Mercspam vs Manpower meta suggestions and discussion thread

[Zak Preston]

Let’s discuss EU4 gameplay aspects : mercenaries and recruits

Spoiler

Everything posted here is my personal opinion and is done in good faith with the only intent to make the game better =)
I actually have quite a large document (9+ pages of A4, text size is 11) with lots of EU4 game mechanics being questioned, but I feel that posting it in one thread will be an overkill (it’s also not finished yet).

Part I: Mercenaries vs recruits problem:

Current meta heavily relies on mixing mercenary and recruited regiments. Deciding factors here are your manpower (MP) pools and income. In early game most nations’ MP-pools vary from 10k to 25-30k, while your force limit (FL) may vary from 5k to 40k. In general (with some exceptions, ofc) the FL to max MP ratio is around 0.7-1 regiment to 1k.

Examples

• Castile: 28 FL, 28k max MP
• England: 34 FL, 27k max MP
• Poland: 27 FL, 23k max MP
• Mamluks: 41 FL, 33k max MP
• France: 37 FL, 44k max MP

I suppose that the concept behind current mercspam meta is something like this: “Players should mix their recruited regiments with mercenary regiments to conserve MP and to spend more funds on warfare (maintenance, reinforcement, hiring more mercs)”. Sounds good, but the implementation is really screwed

• Mercenary infantry is quite cheap
• Their limit is quite high
• They don’t drain manpower
• MP pools are really low, so after a couple of serious battles with recruited armies you are forced to hire mercs anyway.

The result of this meta players tend to hire mercenary infantry and recruited cavalry + artillery. This way infantry takes the most damage, but gets reinforcements from the Infinite Void, bypassing fragile MP reserves. Same problem is with attrition: your mercenary infantry (50% of the army) may be freezing to death in scorched Arctic mountainous fort in Norway, but it won’t really bother you, since your mercenaries still reinforce from the Void.

The results of this meta are really bad for the whole game balance:

1. Infinite mercenary reinforcements break the immersion and realism: in some early conflicts (Muscovy vs PLC, France vs Burgundy + England for example) number of casualties can reach millions. And it won’t have any effect on neighbouring countries.
2. Attrition wars are almost non-existent: if only Napoleon knew he could hire mercenaries from Russian provinces…
3. Some prolonged wars usually end when one of the sides bankrupts, 0 MP is not a sentence yet.
4. Mercenary infantry inflates the value of recruited cavalry. I’ll touch this topic a bit later.
5. Professionalism is almost useless in MP: the really good option is to “buy” MP. Your armies will never be able to train long enough to get any decent amount of professionalism and limited MP pools will force you to hire mercs anyway.
6. Everyone stacks FL buildings to increase merc limit as well over MP buildings, MP-related ideas are of much less value than they should be.

Now it’s time to touch a bit different topic: the (almost) useless cavalry.
In early game cavalry is significantly stronger than infantry: in general cavalry gets ~30%-50% more pips for almost 2.5x the value until tech 12-15, when the infantry gains more pips. I know that Cav has higher flanking range, which is a big deal when you outnumber your enemies (usually until midgame). Problem is that mercenary infantry cost is roughly on par with recruited cavalry, but has a blessing of the Void: the reinforcements come from nowhere. This means that you are can care less about attrition your armies suffer and you can save MP for reinforcing artillery. Just check your previous Dev-MP clashes: the majority of players didn’t use cavalry at all.


My proposed solution:

• Make mercenary infantry much less affordable
• Second obvious solution is to increase the value on manpower and reintroduce MP-related meta:
  1. Increase MP pools by roughly 75-100% and add additional MP-regen modifiers.
     In this case players will still have to use mercenaries, buch on much lower scale and will have to take in consideration attrition modifiers. The other parameter to watch after is a positive MP regen. This option is much closer to current meta with rapid MP regen.
  2. Dramatically increase MP pools (2x-3x of current value), but tone MP-regen percentage a bit down.
     In this case MP becomes a much more valuable resource. Mercenaries become more of an emergency option, but attrition wars will become a really valid option. Warfare becomes a much riskier affair (you can run out of MP much sooner than you might have expected) and the defender gets an upperhand. This solution is closer to pre-1.12 meta introduced in Common Sense.
• Make Cavalry cheaper, something like 1.5x-1.8x of infantry cost (and maintenance). Coupled with mercenaries cost increase and reintroduction of manpower meta this should revitalize cavalry-related builds, make hordes great again and add variety to army composition

Both proposed changes to merc vs MP meta should also make professionalism feature much more valuable. As the result, defensive wars tactics with high attrition, scorched earth, strategically placed forts becomes more viable. Infinite mercspam will be toned down to a more sensible degree and manpower-related ideas also become great again.

Part II: Improved mercenaries suggestion:

But what about mercenaries? Their cost and maintenance nerf won’t affect their true magical power of infinite reinforcements and rich nations will still be able to use them but not on full scale as they do now, (while for minors mercs will be hidden behind a huge paywall. Anyway, the most troublesome feature mercenaries have is an infinite reinforcement pool out of nowhere (I did mention it before, didn’t I). Players use mercenary infantry as a cannon fodder, merging regiments after every battle to advance as fast as possible or hiring new regiments in a provinces near the battle to reinforce it. From a gameplay perspective I see no problems, but from historic and realistic one it’s extremely deliberate

To solve this particular issue I suggest to introduce mercenary manpower resource. It may be a derivative of nation’s maximum manpower value or of nation’s force limit, for example. Furthermore, mercenary manpower pool should be much smaller than manpower pool itself (something like 20%-35%) but regenerate much quicker: as a result, merging mercenaries after each battle and rehiring new regiments should not be possible on a really large scale (but still possible as an emergency action under certain circumstances).

The proposed changes to mercenaries look like a big nerf, so let’s try to counterbalance the increased cost, maintenance and limitations to mercenary meta.

Some rich plutocratic and highly mercantile nations like Genoa, Venice or Switzerland were famous for having extremely potent mercenary armies; German Landsknechts are also a phenomenon of the Renaissance era. Crimean Tatars were often hired by Eastern European local magnates, monarchs and even Zaporozhian Cossacks (who themselves were quite famous on mercenary scene). My suggestion is to allow players to hire region-specific mercenaries that inherit and override some of the military quality modifiers:

• + Discipline (only NIs and idea groups, no policies and events)
• + Combat ability (only NIs and idea groups, no policies and events)
• + Shock\Fire modifiers (only NIs and idea groups, no policies and events)
• - Morale shouldn’t be inherited, because it’s a function of NIs, Idea groups, events, Prestige, Army traditions and Power projection.

In this case players will try to hire Polish Winged Hussars, Swedish infantry or Prussian space marines, while Swiss Reisläufer or Genoese Balestrieri will be completely overshadowed. To fix this possible issue some administrative idea groups should have their own mercenary military modifiers (much like plutocratic ideas):

• Mercenary Inf\Cav\Art Combat ability
• Mercenary Shock\Fire damage dealt\received
• Mercenary cost\maintenance, manpower or manpower regen modifier

Also, the proposed cavalry cost change to 1.5-1.8x cost of infantry should make mercenary cavalry regiments more affordable in general.


Conclusion:
As a result of my proposal, EU4 warfare should improve significantly: mindless mercspam should be replaced by manpower meta, that brings to the table careful campaign planning, meaningful defensive wars (finally, attrition is not useless) strategy and improved mercenaries, to say nothing of realism.

Spoiler

My next posts will be about totally dominant military modifiers, mindless expansion meta and how “tall” gameplay is unviable.

 

[Doldenberg]

I see the problem but I dislike the solution. The game already over-emphasizes the importance of standing armies, which historically only really got traction after the 30-Years War. Manpower-based armies being stronger in late game and Merc-based armies being stronger in early game would be fine in my opinion, the problem is that a) Mercs stay useful for too long and b) that this one somewhat historical mechanic is embedded in an environment that is entirely ahistorical, obviously especially so in Multiplayer.
To just name the most obvious example: Every war is always treated as a "total war"; which is connected to the problem of blobbing. This might actually be even more pronounced with the AI than with players, because players can just make whatever peace deal they want, while many of the rules the AI abides by actually forces it into a situation where it can't recover its losses, e.g. occupation is valued too highly while decisive battles are valued too low. This means that to get a country to accept any deal, it will likely have to beaten up so badly that it can't recover before the next war. (plus the problem of overly aggressive AI-neighbours attacking to take a bite) As a game example, if you have France and Spain as AI and one starts beating up the other and taking territory, it can be assumed that the situation will essentially never reverse throughout future wars. But historically, Mercenary armies were expensive and wars had to be more contained. (Even with standing armies all-out war was rare) As a historical example for comparison, just look at the list of times that Paris was besieged: Five. And only a single one of those was during the timeframe of the game, and it was during the French Wars of Religion. Yet France was involved in a whole lot of wars, and lost a whole lot of them too. In the game, the AI would probably never agree to any historical peace deal France made without getting entirely sieged down.
That is the core problem of EU4 and has always been. The early modern period is defined by its transitions, which are hard to put into the static frame of the game.
Which is why I think the problem will eventually have to be approached from a more holistic perspective that adresses the issue of that total war-mindset of the AI, blobbing/lack of proper portrayals of stable borders for minors/instable bigger empires, and so on.

But even when thinking about a temporary solution, I would do some things differently from what was originally proposed her. One would be entirely separating bonuses for Mercs and normal troops. So Mercs would be quite able in the early game, when those bonuses are low (they could even get bonuses themselves, making them better than manpower based troops, which would then be portraying either levies or the few actual standing armies of that period, which would get appropriate bonuses (like the Black Army of Hungary). Later, with Army Professionalism, national ideas etc., normal units would become better.
Regional mercenaries are a good idea, but again, I think this should take into account the historical circumstances. This has been mentioned in the original post, that people would just buy Prussian space marines and Winged Hussars. But the military reputation of Prussia was closely tied to their standing army (Brandenburg was entirely unremarkable before that), so it wouldn't really be logical to just give Mercs the stats of whatever country they're hired from. (the later soldier trade by German princes is a different phenomenon from the earlier mercenaries and is already portrayed by the Condottieri-feature). Which would be another argument for separating the stats of Mercs and normal troops entirely. This would mean that there are certain countries known for hiring mercenaries (e.g. in Italy), which would get bonuses for that and there should be regions that should provide certain special mercenaries (e.g. Landsknechte in the HRE). Switzerland for example isn't known for hiring mercenaries, but for providing them; so they shouldn't really get a hiring bonus, but a quality bonus to their regional mercenaries and a separate one for their their own troops (since the reputation of the Reisläufer was tied to the military reputation of the Eidgenossen themselves). This could then be tied to regional mercenary-manpower-values more or less separate from national manpower of those nations within the region. I'm saying more or less because there's obvious potential for links, like countries getting manpower penalties if too many mercenaries from the region are hired and getting a decision to limit the mercenary trade.

Since this all seems closely tied to Europa and the HRE especially, although there's obviously mercenaries all over the world, I would like to see it explored in a new expansion and patch focusing on overhauling Europe and the HRE. Regional mercenaries seem like a good feature for such an expansion, while basic changes like separating bonuses for Mercs and normal troops could be part of the free patch.

 

[bebrst]

I see the problem but I dislike the solution. The game already over-emphasizes the importance of standing armies, which historically only really got traction after the 30-Years War. Manpower-based armies being stronger in late game and Merc-based armies being stronger in early game would be fine in my opinion, the problem is that a) Mercs stay useful for too long and b) that this one somewhat historical mechanic is embedded in an environment that is entirely ahistorical, obviously especially so in Multiplayer.
To just name the most obvious example: Every war is always treated as a "total war"; which is connected to the problem of blobbing. This might actually be even more pronounced with the AI than with players, because players can just make whatever peace deal they want, while many of the rules the AI abides by actually forces it into a situation where it can't recover its losses, e.g. occupation is valued too highly while decisive battles are valued too low. This means that to get a country to accept any deal, it will likely have to beaten up so badly that it can't recover before the next war. (plus the problem of overly aggressive AI-neighbours attacking to take a bite) As a game example, if you have France and Spain as AI and one starts beating up the other and taking territory, it can be assumed that the situation will essentially never reverse throughout future wars. But historically, Mercenary armies were expensive and wars had to be more contained. (Even with standing armies all-out war was rare) As a historical example for comparison, just look at the list of times that Paris was besieged: Five. And only a single one of those was during the timeframe of the game, and it was during the French Wars of Religion. Yet France was involved in a whole lot of wars, and lost a whole lot of them too. In the game, the AI would probably never agree to any historical peace deal France made without getting entirely sieged down.
That is the core problem of EU4 and has always been. The early modern period is defined by its transitions, which are hard to put into the static frame of the game.
Which is why I think the problem will eventually have to be approached from a more holistic perspective that adresses the issue of that total war-mindset of the AI, blobbing/lack of proper portrayals of stable borders for minors/instable bigger empires, and so on.

But even when thinking about a temporary solution, I would do some things differently from what was originally proposed her. One would be entirely separating bonuses for Mercs and normal troops. So Mercs would be quite able in the early game, when those bonuses are low (they could even get bonuses themselves, making them better than manpower based troops, which would then be portraying either levies or the few actual standing armies of that period, which would get appropriate bonuses (like the Black Army of Hungary). Later, with Army Professionalism, national ideas etc., normal units would become better.
Regional mercenaries are a good idea, but again, I think this should take into account the historical circumstances. This has been mentioned in the original post, that people would just buy Prussian space marines and Winged Hussars. But the military reputation of Prussia was closely tied to their standing army (Brandenburg was entirely unremarkable before that), so it wouldn't really be logical to just give Mercs the stats of whatever country they're hired from. (the later soldier trade by German princes is a different phenomenon from the earlier mercenaries and is already portrayed by the Condottieri-feature). Which would be another argument for separating the stats of Mercs and normal troops entirely. This would mean that there are certain countries known for hiring mercenaries (e.g. in Italy), which would get bonuses for that and there should be regions that should provide certain special mercenaries (e.g. Landsknechte in the HRE). Switzerland for example isn't known for hiring mercenaries, but for providing them; so they shouldn't really get a hiring bonus, but a quality bonus to their regional mercenaries and a separate one for their their own troops (since the reputation of the Reisläufer was tied to the military reputation of the Eidgenossen themselves). This could then be tied to regional mercenary-manpower-values more or less separate from national manpower of those nations within the region. I'm saying more or less because there's obvious potential for links, like countries getting manpower penalties if too many mercenaries from the region are hired and getting a decision to limit the mercenary trade.

Since this all seems closely tied to Europa and the HRE especially, although there's obviously mercenaries all over the world, I would like to see it explored in a new expansion and patch focusing on overhauling Europe and the HRE. Regional mercenaries seem like a good feature for such an expansion, while basic changes like separating bonuses for Mercs and normal troops could be part of the free patch.

You're addressing really important points. With the current game set-up, the appropriate title for the game could be "Total War" i guess there has to be a whole new system on how to calculate war score, making it possible to win a war without occupying the whole country...

 

[RNGesus322]

If you don't care about achievements, you can change the ubiquity of mercs and the cost of using them in the game files. I took the liberty of changing the following modifiers, and it has cut down the mercspam significantly, both for players and for myself (I can't just mindlessly take infinite loans to beat AI countries 2x my size anymore):

MAX_MANPOWER = 20 (formerly 10) - Means your manpower pool can now store 20 years worth of manpower
MERCENARY_REINFORCE_COST_MULTIPLIER = 2.5 (formerly 1.5) - Means mercs cost 250% extra to reinforce instead of 150%, makes attrition more punishing if you're using mercs.
MERCENARY_SUPPORT_LIMIT_BASE = 4 (formerly 20)
MERCENARY_SUPPORT_LIMIT_FRACTION = 0.4 (formerly 0.33) - means your *base* merc pool is 4 + 40% of FL, instead of 20 + 33% of FL. Means if your manpower drops too much in a war you'll be pretty crippled, instead of being able to ignore it by taking huge loans and spamming mercs. I also nerfed most of the +available mercenaries modifiers to keep this in line with the absolutism change.

INFLATION_FROM_LOAN = 0.3,
BASE_INTERESTS = 10, - Means that each loan you take now increases inflation by 0.3% instead of 0.1%, and the base loan interest is 10% per year instead of 4%. Pretty controversial change, but this means loans aren't just a "free money" button, and you have to think long and hard as to whether you want to pay much more in the long-run in return for gaining an immediate benefit. Also makes -interest modifiers actually valuable, if you get enough of them you could manage to loanspam without problems. Also, no state in history has ever taken on debt equal to 20x their yearly income and not collapsed/gone bankrupt, whereas here you can take 20 loans and shrug it off without a problem. You shouldn't be able to take more than 10 loans without running into some serious trouble. AI on VH mode gets -5 interest because they're stupid at managing loans.

EXPLOIT_COOLDOWN_MONTHS = 120, - Makes exploiting a viable (and in some cases better) way to gain short-term benefits. Pretty sure that most states in history tended to take more resources from their own people over taking on foreign loans (which would put them at the mercy of other states). Long-term loss vs immediate payoff.

DEBASE_MAX_STORED_MONTHS = 180,
DEBASE_MONTHS_PER_CHARGE = 36, - you can still store up to 5 debases, but they regenerate themselves every 3 years instead of 1. Means you have to choose carefully when to use them. Also increased the corruption it gives you to 2.5, to keep it in line with the loan nerf.

I increased the max attrition cap based on the terrain and province modifiers of each province. So for normal (grasslands) it's still 5, but if it's tropical, arid, a desert, mountainous, or suffering from moderate or severe winter, the attrition cap is raised. The highest is something like 15% for a mountainous province with a severe winter. Makes sieging down Russia actually as hard as it was in real life. AI on VH gets 33% reduced attrition because they're stupid at managing it.

absolutism = {
administrative_efficiency = 0.40
global_autonomy = -0.10
global_unrest = 5
possible_mercenaries = -0.75
state_maintenance_modifier = -0.33
stability_cost_modifier = 0.25
culture_conversion_cost = -0.50
num_accepted_cultures = -6
}
Made Absolutism reduce the amount of mercs you can recruit (historically accurate, considering that centralization of state power reduced dependency of the state on mercs)
This also makes Absolutism a trade-off, on the one hand you can conquer more and are better at centralizing, but on the other hand people (especially cultural minorities) are more likely to rise up as a result of losing their autonomy to an absolute monarch. Also reduced -global autonomy modifiers across the board and increased situations where your autonomy goes up, this makes the prosperity and absolutism -autonomy much more valuable and also makes reducing autonomy in provinces (which normally you don't do) a viable tactic, as well as using the centralization state edict.

war_exhaustion = {
global_unrest = 1
global_regiment_recruit_speed = 0.02
global_ship_recruit_speed = 0.02
temples_influence = -0.05
mr_aristocrats_influence = -0.05
rr_girondists_influence = -0.05
rr_royalists_influence = 0.05
manpower_recovery_speed = -0.03
sailors_recovery_speed = -0.03
mercenary_cost = 0.03
merc_maintenance_modifier = 0.05
defensiveness = -0.02
}
This makes war exhaustion something that actually affects you badly, especially if you're relying on mercs. The defensiveness reduction is because if people in provinces are exhausted they should be surrendering earlier. The cost for reducing war exhaustion is also increased to 100 DIP, which also makes -war exhaustion cost modifiers actually valuable instead of useless.

These changes sort of solve the mercspam and manpower problem, as well as making the game a bit more challenging and choice-driven. I changed a lot more than just this, but these are the ones relevant to this thread.

 

[Crashes]

Mercenary Regions

-snip-

Any thoughts?

Here's my 2c.

- Mercenaries do not replenish at all, once damaged, the only way to get mercenary regiments back up to strength is to merge them.
- Every in-game region has a "Mercenary Pool" statistic, which to keep it simple, is the sum provincial mercenary manpower. To keep it simple, this number is the manpower of a province multiplied by a factor based on local autonomy. Increase the effect of devastation, unrest, and occupation on local autonomy so wars generate more mercs. This pool is visible in the recruiting screen and recovers to full in 100 months.
- Decrease the starting ratio of mercs as a proportion of the force limit.

Then to make professionalism more important/easy to get.
- Barracks/Training Fields should raise local supply limit and speed up drilling in that province
- The morale loss from drilling is greatly reduced. Perhaps only a 25% reduction in morale while drilling
- Drilling is considerably faster, and has more modifiers so it is plausible to fight with drilled armies constantly/semi-constantly. By late game, fighting with undrilled armies should be a losing proposition.

 

[RedWyvern]

...
These changes sort of solve the mercspam and manpower problem, as well as making the game a bit more challenging and choice-driven. I changed a lot more than just this, but these are the ones relevant to this thread.

These changes look interesting. Do you have a mod or some such containing all the changes you've made?

 

[KRBLACK]

Plutocratic ideas already have +2.5% mercenary discipline (nerfed from 5% iirc?). Literally any admin-based ideagroup could have some evenly spread merc-related combat, cost or maintenance ideas.


Oh, thank you for your input, I was too slow to get it =)



Professionalism (and drill) is a good concept with lacking implementation: you don't get any when you are at war... This alone says enough

1. I think mercenaries shouldn't benefit from regular discipline, like they don't benefit from -x% land maintenance cost and have their own -x% mercenary maintenance modifier.
2. NP
3. Very true.

Drilling is okish fast, if you take the decision for 40% faster drilling for 15% more expansive Army. Drilling is incredibly fast if you have 100% ArmyProf, since it combines with your decision. Drilled Infantry is crap, since after only one battle they lost their drill completly (so alteast for one battle they are good).
But drilled Artillery will never loose their drill, and drilled Cav is also pretty good.

You should have the money to always drill your army, atleast after the first few years, since there is so much money in the game now. How much fighting occurs is part of the MP. For my MP bigger wars more or less start after the Religious HRE War. So lot of time to get to 100% AP.

If you lost your Inf in Battle, or fight in High Attrition area, just hire Merc Inf once, but never disband them. You can't drill them, but this doesn't matter, because Inf dies so fast. They don't get Army Prof, but this is ok, because of the endless reinforcing. Since you don't disband and rehire, you don't loose ArmyProf from rehiring.

After a while you have a mix of a standing Merc Army supplemented with strong Regular Artillery and Cavelery.

Edit: You get Army Prof when in war. Altough not directly, but I get a pretty good amount of Events, which raise Army Prof by like 5% while in war. I don't really need to fight, just helping out allies.

You didn't get my point. The speed at which your troops gain drill is fine, especially with the extra modifiers (that I don't think are worth taking). The speed at which drilling grants army professionalism is too low when you go over +/- 30 forcelimit, at least compared to the cost of not reducing maintenance.

The problem with Aristocratic is not that its bad, it is that Defensive/Offensive/Quality/Quantity are such strong picks that Aristocratic is just mediocre. The loss of any of those four idea groups is not worth the gains of picking up Aristocratic, and you can only have four military idea groups.

On top of that, Innovative pretty much fills much of the same role, but has even better bonuses (-10% technology cost > -10% military technology cost) in some areas and a LOT of strong policies (including +20% infantry combat ability). The only thing you will miss from Aristocratic is the -1% Army tradition decay and the diplomat (maybe).

I just came back to EU4 after many years of hiatus, and one of the big things I noticed is how the idea group balance is even worse than before, you probably already know from the beginning of the game what eight idea groups you will have and the only hard thinking is which order to take them in.

PS: As for the OP, my experiences of manpower is early game drought, late game deluge. Given, it seems like Manpower was nerfed to the point where you actually can run out late game, but manpower, if you stack enough and get enough buildings, can be turned into an virtually limitless resource to the point where Mercenaries are both unnecessary and detrimental.

I play with the option to choose idea groups without restrictions. (You should try an all-military run once just for fun ). I didn't say that Aristocratic is the best thing in the world, but it is not as bad as it used to be.

+1 land leader siege --> lets you keep your sanity when sieging
+33% manpower --> does what it should
-1% army tradition decay --> a bit worse than the strait +1 army tradition, but ok
+1 diplomat --> this can be a lifesaver for countries like austria or brandenburg that need that extra diplomat to make sure they stay emperor
+1 leader without upkeep --> when you sink points into generals and you finally get your holy 6-6-6-6 generals you'll wish you get to keep em all, now you can
-10% military tech cost --> basically 0.33 military points per month

Also note that the idea group events for aristocratic are pretty good. They grant you more nobility loyalty and therefor let you farm their option more.
150: (12*20)=0.625 military points per month if you farm the demand military support buttom religiously.
So aristocratic grants you about 1 military point per month if you look at it this way.

 

[RNGesus322]

These changes look interesting. Do you have a mod or some such containing all the changes you've made?

I have a mod, although I haven't thought about actually releasing it. If I were to, I would probably call it something like "Historical Balancer", since I based it on a similar vein to HPM. There isn't very much new content though, just rebalancing, I think the only new content were a few events I added for AI to keep them more historical (only when the player isn't playing in that region). Some of the mechanics are different though (like changing Prussian militarism to only tick up while at war and tick down while at peace).

EDIT: Here's the Beta version: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1215178754&searchtext=

 

[Old Tercio]

I agree with the @Fiddlejam post, Paradox was catering to selling (don't blame them), the main issue is that Mercs aren't represented as they should, rarely they should be filling all the gaps of an army Historically they were supportive, with the exception of the Landsknecht golden age which didn't last that long (they had a horrible reputation especially in the low lands) Merc armies ever replaced the core of a kingdom armies, they were just hired to fill the gaps or to reinforced, this is special in the Italian wars where the French and Spanish hired mercs but were never the backbone or core of their armies

 

[Old Tercio]

You're addressing really important points. With the current game set-up, the appropriate title for the game could be "Total War" i guess there has to be a whole new system on how to calculate war score, making it possible to win a war without occupying the whole country...

I agree on this, Paradox should emulate a historical model for war, war looks so generic, conquer all to again 3 provinces with 200 aggressive expansion is lazy IMO

 

[Lepaso]

I'm not going to read all the walls of text, so this may have already been suggested, but why not have a decreasing scale of available mercs as the game progresses? So in 1444, you can hire 40 merc! or some other large number. By the 1700's, you can only hire 10 merc, or some other small number. In exchange, max manpower and/or force limit could go up over time.

This seems like a far simpler fix than jacking merc cost up to 100 ducats a unit or other non-solutions that reward large nations and punish small ones. Plus, this way, available mercs ideas suddenly become even better. Isn't it better to wean the player off mercs over time rather than make the barrier to entry obnoxiously high that does nothing early on but punish small nations and buff large ones, while later on the players can just laugh at any monetary restrictions and summon a 50 stack with nary a dent to their finances?

 

[Pahvimato]

I'd like the main focus to be on maintenance, not cost, if changes are made. That way you could still use mercenaries as an emergency button, but they could not make a significant part of your standing forces. Mercenary cavalry and artillery are already an uncommon sight due to their high recruitment cost which makes them very situational.

 

[Zak Preston]

I'd like the main focus to be on maintenance, not cost, if changes are made. That way you could still use mercenaries as an emergency button, but they could not make a significant part of your standing forces. Mercenary cavalry and artillery are already an uncommon sight due to their high recruitment cost which makes them very situational.

Mercenary cavalry and artillery costs way too much to maintain and only rich and desperate players hire it.

I see the problem but I dislike the solution. The game already over-emphasizes the importance of standing armies, which historically only really got traction after the 30-Years War. Manpower-based armies being stronger in late game and Merc-based armies being stronger in early game would be fine in my opinion, the problem is that a) Mercs stay useful for too long and b) that this one somewhat historical mechanic is embedded in an environment that is entirely ahistorical, obviously especially so in Multiplayer.
To just name the most obvious example: Every war is always treated as a "total war"; which is connected to the problem of blobbing. This might actually be even more pronounced with the AI than with players, because players can just make whatever peace deal they want, while many of the rules the AI abides by actually forces it into a situation where it can't recover its losses, e.g. occupation is valued too highly while decisive battles are valued too low. This means that to get a country to accept any deal, it will likely have to beaten up so badly that it can't recover before the next war. (plus the problem of overly aggressive AI-neighbours attacking to take a bite) As a game example, if you have France and Spain as AI and one starts beating up the other and taking territory, it can be assumed that the situation will essentially never reverse throughout future wars. But historically, Mercenary armies were expensive and wars had to be more contained. (Even with standing armies all-out war was rare) As a historical example for comparison, just look at the list of times that Paris was besieged: Five. And only a single one of those was during the timeframe of the game, and it was during the French Wars of Religion. Yet France was involved in a whole lot of wars, and lost a whole lot of them too. In the game, the AI would probably never agree to any historical peace deal France made without getting entirely sieged down.
That is the core problem of EU4 and has always been. The early modern period is defined by its transitions, which are hard to put into the static frame of the game.
Which is why I think the problem will eventually have to be approached from a more holistic perspective that adresses the issue of that total war-mindset of the AI, blobbing/lack of proper portrayals of stable borders for minors/instable bigger empires, and so on.

But even when thinking about a temporary solution, I would do some things differently from what was originally proposed her. One would be entirely separating bonuses for Mercs and normal troops. So Mercs would be quite able in the early game, when those bonuses are low (they could even get bonuses themselves, making them better than manpower based troops, which would then be portraying either levies or the few actual standing armies of that period, which would get appropriate bonuses (like the Black Army of Hungary). Later, with Army Professionalism, national ideas etc., normal units would become better.
Regional mercenaries are a good idea, but again, I think this should take into account the historical circumstances. This has been mentioned in the original post, that people would just buy Prussian space marines and Winged Hussars. But the military reputation of Prussia was closely tied to their standing army (Brandenburg was entirely unremarkable before that), so it wouldn't really be logical to just give Mercs the stats of whatever country they're hired from. (the later soldier trade by German princes is a different phenomenon from the earlier mercenaries and is already portrayed by the Condottieri-feature). Which would be another argument for separating the stats of Mercs and normal troops entirely. This would mean that there are certain countries known for hiring mercenaries (e.g. in Italy), which would get bonuses for that and there should be regions that should provide certain special mercenaries (e.g. Landsknechte in the HRE). Switzerland for example isn't known for hiring mercenaries, but for providing them; so they shouldn't really get a hiring bonus, but a quality bonus to their regional mercenaries and a separate one for their their own troops (since the reputation of the Reisläufer was tied to the military reputation of the Eidgenossen themselves). This could then be tied to regional mercenary-manpower-values more or less separate from national manpower of those nations within the region. I'm saying more or less because there's obvious potential for links, like countries getting manpower penalties if too many mercenaries from the region are hired and getting a decision to limit the mercenary trade.

Since this all seems closely tied to Europa and the HRE especially, although there's obviously mercenaries all over the world, I would like to see it explored in a new expansion and patch focusing on overhauling Europe and the HRE. Regional mercenaries seem like a good feature for such an expansion, while basic changes like separating bonuses for Mercs and normal troops could be part of the free patch.

Separating mercspam and manpower meta is a very good option, but your particular suggestion has a huge drawback: an early game merc-oriented nation will snowball quickly but will seriously lag behind in mid\late-game. And you what will players do? -- They will start unlearning "useless" idea groups.

I'm not going to read all the walls of text, so this may have already been suggested, but why not have a decreasing scale of available mercs as the game progresses? So in 1444, you can hire 40 merc! or some other large number. By the 1700's, you can only hire 10 merc, or some other small number. In exchange, max manpower and/or force limit could go up over time.

This seems like a far simpler fix than jacking merc cost up to 100 ducats a unit or other non-solutions that reward large nations and punish small ones. Plus, this way, available mercs ideas suddenly become even better. Isn't it better to wean the player off mercs over time rather than make the barrier to entry obnoxiously high that does nothing early on but punish small nations and buff large ones, while later on the players can just laugh at any monetary restrictions and summon a 50 stack with nary a dent to their finances?

Without changing the amount of manpower you have (and it's regen, obviously) any major battle past 1650's will cost the whole manpower pool.

 

[Doldenberg]

Separating mercspam and manpower meta is a very good option, but your particular suggestion has a huge drawback: an early game merc-oriented nation will snowball quickly but will seriously lag behind in mid\late-game. And you what will players do? -- They will start unlearning "useless" idea groups.

I personally don't think this would be such a great problem. We already have nations getting certain advantages in certain time periods, either through their order of ideas or through unique age abilities or events and so on and so forth. I'm personally not really in favor of trying to make the game balanced in the sense that all nations should be equal in power or even just when it comes to ideas. And when it comes to ideas, this could actually make Administrative a less obvious choice, which would probably be a step forward.
The biggest risk I see there is that Merc-oriented nations and idea-picks will snowball so much that Manpower-oriented ones will never even get a chance to shine. Also, since they're Merc-oriented, they could get bonuses to Merc fighting power as well, making them useful for a longer time - they'll still eventually be overtaken by Manpower-based units, but that's the point, because that's how it historically went, the Merc-based warfare eventually became obsolete.

 

[Zak Preston]

I personally don't think this would be such a great problem. We already have nations getting certain advantages in certain time periods, either through their order of ideas or through unique age abilities or events and so on and so forth. I'm personally not really in favor of trying to make the game balanced in the sense that all nations should be equal in power or even just when it comes to ideas. And when it comes to ideas, this could actually make Administrative a less obvious choice, which would probably be a step forward.
The biggest risk I see there is that Merc-oriented nations and idea-picks will snowball so much that Manpower-oriented ones will never even get a chance to shine. Also, since they're Merc-oriented, they could get bonuses to Merc fighting power as well, making them useful for a longer time - they'll still eventually be overtaken by Manpower-based units, but that's the point, because that's how it historically went, the Merc-based warfare eventually became obsolete.

Don't forget that merc-oriented meta as it is right now is quite toxic and unrealistic: your mercenaries get reinforcements out of nowhere, you can almost ignore attrition and lots of other factors I've listed above. In my opinion, mercs should be an addition to most armies with some rare cultural or regional exceptions or even tied to government form (republics). And of the importance of mercenaries should lower as the timeline goes.

 

[Doldenberg]

In my opinion, mercs should be an addition to most armies with some rare cultural or regional exceptions or even tied to government form (republics). And of the importance of mercenaries should lower as the timeline goes.

That wouldn't really be accurate either, since Mercs were actually broadly used at the time and not just solely by the Republics of Italy. It would also possibly completely overthrow the current way the game works since, as said, it's heavily based on sieges, and sieges are a major manpower drain, especially early game, so restricting Mercenaries too much would mostly nerf smaller nations who would essentially have to sacrifice their entire manpower for a single small war (I've already talked about the fact that I consider the tendency of the AI to spam Mercs and ruin itself instead of seeking an acceptable peace deal and cutting their losses as a separate problem). That is why my proposal would actually buff Mercs in the early game, but nerf them in late game.

 

[Pyramid_Head]

It is ironic that with Persia mercs should be nerfed and instead devs buffed them to insane levels, making mercspam many times worse that in any patch before.

 

[Horn and Ivory]

I'd be most in favour of making relatively small and easy-to-get-your-head-round changes to mechanics.

My suggestion: Miltechs gradually increase merc cost and maintenance (just as diplo techs already increase naval maintenance - but to a larger extent, such that fielding all-merc infantry forces is wildly, untenably expensive by the late game). Certain Miltechs increase manpower and manpower recovery, with gradual gains early on, then larger increases starting from the late 1600s, and enormous bonuses in the endgame to reflect the game-changing levee en masse employed by Revolutionary France.

I like the idea of a regional mercenary pool as well, but the implementation would have to be pretty sharp. I wouldn't want it if it didn't gear nicely into other mechanics, or if it were possible to crush an an opponent in MP by buying up the regional pool before the war.

 

[Horn and Ivory]

Separate post so that separate reactions can be given:

Often in the time-period nations peaced out because going ham with the military had led to economic crisis - this happened all the time, especially with France. Debt reducing war enthusiasm would help greatly with all wars becoming total wars, at least in the case of the AI.

For a more vicious implementation of this thing so as to also affect players, debt causes war exahustion. But it'd have to be balanced pretty carefully.

 

[Zak Preston]

I'd be most in favour of making relatively small and easy-to-get-your-head-round changes to mechanics.

My suggestion: Miltechs gradually increase merc cost and maintenance (just as diplo techs already increase naval maintenance - but to a larger extent, such that fielding all-merc infantry forces is wildly, untenably expensive by the late game). Certain Miltechs increase manpower and manpower recovery, with gradual gains early on, then larger increases starting from the late 1600s, and enormous bonuses in the endgame to reflect the game-changing levee en masse employed by Revolutionary France.

Good idea, might actually work even better than just increasing manpower per development value in defines.lua

I like the idea of a regional mercenary pool as well, but the implementation would have to be pretty sharp. I wouldn't want it if it didn't gear nicely into other mechanics, or if it were possible to crush an an opponent in MP by buying up the regional pool before the war.

Buying up all mercs from the region is a very toxic mechanics for MP and should be somehow handled, for example make regional mercs pools individual: this way a nation will have a percentage of it's FL or Available Mercenaries in any region, so it won't be able to hire Prussian-only infantry and will also have to hire mercs from Sweden and maybe Cab from Hungary.

Separate post so that separate reactions can be given:

Often in the time-period nations peaced out because going ham with the military had led to economic crisis - this happened all the time, especially with France. Debt reducing war enthusiasm would help greatly with all wars becoming total wars, at least in the case of the AI.

For a more vicious implementation of this thing so as to also affect players, debt causes war exahustion. But it'd have to be balanced pretty carefully.

Loans is another problem in EU4: you are taking money from nowhere and literally pay them to none. If you bankrupt, you owe anything to anyone. Mercspam + infinite loans make a perfect symbiosis and a perfect circle of "everything out of nothing".
Another words, another magical aspect of the game that I might cover in the next thread.

 

[KRBLACK]

Loans is another problem in EU4: you are taking money from nowhere and literally pay them to none. If you bankrupt, you owe anything to anyone. Mercspam + infinite loans make a perfect symbiosis and a perfect circle of "everything out of nothing".
Another words, another magical aspect of the game that I might cover in the next thread.

I just think the inflation following loans should stack like the following:
0 loans --> 1 loan --> 0.10 inflation
1 --> 2 --> 0.15 inflation
2 --> 3 --> 0.20 inflation

This way taking 3 consecutive loans will give 0.45 inflation. This might be too harsh, but the exact numbers would have to be play-tested.

0,45/ 2 = 22,5%
0,225*75 = 16,875 ADM

This would be a reasonable penalty for taking loans and make ''reduce inflation cost'' modifiers more useful. Though I still think this modifier should decrease the impact of inflation instead because a 8 ADM reduction is very marginal.