Why is there no attrition when moving between enemy provinces?

[John]

That's ridiculous, a 30k big army can sprint from kamchatka, across siberia to moscow without losing a single man as long as they are under the supply limit. Makes no sense how they only start losing men once they're actually besieging a province

[grotaclas]

There is attrition in enemy provinces even if you are below the supply limit(I think it is 1%). You can easily test this by walking around enemy territory with 0% maintenance. But the army can of course replenish their men if the reinforce speed is high enough and they have manpower reserves. Then you have to look at the manpower pool of the country to see the effect of the attrition.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Because the AI would be incapable of dealing with it and bad players would constantly complain about losing their entire army.

[John]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

Because the AI would be incapable of dealing with it and bad players would constantly complain about losing their entire army.

paradox is the best when it comes to solving small problems by removing or handicapping a feature. AI navy attrition, multiple AI armies in one province attrition, remove the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ main menu button etc.
I want to see armies melt in my territory for ♥♥♥♥ sake, attrition in EU4 is worthless unless you're Muscovy in the first 20 years, and in that case it just ♥♥♥♥♥ you

[Turncloak]

I think defensive ideas increases the attrition by +1 if you were looking to play like that it's actually crazy how much losses the enemy incurs from attrition if you look at the losses during a conflict, mainly because they overstack their units.

The only issue is though i'm pretty certain that the ai cheats when it comes to its manpower reserves.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Turncloak:

The only issue is though i'm pretty certain that the ai cheats when it comes to its manpower reserves.

Do you have any proof of that? If they do that reliably, it should be fairly easy to proof by just going back to the last autosave and recreating the same situation and saving one day before the AI does this "cheating". Then you can load that save as the AI country to see if there isn't way how you could gain that manpower(but you have to account for luck and difficulty settings).
I think it is much more likely that the AI just uses one of the less well known ways to gain manpower. For example slackening recruitment, exploiting manpower dev, getting 50% of the remaining manpower back after a stackwipe, using mercenaries to not lose manpower, recruiting special units which cost less or no manpower, special government actions, decisions, missions or events which give manpower or troops, letting rebel armies turn into normal armies(and probably more which I forgot or don't know about).

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

I think it is much more likely that the AI just uses one of the less well known ways to gain manpower. For example slackening recruitment, exploiting manpower dev, getting 50% of the remaining manpower back after a stackwipe, using mercenaries to not lose manpower, recruiting special units which cost less or no manpower, special government actions, decisions, missions or events which give manpower or troops, letting rebel armies turn into normal armies(and probably more which I forgot or don't know about).

That's a comprehensive list, grotaclas. I don't think you're missing anything significant.
Every time this topic comes up, I point to that list myself. It's possible to use tag switching and save scumming to verify that the AI does not cheat with manpower--I've done this, as have many others. What the AI does do is play the game better than the humans who think it cheats. It uses tools they don't even realize exist.

That ignorance can be a temporary state of affairs IF human players take the time to learn the same systems the AI is using. Players can use those tools more effectively than the AI can, but first they have to realize that they exist.

[grotaclas]

I just remembered a few more ways which would make it appear as if the AI gains extra manpower: canceling troop recruitment gives you (part of) the manpower back and finishing recruitment gives you troops without costing you manpower at that time(they woud have cost manpower when starting that recruitment, but that might have been more than a year ago if the province was recruiting something else as well(e.g. ships)). And annexing a subject gives you their troops and acquiring a subject from another country doesn't cancel recruitment which their previous overlord started and then you gain these troops when the recruitment finishes.

[Turncloak]

No, I don't have proof. I was playing Ironman so don't know how I would go about proving that anyway.

More anecdotal, so maybe I don't understand what was going on exactly, but in my previous playthrough I decided to go to war with the Ottomans who had 150k units and a reserve of 4k now throughout this conflict their losses amounted to over 100k from attrition and from me attacking his stacks and losing, but still his losses amounted to over 100k so I don't understand how he can continuously maintain 150k with such losses and almost no manpower reserves.

Maybe he was using mercenaries, I've never bothered actually experimenting with mercenaries.

[MasterYi]

Originally posted by Turncloak:

No, I don't have proof. I was playing Ironman so don't know how I would go about proving that anyway.

More anecdotal, so maybe I don't understand what was going on exactly, but in my previous playthrough I decided to go to war with the Ottomans who had 150k units and a reserve of 4k now throughout this conflict their losses amounted to over 100k from attrition and from me attacking his stacks and losing, but still his losses amounted to over 100k so I don't understand how he can continuously maintain 150k with such losses and almost no manpower reserves.

Maybe he was using mercenaries, I've never bothered actually experimenting with mercenaries.

Mercenaries, and slacking recruitment (costs 5% professionalism)

[Sharpie The Dragon]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

Because the AI would be incapable of dealing with it and bad players would constantly complain about losing their entire army.

Pretty hypocritical of Paradox to say this when they changed how naval attrition works. AI still doesn't take squat for attrition but the player can lose like 75% of their army just travelling through ocean sea zones.

[Dante_Deepdarkness]

Originally posted by Turncloak:

No, I don't have proof. I was playing Ironman so don't know how I would go about proving that anyway.

More anecdotal, so maybe I don't understand what was going on exactly, but in my previous playthrough I decided to go to war with the Ottomans who had 150k units and a reserve of 4k now throughout this conflict their losses amounted to over 100k from attrition and from me attacking his stacks and losing, but still his losses amounted to over 100k so I don't understand how he can continuously maintain 150k with such losses and almost no manpower reserves.

Maybe he was using mercenaries, I've never bothered actually experimenting with mercenaries.

Ottomans rise their professionalism fast and easy, and when they face a long/hard/both war they slack the professionalism for manpower. Granted, you just need to take a look at the ledger (you can see there even the professionalism of any nation, a lot of info is in there) and see it.

[John]

Originally posted by Dante_Deepdarkness:

Originally posted by Turncloak:

No, I don't have proof. I was playing Ironman so don't know how I would go about proving that anyway.

More anecdotal, so maybe I don't understand what was going on exactly, but in my previous playthrough I decided to go to war with the Ottomans who had 150k units and a reserve of 4k now throughout this conflict their losses amounted to over 100k from attrition and from me attacking his stacks and losing, but still his losses amounted to over 100k so I don't understand how he can continuously maintain 150k with such losses and almost no manpower reserves.

Maybe he was using mercenaries, I've never bothered actually experimenting with mercenaries.

Ottomans rise their professionalism fast and easy, and when they face a long/hard/both war they slack the professionalism for manpower. Granted, you just need to take a look at the ledger (you can see there even the professionalism of any nation, a lot of info is in there) and see it.

I always wonder how they increase their professionalism so fast even when they have over 100k troops. Then they'll spend it all as soon as they're at war with the player which is annoying af. I i had wars where I killed an amount of soldiers equivalent to half of Turkey's 17th century population, and they still could throw more hundreds of regiments upon me

[John]

Originally posted by Turncloak:

No, I don't have proof. I was playing Ironman so don't know how I would go about proving that anyway.

More anecdotal, so maybe I don't understand what was going on exactly, but in my previous playthrough I decided to go to war with the Ottomans who had 150k units and a reserve of 4k now throughout this conflict their losses amounted to over 100k from attrition and from me attacking his stacks and losing, but still his losses amounted to over 100k so I don't understand how he can continuously maintain 150k with such losses and almost no manpower reserves.

Maybe he was using mercenaries, I've never bothered actually experimenting with mercenaries.

I used to think the AI cheated too but really most of the time they're just slacking their professionalism, which the AI almost never does against other AI, and will gladly use it all against the player. Especially the ottomans, for some reason they get professionalism quick and easy. Also iirc the ottomans can spawn jannisary units out of thin air with just 10mil points

[John]

Originally posted by Sharpie The Dergun:

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

Because the AI would be incapable of dealing with it and bad players would constantly complain about losing their entire army.

Pretty hypocritical of Paradox to say this when they changed how naval attrition works. AI still doesn't take squat for attrition but the player can lose like 75% of their army just travelling through ocean sea zones.

I'd love naval attrition if it also worked for the AI, instead I'll have the AI transporting 100k men across the atlantic, Indian, pacific sea before invading Japan.
Army attrition should kinda work like the naval attrition, just obviously not so extreme

[Malvastor]

Originally posted by John:

Originally posted by Turncloak:

No, I don't have proof. I was playing Ironman so don't know how I would go about proving that anyway.

More anecdotal, so maybe I don't understand what was going on exactly, but in my previous playthrough I decided to go to war with the Ottomans who had 150k units and a reserve of 4k now throughout this conflict their losses amounted to over 100k from attrition and from me attacking his stacks and losing, but still his losses amounted to over 100k so I don't understand how he can continuously maintain 150k with such losses and almost no manpower reserves.

Maybe he was using mercenaries, I've never bothered actually experimenting with mercenaries.

I used to think the AI cheated too but really most of the time they're just slacking their professionalism, which the AI almost never does against other AI, and will gladly use it all against the player. Especially the ottomans, for some reason they get professionalism quick and easy. Also iirc the ottomans can spawn jannisary units out of thin air with just 10mil points

It's probably just that the player can fight more effectively than other AIs. E.G. deliberately aiming for stackwipes and newly spawned regiments to destroy manpower, that kind of thing.

Originally posted by John:

Originally posted by Sharpie The Dergun:

Pretty hypocritical of Paradox to say this when they changed how naval attrition works. AI still doesn't take squat for attrition but the player can lose like 75% of their army just travelling through ocean sea zones.

I'd love naval attrition if it also worked for the AI, instead I'll have the AI transporting 100k men across the atlantic, Indian, pacific sea before invading Japan.
Army attrition should kinda work like the naval attrition, just obviously not so extreme

It's kind of made up for by the fact that the AI is terrible at naval combat and will blithely sail that 100K transport fleet into your fleet stacked with heavies and galleys.