A Complete Military Overhaul
My available time to maintain this mod is currently limited due to university commitments, and I’m also taking a short break from EU5 while waiting for continued improvements to the base game. I have no plans to abandon the project, but updates will likely be tied to periods when I am actively playing the game. This means there may be longer gaps between updates.
To help keep the mod maintained, I’m open to bringing on trusted community modders as contributors. The project will continue to follow my overall design vision, but contributors will have meaningful agency as long as ideas and progress are communicated clearly. Please note that this work would be completely voluntary.
At minimum, I’m looking for maintainers who can keep the mod updated for new game versions – any additional improvements are a bonus.
If you’re interested, add me on Steam and send a DM so we can chat first.
Not compatible with the 1.1 Rossbach beta.
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This mod is a ground-up rework of EU5’s military system. It replaces the opaque, unbalanced, and often arbitrary vanilla approach with a consistent and coherent model.
I highly recommend that you combine this mod with my other mod: Anti Snowballing. You will need to install the compatibility patch and load it after the main mods for them to work together.
Anti Snowballing: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3644897537
Compatch: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3644927989
- Infantry, cavalry, auxiliary, and levies all share the same regiment size per age (artillery is the only exception given its specialized nature).
- Regiment sizes scale smoothly from 200 (Age I) to 1000 (Age VI). In vanilla, this range was 100 –> 3200 for infantry (and different for every other unit type). This new, consistent, and narrower range allows for smoother power scaling and better balance between units.
- Base regiment size for damage calculations has been reduced from 1000 to 500. By both narrowing regiment size differences across the ages (see above) and halving the base regiment size value, damage progression is much smoother over the course of the game. Early game units now deal meaningful damage, while late-game units no longer become space marines.
- Levy Combat Efficiency removed.
- Levy age-related combat effectiveness modifiers removed.
- Levies now receive a flat -30% discipline malus (vanilla: -10%).
- All Levy Combat Efficiency bonuses from techs, priviliges, laws, etc. have been replaced with alternative bonuses.
- Levy recovery speed is twice the rate of vanilla as a base (10 years to fully replenish instead of 20).
- Levy tooltips updated to clearly communicate this discipline malus to the player.
- Important Note: With this mod, levies are far more useful than in vanilla, even after building up a professional army. Regulars will generally be better on average, but levies are no longer cannon fodder.
- Following the fundamental changes to regiment sizes and scaling, every army unit in the game has been manually tweaked and rebalanced around the new system.
- Units will gradually increase in combat power with every age, peaking at ~3 combat power for infantry and ~3.5 for cavalry in Age VI (lower than vanilla, since combat power is an incredibly powerful stat).
- The distinction between light and heavy units has been standardized across the board. Heavy units have higher combat power, but lower initiative and combat speed. Light units have higher initiative and speed, but lower combat power.
- Unit damage multipliers against other unit types has been removed. Most notably, cavalry no longer take 25% less damage from infantry. Note that the one exception is that artillery still takes 50% extra damage from other units.
- Heavy cavalry now only has 150% flanking ability (light cav still has the full 200%). This means that light cavalry remains the primary flanking force in armies, while heavy cavalry can serve a more generalist role as a powerful unit.
- Cavalry starts out relatively strong compared to infantry, but the gap closes over the course of the game.
- Artillery now takes 50% less attrition damage as a base (vanilla: 50% more damage). This is to address a common complaint where players would constantly lose their artillery siege bonus due to high artillery attrition in sieges.
- Each point of initiative is 50% more valuable. This is subject to further tweaks based on player feedback.
- The infantry ‘secure flanks’ bonus has been buffed to 35% (vanilla: 25%). Stacks to 70% with both flanks secure.
- Feudalism military tactics bonus reduced from +1 to +0.25.
- Unique units are differentiated from their generic counterparts primarily via damage & morale modifiers, with some exceptions where base stats like combat power and initiative are modified when the former changes are not sufficient.
- UI clearly shows levy/regular and light/heavy status.
- Integrated the ‘Unit Pictures’ mod so that units show the proper artwork based on their subtype.
- Age-based expected army size modifier increased (encouraging the AI to grow their regular army).
- New building: Military Quarters. Available from game-start to monarchies. Provides +10% local crown power and +5 manpower per month. However, they are limited to being built in locations with a city rank.
- Sergeantries are the ‘better version’ of Military Quarters, but the base price has been increased from 50 to 200 (4x increase). Like in vanilla, they can only be built in urban capitals (town or city rank). They provide +25% local crown power and +10 manpower per month.
- The equivalent building for republics – the ‘City Guard’ – has been modified to be buildable in any city-rank locations. In vanilla, they were limited to urban capital locations. They provide +5 manpower, just like Military Quarters. However, they provide no crown power bonus.
- Smaller countries (under 600,000 population) receive scaling military bonuses, with the strength of the bonuses increasing as population decreases. These bonuses include a discount to regular regiments (build & maintenace cost), an increase to noble and commoner levy size, and an increase in levy recovery speed. Important Note: These bonuses do not apply to subjects! Otherwise vassal swarms would be way too OP.
- Fort limit from number of locations halved.
- Cities now give +0.25 fort limit instead of +1.
- Towns give +0.1 fort limit instead of nothing.
- Bonuses from country ranks have been changed to percentage modifiers instead of flat bonuses (Empire: +33%, Kingdom: +15%, Duchy: +5%, HRE Emperor: +33%).
- Note that some large countries start above the limit; the AI quickly corrects this within a couple months by dismantling forts.
- More willing to fight and hunt armies.
- Spends more on maintenance.
- Values regulars more.
- Seeks higher warscore before peace.
- Waits longer for morale, garrisons, and CBs before declaring wars.
- Prefers cleaner borders in peace deals.
- Slightly prefers stronger allies.
- Higher war enthusiasm.
- Higher priority on unit advances.
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
