Does size of army affect war exhaustion?

[grandsteed]

Basically the title. I had Ottoman Empire with a very large troop in my army (running at deficit but necessary for the campaigns I’m waging) and the war exhaustion reaches 10+ in only a few months even though I am winning all the battles without massive casualties. I can’t stay in the war for very long before my empire crumbles to rebels. I have cores in most of my provinces or at least no rebel issue before the exhaustion starts. Doesn’t matter who I am at war with either, I fought the Berbers war and I had to back out because of rebels.

 

[TheArchMede]

Attrition also causes war exhaustion if your army is over the province supply limit.
War exhaustion depends on how your losses compare to your support limit rather than the size of the army.

If you have all your troops in one big stack, its likely to be taking high attrition from lack of supply, and that will push your WE up very fast.

 

[grandsteed]

Attrition also causes war exhaustion if your army is over the province supply limit.
War exhaustion depends on how your losses compare to your support limit rather than the size of the army.

If you have all your troops in one big stack, its likely to be taking high attrition from lack of supply, and that will push your WE up very fast.

That’s probably what did it, I noticed when I combined the forces on the province there’s always a die-off of excess men, which is likely why. I was fighting along a narrow area and I had a bunch of guys crowded together.

 

[Kovax]

That's one of the tricks of pre-modern warfare. You can only support a relatively small force in any given area by foraging, so armies were dispersed until an enemy was found and the various groups collected into an army again. Cavalry was often utilized to collect food and other essentials from the local villages, either by purchase or threat (often a mix of both). The alternative was to have the unified army run out of food, which is the situation you're facing. Battles and wars were won and lost historically due to one side managing to crush some of the individual detachments before they could regroup. This is well represented in HOI3.

 

[TheArchMede]

As Wellington put it.
Big armies starve and small armies lose.
He was talking about Spain in particular, but it has general application in EU3.