Framework to analyze I:R strategic choices (or rather lack of them)

[IsaacCAT]

• Caveat

This thread refers to general concepts and not concrete details.

• Preface

I have got many suggestions in mind for I:R, some of them have been already published, some other need some polishing (14) and others have yet to occur to me. However, I feel that any improvement to the game should be considered not only in its own merits but also on the overall benefit for the game. I have been concerned on the micro and I wanted to share with you my thoughts on the macro. Introducing the strategic choice concept.

• Strategic choice

It is defined as the evaluation of available alternatives for attaining a result. It includes the selection of alternatives, collecting alternatives factors, evaluation of alternatives and making the strategic choice.

Now, I will assume that the result for an I:R player is to survive until the end date and have fun while playing the game. With these objectives, I will try to follow the strategic choice process:

Selection of alternatives:

The alternatives to achieve the expected result are the following (please do not hesitate to add others):

1. Expansion + POP assimilation for levies + legions
2. Expansion + POP integration for levies + legions
3. Subjugation + mercs and vassal states for armies

Collecting alternatives factors:

I would say input factors should be money and PI cost. Output factors should be army size, POP happiness and technology level. We will use these factors to evaluate each alternative (please do not hesitate to add others).

Evaluation of alternatives:

Strategic alternative	Money Cost *	Political Influence Cost *	Army Size *	POP Happiness *	Technology level*
Expansion + POP assimilation for levies + legions	100​	100​	100​	100​	100​
Expansion + POP integration for levies + legions	100​	100​	100​	100​	100​
Subjugation + mercs for armies	130​	50​	30​	100​	100​

* values are relative and at game end

• Conclusion

At this moment, there are not enough alternatives (3) and they are not meaningful/different enough.

POP happiness and technology level are easily maximised no matter what alternative you choose, they become irrelevant after mid to end game. The third alternative has an increased cost (mercs) for a worst outcome (army size) while the only benefit is a reduced PI cost that the player has no meaningful way to spend to achieve the stated objectives.

Nevertheless, this thread aims to incorporate other players thoughts and many things could be improved/incorporated in this framework.

For example:

• Government type, culture, religion, trade... could become part of strategic alternatives for the player. IMHO, now they do not qualify for a valid alternative as they are mere cosmetic theatres for the real strategic choices.
• Manpower, military units, buildings, roads... could be determinant factors for I:R strategic choices. IMHO, they are not (except maybe in MP games). To become critical factors they should become relevant to achieve the objectives while different for each strategic choice. Now they are the same to all the strategic choices.

• Bonus Objective for this Thread

Come up with brilliant real strategic choices besides the already stated. No matter if they require some changes to the game, hopefully we can inspire the next I:R team.

 

[Herennius]

Interesting thread. Something that instantly jumped to my mind (but maybe i'm playing the game not enough in a min-maxing fashion to understand)...

In your table the first two rows are exactly identical. I won't dispute that differentiating out assimilation and integration startegies further could be beneficial for IR - but are they really that similar? Ok, the table is just directed to be a review when you have hit year 720, but even then...can assimilation be that fast to achieve the same army size? I always feel forced to do at least some integration, when my levies should keep pace in size with those of my opponents. A merc related strategy is probably an alternative (haven't come round to such a run with 2.0 yet, though), but solely relying on assimilation...? I could imagine that this works either as a country starting out big - and of course as a migrating tribe where you "assimilate by back-packing"...but when starting out as a small Republic or Monarchy in range of a dangerous enemy?

 

[IsaacCAT]

Interesting thread. Something that instantly jumped to my mind (but maybe i'm playing the game not enough in a min-maxing fashion to understand)...

In your table the first two rows are exactly identical. I won't dispute that differentiating out assimilation and integration startegies further could be beneficial for IR - but are they really that similar? Ok, the table is just directed to be a review when you have hit year 720, but even then...can assimilation be that fast to achieve the same army size? I always feel forced to do at least some integration, when my levies should keep pace in size with those of my opponents. A merc related strategy is probably an alternative (haven't come round to such a run with 2.0 yet, though), but solely relying on assimilation...? I could imagine that this works either as a country starting out big - and of course as a migrating tribe where you "assimilate by back-packing"...but when starting out as a small Republic or Monarchy in range of a dangerous enemy?

You are right, the path is the following:

You start small, you hire mercs to grow, you integrate some cultures to grow more, and then you assimilate to have the best output from your POPs (happiness) as fast as possible. Or you could keep different cultures integrated. At the end date, both paths will reach max output/citizen as there are so many modifiers to happiness. However, for the min-maxing the assimilation game (temples + theatres + moving slaves) is the optimal path because at mid game you can have max technology and output. If you need more armies you can always use mercs.

My point remains, there are no relevant strategic choices (*). I understand that any historical recreation cannot differentiate monarchies from republics or Romans from Greeks in their playstyle (**). But for the game sake, we should be able to present real choice to the player. I will try to present some outlandish suggestions for strategic choices in the following posts, involving all aspects of the game. The player should be able to experience the I:R World with all its glory with a different prism each time.


(*) the legion versus levies was an intent to give strategic choice to the players. But it has been short lived as the choice is irrelevant beyond MP.

(**) one clear example are roads. The game has given Roman roads an edge, they are less expensive. However, all other cultures can build them and their benefits are the same for everyone. Who could deny that roads work equally for all cultures/governments/religions? They are not a strategic choice.

 

[Victor1234]

You are right, the path is the following:

You start small, you hire mercs to grow, you integrate some cultures to grow more, and then you assimilate to have the best output from your POPs (happiness) as fast as possible. Or you could keep different cultures integrated. At the end date, both paths will reach max output/citizen as there are so many modifiers to happiness. However, for the min-maxing the assimilation game (temples + theatres + moving slaves) is the optimal path because at mid game you can have max technology and output. If you need more armies you can always use mercs.

My point remains, there are no relevant strategic choices (*). I understand that any historical recreation cannot differentiate monarchies from republics or Romans from Greeks in their playstyle (**). But for the game sake, we should be able to present real choice to the player. I will try to present some outlandish suggestions for strategic choices in the following posts, involving all aspects of the game. The player should be able to experience the I:R World with all its glory with a different prism each time.


(*) the legion versus levies was an intent to give strategic choice to the players. But it has been short lived as the choice is irrelevant beyond MP.

(**) one clear example are roads. The game has given Roman roads an edge, they are less expensive. However, all other cultures can build them and their benefits are the same for everyone. Who could deny that roads work equally for all cultures/governments/religions? They are not a strategic choice.

I haven't played IR, but from what I gathered, the legion v levy changes seemed to have been very popular with the player base. Are you saying it's really chrome without adding anything meaningful after all? What do you mean that the choice is irrelevant, and why only in SP?

 

[IsaacCAT]

These are the changes I recommend to introduce strategic choice in the game:

• POP Happiness:

All the permanent modifiers to POP happiness are transformed to temporary modifiers activated by province investments, e.g., festivals, using PI. They can be related to culture/religion/class. The type of action, happiness boost and duration can be unlocked by inventions or laws.

• Trade:

Trade is critical for POP happiness (see point above) as they are not permanent and they will remain as long as goods are traded in the province.

Trade goods will have different trade values depending on the nation demand that imports them. This will affect the trade value for the exporting nation as well. Thus, exporting to one nation could be more profitable than another, depending on their demand:

Happiness goods base trade values are changed depending on the province POP numbers. Trade goods base value for nobles, citizens, freemen, tribesmen and slaves will be modified by the number of POPs in that province. For example, a province with 40 POPs with 1 noble, 4 citizen, 10 freemen, 5 tribesmen and 20 slaves will modify those trade values by: nobles trade value goods: 3%, citizens trade value goods: 10%, freemen trade value goods: 25%, tribesmen and slaves trade value goods: 62%.

Strategic resources trade value will be affected by their demand as well. For example, Iron required for legions will have its base trade value modified by the number of legions with heavy infantry. If our nation legions have 10 units: 5 HI, 5HC, then the base trade value of Iron and Horses will be affected by 50% and 50%. What if we decide to trade iron without having legions? Trade value will be 0 but we will have the +2% local tax modifier and the +10% heavy infantry discipline capital surplus modifier. For wood, trade value will be affected by the number of Hexere, Tetrere, Octere and Mega-Polyreme / number of Liburnian and Trireme.

Food trade goods will change its trade base value by demand using the province food. If it is positive (growing) the base trade value of food trade goods will be 50%. If it is negative, base trade value of food trade goods will be 100%.

• Food:

food is produced by POPs and there is no free food. I have already made a suggestion about this here https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-pop-type-of-territory-and-civ-level.1479486/

• Manpower:

Manpower is only generated by POPs from integrated cultures or the primary culture.

• Religion:

We have already said that happiness permanent modifiers are changed to temporal modifiers decided by the player using PI in each province. State Religion happiness is no more a permanent modifier but something that the player can enact in some provinces to the POPs of that religion for some time.

Contrary to the game now, pops will tend to convert to the territory religion and not to the primary religion. If the player wants to convert a remote territory with a majority of POPs from another religion, it could use a religion decision like the found colony cultural decision to change the territory religion and start converting pops.

• Culture:

The inventions and country rank culture happiness modifiers should disappear and require the player to enact in some provinces to the POPs of that culture for a limited time. Other culture modifiers remain as they are tied to decisions made by the player (laws, deities, buildings, etc...)

Assimilation will be to the territory culture and not to the primary culture.

• Tribes:

Tribes will have an option to create alliances with other tribes that will allow them to use all their clan retinues of the alliance. This control of the clan retinues of other tribes will be temporary and will rotate for all the members of that tribe alliance. This way, the player could "unite" many tribes and use all the clan retinues to attack its enemies and sack their cities, conquer their territories, etc...

Tribes will have increased migration attraction to settlements territories of +5, while cities will have decreased migration attraction of -2.

• Monarchies:

Legitimacy has to play a critical role in Monarchies. Now it seems that legitimacy cannot be negative (I have not experienced negative legitimacy in any of my games). Thus, lower ruler popularity, war exhaustion, ruler corruption and low stability should have double the impact on legitimacy.

• Republics:

N/A

• Empires:

Empires is a type of government that requires an additional condition, the nation has to have at least 5 client states, satrapy or mercenary states that combined have the same number of POPs than the nation forming the Empire. After the Empire is formed, the player can integrate the other subject nations without loosing the Empire form.

• Military Units:

Strategic goods should not only be present in the whole nation but also be present in the region where the legion is based to have access to those units. For example, in order to have elephants in the legion of the region of Italia, the player should trade/produce elephants in any of the provinces of that region.

• Buildings:

Free pops will migrate of their own volition to nearby territories in pursuit of economic opportunities (wiki). Economic opportunities should be represented by the buildings present in one territory. Now, they do not introduce any migration attraction to the territory and that should be changed, with each building increasing the migration attraction to that territory. Cities without buildings should always be less attractive than settlements with buildings, thus settlement buildings should have at least +5 migration attraction. Each city building should increase +0.5 the migration attraction to the territory

• Migration:

Player should be able to entice other players POPs with migration attraction. Now the game allows migration between territories from different players but not to ports from other players. That should change and POPs migrate freely to other nations.

Also, this suggestion to increase migration speed when a territory is looted or occupied should be implemented

Finally, It would be nice if some PDS dev could enlighten us on what triggers a POP to decide to migrate. I have seen territories with famine without any POP emigrating for many months/years.

• Slaves

The game does not allow the player to choose the proportion of slaves in society. You build cities and integrate cultures to end up always with more of 50% of slaves. The game should not grow slaves POPs, already existing POPs represent the sons of slaves being born as slaves. There are many ways to create slaves in the game (capturing, demoting) and keeping them by stop their promotion. Allow us to have a society with less slaves (33%).

• Monuments:

You cannot build whatever monument you like. There should be a mission/requirements that needs to be accomplished before you can unlock a monument and the benefits of that monument will be decided depending on the decisions or values of the feat (king's dead, great victory).



I plant to post them as separate suggestions in the suggestion forum.

 

[IsaacCAT]

I haven't played IR, but from what I gathered, the legion v levy changes seemed to have been very popular with the player base. Are you saying it's really chrome without adding anything meaningful after all? What do you mean that the choice is irrelevant, and why only in SP?

They are very popular, that is not in contradiction to not being a strategic choice.

The choice is irrelevant because it does not matter if you choose levies or legions, except for flavour.

You can make a WC with levies only, no need for legions at all:

Pax Aeterna in 60 years (510) -- Some notes of what I learned in the process

Hello, I decided to post here instead of in AAR since the main content of this post is about general fast conquest strats instead of a recollection of my proof of concept run. I conquered the world in 60 years (and one day because I forgot to...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Devs said that legions were the natural evolution of levies, they are more powerful with better modifiers. And they are, used by a human player, legions are mandatory for a competitive game.

But for most players, the decision to go for levies or legions is not critical and you can switch from one to another easily (change law, disband legions).

A strategic choice should be something that forces you to take irrevocable decisions and allow you to specialize. And at the end, this specialization has to allow you to beat other players that have taken another option by playing differently.

Levies should use numbers in their advantage to win against legions, while legions should be able to win against levies with greater numbers in tighten terrains.

 

[Victor1234]

They are very popular, that is not in contradiction to not being a strategic choice.

The choice is irrelevant because it does not matter if you choose levies or legions, except for flavour.

You can make a WC with levies only, no need for legions at all:

Pax Aeterna in 60 years (510) -- Some notes of what I learned in the process

Hello, I decided to post here instead of in AAR since the main content of this post is about general fast conquest strats instead of a recollection of my proof of concept run. I conquered the world in 60 years (and one day because I forgot to...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Devs said that legions were the natural evolution of levies, they are more powerful with better modifiers. And they are, used by a human player, legions are mandatory for a competitive game.

But for most players, the decision to go for levies or legions is not critical and you can switch from one to another easily (change law, disband legions).

A strategic choice should be something that forces you to take irrevocable decisions and allow you to specialize. At then end, this specialization has to allow you to beat other players that have taken another option by playing differently.

Levies should use numbers in their advantage to win against legions, while legions should be able to win against levies with greater numbers in tighten terrains.

Ah, thanks for that. To be fair, that's a flaw of all Paradox games, that the overall design seems to be to add so many positive modifiers (and very little besides modifiers or A-B-C modifier trees) that there's really no wrong answer, just good answers and better answers and as a result, there will never be any strategic choices, because every path leads to winning, regardless, just some get you there faster.

I disagree with you though about the conclusion. Yours is not a strategic choice either, but rock/paper/scissors with only two options, that you also seem to want to lock in. So you're stuck with just using rock all the time if you picked rock once in the beginning.

I think the purpose behind the levy system is to try and tie societal factors into the army building process in a larger way than just the usual Paradox game, which is good. Historically, the devs are (mostly) right. Everyone had at least some "legions" (if we mean standing troops here...), everyone wanted standing troops and they were clearly a better system of mobilizing a population for war (ironically, represented by the yearly levy of Roman legions being replaced by standing Roman legions during the game's timeframe).

Not everyone's politics/economy/society allowed for them though, which is where the design seems to fall apart since you describe it as an easy choice you can change whenever or just ignore altogether.

That's different from what wins battles though, which is what you seem to want to coflate. Whether your horsearchers are a standing force that arrived in 2 days and can stay on campaign all year, or took 3 months to gather and need to go home again in 6 months, makes no difference when they are actually standing on the battlefield facing the Romans at Carrhae. It makes a huge difference in the strategy of a campaign (see Caesar's Civil War and how the Pompeians had to retreat out of Italy because their levies weren't raised fast enough) and how quickly you can fight the next battle if you lose this army.

I think IR is nowhere deep enough to reflect these differences, or any ancient warfare nuances (let me guess: Create giant doomstack --> destroy enemy stack --> carpet siege) so trying to create strategic choices is a thankless errand, but despite this, I'd be curious to read what else you have in mind.

 

[IsaacCAT]

I disagree with you though about the conclusion. Yours is not a strategic choice either, but rock/paper/scissors with only two options, that you also seem to want to lock in. So you're stuck with just using rock all the time if you picked rock once in the beginning.

That was an illustration of how choosing one path allows for a "winning" condition.

that the overall design seems to be to add so many positive modifiers (and very little besides modifiers or A-B-C modifier trees) that there's really no wrong answer, just good answers and better answers and as a result, there will never be any strategic choices, because every path leads to winning, regardless, just some get you there faster.

Every path leads to winning is not a problem. The strategic choice is concerned on which path you follow, but the objective is to "win". However, you should be playing differently, as your choice matters.

In your description of rock/paper/scissors, there is no strategic choice because you will loose to paper every time, if you choose rock. When the player is locked in rock playing style, the game should allow rocks to beat papers and scissors. If the player has the skill.

Not everyone's politics/economy/society allowed for them though, which is where the design seems to fall apart since you describe it as an easy choice you can change whenever or just ignore altogether.

Indeed

That's different from what wins battles though, which is what you seem to want to coflate. Whether your horsearchers are a standing force that arrived in 2 days and can stay on campaign all year, or took 3 months to gather and need to go home again in 6 months, makes no difference when they are actually standing on the battlefield facing the Romans at Carrhae. It makes a huge difference in the strategy of a campaign (see Caesar's Civil War and how the Pompeians had to retreat out of Italy because their levies weren't raised fast enough) and how quickly you can fight the next battle if you lose this army.

legions versus levies have more advantages than only mobilization. Professional soldiers were experienced and better equipped, see Marian reforms.

I think IR is nowhere deep enough to reflect these differences, or any ancient warfare nuances (let me guess: Create giant doomstack --> destroy enemy stack --> carpet siege) so trying to create strategic choices is a thankless errand, but despite this, I'd be curious to read what else you have in mind.

You are right, except that in I:R better units can cut through doomstacks because morale makes weaker units flee the battlefield.

Something that I would like to see implemented is reinforcement of armies only in provinces not conquered or conquered but with a port. Having automated reinforcements does not feel right. Moreover, in I:R timeframe battles were done outside winter and it was usual to stop a campaign during 6 months and continue after winter. This can be achieved by army attrition + non automatic reinforcements.

There is much that can be done to have greater strategy than doomstack -> destroy enemy stack. I:R has many opportunities to implement those, but as you have said, devs are required to make changes and balance the whole thing. My only concern is that to make the game popular they may have the temptation to forgive player mistakes and give everything to everyone.

 

[Victor1234]

That was an illustration of how choosing one path allows for a "winning" condition.


Every path leads to winning is not a problem. The strategic choice is concerned on which path you follow, but the objective is to "win". However, you should be playing differently, as your choice matters.

In your description of rock/paper/scissors, there is no strategic choice because you will loose to paper every time, if you choose rock. When the player is locked in rock playing style, the game should allow rocks to beat papers and scissors. If the player has the skill.

This makes sense about the winning condition, but the point I was trying to make is why lock the player into any playing style permanently? A strategic choice that makes sense in some situations shouldn't make sense in others, so the skillful player shouldn't be someone who keep beating everyone with rock, but someone who plays paper or scissors too, depending on the situation.

This would be a simple strategy game, but for a grand strategy game, I would expect that there should be some extra constraint or limit on when or how much a player can play any one strategy, so that they have to plan ahead, like a multi-turn chess strategy. Planning ahead should not just be a simple case of stockpiling enough X to instantly hit a button when needed or instantly raising levies in region Y, which is often what it becomes in Paradox games. The problem is it's not nearly feasible to do like chess and only let you do 1 action per turn though, either, and the cooldowns they do try often just end up feeling arbitrary instead of useful.

legions versus levies have more advantages than only mobilization. Professional soldiers were experienced and better equipped, see Marian reforms.

That depends on definitions. IR clearly wants you to think legions = professional & standing and levy = bad quality & levied, but the two aren't linked historically. The Successor Kingdoms for example, had professional levy troops. The Parthian levy cavalry were clearly better than any professional Roman cavalry in the game's time period. The Marian legions specifically were at best semi-standing and didn't become standing until Augustus, while the Marian veterans were essentially levies. The Polybian legions during the Second Punic War and beyond became professional, despite in theory being levies.

The point is, troop quality shouldn't be a direct result of how the troops are raised, but through training and/or especially experience and how they are raised should have an impact on the strategy of when can you use them (legions are available now, levies should take months to show up on the map), not necessarily how they are used or what quality.

You are right, except that in I:R better units can cut through doomstacks because morale makes weaker units flee the battlefield.

Something that I would like to see implemented is reinforcement of armies only in provinces not conquered or conquered but with a port. Having automated reinforcements does not feel right. Moreover, in I:R timeframe battles were done outside winter and it was usual to stop a campaign during 6 months and continue after winter. This can be achieved by army attrition + non automatic reinforcements.

There is much that can be done to have greater strategy than doomstack -> destroy enemy stack. I:R has many opportunities to implement those, but as you have said, devs are required to make changes and balance the whole thing. My only concern is that to make the game popular they may have the temptation to forgive player mistakes and give everything to everyone.

What makes a unit "better" in IR though? Is it experience? Is it being a legion unit? Do worse units with a good leader not run away? The problem is not really battles anyways, I don't think (although they should be different than no control dice roll by now), because they seem to be decisive enough (two mega stacks meet, one wins, the other leaves/gets destroyed), which is good enough for the period, and they can be finetuned.

The problem is that Paradox games are terrible wargames, despite almost the entire focus being war. They are good with the strategic layer (for a while, until it gets to late game), but they do a terrible job at the operational layer especially. There is no real campaign, there is no maneuver, there is no real logistics, there is very little "forcing the enemy to battle" except when there's a blocked strait and naval control involved or you can get your guys just right and hover your mouse over the enemy stack to see exactly what day they arrive at their destination (haha...) so you can get into their province before they run away.

The main "strategy" of the war should come after the war starts, to even try to make battles happen. They were pretty rare in this period, considering. Not just random running around the map, hoping my mega stack catches his mega stack at some point, while the secondary game of sieging down territory plays out. Oh look, he's got a 50k doomstack chasing me, well, let's bring in my hidden extra 40k stack, aha, now they stopped marching, combine my stacks into a 70k stack and chase him...

The automatic reinforcements is a great example. Your solution would help a bit, but it's not really a solution to the problem either, because that just shifts the focus to fighting coastal province battles instead, which is not a great strategic problem because there will be ports in practically every province.

I think the real solution to this specific problem would be to take a page from (older) Total War, and have no reinforcements. You want to reinforce Hannibal's army in the middle of Italy? Hire local mercenaries if there are any or try and move a Punic army from Spain and then merge them, your units will take some experience loss when they merge but if Hannibal doesn't get his reinforcements and runs out of mercenaries, it doesn't matter how many battles he's won, he's got to run away or be destroyed. But Paradox probably won't do this, because they think the players won't like having to manage reinforcements, or they'll complain about why their army didn't get reinforced, or they can't get the AI to use it properly (Total War usually doesn't manage either) so instead comes the 1% attrition and -10% reinforcement speed in enemy territory modifiers.

I can see the same problem in every Paradox game except HOI (where they figured out move = attack and tanks move fast so you can do pockets), which is why IR seemed to be so promising. They were finally going in a different direction and had a good canvas for it too. Too bad it looks like they mostly shoe-horned in EU4 (including the, for this period, ridiculous fort mechanisms). Anyways, I'm done complaining! Looking forward to hear more of your ideas though.

 

[IsaacCAT]

This makes sense about the winning condition, but the point I was trying to make is why lock the player into any playing style permanently? A strategic choice that makes sense in some situations shouldn't make sense in others, so the skillful player shouldn't be someone who keep beating everyone with rock, but someone who plays paper or scissors too, depending on the situation.

This would be a simple strategy game, but for a grand strategy game, I would expect that there should be some extra constraint or limit on when or how much a player can play any one strategy, so that they have to plan ahead, like a multi-turn chess strategy. Planning ahead should not just be a simple case of stockpiling enough X to instantly hit a button when needed or instantly raising levies in region Y, which is often what it becomes in Paradox games. The problem is it's not nearly feasible to do like chess and only let you do 1 action per turn though, either, and the cooldowns they do try often just end up feeling arbitrary instead of useful.

A strategic choice is something that requires planning ahead and it is more similar to multi-turn chess.

Because we have simplified the description we have blurred strategy and tactics. When I want the player to take irrevocable decisions that are not easy to change, I do not intend to reduce it to one tactic alone. I am trying to make every run different and make the players feel that their decision matters. Once "locked" in one strategy, the player will implement the strategy progressively while applying the necessary tactics each time to win.

This helps game replayability because the same scenario can be played with different strategies from the start.

About the grand strategy game, per definition it encompasses war, diplomacy, politics, economy, culture, etc... All those layers managed by a player in real time. As chess and the Deep Blue showed to us, a human player is limited. And we must remember that playing has to be fun. I:R tried to be one jack of all trades for PDX, thus the game flow has to compromise all different aspects of the game without marring the player in any of them.

The point is, troop quality shouldn't be a direct result of how the troops are raised, but through training and/or especially experience and how they are raised should have an impact on the strategy of when can you use them (legions are available now, levies should take months to show up on the map), not necessarily how they are used or what quality.

Totally agree with you.

The levy and legion strategy should imply different things. For example, legions can train while levies cannot (that is already in the game). The game should differentiate both paths more and make them less interchangeable.

Another suggestion to make legions different than levies:

Settling Veterans

Preface: In the later Republic, in time of Marius and later with Caesar and Augustus, one way to pay the soldiers was giving them land in colonies or near the fortress they served (1). Observation: manpower becomes not an issue at mid/later game...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

The problem is that Paradox games are terrible wargames, despite almost the entire focus being war. They are good with the strategic layer (for a while, until it gets to late game), but they do a terrible job at the operational layer especially. There is no real campaign, there is no maneuver, there is no real logistics, there is very little "forcing the enemy to battle" except when there's a blocked strait and naval control involved or you can get your guys just right and hover your mouse over the enemy stack to see exactly what day they arrive at their destination (haha...) so you can get into their province before they run away.

Because they are not wargames and I thank them for that. I like the grand strategy aspect of their games. But that does not mean that their war aspect cannot be improved. In I:R timeframe there were not many small stacks and wars were decided by one or two decisive battles.

I suggested the following on this regard:

Ancient warfare: war score from battles and capitulation

Preface: I have been thinking about how the game accrues war score and how this reflects ancient warfare. Observation: It is very easy to take over the capital from AI nations. It may be a problem with the new levy system introduced in 2.0 but...

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Seasons Supply Limit, Forts Famine & Garrison, Battle Engagement and Reformed War Goals

Preface: as we approach the release of 2.0 some players are missing some changes on how warfare is implemented in I:R. One of the criticism is the lack of an original warfare system for I:R as the game uses a war system inherited from EUIV that...

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Battle Simulator 2.0: formations

Preface: while we await for 2.0 release, some players crave for changes in how battles are simulated. @Iosue Yu thread about how to improve units, @Decius thread about how to improve tactics, and my own thread on how to improve warfare...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I think the real solution to this specific problem would be to take a page from (older) Total War, and have no reinforcements. You want to reinforce Hannibal's army in the middle of Italy? Hire local mercenaries if there are any or try and move a Punic army from Spain and then merge them, your units will take some experience loss when they merge but if Hannibal doesn't get his reinforcements and runs out of mercenaries, it doesn't matter how many battles he's won, he's got to run away or be destroyed.

Agreed.

Too bad it looks like they mostly shoe-horned in EU4 (including the, for this period, ridiculous fort mechanisms).

Forts and walled cities stopped armies for long sieges. I miss the negotiation that happened as I suggested here:

Negotiations to surrender forts

Preface: in the suggestion geography, forts and ZOC of this morning, I introduced the surrender mechanism for forts. This suggestion tries to explain this mechanism. Observation: now, armies can assault forts...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

And I like forts in I:R but I would change their workings a bit:

Geography, forts and ZOC

Preface: this suggestion is based in ideas from @Ukhan and @Consul Vespasian. However, the main drive is the forts in cities should be walls post from @Chehabian. Because I feel that people in cities would like to have protection and forts look...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

As you see, there are no lack of suggestions, but everything should be considered into the flow of the game and to allow the player to make choices that have consequences that shape the game in different directions. Now, everything seems to be a waiting game to manage your nation in the path set by Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.

 

[olivenkranz]

...

• Military Units:

Strategic goods should not only be present in the whole nation but also be present in the region where the legion is based to have access to those units. For example, in order to have elephants in the legion of the region of Italia, the player should trade/produce elephants in any of the provinces of that region.
....

That is already the case. If you mean by based which region slot the legion occupies in the legions overview.

 

[IsaacCAT]

That is already the case. If you mean by based which region slot the legion occupies in the legions overview.

It is not the case for each region. I have had to test it myself to be sure:

In the region of Arabia Felix I do not have any province trading with Iron, but I am able to add Heavy Infantry to my legion from that region. However, it seems that elephants are not available, but camels and HI are. Maybe is a bug?

We want the player to feel the consequences of trade and make it as much local as possible.

 

[olivenkranz]

It could be that not all units are locked behind a resource.

 

[IsaacCAT]

It could be that not all units are locked behind a resource.

Not all, only the superior ones, and only for legions. Levies have access to all of them depending on culture: