any other colonizer would need a strong navy.

In real life, the Ottomans needed a navy.

 

[agonistes]

It's not the ideas that are trash, it's the usefulness of navies in general. There are some niche cases where naval power per ship actually matters but the vast majority of the time having a powerful navy is well down the priority list (in single player ofc).

To be more precise, its the lack of necessity for added value. Navies are extremely useful and powerful, as the OP demonstrated - in his/her case, the knights are curb stomping Otto and France.

I've done the same with Holland, and in a US run where I was at war with, literally, every colonizer and their colonies (plus a Russia under a UK PU). You just rarely need to buff them. A sound (haha) naval game can quickly run up warscore, speed sieges, make your units invincible, and decimate enemy manpower much faster.
But you don't need ideas to do any of those things well. Although I have run out of sailors.

Oh, and just two days ago my little Japan took on Spain, England, and Portugal in a war for Australia. Without good naval play, that war would have taken a couple decades. I like my wars short and sweet.