Levies & Regulars Warfare Tweak

Levies & Regulars Warfare Tweak

* Major Concept
– Rebalanced Levies and Regulars
– (Perhaps) Reasonable power balance between Levies & Regulars
– Regulars are not a simple superior version of Levies
– Instead, Levies and Regulars have different role.
– Actually useful Naval Mercenaries.
– Despicable CB and War Goal system is ‘fixed’

* War Goals and Casus Belli adjustments

– Many CB’s war goal now have reduced war demand cost penalty BS.
– CBs can be created without spy, and CB creation speed is actually meaningful.
– Generic Fabricated Claim CB can be freely generated for cowards.
– "The Best CB" is still respected, and they now are even better!
– Some Stupid niche War Goals now has extreme ticking war score, allowing war to be conclusive very quickly

* Major Tweaks and Reworks.
– Shifting roles of the Levies Regulars as Age progresses.
– Stats and Specifications of Levy and Regular units for each age is heavily adjusted to represent a historic shift in military concepts.

– Early Regulars are not very strong, however, they are always better in terms of morale, and will usually win same number combat easily, not by having less casualties, but by having far superior morale sustain.
– Noble Cavalry is dangerous, and swarm of the peasants are not a thing that can be ignored.
– Early Regulars must be used with Levies to assure maximum success.

– Regulars becomes more and more core of the your military power, and levy’s role becomes more supportive.
– Levy unit’s characteristic is drastically different for every age. Combine levies with regulars or mercenaries accordingly. Multiple possible strategies exists, but choice is all up to you.

– Unique roles of Light units and Artillery
– Light Infantries takes significantly less frontage, and deals more damage than that of Heavy Infantries. Instead, they have no defensive bonus and takes additional morale damage.
– Heavy Infantries are needed to provide a backbone of the your army. They are main morale tank.
– Artilleries takes only half of frontage. They are useful even in frontline, and will not take notable loss as long as their flank is secured. However, becuase they takes 50% more morale damage, they can’t stay in a line for long. They will not lose their strength easily, but will not be a magic firepower either.

– Sergeantry and City Guard buildings provides +250/+500 manpower at capital.
– Hence, all countries will gain ‘minimum base manpower’ and small countries can be dangerous in coalition.
(Conquistador units were insanely buffed to offset the difficulty of increased native foes.)

– New Levy unit types
– Burghers provides extended support of Heavy Infantry Levy until Age of the Reformation.
– Discovery Heavy Infantry Levy : Citizen Milita (Burghers, Soliders)
– Reformation Heavy Infantry Levy: Pike Miltia (Burghers, Soldiers)
– Absolutism Light Cavalry Levy: Volunteer Cavalry (Burghers)
– With relatively less powerful Burghers losing their status at Revolutions, and only few extremely wealthy one (future’s capitalist), they join Gendarmarie at Revolutions.
– Burghers serves as significant auxiliary backbone of the your military as levy source.

– Combat Mechanisms such as addtional damage on not-engaged units are heavily tweaked to put the end of folly, for once and for all.
– As age advances, Cannons eventually grow insanely powerful at inflicting casulties, but they can’t damage the morale as much. Hence, artillery must be overcame with carefully thrown cannon fodders in late game

* Warfare changes as firearm advances….
– Advent of the Firearms will change Levies and Regulars forever.
– Levies becomes more and more like light infantry units, and will lose direct confrontation capability as age advances. They will require mercenary or regular heavy infantry’s protection. However, if well protected, guns will prove that even peasants can devastate elite army troopers.

* Beware of the history’s "Plot Twist"
– Absolutism Levies are in general useless, but they still does quite a lot of damge and should not be underestimated
– As Revolutions changes everything, levy conscripts will become true backbone of the your country, at the end game.

* Annoyances Fix
– Early game Cavalry is nerfed significantly to prevent magic horse that kills everything instantly
– Increase in actual infantry combat stat happens earlier, but in smaller scale during early time.
– Noble Cavalries still must be feared. But well formulated regulars will have no problem with them.
– Tribal Cavalries was nerfed significantly, but they are still dangerous if you are reckless.

– Artillery will no longer magically remove all morale bar during barrage.
– Instead, they inflicts massive damage during barrage, even at earlier Age.
(Far more casualties inflicted, with minimal morale damage.)

– Significantly Reduced Army build cost, and instead increased maintenance
– Mercenaries are now reasonably priced, and will not be an outrageous rip-off.
– Merc leader’s now actually have brain to properly manage sizable company.

– Significantly reduced Siege tick, and added fort limit penalty increment on Age progression.
– Additional Siege Bonuses obtainable from artillery unlocks.
– Fort Limit researches will mitigate those penalties slightly. (That being said, defensiveness is costly in research-wise)

– Cities and Towns gains defensiveness penalty, making them far less suitable for sustaining long siege
– Cities and Towns gains garrison size bonus, making them very difficult to assault during early game.

* Disclaimer
Lacerations that this game has is insanely large, hence, bandages and stiches that this mod provides has its obvious limit. It can’t make the game perfect by any mean, but only can cover up the wound for a bit so that game at least can be enjoyable without too much headache.

How much ‘annoyance’ is acceptable as player varies, and some players think that something is too streamlined, and some may not. For myself, I am kind of inclined toward ‘casual’. (Opposite of fan of the long siege that is.)

Despite of that limit, I believe that universal demand for ‘explainable status of the game’ exist, and this keeping gameplay ‘explainable with sanity’ is the my goal and ambition with this mod.

Some of interventions are as blunt as what Pdx’s ‘interventions’ are such as "base manpower" being very plentiful, siege tick being halved, Light Infantry units getting really favorable modifiers.

Yet I decided to push with them, as, lack of base manpower made Europe full of blob, excruciatingly long siege making game unplayable, Light Infantry having no sanely explainable role and gimmick by any mean, was NOT acceptable. There had to be an explainable gameplay, so I decided to take a blunt move on this. It is like peeing on one’s own frozen foot, but given that one has ‘pee that is hot enough’ I bet it is better than nothing.

I hope you enjoy this potent game, and hope that this mod helps with that. 🙂