Russia vs Ottoman - why does no other country attack?

[LSD]

I picked the game up with the bundle last week. I've played all the last-gen PDX games, and i'm surprised how badly i'm doing with EU4.
I've formed Russia, it's 1560ish, and i've already peaced-out from an Ottoman war by giving them 63 warscore worth of land. Now the truce is over, they've declared war again...ugh.

The first time they declared, i made a safety save, and managed to bleed their manpower to 0 by scorched earthing the hapless AI (with their +1k regain rate, i couldn't recapture anything from them though). What i don't understand is...why does nobody take that as an opportunity to strike?

Hungary and the Mamluks are both great powers on their borders who've lost wars to them in the past and have them as rivals. Shouldn't 0 manpower be a sign their enemy is a prime target?

In other PDX games, i'm used to there being a pile on at that point. What gives?

[Mr.M]

...manpower barely hurts the AI as it will just spam mercenaries with money. The AI also doesnt give a damn about loans and thus just ♥♥♥♥♥ out mercenaries as long as possible - which still makes them strong even with 0 manpower.

[VaderDFXB]

Originally posted by MrMonokel2000:

...manpower barely hurts the AI as it will just spam mercenaries with money. The AI also doesnt give a damn about loans and thus just ♥♥♥♥♥ out mercenaries as long as possible - which still makes them strong even with 0 manpower.

Pretty much this. Should be much improved in the new patch though with the changes to mercenaries that's incoming. At least one of the things Paradox is doing right...

Basically mercenaries will have their own manpower pool and no longer pop into existence because ducats.

Edit: Hmmm, I wonder if EUIV mercenaries are born when you rub ducats together...

[Razor Feather]

From the sounds of it, it would probably be because the ottomans weren’t actually all that weak. A manpower regain rate of over 1k a month is quite a bit, especially when combined with the ability to raise mercs, which the ottomans were almost certainly doing. It also sounds like you weren’t doing all that much battling or more importantly stack wiping of their forces, so their total deployed troop count probably didn’t go down that much, and likely still included many cannons.

The ai will dogpile larger countries on occasion, but it generally takes those nations going bankrupt or having their actual troop numbers greatly lowered, in addition to low manpower. Otherwise the ai doesn’t really see them as all that much weaker, which is frankly probably an accurate assesment of the situation.

In my experiance beating an enemy by attrition requires you to take the fight to them as their manpower bottoms out, catching mercs before they can form into meaningful armies, or just generally rushing them at the point where their current armies can’t reinforce properly due to a lack of manpower and no mercs, and crushing those armies and their cannons, so the ai loses their ability to siege effectively, as they never hire merc arty. Otherwise the only real thing you achieve through attrition is raising their war exhaustion, which the ottomans usually reduce heavily, and thus they won’t succumb to it unless you start occupying them as well.

[Raider Deci]

Originally posted by LSD:

I picked the game up with the bundle last week. I've played all the last-gen PDX games, and i'm surprised how badly i'm doing with EU4.
I've formed Russia, it's 1560ish, and i've already peaced-out from an Ottoman war by giving them 63 warscore worth of land. Now the truce is over, they've declared war again...ugh.
?

Unfortunately thats how paradox-games work. The AI will just continue to pound their rival (aka the player) over & over. If the AI smell a weak prey nearby they will pile on top of that quicker than an englishman for tea-break. Stellaris is the biggest offender where you can simply count on being attacked through simple rivalry (which is really tiresome), but EU4 is plagued by this as well.

Allies for deterrence is the answer. And winning every war. As others have pointed out the AI will destroy their own economy by hiring tons of mercs if it means winning, although the ottomans are rich and can support their forcelimit in mercs anyway at the start of the game


I really think the changes to how mercenaries work will change the game more than anything else for the AI.

[LSD]

Yeah, i had a lot of trouble fighting them. I managed to end up at tech 9 vs tech 13, meaning 0 infantry fire. I only managed to wipe one of their 3 30k armies. The rest, even at half strength, would pummel my 3 20k armies...

I'm now at tech 11 vs 13, with Sweden and Danzig as allies (Hungary refused...), but even collectively our armies are like 2/3 of theirs. This is gonna be fun :(

[Razor Feather]

Originally posted by LSD:

Yeah, i had a lot of trouble fighting them. I managed to end up at tech 9 vs tech 13, meaning 0 infantry fire. I only managed to wipe one of their 3 30k armies. The rest, even at half strength, would pummel my 3 20k armies...

I'm now at tech 11 vs 13, with Sweden and Danzig as allies (Hungary refused...), but even collectively our armies are like 2/3 of theirs. This is gonna be fun :(

Yeah that level of mil tech disadvantage would be a huge, and rather avoidable, problem. Its especially bad with mil tech 14, 15, and 16 coming, as they give bastions, morale, and a big chunk of artillery fire respectively. Have you been staying up to date on institutions?

[LSD]

Originally posted by Razor Feather:

Originally posted by LSD:

Yeah, i had a lot of trouble fighting them. I managed to end up at tech 9 vs tech 13, meaning 0 infantry fire. I only managed to wipe one of their 3 30k armies. The rest, even at half strength, would pummel my 3 20k armies...

I'm now at tech 11 vs 13, with Sweden and Danzig as allies (Hungary refused...), but even collectively our armies are like 2/3 of theirs. This is gonna be fun :(

Yeah that level of mil tech disadvantage would be a huge, and rather avoidable, problem. Its especially bad with mil tech 14, 15, and 16 coming, as they give bastions, morale, and a big chunk of artillery fire respectively. Have you been staying up to date on institutions?

It took me forever to get Colonialism -- got it in 1560 by invading Kazan, who got it from friendly Ottomans.
There's Lithuania and Poland separating me from the developed side of Europe. They have tech levels of 8, and still don't have it embraced, so i had nobody around to even try to get it to spread from. I tried dumping points in Moscow to get it to appear, but only got 3/4 of the way, which is a big waste.

Do you have any tips? Ottomans are 110k troops at tech level 13, while Sweden = 20k @ 12 tech, Danzig = 12k @ 11, and i'm 61k troops @11. I'm 2 years off unlocking tech 12 for the fire attack/defence pips.
Would re-loading and pushing my army towards forcelimit put them off declaring war on me? Or does AI know they can steamroll 100k just as easily as 60k when they're all pikemen?

[VaderDFXB]

Oh, nevermind, it's not a mercenary problem. OP is being attacked by an enemy with a MUCH higher mil tech level.

Yeah...

[LSD]

Originally posted by VaderDFXB:

Oh, nevermind, it's not a mercenary problem. OP is attacking an enemy with a MUCH higher mil tech level.

Yeah...

"why does nobody take that as an opportunity to strike?"

You're right, it's not mercenaries. They had like 12 loans going.
It just seems to be the way the AI works. Poland has been sat by itself with tech level ~8. Everyone hates them, but nobody's attacked them in 50 years. Their ally is Lithuania with only one or two tech above them.

AI diplomacy seems very different to other Clausewitz games. Mostly seems improved, apart from a predilection towards rivals over just about everything else...

[Medicles]

You should just restart, because its questionable if you can get equal to Ottomans anymore. Even if you win the war now, it will most likely cost you way too much and very little for the Ottomans, so you would just buy another ten years until they attack you again.

Russia is quite far too the east and does have a marginal problem in getting institutions just by spreading it. What you want to do is developing specific provinces to get the institutions going. Moskva for Renaissance, Neva for Colonialism and eventually Novgorod for Printing Press (only if you arent already present in central europe). You also want to have a "spread street" from Neva to Moskva, means you want to connect high dev provinces to increase the spread. It usually is enough to make a street out of dev 10 provinces, but the Neva-Moskva street already has enough dev, except for one 6 dev province that needs to be increased to 10.

This may sound wasteful, but it is actually not. You just develope 3 provinces and what you get is a very early institution embracement that is compareable to the nation where the institution started, means you should always be on top of tech and usually even 2-3 techs above your immediate neighbours and you will get good money out of those high dev provinces.

Thats all you need to do.

[Razor Feather]

Originally posted by LSD:

It took me forever to get Colonialism -- got it in 1560 by invading Kazan, who got it from friendly Ottomans.
There's Lithuania and Poland separating me from the developed side of Europe. They have tech levels of 8, and still don't have it embraced, so i had nobody around to even try to get it to spread from. I tried dumping points in Moscow to get it to appear, but only got 3/4 of the way, which is a big waste.

Do you have any tips? Ottomans are 110k troops at tech level 13, while Sweden = 20k @ 12 tech, Danzig = 12k @ 11, and i'm 61k troops @11. I'm 2 years off unlocking tech 12 for the fire attack/defence pips.
Would re-loading and pushing my army towards forcelimit put them off declaring war on me? Or does AI know they can steamroll 100k just as easily as 60k when they're all pikemen?

So first some advice on institutions:
Force spawning institutions costs ~2000, with more or less based on how much dev modifiers you can get together. Taking tech at the increased price for the first 50 years is ~3000, and you don't get any dev out of it. Generally its best to start devving for the institution if you won't be able to embrace it by the time tech costs get to around +20-30%. You don't want a high development province, as it starts to cost quite a bit more after around 20 dev, and you don't get nearly as much development for it. Instead develop a province of 7-20 dev near a group of high dev provinces, and pick a new one for each institution. It gives you a strong core set of states for buildings, and keeps you from getting behind on tech.
I force spawn rennaisance, colonialism, and printing press as pretty much every nation outside of western or central europe, and generally start once the tech cost increase gets to 10-20%.

As for the war, I kind of doubt building way more troops will discourage the ai from attacking, though I admit to having very little experience in actually dealing with that sort of tech penalty at that stage of the game. You might of course be able to eventually win through shear force of stubborness, as the ai really tends to be pretty dismal at sieging down a large country, and it also never pays to lower WE. If they have lots of debt already, you might be able to just stall until they bankrupt, particularly if you can get enough allies to attach to you to present a credible threat, so as to get them to abandon seiges. You can also abuse the hell out of estate rebels. Just revoke estates from provinces the ottoman troops are already locked into entering, causing a rebellion, and then immediatly replace the estate. Every year every one of your provinces can be used as a little land mine, which is exceedingly cheesy but also quite effective.

[LSD]

Estate rebels sounds fun, but i think they get the same tech as the state they're in, which makes them target practice at the moment. I'm resting my hopes on getting to tech 12 quickly and then piling on them when the AI starts chasing armies around.

I made lots of mistakes, like ignoring admin ideas (because all the merc-related bonuses looked awful), blowing a bunch of mil points on quelling rebel spawns, and spending 50 years with a 0/2/0 ruler. But i don't want to give up either :(

If i survive, i'll give development a try. Didn't really consider the benefit of being left with high development provinces vs dumping points into a hole with the negative tech modifiers. Flicking around online before i started playing said it was basically never worthwhile to develop provinces, so i just left it at that.

[Medicles]

Who would say that? Developing provinces is one of the greatest thing in the game and arguably even the reason, why nations outside of europe can be somewhat compareable to europeans when playing them.

[VaderDFXB]

Originally posted by Medicles:

Who would say that? Developing provinces is one of the greatest thing in the game and arguably even the reason, why nations outside of europe can be somewhat compareable to europeans when playing them.

Developing provinces to get institutions to spawn makes playing in most of the world actually playable. Heck, I wish it'd be cheaper to do. Way too expensive as it is.

[Medicles]

Originally posted by VaderDFXB:

Developing provinces to get institutions to spawn makes playing in most of the world actually playable. Heck, I wish it'd be cheaper to do. Way too expensive as it is.

I wouldnt say that, i mean, its not impossible to play other nations of the world without developing provinces, but it is a huge and very significant help. Thats why i formulated the sentence carefully and used the word "arguably", because i knew if i would have said that its the actual reason why other nations than europeans are playable, someone else would have commented that its not true and that you can play other nations perfectly fine without developing.