I would like to discuss about nationality in the game. I will make some proposals, but really I don't especially "want" them in the game - or more accurately they are at the bottom list of my wishlist, as they can be self-enforced fairly easily, and the developers don't have a lot of time to make this sort of change.
I believe RoP does not incitate you to keep different nationalities in separate armies, at it should, for two reasons :
A. There is no malus in most cases in mixing nationalities.
Supposedly, mixing nationalities in a stack increases the CP cost. This works well in BoA with its limited number of leaders, but not at all in RoP, because you can get rid of this modifier :
- By adding ONE leader of the "wrong" nationality, even though you have maybe 50 elements of said nationality.
- By combining elements of the "wrong"nationality in ANY brigade - the malus just disappears.
B. There is an advantage in having extremely mixed armies.
Apart from this non-existing CP issue, the only "main" impact of nationality is replacements. In many games, a player will be short on replacements for some nationalities (say : Prussian) and very long on replacements for another nationality (say : English). Thus, a good way to make sure the "consumption" of replacements is balanced and don't have this sort of gap is to mix different nationalities in a given column, and even in brigades.
The final result is that if you want to optimise your army, you will want to have very multinational armies / brigades. In any case, even without being gamey, you will never have a problem with multinational armies : you will always find the leaders needed. It is a problem IMHO as really multinational armies were rare and worked poorly (and still do).
I believe the following proposals could "solve" the issue and enhance the game :
- No multinational Brigades, except leaders with the International traits.
- More leaders with the International traits, for instance by all those dudes who start with a multinational brigade (there are several)
- Multinational armies have a malus which they cannot get rid of, except International leader. This malus can be (dunno which one would be best, and the percentage are for indication only) :
a. A flat 10% malus (like the malus you have when out of command) per additionnal nationality, up to 35% (cumulative with the normal out of command malus, but still not beyond 35%) or
b. An increase of 20% of the global CP needed by the stack, or
c. Lower chance of activation for all the leaders in the stack ("In what language is this map ? "And what sort of ammo do these English canons really need ?")
- Units with 0 command cost (including leaders) would not be concerned by those rules
- The nationality of the units in an (international) brigade are not considered when verifying whether the column have different nationalities or not).
- If we are extreme about this, mixing different langages could be even worse.
This would change the balance of the map :
- On the Bohemian / Austrian front, the Austrian would have more troubles organising his forces
- On the Rhineland / Hannover front, the Prussian would have slightly more difficulties in organising his forces
- On the Eastern Prussian front, no change.
- On the Nordic Front, the Austrian player will have an horrible time with his 50% imperial / 50% Swedish force. Throwing a couple international leaders up there could be good. The Prussian player would have a little more difficulty when trying an early Swedish KO, due to the coordination needed between the Prussian / Hannoverian / Braunschwicg forces.
- Making Ferdinand a 3-star leader would be much, much more tempting.
Overall, the balance would be a little less in favor of the Austrians, and the early Prussian blietzkrieg could be more difficult to slow down / stop.
In my next games, if my opponents accept, I will try to enforce a no multinational brigade / no multinational columns rule.
What are your inputs on these proposals ?