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:

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

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.

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. Attrition wars are almost non-existent: if only Napoleon knew he could hire mercenaries from Russian provinces… Some prolonged wars usually end when one of the sides bankrupts, 0 MP is not a sentence yet. Mercenary infantry inflates the value of recruited cavalry. I’ll touch this topic a bit later. 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. 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.

Make mercenary infantry much less affordable

Second obvious solution is to increase the value on manpower and reintroduce MP-related meta: 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. 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

Part II: Improved mercenaries suggestion:

+ Discipline (only NIs and idea groups, no policies and events)

Discipline (only NIs and idea groups, no policies and events) + Combat ability (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)

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.

Mercenary Inf\Cav\Art Combat ability

Mercenary Shock\Fire damage dealt\received

Mercenary cost\maintenance, manpower or manpower regen modifier

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

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