Update

I would update this myself if I actually bothered to learn how to mod. So who knows, maybe I will.

An update for this mod with the new Austria Update would be fine bro.

How about an update? Sounds like a good mod

Dead

please update

pls update

still waiting for an update to this day

Update it please...

You gonna update it?

They are automatically disbanded so far... BUt it would be nice to have defines.lua changed so they start with 0 or alike armies, as so far you are running a deficit for almost a year with armies like french ones decreasing from 30.000 to a bare 6000

VVV yes. I'm wondering this too. Also, what about when I/the AI spawn with army stacks (for example, if i were to start in 1492)? Are my stacks automatically disbanded via the mod, or do I have to manually disband them, or do I start with mercs raised? If I were to start a game, for example, in the Eighty Years War, does the mod auto-replace all my armies with mercs instead?

I don’t know if this is a stupid question or not, but how does the AI handle these changes? Does it use forces the way it should, or does it try to play the same way as normal and go perpetually bankrupt?

I think it really rebalances the game and makes its better and more fun

@[TAC] Duffy, I don't know exactly when, but I try to keep working on it and I'm really happy to hear that you like it :D

Does it work with Extended Timeline?

@Drip Top Maple Shop Just wondering when the next update will be? I really enjoy this mod. So please please keep working on it!

I like the mod idea, but what i dont like is to put every nation into same place. Like for sure nations that ware not used to "high quality standards" and often forced to being army, or fight in the name of god, under dictators - could have much more manpower, even if not same useful in combat. You cant just put same mechanics to europenian nations as muslims and asians. Its much more complicated and same should engine be.

And also, sad thing is that in EU4 u can have only 1 army type at one time. I would love to see how can looks battles with mixed types of cavalery, mixed types of infantry with different statistics.

That brings me aditional problem. Why every unit has same price for start and maintain? In some cases soldiers would like standard of payment and privillages, and in some situations it was like they had no choice but to fight without any payment, or even wanted that. Ofc training, food and items costs but its too simplified.

Also I missread how steams link system works so here is the link that the quote comes from https://www.quora.com/Whats-so-difficult-about-maintaining-a-standing-army-that-the-Romans-could-but-their-successors-in-the-Middle-Ages-couldnt

@[A-TEAM] Murdock How much of that was standing army?,when the OP says that they stuggled to keep a standing force I beleave he means the strain of training and up-keep durring long periods of peace, "An early Imperial legion of about 5,000 men required about 7,500 kilos of grain and about 450 kilos of fodder per day or 225 and 13.5 tonnes of grain, respectively, per month." http://psteamproxy.yuanyoumao.com ,so while raising a force of 80k troops would be a struggle for all but the strongest of nations at the time its not impossable and if planned propperly could have little to no effect on the kingdom as a whole.

"Now that even the most formidable nations would struggle to keep a standing force of 10k at the start [which is historically accurate]" - Really? "The Ottomans had a much larger force. Recent studies and Ottoman archival data state that there were about 50,000–80,000 Ottoman soldiers including between 5,000 and 10,000 Janissaries" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople

i love this mod! much more challenging and realistic! one thing i might add is that in the early days of EU4's time period, the army that was fielded and not mercanaries was almost always the Kings banner men and their supporting warriors(those who really suppported the king and stepped up first). my idea is that at the start of the war(if your war exhaustion is low enough) you get a small war enthusiam bonus (we were all bloodthirsty barbarians) to the fielded army's combat ability and moral but the bonus wares off over time (say it goes from Whole bonus to gone in about a month or two of the war) do to people dying and national moral for the war effort goes down (modified based pn if you are winning or losing) this bonus would however get less and less as you progress down the techs.

@Drip Top Maple Shop , the sad thing is I had three more points I had worked out, because steam only allows you to have 1000 characters per comment I nixed my post without checking to see if my recent changes had been saved (about 2600 characters in all) so my notes on navy's empire rank and suggestions on what you could do to make tech-groups more unique got delete without a backup. (I've started putting together a new points list so ill toss it at you when I'm done)

@James T Chase, thank you so much for the thorough critique! The forcelimit idea is ingenious. I'm looking into what I can do for each tech group, but I don't feel ready to come out any numbers until I study the specific numbers. Once I get the core management of land warfare done for Europe, I'll move on to each region, as well as overhaul navies.

@RedWolf, the mod is not compatible with 1356 atm. No mod changing the dates of the game, changing the technologies, or impacting warfare are going to work with it. I'll see about how much a fort's maintenance should really cost, but the game's definition of fort is really vague anyway.

Except that, I find it a pretty good idea, realistic or at least more realistic than vanilla perpetual wars. I'd suggest tweaking the forts by adding in almost every european province (feudalism remnants) through an event to allow for maximum mod-compatibility, while maybe reducing the cost of maintaining them (at level 1); removing +1 defense bonus for capitals if unfortified, and adding a 5% chance of fort destruction if using cannons... That way there would be less and less forts once they get deprecated and not useful anymore due to more advanced miltary cannons

I don't know if it's only me or if the mod really needs balancing... I played it with 1356 mod, and even France doesn't get more than 2000 men in 1356, 6000 in 1380 (peace time). I suppose it's normal for the time (as permanent armies I mean, since national armies and mercenaries cumulated could go in much higher numbers, but what makes me doubt is the fact that no country ever grew except austria (one more province), england (two provinces from France in 100 years war), Hainaut (artois from burgundy). On the other hand, troubles in Lithuania and Poland are hard to crush since standing armies are no more than 8000 while rebels are 12000.

My only other note was that differant tech groups should have difrent maintenance costs ( so Azteks get mass infintry and steep nations get cheaper cavalry)

I'd make the same comment about navys, as If I remember correctly the chinese had a rather large merchant fleet in the 15th century.

Its 6:45AM my time and I ticked that I deleted about half of my post so Ill just say I love what you've doon so-far and ill return at a later date.

To make it short, I think if you are going to go for realism you should modify navy units as well.
I think that merchant ships should be cheaper and have less defences ehile galleys and heavy ships a bit more expensive but that nations should get a higher force limit ( it always bothered me that England only had 34 ships)

Sigh, well notepad just deleted the other half of my comment wall so, that's nice.

5/5
2.2 Alliances.
So this ties in with force limit, from my observations it appears that the "army strength" alliance modifier is affected by one of two things. Either a. (nation 1) army strength has % of total force limit or b. (nation 1) has () amount of troops compared to (nation 2) which has () amount of troops, so it would appear that either the system is working correctly and I've just noticed it more with your mod enabled or perhaps (and yes I realize I sound like a broken record here) the force limit of nations need lowered a bit.

4
2. Force limit / Aliences So this is where my knowledge (or lack thereof) of game systems and design will probably show it's-self the most.

2.1 Force limit.
All I can say right now is that it's too high and from my understanding this affects the size and strength of the rebels. However, It also NEEDS to be high so that when nations go to war they actually raise an army. Now I'm not the kind of man who likes to bitch about a problem without at least trying to present a solution, And after thinking about it, I've come up with what I 'THINK' might be a solution. ( Insert bit about lack of coding knowledge here )
So my solution is this, I would add an effect to every nation that has a 50-75% reduction to force limit with the condition that it only take effect when the nation is at peace.
If that wouldn't work, then perhaps just adding a static -75% reduction in force limit and have war taxes act as a counter and increase force limit by 75% and balance out the previous modifier.

3/...
1.2 Empire rank. So it's my opinion that empire rank should if it's possible, include a unit maintenance cost modifier, So duchy nations pay 100% kingdoms get a 10% discount and empires get a 15-20%. I feel that this would better reflect the situation of each nation, A nation the size of France is going to have a much easier time finding and maintaining troops than some german OPM
1.3 Army focus. This is probably the most arguable point I'm going to make but I think that having a system (perhaps in policys?) that allows you to choose an army focus would be neat and add a bit more of a unique flair to the mod.

2/...
1. Unit cost

1.1 base income. so this is simple I don't think that the base income of a nation should be lower then the cost to maintain one unit, (so 1.66 at the start) If I remember correctly back around the time of common sense paradox made it so that the base income of a nation was 1 ducet a month and that allowed even OPM nations to maintain a proper army without dropping maintanance and getting steamrolled by players declaring war and attacking in the same month, my suggestion to you would be the same raise the base income of all nations to between 1.5 and 2 ducets so that OPM nations(particularly those in the HRE) will maintain at least one unit.

1/...
Okay, lets get this started.

So I started playing with your mod roughly 2 weeks ago and have been using it exclusively since, here are my observations and suggestions.

I'm going to outline the problems that I see and attempt to provide a solution (be warned that my knowledge of how the game is programmed is programed and what is and isn't possible is very limited.) {I'd also warn you that my suggestions will most likely overlap or have a common solution}

I should also say that I'm operating under the assumption that you seek to make the game both more enjoyable while also a more realistic experience.

Well Steam comments only allow me to post 1000 characters at a time so sorry for the chat spam

I'll take a look it but no, it won't work with that mod.

I do like this mod concept and look forward to testing it in a near future.
Considering that it's not compatible with Extended Timeline, I guess it's not either with 1356 - Extended Timeline mod (which is more accurate than vanilla and a nice expansion with the Hundred Years War by the way) ?
Eventhough it does start the game only a century before, it still needs to add 2 or 3 techs for early timeline

@Drip Top Maple Shop The last update u did was great. Reducing manpower and reducing the growth and capping the amount of mercenary regiments force u to start developing a standing army over time. One area that needs to be improved is the AI. The AI needs the ratio of regiment they have to go to war reduced. The AI for the most part seems unwilling to go to war to expand there own boarders. Keep up the good work mate. =)

This mod is not compatible with the extended timeline mod. After looking at it, there's no way to make an accurate version for that time frame. And I will make a version for MEIOU and Taxes when version 2.0 is released

Thank you Scott

I agree fully about rebels, but sadly I'm not sure that there's much I can do about them atm. Hordes deserve new features, and I agree about the comment that manpower should be modified, as should the military tech boosts. I'm currently trying to match the boon in wartaxes to proper war exhaustion.

I agree fully about rebels, but sadly I'm not sure that there's much I can do about them atm. Hordes deserve new features, and I agree about the comment that manpower should be modified, as should the military tech boosts. I'm currently trying to match the boon in wartaxes to proper war exhaustion.

but that's pretty excessive :P

honestly hordes could be really reworked. Hordes shouldn't HAVE a standing army or an army that they can even control- Just when war is declared, like 20k hillariously strong horsemen pushing into foreign territory

The Ottomans never really expand in this mod so far in my experience (although I suppose it's a good thing they arn't stomping around like they usually do) Played probably 8 games and they've never conquered the Mamluks.

This mod is great and makes the game extremely difficult the only thing the bothers me is when rebel spawn during peace time and it kills your economy to raise troops is there anyway to make the amount of rebels that spawn more equivalent to the size of the armies that the nations have

Does this affect the AI's decision-making?

I've played a game starting in 1444 up until 1717 as Brandenburg. The mod made things more interesting. I spent more time developing my economy so that I could afford to fight and win wars. Around the start of the 1700's an army of about 60K was a huge army for a country to have in peace time. And most wars I fought only lasted like 3 years.

Cons/Notes for the Developer
-The Mil Tech doesnt reduce the cost of supporting an army by enough. It was still cheaper to build Mercenaries.
-Manpower is no long an important aspect of the game. I recommend reducing manpower by like 50% or even 75%
-War Taxes needs to be increase war exhaustion a lot more. Its currently does little.

Pros
-Few battles but importance of winning increased
-Seiges were quicker
-AI is quicker to want to end a war it is losing
-Harder to stack wipe an army.
-25% casualties was the worst battle the AI suffered. And I had Prussian space Marines

I highly recommend this mod if you want a more realistic game play.

@soranya The AI handles it well. They reduce the size of their armies during peace and increase them when they are at war. The AI tends to build a lot more infantry. Eg: 10K Inf, 2K Cav and Maybe 1k Art was ruffly the ratios of AI armies