Am I missing something, or do numbers mean EVERYTHING in a war?

[ZechsMerquise73]

The only way I've really seen that made since was to temp the enemy into crossing a river or engaging on a hill or mountain, bonus if you have a command modifier for one of those terrain types.
The bad thing is that the game almost never makes any sense as to why outnumbered troops win. For example, 10k English troops charge 14 French troops. The English win in 1068. How does that make sense? I guess they just had better generals? If you can stack out generals with 20 martial skill, they just steamroll, even sometimes where they ought to loose. But sometimes not.

I think the better question is, does it make sense which army wins? As far as I know, most of that is tied up in variables that are hidden or not apparent to a player. This is something of a Paradox design strategy: they don't tell you much of anything. The best strategy I've seen to win against an opponent with more troops than you is to just make an ally who has more troops than them. There's always a bigger fish. Waiting them out helps a lot too. Assassination, buying multiple merc companies.

 

[OrdepNM]

I really dont understand why people complain about the generals having no impact and numbers being everything. Inn my batlles, clicking on the ongoing fight always shows that the general of the collumn with the lowest martial stats in this one who fares worst, regardless of numbers and specially if he's unlucky to be paired with the best general of the opposing force. Just check how the battle is progressing and see which collumn is losing morale faster, most ofen than not youll find its the most poorly lead one.

Numbers are an important factor, but theyre hardly the only one. One time fighting some 8000 seljuks with my 11000 army I had quite a disastrous defeat: the sultan was in the side and he had great martial and alot of luck, because on his side was my worst general, a 6 martial guy I picked because no-one else was avaliable. He routed my forces on that side even while his center was getting hammered, then proceeded to attack my king in the center, who despite his 17 martial quickly started collapsing and finally my marshal, despite winning his 1-1, was also buried by the troops coming from the other 2 columns.

In another battle, tactics literally won the day. I went against an evenly matched army and got trounced, which caused me to ragequit as my king also got slain (I was already clearly losing at that point so it wasnt the cause). The next time, I put my matshal in the center with the least ammount of men while my wing generals had the bulk of the army. This worked like a charm, my marshall took a beating and came every close to routing, but before he could my generals swept the wings and massed on the middle forces for a complete turnover of the previous battle.

So, TD;DR: Tactics matter, both from the player and from the generals and dont forget a battle has 3 separate fights going on.

 

[jonnydesperado]

Generally, numbers mean a lot, but that's also because - as was pointed out - a lot of armies have a very similar composition, or your enemy has a lot of archers which will already basically destroy your morale before the melee even starts... usually, the most obvious way how troops with smaller numbers win is because they are simply better troops. Playing as Byzantium, your Cataphract retinues will easily smash armies much, much larger, because they get a bonus and consist out of the two best kinds of troops available. I've found that a huge mass of heavy cavalry is almost invincible, especially because their morale is so high, too. Overall, if you want to win with smaller numbers, you need to pay attention to what your enemy has and what you have. When I played as Denmark and fought the HRE over some de jure squabbles, I almost won in spite of their numerical advantage because of my heavy infantry - the skirmish phase was bad for me, but when it came to melee, I inflicted extremely heavy casualties which in the end would've left our armies at roughly the same size if I hadn't taken the additional casualties of retreat. Later I still could win the war, not only because of tough heavy infantry and my king being a heavy infantry leader, but also because of intelligent troop distribution and whittling them down. Unless you're facing really unsurmountable odds, I think there's usually a way out if you concentrate on your strengths and their weaknesses - be it that you have elite troops that are better than they are or that because you're a human, you can use the AI's limitations.

But overall, I think that if you want more control about battles and really fight it out and have that satisfaction of beating a much larger force simply because you had some good troops and a plan, you'll need to look at the Total War series instead of Crusader Kings II, whose strengths lie elsewhere than in the battles.

 

[MrWeRD]

If the other army is larger, I usually just wait for it to get whittle down from attribution and sieges before I swoop in and crush it with my full army. Unless my army is mostly HC, I will never try to fight an enemy who is larger than me.

There can be miracles, but I don't believe. Hope is frail and easy to kill.

 

[Romaious330]

I really think that always having the defender get a defensive bonus is a bit wrong. If it is your land, and you attack someone, technically you probably will have the advantage since you and/or your troops know the lay of the land. Also, they could add something so that if a unit is in a province for a time, they get a bonus like "fortified" where they have basically constructed a fort for defense. But unless they have done so while in an enemy's territory, they should be at a disadvantage.

Also, if you have a general which was fought in a province before, then that disadvantage could be removed for you.