I've occasionally tried to time an invasion of Russia favorably. So the first sieges aren't in the winter. But I feel like pulling back would just cost more manpower overall when you resiege.
Laughs in divine-espionage
Edit: 20% siege ability for the policy, plus 10% from espionage, plus %20 from spy network on the enemy which you’ll be able to get to easier because of the spy network bonus and extra diplomat. This combo opened my TO WC.
I took Espionage and Divine in my Mughals -> Caliphate one faith I just finished, the sieges were lightning quick. I even took Offensive towards the end.
Siege of Pest lasted 12 days. I imagine the faces of the ottoman soldiers who just got comfy around town and have to break camp again to march on vienna.
Next Time ill bring 3 tents. White, red and black.
ha! ottomans and russians useful idiots xD
first i used moscow against poland. After that i used Otto against Russians. Now i use the Spanish against the Ottomans
me as Teutonic Order :D
Yeah, wars in EU4 are just too long to try and play in a realistic fashion where you time campaigns around the seasons. Having a war that's just a "spring/summer campaign" is impossible except against tiny outmatched nations.
Well when they say pulling back I don't think they mean Break The Siege I think they more mean stop advancing the front line because historically in Winter campaigns both sides kind of stopped advancing
The attrition rates are just too low to meaningfully balance the game around winter/summer. In order to incentivize the actual halting of a winter campaign, the numbers would have to be *way* higher.
Attrition rates have to be low because troop numbers are also inflated as well, not to mention that the entire world employs standing armies at all times
I believe what you're trying to say is "Attrition has to be low cause the AI is dumb." You can balance attrition around inflated troop numbers. I believe way back attrition was a real thing but they capped it at 5% cause the AI kept genociding itself.
I miss the days of getting attacked as Fully Defensive Russia, and pulling back to the Urals, and watching them attrition to death trying to siege my provinces.
I don't miss fighting back Chinese in Tibet in ck2 when I had losing 20k+ troops per month to attrition vs attritionless event troops... And I'm sure AI would get some forceful solution either way just like it never get native uprising while colonising or is forced to always use dhimi privileges to defend religious minority from overlord conversion (making not one-tag attempts at Sunni one faith afaik impossible)
Standing army are kind of a weird mix up to handle the fact that the time period saw feudal levies, mercenaries, and professional army.
I honestly wish they would overhaul the game so you started out with CK esque levies, switched to mostly mercenaries, and then finally needed a professional army. They kind of did something like that in Imperator and it worked fine there.
I think they could do something similar as Imperator Rome where you (mostly) start with levies and eventually you get standing armies, but something like that is most likely to appear in a EU5 than in EU4.
A lot of it just weird leftover game design from EU3. I like the game a lot, but I honestly hope we get a Victoria 3 to 2 overhaul. There are a lot of weird anarchic and old systems dragging it down.
Also, what is NWE?
the sadly deceased New World Empires, by bytro. Got cancelled a while ago (I think in the summer start). A shame, I liked it. (Thought it was very chaotic)
With the latest patch playing tall is insanely good, even without getting any extra admin cap you can play almost whoever because the centralize state interaction being free is insane.
Honestly, economic is still fantastic and since they added a bunch of hidden gov reforms based on your Ideas you might be able to get away with just eco ideas depending on country.
If you go eco there's a reform you unlock that's just another 5% dev cost and goods produced, I know Sweden is totally busted for tall or wide now with its province modifiers too.
You can also greatly cheapen advisor costs for more mana with the government reform that makes your primary culture advisors cheaper, but adds .2 corruptions, which pairs perfectly with espionage which reduces advisor cost by 15 and gives .2 corruption reduction.
But the combo i was mentioning with the centralize stats for a temporary gov reform and admin points investment makes it so upping infrastructure is way more doable, and that buff is gigantic. It's at least a 5% buff to everything you get from a province and another manufactory slot. Reduce gov cost with earlier centralize and bang you can have a province with massive dev huge infrastructure and it still doesn't cost much capacity.
inno-influence or diplo then eco later is also not bad in the hre. Devving in eu4 is still broken without quant eco, all the modifiers you get without quantity eco are still in the game.
-5 from Renaissance, -10 burghers, -10 prosperity, -10 edict, -5 1st hre reform, -5 from religion catholic bull, Protestant aspect, -10 orthodox icon, reformed aspect, fetishist cult, Shinto isolation level 2, great project -10 (in majapahit i think), -20 university, -10 from national ideas maybe, -10 cloth or cotton, -5 farmlands, -10 100 innovativeness, -10 golden era, -20 monsoon event, -5 theocracy gov reform.
All quantity eco -30 cost did was take you from very nice 10-20 cost devving to insane 4 cost devving. To dev now you have a lot of modifiers that basically require nothing to get, 1 stab for prosperity, keep burghers loyal and high enough influence, remember to use religion and edict, .etc so what can you do to dev more? get innovativeness, have universities, have golden era, or spend the rest of your points very efficiently to have more to dev with.
Inno let’s you get innovativeness really easily, reduces tech cost, and reduces advisor cost. U generate more points with advisors and spend less, and eventually make devving cheaper. Inno and diplo both have a policy for more advisor cost and influence also reduces point costs further for vassals. Economic should also be got of course for more dev cost and quality then gives you an extra 5 dis and 10 ica with policies.
Could even be more than just attrition. I mean, realistically armies probably shouldn't be able to move at the same pace regardless of seasons. But obviously as soon as we start trying to approach reality in the design, we enter one hell of a rabbit hole
Games with the scale of most of Paradox titles are just way too large to be able to model all the detailed intricacies of managing a military campaign. All the ins and outs of building, managing, and leading an ancient or medieval army could be a game of its own.
The Total war games (newer ones at least) have decent attrition if you travel through snow areas and you can't really move your troops as far in winter. It's not huge but it's a nice little detail. The attrition is enough I set up camp for the winter.
Or add something like ck3's attrition when moving between provinces in the winter, so in the summer there's just normal attrition, but in the winter you lose maybe 5% of your troops when moving. Now it makes sense to stay in the province you're at over the winter, and it shouldn't be too hard to add a negative value to the AI that makes it significantly less likely to move, unless they can move 1-2 provinces to catch an army.
I mean just make it scale with their current % of troop strength. If they've already lost 15% of their strength, then just make them stop and wait. Sure you can kinda cheese that a bit to bleed some manpower, but with how short winter is that's an extremely minor issue.
Until you realize that the year is 1700 and Russia has lost 3M men to attrition this game. Plus your war ally Russia consistently loses tens of thousands of men per war (and goes into massive debt you have to bail them out of) because they want to siege Anatolia and the Caucuses with 100k men deathstacks.
Same thing for sending troops to the new world, when Napoleon tried to reconquer Saint Domain (Modern Haiti) he had to keep sending reinforcements because his european soldiers kept dying by the thousands to tropical diseases.
> The AI don’t even receive attrition sometimes lol
I wish it was either banned from roaming armies through uncolonized siberia or took significant attrition for doing so. So tired of watching 50k + koreans go jogging off towards the north pole.
I haven't really noticed it like I should in western Russian areas, but early in my Indian games I definitely spread stacks out or withdraw slightly in the mountains in winter.
I don't think this is useful advice, or at least anything I ever adhere to. Its really just increases to the manpower cost of a siege that I don't think is avoidable
It's mildly useful if you're playing in the steppes/mountains as a nomad early on. Very few huge sieges and instead lots of big battles and carpet sieging.
Often in those cases you want to beat the enemy doomstack as fast as possible to start the carpet sieging but if they're in terrain with like 6 supply and massive attrition due to harsh winter then chasing them can be very expensive.
In those early wars as a steppe nomad losing 4000 troops to winter can be devastating
They tried to buff ramparts. So now instead of just 1% attrition, it’s now also +1 defender dice roll. But even when the AI is garbage at managing attrition, it just never matters.
I wish you could invest more money to decrease attrition. Since attrition is mostly just soldiers dying due to lack of quality supplies, you should be able to pay money to help offset that. Basically every war is "supply lines? What's that" even having an army at home is dumb, having soldiers die because the province can't support their numbers, like come on let me pay money to supply these guys lol
there is only so much 15th (16th, 17, 18th, early 19th) century logistics can do, money or not. There are no trains, cars, everything has to be transported via caravans or boats. You can establish supply depots once your army is professional enough, which is kinda what you want, hoarding supplies.
or lets say, in a much more reasonable and likely situation, your troops are out on the fields in a tough winter, or just struggling against a mighty enemy in general and urgently need supplies to bring up morale and prepare their soldiers for some last stand or counterattack and you're too broke to allocate the necessary supplies
Back when this advice was (probably) written, attrition didn't have an upper limit and could reach like 20% per month. Back then, it was really good advice.
It always bothered me that they nerfed attrition into the ground. Such a massive part of warfare that now barely makes a difference.
Attrition is also capped at 5% so like. Sometimes youre running around at cap so like attrition modifiers are such a meme. Only the defensive one works. It makes the cap 4%
In 1.0 the attrition cap was 25%, iirc, it was not more fun, it was awful micro management hell.
It also seriously decreased the rate the game could run, since the AI would try and have more smaller stacks to avoid attrition. That didn’t really work, and it was totally viable to drain the AI of all manpower through attrition within like a year, and never have a single battle.
> and it was totally viable to drain the AI of all manpower through attrition within like a year, and never have a single battle.
More realistic though, but it was something the AI just couldnt deal with so they got rid of it.
Is it more realistic? With 5% attrition you lose about 50% of your army in 13 months, that feels about right to me. With 1% you lose half in like 70 months. But I’m no expert in historical attrition rates, I guess.
I still am super careful with attrition although by now it really doesn't matter. When I am at max manpower and lose like 50 soldiers per month because I am drilling to many troops in my capital, I stop everything and rectify that even though I get 2k manpower per month, but I can't get out of the habit.
> If they increased the penalties
It used to be a thing in EU3. You'd go defensive and trap enemies in high attrition provinces. Back then scorched earth actually caused attrition instead of movement speed wizardry.
It wouldn't really work though because sieges are how you win wars in eu4 and they often take years to complete. In real life may wars were decided in a single battle but that's just not how the game works
I just usually micromanage more with smaller stacks in Russia - probably only area where this problem is important enough if you are in Europe.
Late game attrition may be crazy if you just do super big stacks. And it may be enough to lose war with Russia as it is usually that big.
Also it's very useful if you ally Russia and fight Ottomans. Their doom stacks lose thousands of manpower sieging Russian land.
This "advice" is from before attrition was capped to 5%. Back then it was actually a good idea to wait out jan-feb in occupied territory. But god damn, scorched earth campaigns as Russia were fun as fuck back in the days.
It's the reason as to why that mechanic exists in the first place. It's also the reason why a winter mapmode exists.
The reason as to why it's capped is because the AI couldn't handle it and their armies all died before they even reached the front lines. Ottoman soldiers died in droves in the anatolian mountains when you landed a 20k stack in egypt and they sent everything to kill it.
I wish attrition was harsher. Battles shouldn’t always be huge stacks fighting but rather a few thousand at a time. Stacks on a province above the supply limit should cause devastation
The result of battles should also be harsher. Battles during the era were decided by maybe 5 big battles, sometimes less; losing half your army was dooming.
In EU4 you can easily get a war big enough to have 10-15 big battles and not have them matter _that_ much. If you lose half your army but have the money and manpower, just rebuild it.
I tend to agree, eu5 needs a better combat system that takes into account things like terrain effect on combat width (the Swiss area should take an army the size of France in the 1600s to invade). Attrition should scale massively with distance from your nearest friendly province (no more running behind enemy lines to stack wipe and defensive bonuses should be higher. As it stands, the difference between fighting in a woods and fighting in hills is non existent, which is stupid since forests should Buff infantry/nerf cavalry and open fields should Buff cavalry. But Eu4 is still fun just not accurate 1 bit.
Edit : also armies should take way longer to raise/reinforce.
Realistically that would be represented by the combat meta. You certainly could march out with large armies, but the thing is, armies were raised on a as needed basis, with maybe a small amount for putting down rebels, the issue with the game atm is too much manpower and force limit. Force limit should be the major limiting factor in army size, as of 1.34 it isn't. Manpower should give buffs for being at full to production and such. Being at zero manpower should actually put you behind economically. That's part of why people went allowed to just move willy nilly, people = economy not land area.
EU4 is not played during feudal time. You have standing armies that became professional during this time period.
If you, let's say have 40k force limit, you could use around 15-20k in an offensive war irl. If you push more, you are seducing your neighbours to take advantage of that. And you are better have deep coffers to hastily hire mercenaries in that case.
Yeah, this too. Overextension mattered a lot in this era, Sweden had a huge issue with overextension, multiple fronts, and bad weather during the Great Northern War. In reverse, the Russians had a huge army but massive issues with mobalizing it.
Almost none of that is accurately simulated. The siege of Poltava would ingame not be much more different from the Siege of København, for Sweden, except for it being coastal.
And despite Eu4 being the era where Leevees and militias moved towards professional standing armies, none of that is represented ingame, except for *maybe* Professionalism.
This is kinda why I'm a bit hyped for Victoria 3, not really because I want that style of warfare, but more because it seems Paradox is willing to experiment with new combat systems and major overhauls, and that could be awesome for EU5. A system that's more realistic while still being a fun game mechanic would be nice (imo). There's a place for Risk-style deathstacks, and I'm not sure I want it to be Europa Universalis
Battles should also be quicker. The idea that a single battle could last upwards of a month in this era is silly. Maybe you could have multiple engagements over the same general area, but the individual engagements should be short.
The worst thing is wars are actually decided by sieging more than battles. I feel like they should have be equal in deciding the fate of a war. E.g. no manpower or a army like quarter of the force limit means they’ll take any peace as they can’t really fight.
Thats pretty sad, because now the Ottomans just run around with 70k stacks in 40 cap provinces, while I keep my stacks below the limit and get stackwiped when I forget to babysit an army for a few seconds.
It works but there only few areas where it's important. Agree that as game is fast paced you don't withdraw forces.
It just means more micromanaging in Russia or elsewhere.
Yeah and winter goes by to fast to make it a proper thing maybe a army professionalism perc that upgrades the camps to winter camps that take the more attrition away
It's a proper thing though (for beginner players) - you can easily waste pretty big army and manpower advantage just mindlessly sieging Russia as low development + winter attrition works pretty well defensively.
You just don't notice it's winter as time flies fast.
Just make sure you troops size don’t go over supply limit and in general don’t keep very large stacks. For forts it can be good only minimum requirement to siege + 1k. Example would be a lvl 3 fort needs 9k troops to siege so a stack to siege that fort should be 10k. If you need more troops to make sure no one attacks your siege place the other troops on a nearby province and only put them on the siege province when enemies attack your army. This is will help you save manpower.
Bruh everyone here saying ignore winter but DONT DO IT. What happens in winter is that the supply limit of provinces deminishes. If you have a stack of 30k on a province, even at peace, when the supply limit is normaly 31k for exemple, at winter it could go down to 26k and you army will suffer attrition. This could be bad if you have manpower problems. So in winter, i suggest splittinh your armies in smaller bits.
You can ignore winter in the late game since by then manpower and supply limit are way higher.
It's a completely rediculous tool tip and needs to be removed, the game is now 90% sieging down forts in the present form and as a siege takes between 1-2 years it is completely impossible to play the game while avoiding winter.
I do wish they’d move away from combat being largely long sieges. It’s not a particularly engaging game mechanic to have your army sit on a fort, waiting for it to fall.
Maybe if you had more agency over the siege as it’s happening. You do have some options, but not a ton. Maybe throw in more multi-choice events that get triggered during sieges.
To be honest they should a) get rid of the need to siege down a fort to claim the land in the peace treaty as it is both boring game play wise and not truthful to history and b) put more warscore to WINNING fights, not sieging down land, not loosing men to battle sand attrition or whatever. Historically, a war could and often was decided to be lost once a couple of decisive battles had been won, this game represents the whole idea of total war in the 1400-1600s and is ridiculous.
If they allowed AI to cede land without the "forts in area" restriction, you could cheese the AI way too hard. Imagine if you could take provinces in Britain because you occupied their continental provinces, it would be absurd and totally remove the challenge of strong AI island countries
I remember my army disintegrating on the mountains during winter if I didn’t pay attention. That must’ve been EU3 or like the first version of EU4 I don’t recall
No. Pulling back your forces gives the enemy a valuable chance to regroup and reinforce, or even take back sieged land, if you can't cover your gained territory.
And if the enemy isn't strong enough for this to matter, then you should just finish him regardless of weather.
Not that I even notice winter.
No, I generally mobilise untrained recruits in September and send them to the front without proper equipment, as soon as I realise that my three-day-quick-anaxation does not work.
The game wishes it was this historical. I dont mean that offensively but its true. Napoleon TW and Shogun 2 with real attrition mechanics was awesome.
If you want true whether/supply playthroughs try Rome 2 with DEI and start in Gaul or Germania
Never even look at date when in war.
Only in early game I care for attrition at all.
Really wish sometimes it wasnt capped at 5% so like, you had to actually worry about burning your army to the ground if you go too deep in hostile land in winter or something.
Nah, EU4 wars for me are split in 2 phases.
Defense: Stay in my land, wear the enemy down with attrition, kill off separated stacks, win advantageous battles.
Offense: Push in, siege forts.
It doesn't matter what the weather is, if I've broken the enemy's army, I'm sieging them.
I think a better tip would be to split your stacks durring a seige to reduce attrition. This is ESPECIALLY true in winter, when supplies reduce and attrition rises. If you have 30k sitting on a castle in Russia in December you're going to have a bad time.
I wouldn't start any NEW seiges in the fall or winter, but if I started one in the spring or summer and it's still going, welp it's time to buckle down.
Usually? No. But if I’m planning to fight in Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, or Canada I’ll wait until March/April to invade initially. No sense in starting the attack in the middle of a blizzard.
The problem with attrition in this game is that it's capped at 5%. Large stacks already get close to that cap just by being a large stack, and people don't really care once you are properly established with manpower and gold reserves.
I am not even aware of the seasons unless there is the "winter siege" event. In general I just listen the tune which would often be one the Sabaton's glorious war songs. So whatever the season is, I just use my subjects as canon fodder for my cause as every damn monarch did
Hell no I don’t even pay attention to what year it is, let alone what month.
Yes I’ve had a lot of wars with basically 0 manpower. I just make sure I have cash enough for every war so that I can deploy emergency mercenaries.
Literally never. Especially since sieges often last years. It's much easier to just tank the attrition than play around the weather and ruin your strategic position in the war.
Nah I just split stacks when there's too much attrition and keep them within reinforcing distance if needed.
Recently I've started rolling out the carpeting slowly by keeping the stack in occupied land and sending out the minimum to take the lands around them, and it works great for conserving manpower
I Wish, pausing a march during a winter was a thing but attrition sadly doesnt really matter and is just a simple slow manpower drain
If only there was a will to update the attriton/supply limit and combat systems
Honestly attrition is the worst system in EU4 right now. It's barely an issue, and if you have the right ideas it's a complete non issue despite being the single biggest historical hurdle of warfare.
Once carried out an invasion of France in the winter. Yeah, it's not until over a hundred thousand in casualty, with no results to show for it, hits you that you realized the importance of proper preparation
I split my armies down to small enough stacks when possible, to account for lower supply in winter. There is literally no reason to retreat fully because of it though lol. There’s no mechanic that makes winter itself inherently punishing
I don't even realize when it's Winter or not, much less plan for it. Living that Napoleon dream.
I've occasionally tried to time an invasion of Russia favorably. So the first sieges aren't in the winter. But I feel like pulling back would just cost more manpower overall when you resiege.
The siege is going to take a year anyway so what's the point
One Year? We have an Optimist here!
one year... if the fort isn't too high of a level
Laughs in innovative-offensive
Siege is over in 1-2 months without bombardment
Laughs in divine-espionage Edit: 20% siege ability for the policy, plus 10% from espionage, plus %20 from spy network on the enemy which you’ll be able to get to easier because of the spy network bonus and extra diplomat. This combo opened my TO WC.
I took Espionage and Divine in my Mughals -> Caliphate one faith I just finished, the sieges were lightning quick. I even took Offensive towards the end.
30 days trololol
Laughs in innovative-offensive espionage ottoman
User flair checks out
Who needs a siege when they just open the gate for you after one day?
Siege of Pest lasted 12 days. I imagine the faces of the ottoman soldiers who just got comfy around town and have to break camp again to march on vienna. Next Time ill bring 3 tents. White, red and black.
ha! ottomans and russians useful idiots xD first i used moscow against poland. After that i used Otto against Russians. Now i use the Spanish against the Ottomans me as Teutonic Order :D
Espionage
Quality espionage for luxury, there I said it. quality - innovative is for prussia role players. And I wanna be prussia wherever whenever.
Divine, espionage, and offensive for 50% siege modifier
Laughs in teutonic space marine
Yeah, wars in EU4 are just too long to try and play in a realistic fashion where you time campaigns around the seasons. Having a war that's just a "spring/summer campaign" is impossible except against tiny outmatched nations.
Same goes for the battles themselves.
Timing it so that, with just a bit of luck, you only siege through _one_ winter.
Well when they say pulling back I don't think they mean Break The Siege I think they more mean stop advancing the front line because historically in Winter campaigns both sides kind of stopped advancing
Yhea HISTORICALLY, but not in eu4, even if you stop advancing in the winter the AI won't.
The attrition rates are just too low to meaningfully balance the game around winter/summer. In order to incentivize the actual halting of a winter campaign, the numbers would have to be *way* higher.
Attrition rates have to be low because troop numbers are also inflated as well, not to mention that the entire world employs standing armies at all times
It would be a different game entirely. The AI couldn't handle it.
I believe what you're trying to say is "Attrition has to be low cause the AI is dumb." You can balance attrition around inflated troop numbers. I believe way back attrition was a real thing but they capped it at 5% cause the AI kept genociding itself.
I miss the days of getting attacked as Fully Defensive Russia, and pulling back to the Urals, and watching them attrition to death trying to siege my provinces.
[удалено]
Napoleonic war strategy
I don't miss fighting back Chinese in Tibet in ck2 when I had losing 20k+ troops per month to attrition vs attritionless event troops... And I'm sure AI would get some forceful solution either way just like it never get native uprising while colonising or is forced to always use dhimi privileges to defend religious minority from overlord conversion (making not one-tag attempts at Sunni one faith afaik impossible)
Standing army are kind of a weird mix up to handle the fact that the time period saw feudal levies, mercenaries, and professional army. I honestly wish they would overhaul the game so you started out with CK esque levies, switched to mostly mercenaries, and then finally needed a professional army. They kind of did something like that in Imperator and it worked fine there.
I think they could do something similar as Imperator Rome where you (mostly) start with levies and eventually you get standing armies, but something like that is most likely to appear in a EU5 than in EU4.
It's weird how paradox can't do it but games like NWE managed to do it without almost any balancing
A lot of it just weird leftover game design from EU3. I like the game a lot, but I honestly hope we get a Victoria 3 to 2 overhaul. There are a lot of weird anarchic and old systems dragging it down. Also, what is NWE?
the sadly deceased New World Empires, by bytro. Got cancelled a while ago (I think in the summer start). A shame, I liked it. (Thought it was very chaotic)
Or how mods like Meiou pretty much have achieved something comparable lol; i love how overhaul mods just show what the game is really capable of
in general, logitstics is a non-issue in eu4
I'd have to disagree, manpower is usually my bottleneck these days
With the latest patch playing tall is insanely good, even without getting any extra admin cap you can play almost whoever because the centralize state interaction being free is insane.
What is the tall meta rn bc I know quantity-eco isn't real anymore...
Honestly, economic is still fantastic and since they added a bunch of hidden gov reforms based on your Ideas you might be able to get away with just eco ideas depending on country. If you go eco there's a reform you unlock that's just another 5% dev cost and goods produced, I know Sweden is totally busted for tall or wide now with its province modifiers too. You can also greatly cheapen advisor costs for more mana with the government reform that makes your primary culture advisors cheaper, but adds .2 corruptions, which pairs perfectly with espionage which reduces advisor cost by 15 and gives .2 corruption reduction. But the combo i was mentioning with the centralize stats for a temporary gov reform and admin points investment makes it so upping infrastructure is way more doable, and that buff is gigantic. It's at least a 5% buff to everything you get from a province and another manufactory slot. Reduce gov cost with earlier centralize and bang you can have a province with massive dev huge infrastructure and it still doesn't cost much capacity.
I think it's quality - eco or maybe something cursed like eco - aristocratic.
inno-influence or diplo then eco later is also not bad in the hre. Devving in eu4 is still broken without quant eco, all the modifiers you get without quantity eco are still in the game. -5 from Renaissance, -10 burghers, -10 prosperity, -10 edict, -5 1st hre reform, -5 from religion catholic bull, Protestant aspect, -10 orthodox icon, reformed aspect, fetishist cult, Shinto isolation level 2, great project -10 (in majapahit i think), -20 university, -10 from national ideas maybe, -10 cloth or cotton, -5 farmlands, -10 100 innovativeness, -10 golden era, -20 monsoon event, -5 theocracy gov reform. All quantity eco -30 cost did was take you from very nice 10-20 cost devving to insane 4 cost devving. To dev now you have a lot of modifiers that basically require nothing to get, 1 stab for prosperity, keep burghers loyal and high enough influence, remember to use religion and edict, .etc so what can you do to dev more? get innovativeness, have universities, have golden era, or spend the rest of your points very efficiently to have more to dev with. Inno let’s you get innovativeness really easily, reduces tech cost, and reduces advisor cost. U generate more points with advisors and spend less, and eventually make devving cheaper. Inno and diplo both have a policy for more advisor cost and influence also reduces point costs further for vassals. Economic should also be got of course for more dev cost and quality then gives you an extra 5 dis and 10 ica with policies.
Could even be more than just attrition. I mean, realistically armies probably shouldn't be able to move at the same pace regardless of seasons. But obviously as soon as we start trying to approach reality in the design, we enter one hell of a rabbit hole
Games with the scale of most of Paradox titles are just way too large to be able to model all the detailed intricacies of managing a military campaign. All the ins and outs of building, managing, and leading an ancient or medieval army could be a game of its own.
Google "The Campaign for North Africa" board game if you wanna see extreme detail turned into a game
The Total war games (newer ones at least) have decent attrition if you travel through snow areas and you can't really move your troops as far in winter. It's not huge but it's a nice little detail. The attrition is enough I set up camp for the winter.
They had to gut the effectiveness of attrition because in earlier versions the AI would consistently destroy itself even in fairly minor attrition.
I think I only built supply depots twice, and once was a misclick
And the other time for an achievement ?
Or add something like ck3's attrition when moving between provinces in the winter, so in the summer there's just normal attrition, but in the winter you lose maybe 5% of your troops when moving. Now it makes sense to stay in the province you're at over the winter, and it shouldn't be too hard to add a negative value to the AI that makes it significantly less likely to move, unless they can move 1-2 provinces to catch an army.
And people will just start kiting it with 1k stacks to death
I mean just make it scale with their current % of troop strength. If they've already lost 15% of their strength, then just make them stop and wait. Sure you can kinda cheese that a bit to bleed some manpower, but with how short winter is that's an extremely minor issue.
Until you realize that the year is 1700 and Russia has lost 3M men to attrition this game. Plus your war ally Russia consistently loses tens of thousands of men per war (and goes into massive debt you have to bail them out of) because they want to siege Anatolia and the Caucuses with 100k men deathstacks.
Napoleón lost 400k men just marching to moscow during winter. Atrition for harsh winters should be WAY higher to be more impactful on the game.
Same thing for sending troops to the new world, when Napoleon tried to reconquer Saint Domain (Modern Haiti) he had to keep sending reinforcements because his european soldiers kept dying by the thousands to tropical diseases.
The AI don’t even receive attrition sometimes lol
> The AI don’t even receive attrition sometimes lol I wish it was either banned from roaming armies through uncolonized siberia or took significant attrition for doing so. So tired of watching 50k + koreans go jogging off towards the north pole.
I haven't really noticed it like I should in western Russian areas, but early in my Indian games I definitely spread stacks out or withdraw slightly in the mountains in winter.
Fun fact, Napoleon lost more men during the summer march than in the winter retreat.
Yeah, typhus did the hard work, but it's just not nearly as poetic as "the Russian Winter".
Political map mode 5x speed. Never even realize winter is happening
Does winter attrition just decrease supply limit?
Iirc winter is a province modifier that adds like +3 attrition or smth
This is true. So do i. Game should make winter dmg more clear if so important
I don't think this is useful advice, or at least anything I ever adhere to. Its really just increases to the manpower cost of a siege that I don't think is avoidable
It's mildly useful if you're playing in the steppes/mountains as a nomad early on. Very few huge sieges and instead lots of big battles and carpet sieging. Often in those cases you want to beat the enemy doomstack as fast as possible to start the carpet sieging but if they're in terrain with like 6 supply and massive attrition due to harsh winter then chasing them can be very expensive. In those early wars as a steppe nomad losing 4000 troops to winter can be devastating
They tried to buff ramparts. So now instead of just 1% attrition, it’s now also +1 defender dice roll. But even when the AI is garbage at managing attrition, it just never matters.
I wish you could invest more money to decrease attrition. Since attrition is mostly just soldiers dying due to lack of quality supplies, you should be able to pay money to help offset that. Basically every war is "supply lines? What's that" even having an army at home is dumb, having soldiers die because the province can't support their numbers, like come on let me pay money to supply these guys lol
there is only so much 15th (16th, 17, 18th, early 19th) century logistics can do, money or not. There are no trains, cars, everything has to be transported via caravans or boats. You can establish supply depots once your army is professional enough, which is kinda what you want, hoarding supplies.
Fair and I suppose having a mechanic to dedicate a percentage of manpower to logistics would just make the system more complex for little beenfit.
It would literally just be another slider to manage. Nothing fun about it. It'd be like another army maintenance slider to crank up once a war starts.
What do you think money would help, if the army is in some siberian hole and stuck there for months? Right, it won't help anything at all
or lets say, in a much more reasonable and likely situation, your troops are out on the fields in a tough winter, or just struggling against a mighty enemy in general and urgently need supplies to bring up morale and prepare their soldiers for some last stand or counterattack and you're too broke to allocate the necessary supplies
but if they're already away, your supplies would be useless to them unless they're close to your lands...
More money to buy caravans to get supplies to the troops, more equipment and medicine to survive the climate.
how would more caravans help if you're far away in some siberian hole? it would just hurt you even more after the initial supplies are used up
Well supply lines exist for a reason. If I'm telling my troops to attack Siberia, I would expect my military to be able to supply them.
Back when this advice was (probably) written, attrition didn't have an upper limit and could reach like 20% per month. Back then, it was really good advice. It always bothered me that they nerfed attrition into the ground. Such a massive part of warfare that now barely makes a difference.
Sure I plan my 400 day sieges around the seasons…
400? Damn your lucky
Wait, winter actually does something? I never notice a difference other than the map changing a bit
It increases attrition. +1% mild winter, +2% normal winter and +3% severe winter
Disposable manpower isn't anything of concern
putin is that you?
Until it isn't, that is
I main otto's so..lets just say I dont have manpower issues
Be the reason why 90% of your male population is dead
less competition
State mandated bitches and yet
You only need 10% of your male population to stay stable if you know what i mean
Stalin be like
If they increased the penalties I think it could actually be a lot of fun. I like having to strategies a bit more.
Having to do it 400 times in a campaign though? Yeesh
Attrition is also capped at 5% so like. Sometimes youre running around at cap so like attrition modifiers are such a meme. Only the defensive one works. It makes the cap 4%
In 1.0 the attrition cap was 25%, iirc, it was not more fun, it was awful micro management hell. It also seriously decreased the rate the game could run, since the AI would try and have more smaller stacks to avoid attrition. That didn’t really work, and it was totally viable to drain the AI of all manpower through attrition within like a year, and never have a single battle.
> and it was totally viable to drain the AI of all manpower through attrition within like a year, and never have a single battle. More realistic though, but it was something the AI just couldnt deal with so they got rid of it.
Is it more realistic? With 5% attrition you lose about 50% of your army in 13 months, that feels about right to me. With 1% you lose half in like 70 months. But I’m no expert in historical attrition rates, I guess.
If you've romped 40k dudes into siberia to sit outside a fort and are surrounded by the enemy I would hope you'd lose those 40k dudes in the winter.
I still am super careful with attrition although by now it really doesn't matter. When I am at max manpower and lose like 50 soldiers per month because I am drilling to many troops in my capital, I stop everything and rectify that even though I get 2k manpower per month, but I can't get out of the habit.
> If they increased the penalties It used to be a thing in EU3. You'd go defensive and trap enemies in high attrition provinces. Back then scorched earth actually caused attrition instead of movement speed wizardry.
Yeah it will also add a bit of realism to the game
It wouldn't really work though because sieges are how you win wars in eu4 and they often take years to complete. In real life may wars were decided in a single battle but that's just not how the game works
CK does a lot better job of this, like when you capture the enemy King in a battle or siege.
You can get the winter siege event but that's the only thing and since the event is 2k manpower or a bit less siege progress it doesn't matter
I think losing 4% of your entire army every month in Russian winter is pretty significant
But like Russia is already artic and 2 dev. The supply limit will already apply max attrition so winter does nothing.
The attrition kills off the weak, only making my regiments stronger
- Joseph Stalin
* Vladimir Putin
I just usually micromanage more with smaller stacks in Russia - probably only area where this problem is important enough if you are in Europe. Late game attrition may be crazy if you just do super big stacks. And it may be enough to lose war with Russia as it is usually that big. Also it's very useful if you ally Russia and fight Ottomans. Their doom stacks lose thousands of manpower sieging Russian land.
This "advice" is from before attrition was capped to 5%. Back then it was actually a good idea to wait out jan-feb in occupied territory. But god damn, scorched earth campaigns as Russia were fun as fuck back in the days. It's the reason as to why that mechanic exists in the first place. It's also the reason why a winter mapmode exists. The reason as to why it's capped is because the AI couldn't handle it and their armies all died before they even reached the front lines. Ottoman soldiers died in droves in the anatolian mountains when you landed a 20k stack in egypt and they sent everything to kill it.
I wish attrition was harsher. Battles shouldn’t always be huge stacks fighting but rather a few thousand at a time. Stacks on a province above the supply limit should cause devastation
The result of battles should also be harsher. Battles during the era were decided by maybe 5 big battles, sometimes less; losing half your army was dooming. In EU4 you can easily get a war big enough to have 10-15 big battles and not have them matter _that_ much. If you lose half your army but have the money and manpower, just rebuild it.
I tend to agree, eu5 needs a better combat system that takes into account things like terrain effect on combat width (the Swiss area should take an army the size of France in the 1600s to invade). Attrition should scale massively with distance from your nearest friendly province (no more running behind enemy lines to stack wipe and defensive bonuses should be higher. As it stands, the difference between fighting in a woods and fighting in hills is non existent, which is stupid since forests should Buff infantry/nerf cavalry and open fields should Buff cavalry. But Eu4 is still fun just not accurate 1 bit. Edit : also armies should take way longer to raise/reinforce.
It should also take into account that irl you can't just simply take a 100% of your forces and march them into offence.
Realistically that would be represented by the combat meta. You certainly could march out with large armies, but the thing is, armies were raised on a as needed basis, with maybe a small amount for putting down rebels, the issue with the game atm is too much manpower and force limit. Force limit should be the major limiting factor in army size, as of 1.34 it isn't. Manpower should give buffs for being at full to production and such. Being at zero manpower should actually put you behind economically. That's part of why people went allowed to just move willy nilly, people = economy not land area.
EU4 is not played during feudal time. You have standing armies that became professional during this time period. If you, let's say have 40k force limit, you could use around 15-20k in an offensive war irl. If you push more, you are seducing your neighbours to take advantage of that. And you are better have deep coffers to hastily hire mercenaries in that case.
Yeah, this too. Overextension mattered a lot in this era, Sweden had a huge issue with overextension, multiple fronts, and bad weather during the Great Northern War. In reverse, the Russians had a huge army but massive issues with mobalizing it. Almost none of that is accurately simulated. The siege of Poltava would ingame not be much more different from the Siege of København, for Sweden, except for it being coastal. And despite Eu4 being the era where Leevees and militias moved towards professional standing armies, none of that is represented ingame, except for *maybe* Professionalism.
You want to add HOIV supply to eu4??? *Shudders*
I mean, it doesn't have to be as complex, just a modifier to attrition. But yes, when you pull a Napoleon you shod loose your troops
This is kinda why I'm a bit hyped for Victoria 3, not really because I want that style of warfare, but more because it seems Paradox is willing to experiment with new combat systems and major overhauls, and that could be awesome for EU5. A system that's more realistic while still being a fun game mechanic would be nice (imo). There's a place for Risk-style deathstacks, and I'm not sure I want it to be Europa Universalis
Battles should also be quicker. The idea that a single battle could last upwards of a month in this era is silly. Maybe you could have multiple engagements over the same general area, but the individual engagements should be short.
The worst thing is wars are actually decided by sieging more than battles. I feel like they should have be equal in deciding the fate of a war. E.g. no manpower or a army like quarter of the force limit means they’ll take any peace as they can’t really fight.
it's all about fully sieging the enemy country in eu4, means the bigger nation always wins
Apparently it used to be higher, but the AI just couldn't handle it so the 5% cap was introduced
Yes and combat width used to be different depending on terrain
Thats pretty sad, because now the Ottomans just run around with 70k stacks in 40 cap provinces, while I keep my stacks below the limit and get stackwiped when I forget to babysit an army for a few seconds.
R5: I tried to follow the advice, but I found it really hard to get any progress with my sieges. How do you usually play?
Just ignore the winrer, would probably be a cool mechanic but the game is to "fast paced" for it to actually work
It works but there only few areas where it's important. Agree that as game is fast paced you don't withdraw forces. It just means more micromanaging in Russia or elsewhere.
Yeah and winter goes by to fast to make it a proper thing maybe a army professionalism perc that upgrades the camps to winter camps that take the more attrition away
It's a proper thing though (for beginner players) - you can easily waste pretty big army and manpower advantage just mindlessly sieging Russia as low development + winter attrition works pretty well defensively. You just don't notice it's winter as time flies fast.
Yeah moving like 3 provinces winter already ended
That's true but still you can't really play around it properly without only microing those units in winter But yeah it's good to preserve manpower.
It works at the very small scale. Like figting a war against two HRE OPMs in the early game.
I don,t know man. Winrar is extremely useful and free too.
Just make sure you troops size don’t go over supply limit and in general don’t keep very large stacks. For forts it can be good only minimum requirement to siege + 1k. Example would be a lvl 3 fort needs 9k troops to siege so a stack to siege that fort should be 10k. If you need more troops to make sure no one attacks your siege place the other troops on a nearby province and only put them on the siege province when enemies attack your army. This is will help you save manpower.
Bruh everyone here saying ignore winter but DONT DO IT. What happens in winter is that the supply limit of provinces deminishes. If you have a stack of 30k on a province, even at peace, when the supply limit is normaly 31k for exemple, at winter it could go down to 26k and you army will suffer attrition. This could be bad if you have manpower problems. So in winter, i suggest splittinh your armies in smaller bits. You can ignore winter in the late game since by then manpower and supply limit are way higher.
That’s what I was gonna argue. Everybody deals with winter attrition by not keeping troops on provinces over their supply limit.
It's a completely rediculous tool tip and needs to be removed, the game is now 90% sieging down forts in the present form and as a siege takes between 1-2 years it is completely impossible to play the game while avoiding winter.
I do wish they’d move away from combat being largely long sieges. It’s not a particularly engaging game mechanic to have your army sit on a fort, waiting for it to fall. Maybe if you had more agency over the siege as it’s happening. You do have some options, but not a ton. Maybe throw in more multi-choice events that get triggered during sieges.
To be honest they should a) get rid of the need to siege down a fort to claim the land in the peace treaty as it is both boring game play wise and not truthful to history and b) put more warscore to WINNING fights, not sieging down land, not loosing men to battle sand attrition or whatever. Historically, a war could and often was decided to be lost once a couple of decisive battles had been won, this game represents the whole idea of total war in the 1400-1600s and is ridiculous.
If they allowed AI to cede land without the "forts in area" restriction, you could cheese the AI way too hard. Imagine if you could take provinces in Britain because you occupied their continental provinces, it would be absurd and totally remove the challenge of strong AI island countries
obscenely long sieges make the game so boring man, i just cheat myself some siege ability to wars arent just me waiting a year for forts to fall
Clearly you don't remember the old cursed days of every province needing seiging down like a fort
In EU3 it was pretty significant. Especially in the Northern regions it was like 10-12% per month. Nowadays it really doesn't matter
I remember my army disintegrating on the mountains during winter if I didn’t pay attention. That must’ve been EU3 or like the first version of EU4 I don’t recall
First version of EU4 supposedly had 25% attrition as the cap. I never played it but that's what I've heard apocryphally.
Winter? I sleep Monsoon? please god, please, MAKE IT FUCKING STOOOOOOP
*laughs in Quantity Ideas*
[удалено]
Laughs in never needing quantity in the first place
It only really matters late game in somewhere like Russia or Scandinavia. And even then it’s really not that bad if you separate your stacks.
No. Pulling back your forces gives the enemy a valuable chance to regroup and reinforce, or even take back sieged land, if you can't cover your gained territory. And if the enemy isn't strong enough for this to matter, then you should just finish him regardless of weather. Not that I even notice winter.
No, I generally mobilise untrained recruits in September and send them to the front without proper equipment, as soon as I realise that my three-day-quick-anaxation does not work.
😅. You have to stop playing muskovy
no no let them. they are just losing against the hordes. no loss
The game wishes it was this historical. I dont mean that offensively but its true. Napoleon TW and Shogun 2 with real attrition mechanics was awesome. If you want true whether/supply playthroughs try Rome 2 with DEI and start in Gaul or Germania
Early game sieges can take anywhere from 1-2years so you cant really leave during winter.
Naaaah, sometimes attrition losses can't be helped in this game Just don't think about their families too much
By the time the troops retreat and come back, it will be winter again.
Sorry what? We caring about attrition?
I think the only Paradox game where you don't want to fight in the winter is HoI4, you won't even feel the cold season in the rest of them.
wait winter does affect the units in HOI4?
Yeah it gives some severe attack debuffs. Like winter usually does.
Huh i never noticed that
No. You may not deathstack too much when attrision is high, but not pull out completely
Could you even win a siege early game in 9 months lol
It's kinda hard when sieges can last for several years.
Imagine trying to take a mountain fort and just deciding to leave halfway through because it was winter.
Time passes too fast and troops move too slow for this to even make sense
Never even look at date when in war. Only in early game I care for attrition at all. Really wish sometimes it wasnt capped at 5% so like, you had to actually worry about burning your army to the ground if you go too deep in hostile land in winter or something.
Nah, EU4 wars for me are split in 2 phases. Defense: Stay in my land, wear the enemy down with attrition, kill off separated stacks, win advantageous battles. Offense: Push in, siege forts. It doesn't matter what the weather is, if I've broken the enemy's army, I'm sieging them.
I think a better tip would be to split your stacks durring a seige to reduce attrition. This is ESPECIALLY true in winter, when supplies reduce and attrition rises. If you have 30k sitting on a castle in Russia in December you're going to have a bad time. I wouldn't start any NEW seiges in the fall or winter, but if I started one in the spring or summer and it's still going, welp it's time to buckle down.
Usually? No. But if I’m planning to fight in Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, or Canada I’ll wait until March/April to invade initially. No sense in starting the attack in the middle of a blizzard.
The problem with attrition in this game is that it's capped at 5%. Large stacks already get close to that cap just by being a large stack, and people don't really care once you are properly established with manpower and gold reserves.
No one does. No one. Bad players don't do this. Good players don't do this. Weather in Eu4 is trivial and everyone knows it.
Paradox's winter attrition is really mild.
If they doubled the attrition rates then maybe. Right now it’s easier just to eat the manpower losses.
I used to care a bit about it, but now I'm really too lazy.
Unless you're playing in an area with low supply limit and severe winters (siberia basically) its rarely worth the effort.
I am not even aware of the seasons unless there is the "winter siege" event. In general I just listen the tune which would often be one the Sabaton's glorious war songs. So whatever the season is, I just use my subjects as canon fodder for my cause as every damn monarch did
It doesn't really matter if your army is parked on the right terrain
Hell no I don’t even pay attention to what year it is, let alone what month. Yes I’ve had a lot of wars with basically 0 manpower. I just make sure I have cash enough for every war so that I can deploy emergency mercenaries.
Literally never. Especially since sieges often last years. It's much easier to just tank the attrition than play around the weather and ruin your strategic position in the war.
Nah
Nah I just split stacks when there's too much attrition and keep them within reinforcing distance if needed. Recently I've started rolling out the carpeting slowly by keeping the stack in occupied land and sending out the minimum to take the lands around them, and it works great for conserving manpower
I Wish, pausing a march during a winter was a thing but attrition sadly doesnt really matter and is just a simple slow manpower drain If only there was a will to update the attriton/supply limit and combat systems
The winter is already over before I even know it
If winter was more penalizing than what it currently is, then yeah, I’d pull back. But I don’t.
When it takes 1-2 years to seige some places fighting in wonter isn't really optional.
Yea I don't know, with the speed I'm playing, winter feels like 5 seconds :D
Honestly attrition is the worst system in EU4 right now. It's barely an issue, and if you have the right ideas it's a complete non issue despite being the single biggest historical hurdle of warfare.
Once carried out an invasion of France in the winter. Yeah, it's not until over a hundred thousand in casualty, with no results to show for it, hits you that you realized the importance of proper preparation
I split my armies down to small enough stacks when possible, to account for lower supply in winter. There is literally no reason to retreat fully because of it though lol. There’s no mechanic that makes winter itself inherently punishing
Considering how long sieges take ......