one or two things to rebalance campaign game

[pino69]

Hi,

Almost finished a campaign with France Hard/Normal.
This gamehas very good potential and will be at the end a winner. But I think some light changes could drastically improve the campaign which I found too easy and not enough challenging. I finally had victory conditions without too much trouble, only in the americas with natives, but nothing very hard.

The point here is I think the aim in that game should be prestige, not territory.
That's no point to conquest all the factions on the map. It were not historically the case, even France in the revolution period, did not annex a lot of land, they rather made "friendly republics", puppet countries which lived in the Empire zone of control.

So : here is some ideas maybe easy to mod...

1 - Every faction should have core provinces. One province state should have that province as a core. Multi-province factions should have one or two province as core as regard to their history.
Core provinces should exist only in the european theater. No core on the americas or india.
Core province couldn't be exchanged in treaties.
Main buildings (level 3 or more) should be only build in core provinces.

2 - The core provinces of any country shouldn't never be annexed and added to conqueror territory.
If the capitol of a core province fall, it should be automatic peace at the conditions of the winner -> protectorate or/and military access or/and non core provinces, plus a random tech gain from the research pool of the looser.
Conquest of core provinces should bring a large amount of prestige, proportionnal to the power of conquered faction.
This way, you could control large territories but as protectorates, not as land.

As it, no more France in Spain or England, or Austria... And a fair game of influence. Say you're at war as France with Netherlands. You fight evreywhere on the map but finally manage to take Amsterdam : you gain lot of prestige, war stops immediately, you keep your international conquests if any, you can have Netherland as a french protectorate and maybe you can have Limejuice... But Netherlands keep Amsterdam.
Fight for protectorates and prestige, not for lands...

Some other points should be taken in consideration :

3 - AI has to make naval invasions (I think that point has been discuted a lot). Without them, large empire games have no sense. In a full scale war with the brits, I could keep caribeans colonies without a fight, even if they hadn't any fortifications nore garrison... Should the AI assaulted them I would have been very annoyed. More, knowing this, I didn't have to distract part of the fleet to protect far colonies and could concentrate and challenge brits on the sea
-> not realistic and definitely not fun.

4 - American and indian theaters should be modded too.
I feel native tribes, as indian factions, souldn't have access to the full technology tree. In 2 games, Marata were always the prestige winner at the end because they were unchallenged in the beginning and had plenty of time to develop without too much fight -> because of AI unable to invade by sea. Hell, I'm waiting to see brits try to colonize India !
I know some people want to play indian factions, but having heavy fabrics in Bombay in 1750 has no sense at all. By the way, let indian factions develop toot much and the brits nor the Netherlands will never invade it because they will be afraid.

5 - Concerning colony, recrutement is too powerfull. It has no sens to be able to recruit late heavy cavalry in Quebec...
What I suggest is that only native units could be freely recruited in colonies. You should be able to recruit milice, dragons and local infantry too but the number should be capped with your government building level : say 2 units by government building level -> 6 units max !
All the other units (line, cavalry, arty...) should be transported by sea from your core provinces in european theater. But they could be reinforced on the field.
To have a better balance, I think all native units (AI and yours) should be small units (i.e 60 vs 120) and don't use any kind of formation which leads to more realistic and smaller scale battles, guerilla type -> no more big infantry lines in the wild canadian forests... It's indian warriors against native units and foresters.

6 - Troop transport has no sense at all and ruins the gameplay.
You shouldn't be able to cross all the map with a full stack with an simple aviso, it's a joke and no fun.
The rule sould be 1 ship = 1 unit, with agents and generals counting for none. With those rules, to send full stack to America means produce your units in motherland, build 20 ships (perfection would be the use of transport ships which are the only unit able to transport but have no cannons - escort needed ! - but I don't think it could be modded), and send them far away praying not being intercepted in the process.
That's challenge.

All in all, what could be modded are these 3 points :
- more prestige game withcore provinces unable to be annexed
- naval troop transport fully remade
- american and indian theaters troops

Finally, all that post has no sense if AI is unable to make naval invasions.

Thank you modders to keep one or two of these ideas for your future work.
Sorry too for my english which is far from perfect :-)

[XiombargDei]

Your idee on core provinces is nice, and could be a good start for a realistic mod. It is true that at that time, a conqueror did not slaughter a whole coutry, but became more or less their '"Protector"

I really like your points 5 & 6 and will add them to my "general ideas" post ^^

cheers

[Ralendil]

Agree with point 1, 3 (here it is not a mod that we need, but that CA works seriously on this), 4 (very important point) and especially the point 5. France has lost Quebec cause they had not sent enough troops.
The point 6 is interresting... but here again it is up to CA to realise the stupidity of the current system. To be realistic we would need that 2 ships can transport 1 unit. Transports are a bad idea, cause at this time the vessels had always cannons.
I disagree with the point 2. We should be able to eleminate other nations, but it should be harder than it is actually. The AI opposes no real resistance at all. I don't know if it exists yet, but we should see RE EMERGENT factions. When the people is unhappy, we should see eliminated factions reappearing. This would force you to always keep an eye on what you conquered.