A few questions about morale, tradition and warfare in general.

[Aygar]

Hello there, so far im loving EU4 and the new expansion, i already had a couple really fun and succesul games as france, manchu, byzantium and russia. But, except for my campaign with france it looks like everyone is doing so much better than me in
the military department, their morale is much higher than me and they are always going around with 3 star generals (i never got a general with 3 stars, even as france) So i guess i'm doing something wrong.

My question would be how to have the maximum possible army tradition and morale as any country (in ideas i usually pick defensive first)

As both Byzantium and Russia not just angry blobs like france or the commonwealth but everyone seemed to kick my ass, so the only way i had to defeat was to drag them into a war of attrition of overpower them with massive armies on favorable terrain.

I mean, i dont have any problem using tactics like that to win, but i miss when i played EU3 and every country you picked would adapt to your playstyle.
Is there a way to have a powerful elite army as any nation? or only if you are prussia/france?

thanks!

 

[DanubianCossak]

The key to AoW warfare comes down to the combination of land morale and army tradition.

Note that there are various sources of morale: army tradition at 100 will give you 0.25 morale and prestige will give you another 0.10 at 100. You can hire an adviser that gives additional 0.10, and one of the defensive ideas also has a morale bonus.

Now equally important as morale, is army tradition. Why? Because it not only gives you 0.25 morale (which is a big amount early on) it also gives you MUCH better generals. Nothing in game compares/can influence battles like those 6/6/6/whatever generals can. They will literally insta annihilate entire enemy stacks.

So for those reasons, i would say that innovative idea group is one of the most important ones you will want to get ASAP as any western country (specially if youre not western, because of the tech bonus). One of the innovative ideas will give you a bonus to tradition decay, meaning, it will be a lot easier to maintain whatever tradition you get. After innovative, i would go for whatever military idea group gave +1 tradition, i think its aristocratic, and after that do either quality (infantry/cavalry power) or defensive (land morale) for the added bonuses. If you do all that, you will have very little trouble winning battles (after initial phase, until you gather very high tradition). If you play someone like Brandenburg or Prussia, or Sweden, on top of that, it can become ridiculously OP (wiping out 10s of thousands of enemy troops).

 

[Aygar]

@DanubianCossak: thanks! I will start another campaign and follow your advice, now i understand why the polish and lithuanians mopped the floor with me as russia haha.

 

[DanubianCossak]

If you play as Russia, youll probably want to save up every bit of ADM points you can - because a.) you have to conquer & core a lot of provinces and b.) you need tech level 10 to form Russia. So you should probably focus on military ideas first. Id say.... um.... defensive + quality, or defensive + aristocracy should do the trick, and then drop innovative on top when youre done. Or if you roll a high ADM ruler, go for innovative when you can.

Its hard to make a pre game plan for that. I mean for the first 200 years, as Russia, you might make a way better use of religious ideas, than innovative. Because religious will let you convert Sunni/Catholic provinces.

 

[Aygar]

i take note, one thing i noticed as russia is that unless you convert all those provinces you get massive revolts like non-stop. With Byzantium plus humanist ideas on the other hand, felt like i could conquer as much as i wanted and no one ever revolted, dunno why. Next i will probably do as you suggest and pick defensive+aristocratic, so i can make use of all the plains with cavalry or pick quality and bait the enemy into forests.