How to build a great army?

Increasing your military spending won't get you more soldiers...well, you'll get more soldiers but they'll all promote to officers because of the enormous amounts of money you give them. Keep the military slider at 50-60% for best results. Decrease it if you see that your officer pool increases above 0.20% (can be seen when hovering your mouse over the "leadership" pool). Mobilization depends on how many of your poor strata you can mobilize, it's increased with technologies and reduced with liberal ideaologies. You can mobilize right under the "build army" button.

What he said.

Plus ... diplomacy.

Also, luck helps. Don't forget about luck.

test

this is a test ...im testing if i can post because i was having issues

Any other strategies for making a large army in Victoria 2?

get the techs that lower casulty rate. Increase population growth and conquer high populated area's.
Since Soldier is always a demotion it's easier to get those from new territory.
So Soldier is the lowest class on the population ladder.
Tax the poor to oblivion helps to encourage a live as a soldier and counter's promotion to officer's.

can also use national focus as well as what everyone else said. I use national focus on my most populous states for at least a year and a half to 2 years before a war. Atleast if playing a small country.

Easy1 said:

I'm kind of new to Victoria so I'm just interested in all the simple steps that must be done to build the largest potential army of your country.

High military spending is necessary to recruit soldiers, I got that. As Greece however I never got the opportunity to mobilize, not even when I was at war. Don't now why.

And a very high military spending did not give me the expected results either. In Victoria 1 one could just directly convert farmers (I think) to soldiers, in addition to mobilizing. I haven't seen anything like that in Victoria 2. So, since I just want to crush the Ottoman Empire as Greece (the post war economic consequences aside), and only were able to muster some 20 - 30 000 soldiers I was the one getting crushed you see

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Greece is annoying to play, UK is worth s*** as ally. Even worse if Ottomans ally with NGF.

Without big population you simply won´t have a big army.

Whats a good average build for an army. {Like Cav. and Inf. ratio]

Lazguard said:

Whats a good average build for an army. {Like Cav. and Inf. ratio]

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X+2 Infantry, 1/2 Hussars/Dragoons, 1 Engineer, X Artillery where X is determined by supply limit. Basically the total size of your army shouldn't cause attrition when your stack is positioned on the border of whoever you plan to go to war with. So for example in the early game(with no techs) on a plains the supply limit is 40, you can support 13 regiments as 13X3(due to the game's unit size being 3k rather than 1k)=39, so out of 13 regiments you have 1/2 Cavalry and 1 Engineer as you constant which leaves 10/11 regiments so you end up with 6 Infantry, 2 Cavalry, 1 Engineer, 4 Artillery. Later on when you get access to tanks and airplanes it becomes a bit more complicated because technically airplanes can replace your entire back line and tanks your entire front line while providing all the needed utility(recon, siege and support values), but that's incredibly expensive and inefficient as your other troops also get incredibly powerful with all the inventions, especially your artillery. Thus it's more of a balancing act and specialized stacks if you're experienced enough to know what you want(for example defensive stacks, hunter killer stacks, sieging stacks) and if you want to micromanage your army so much. If not stick to the standard stacks just bring in some tanks instead of your cavalry and airplanes instead of your engineer and a handful of artillery.

Lazguard said:

Whats a good average build for an army. {Like Cav. and Inf. ratio]

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Holy necro. Did you join the forums just to post in a 2-year old thread, mate?

Does artillery actually help in sieging? Units with reconaissance make it faster, but then what's about sapeur and their siege ability?

The wiki is shaddy; when I read it, I understand that units rout when they have no organization; in other Paradox games, they rout when they have no morale, so what's the difference beetween both? Also, what does unit experience do?

Thrake said:

Does artillery actually help in sieging? Units with reconaissance make it faster, but then what's about sapeur and their siege ability?

The wiki is shaddy; when I read it, I understand that units rout when they have no organization; in other Paradox games, they rout when they have no morale, so what's the difference beetween both? Also, what does unit experience do?

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Recon hastens sieges in provinces without forts, siege hastens sieges in provinces with forts. Organization is indeed the equivalent of morale in other Paradox games, whereas experience and morale in Vicky 2 simply make your troops fight better.

This thread has the distinction of being necroed twice.

Boom, this thread has been necro'ed the third time by me, it has been over 4 years now.