I'm newish, and I've figured some stuff out but I'm having trouble with combat. I'm playing as Muscowy, and it's sometime in the 1470s, and I've managed to put together a decent kingdom. Sweden is being a real drag, so I waited until October, declared war, torched my border provinces, and pulled back, waiting for Sweden to go on the offensive and planning to strike once attrition had taken its toll. Once I finally hit back, though, Sweden wrecked me. Attacking with near-equal sized armies was no contest. I'd take about ten times the casualties the Swedes took, and I'd lose entire 15k armies before they could even retreat due to low morale. Even when I combined all of my local forces and tried attacking ~12k Swedish armies with ~30k armies of my own, I would (barely) win one battle, pursue the enemy army, and then lose to them in the follow-up battle. thought it might have something to do with our differing tech levels, but then I responded to an uprising in Saratow and the same thing happened - my ~15k army was trounced by a ~7k religious fanatic army.
So, what am I doing wrong? My army is fully funded and each army has a general. I'm using armies of 15k soldiers (5k infantry and 10k cavalry - I read somewhere that, at this point in the game, the benefits from having a bunch of cavalry outweigh the benefits of the combined arms bonus), and I combine two of them into a 30k army when I'm going against a large army and want an assured win. Although my armies have rarely outperformed enemy armies, it's only been recently that they seem to be doing as badly as they do now. Any suggestions? Any combat mechanics I should be paying a lot more attention to?
So, what am I doing wrong? My army is fully funded and each army has a general. I'm using armies of 15k soldiers (5k infantry and 10k cavalry - I read somewhere that, at this point in the game, the benefits from having a bunch of cavalry outweigh the benefits of the combined arms bonus), and I combine two of them into a 30k army when I'm going against a large army and want an assured win. Although my armies have rarely outperformed enemy armies, it's only been recently that they seem to be doing as badly as they do now. Any suggestions? Any combat mechanics I should be paying a lot more attention to?