I'm an economic player. Frequently I'll not even touch my starting army until I want to increase my military score. I'm curious, however, as to what the best way to go about this is?
How do I increase my military ranking?
- Thread starter Pellaken
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Short answer, build more units. Capital ships count more (from the forum), UK always rank high because of that. Also I think your leadership and/or leaders give some points.
More specifically.. build dreadnaughts... I think they give 20 points on your military score. Also... having a jingoist party in power boosts your score based on your military supplies consumption... its a bit gamey but an easy boost on the last day of gameplay.
Dreadnaughts give the highest increast by far, next is cruiser, then prob ironclad, any lower than that and it makes very little differance.
The technical answer is that military score is computed as a function of the amount of goods (as in Small Arms, Ammunition, Liquor, Canned Goods, Clothes, etc.) that is consumed by all your armed forces for their maintenance.
More brigades = more goods consumed = higher military score
More ships = more goods consumed = higher military score
What should also be noted is that because goods are the metric, higher quality troops will yield higher military score. A nation with 10 Guards brigades will have a higher military score than a nation with 10 Militia brigades.
Obviously, a player should keep his army's composition a sane one: A hundred brigades of Cannons will consume more goods a hundred brigades of Infantry, but a hundred Cannons and nothing else will not be effective at actually fighting.
Finally, people recommend Dreadnaughts because A. there's no limit on the number of ships you can have, compared to being limited to a max number of Brigades by your Soldier POPs, and B. Dreadnaughts consume lots of goods and are expensive to maintain, and so will yield a lot of military score as long as you can afford it.
A final note: The Easy and Very Easy difficulty settings have a modifier that reduces supply consumption of your military, to make their maintenance cheaper. This has the nasty side-effect of actually making your military score lower than it should be, because the computation doesn't take the artificial reduction into account. Either play on higher difficulty settings or remove the supply consumption reduction from static_modifiers.txt
So, the long answer to improving your military score is to build the highest quality land army you can, up to your max brigade limit and with a sane composition, and then build the largest navy you can with the most advanced ships available to you.
More brigades = more goods consumed = higher military score
More ships = more goods consumed = higher military score
What should also be noted is that because goods are the metric, higher quality troops will yield higher military score. A nation with 10 Guards brigades will have a higher military score than a nation with 10 Militia brigades.
Obviously, a player should keep his army's composition a sane one: A hundred brigades of Cannons will consume more goods a hundred brigades of Infantry, but a hundred Cannons and nothing else will not be effective at actually fighting.
Finally, people recommend Dreadnaughts because A. there's no limit on the number of ships you can have, compared to being limited to a max number of Brigades by your Soldier POPs, and B. Dreadnaughts consume lots of goods and are expensive to maintain, and so will yield a lot of military score as long as you can afford it.
A final note: The Easy and Very Easy difficulty settings have a modifier that reduces supply consumption of your military, to make their maintenance cheaper. This has the nasty side-effect of actually making your military score lower than it should be, because the computation doesn't take the artificial reduction into account. Either play on higher difficulty settings or remove the supply consumption reduction from static_modifiers.txt
So, the long answer to improving your military score is to build the highest quality land army you can, up to your max brigade limit and with a sane composition, and then build the largest navy you can with the most advanced ships available to you.
I might seem a bit slow, but is the supply consumption the determining factor in the "Land Soldiers" score?
If you're referring to the number of brigades reported to be owned by a nation in the Diplomacy screen, then no, supply consumption has nothing to do with that. That number is just the raw/absolute number of land brigades owned by the nation and tells you nothing about the quality, type or supply level of those brigades.
Supply consumption is the determining factor in Military Score.
A purely cannon army is very effective at actually fighting. Its occupying that they don't do so well. Infantry are poor at fighting as well as occupying. Tanks and planes have uses, but the side with the most infantry is the side that loses.
For late game score, you need dreadnoughts. Build up your economy to the point where you are banking hundreds of thousands per day, make sure you have access to the required materials, and then blow the lot on dreadnoughts. You can make your score per dreadnought higher by researching the techs that boost their stats and you get multipliers for having militaristic government policies and being at war, but dreadnoughts are the way to turn economic power into end game MIL score. If you actually want to fight a similarly powerful country at sea, you'll do better with spending the same funds on a larger number of cruisers, but you don't get any score for cruisers. Early to mid game, army is important, but dreadnoughts rule for end game score.