ideas to improve vanilla ETW

[XiombargDei]

Hi here

I see a lot of threads about great mods like WWI or Elder Scrolls but not much about simply improving the vanilla game. So here is my list of proposals and ideas to make basic ETW more fun and difficult. I have no idea of what is possible / moddable / hardcoded or whatsoever. I’m not a modder myself. But anyway here is a list of ideas

I Trade
Have more information and control over the trade routes.

1. When overing a trade route, show exactly what you trade to who, in which quantity
2. Ability to blockade only the trade good you want
3. Ability to choose what to export and what to import
4. Control the production of your empire, say for example to stop producing cotton or tea to raise the demand and the price
5. Ability to control which route the goods take

II Role Play (aka breeding characters and such)
Information and control over your government and gentlemen

1. Make gentlemen research specialization (+ industrial points etc.) depends on how many time they spend in such a building. for example put a gentleman in a metal factory for 6 turns to get +Industrial points, put a gentleman in a city with level 4+ government building to get humanism+ research points)
2. Same system for Ministers. have ministers be controlable characters like gentlemen. Put a minister in the field for him to get + military trait, or in a commercial harbor for him to get +commerce points. then when you think he is ready, send your minister back to the capitol to be able to name him at the government.
3. Have your spies be able to steal technology (I don’t think they can )

III Campaign map & related
Ideas to improve the difficulty and lenght of the campaign map strategy

1. Make it more difficult for an army to take control of a region capital.
2. Disable assaulting on the first turn of a siege to simulate all the organisation it takes for an army to march on, get in place, sets its attacks, and the defenders to burn the land in front of them and sets their city for defense.
3. When an attacker take control over a region capital, have rebels spawn in each and every little town of the region, like half a stack in each.
4. When a faction is destroyed, make its navy become pirate ships
5. When discovering a new technology, you should have to retrain your units so they get use of this new tech (like square formation, rank fire etc.)
6. Recruitment should be limited in the colonies. You should only be able to recruit local troops and dragoons in the America as GB or France for example. Other troops should be recruited in your homeland and transported by ship.
7. Each and every ship should only be able to transport ONE unit. No more 2000 soldiers on one Aviso ... Agents should count for none.
8. Give possibility to hire Privateers so you can blockade trade routes without declaring war.

IV Economy
Ideas to reduce the general income and make upkeeping armies more realistic

1. Introduce siege cost, like 5000gold for each siege turn
2. Cost for every army in the field you have, based on the upkeep of each unit in your own territory and double this cost in enemy territory
3. Less food producing in the region an army stands in, like -5%
4. When a battle take place in france for example, have this region's income cut in half to simulate the troubles and ravaged lands.

V Land and sea Battles
Ideas for units and general units changes

1. Increase Musket and Rifle range
2. Decrease maximum range accuracy dramatically
3. Increase close range accuracy dramatically
4. Create an exponential accuracy scale, so that accuracy improves dramatically the closer you get
5. Sailing mechanics - Dramatically slow sailing into the wind, reduce turning speed, eliminate turning while immobile.

VI Technology Tree Changes
Ideas for new technologies and research mechanics

Add 8 technological lines - broken down as follows

• Infantry have 4 technological lines, each one dedicated to increasing the following stat pairs :

• Reloading and Ammo Capacity
• Accuracy
• Melee Attack and Charge
• Melee Defense and Morale

• Ships have 3, possibly 4 technological lines, each one dedicated to increasing the following

• Reloading and Morale
• Speed and Maneuverability
• Hull Strength
• The possible 4th is Marine effectiveness and number, if that's possible

VII Diplomacy
Ideas to improve diplomacy or get new diplomacy proposals

1. Demand nation to break an agreement, this could for example mean that you can demand/ask a nation to break its current agreement (e.g. trade agreement, alliance or military access) with another nation, that you like to weaken
2. Demand to attack another nation, similar to M2TW where you could ask a nation to attack another nation for you, either in support or to keep them busy
3. Demand a region to become independent, this would be nice if you would like to create a buffer state, of course you should be able to liberate one of your own regions as well if you would like to and this will of course become a protectorate of your nation.
4. Loan money, maybe unnecessary as they AI seems to have no money problems, however it could benefit your nation if the other nation honours the deal of course and improve mutual relations if the intrest rate is low
5. Make peace with, this demands two nations that are at war with each other to make peace (for example to prevent a friend from being destroyed)
6. Guarantee independence, this will ensure that you guarantee the Independence of the nation in question and thus improve mutual relations, furthermore when attacked (the guaranteed nation is not the aggressor) you will be asked to come to their aid
7. Send expeditionary force, this will allow a selected army to be put under the direct control of you or the AI and just like with military access you can determine the number of turns the army will remain under their control, they will have to pay a part of the upkeep costs to compensate you. Of course they side which gains the army also benefits from any exclusive units in the expeditionary force. In order to make this deal po

well i'm sure many of you had those ideas already ^^
If you post yours and this thread grows, i'll edit the first post.

cheers

[BritPatriot1815]

Regimental music need to be better for a start!!!

[Alkarin]

Regimental music need to be better for a start!!!

get the music mod. so when your troops march it plays british grenadiers

[Quixote07]

Accuracy dropoff Fix

1) Increase Musket and Rifle range

2) Decrease maximum range accuracy dramatically

3) Increase close range accuracy dramatically

4) Create an exponential accuracy scale, so that accuracy improves dramatically the closer you get

Technology Tree Changes

1) Add 8 technological lines (sounds like a lot, but bear with me) - broken down as follows

Infantry have 4 technological lines, each one dedicated to increasing the following stat pairs
Reloading and Ammo Capacity
Accuracy
Melee Attack and Charge
Melee Defense and Morale

Ships have 3, possibly 4 technological lines, each one dedicated to increasing the following
Reloading and Morale
Speed and Maneuverability
Hull Strength
The possible 4th is Marine effectiveness and number, if that's possible

Basically, instead of having to add a dozen historically accurate units you let people create their own units through customization. Adds a lot of strategic depth to the tech tree.

To compensate, Line Infantry start much weaker than they are now in all respects, with militia even worse (militia also wouldn't benefit from the upgrades nearly as much).

This could be a problem if the nation gets a dozen colleges, so increase the unrest caused by colleges too. Make a province highly highly unstable if it has more than two, tops. Especially of the higher level colleges.

3) Sailing mechanics - Dramatically slow sailing into the wind, reduce turning speed, eliminate turning while immobile.

If these changes got put in, combined with some AI improvements, I think we'd have a much deeper and more enjoyable game.

[XiombargDei]

just an idea i just had :
when you discover a new technology, you need to retrain your armies in a town/city/harbor, depending the level of the unit.
for exemple i just discovered "Silex canons", i should have to send my ships in a harbor, spend some money just like when replenishing, and then only the new effect takes place.

[AK47]

Weaken the native archers.

[Van Diemen]

Much more diplomacy options as I stated here earlier.

[Imp]

-line grenadiers with line infantry shooting skills but higher melee values.

-grenadiers and curassiers for russia.

-guard grenadiers for prussia instead of the "Guards"

-removal of grenades with the introduction of rank fire

-no hand mortars please

-square formation for grenadiers

-full size for grenadier formations at higher costs maybe?

-higher rate of fire for prussian line

-higher melee values for russian line

[Van Diemen]

-square formation for grenadiers

-higher melee values for russian line

I'm afraid the square formation cannot be added to grenadiers without removing their grenade tossing ability, but I do agree with higher melee values for russian line infantry, as well as having a larger unit size and relatively lower recruit and upkeep costs for russian line infantry.

I'm not sure but maybe in vanilla ETW russian militia is relatively better than militia of other nations?

[XiombargDei]

@ Quixote07

thanks for participating. I've updated the first thread with most of your proposals. Could you be more specific on the accuracy and new tech tree part ?

@ Imp

I'm afraid those are very specific changes and it does not apply here. This thread is more about general changes in the game, not units themselves.

@ Van Diemen

thanks for posting here. I took the liberty to add your diplomacy ideas to the first thread, I hope you dont mind. Please feel free to post updates.

[Imp]

I'm afraid the square formation cannot be added to grenadiers without removing their grenade tossing ability, but I do agree with higher melee values for russian line infantry, as well as having a larger unit size and relatively lower recruit and upkeep costs for russian line infantry.

I'm not sure but maybe in vanilla ETW russian militia is relatively better than militia of other nations?

well you see, i want the grenades to be removed

sorry if this thread wasn't ment for unit finetuning, i just thought it applies to "improving vanilla etw" since it bugs me

maybe you can add a subsection involving unit stat changes?

[XiombargDei]

Added the privateer Idea (III 8.) taken from Pacifist Hummingbird post

[peregrino]

I think:

-4 turns/year
-Increasing chance to HUGE revolution in everywhere year after year
-For all saints (with respect), When a revolution begins a lot of provinces or armys must join main rebel army!!
-Music, the ETW´s music is like Robocop...no offense but the music in this age is VERY different