Army composition with Nomads

[kmh42]

Hi!
I am fairly new to EUIV and have a hard time with army composition. I am in my Timurid playthrouh and like in the strategy guide on the wiki page (http://www.eu4wiki.com/Timurids#Strategy) said, I had two Units of 100% Horse for fighting and some units with 100% infantry for sieging. Now I am able to build bronze canons and I don't know how to integrate them into my army. Are canons better in fighting or sieging? SHould I starting t mix up my armies?

 

[Fenrirwolf]

Early Cannons are really only usefull for sieging, so put at least one in each sieging army (you will always get one bonus siege and better break-wall-chance if you have at least 1(000) cannon units).
Lategame you will want more cannons, both for sieging and for attack once fire becomes a viable and important stat, though you probably still want to seperate cav and inf/canons to use the speed of the first to catch weak armies, and only consolidate against large/strong armies (ottomans, commonwealth and maybe ming might be good enemies for this)

 

[1nf3ct3d]

Cav have different speed compared to Inf?

 

[kmh42]

Early Cannons are really only usefull for sieging, so put at least one in each sieging army (you will always get one bonus siege and better break-wall-chance if you have at least 1(000) cannon units).
Lategame you will want more cannons, both for sieging and for attack once fire becomes a viable and important stat, though you probably still want to seperate cav and inf/canons to use the speed of the first to catch weak armies, and only consolidate against large/strong armies (ottomans, commonwealth and maybe ming might be good enemies for this)

Thank you very much! I will keep this in my mind.
Funny that you mansion the ottomans, they just crushed me

 

[birincikalite]

Cav have different speed compared to Inf?

No.

Ideal composition in early game would be full cav for hordes, but thats too expensive so you should have a mix of two that doesn't favor infantry and doesn't hurt your economy as well. In lategame you can just stack cavalry/cannons close to equal though cavalry being favored due to money reasons and you dont wanna lose your frontline and have cannons on front during war.

 

[Fenrirwolf]

mhm, checked the unit speed again, they have the same speed. Im pretty sure that wasnt always the case, though i might just have assumed it (and played like this for about 2 years now) since it only makes sense that horses move faster than humans. then again, you use bird-mana to summon farms, so realism is out the window anyway ^^
then its more or less like birincikalite said, early as much cav as possible and as long as you are a horde you really dont need inf-siegestacks, since nomaads dont pay for reinforcements, then early only two or three cannons (depends how big you are and how many forts you can/need to siege at once) and late when you swim in money, manpower and forcelimit you want as much cannons as you have combat width and at least as much cavalry ( maybe a few more to compensate losses and protect your cannons).
Happy razing.

 

[Fenrirwolf]

Also, the wiki severly lacks updates lately, so take everything thats written there with a grain of salt.

 

[Thrake]

Early on, canons for sieging only. Once you get the new canon upgrade, you can start adding them to your fighting army because it will decrease casualties for the front line. Even later on, you will want more or less as many canons as cavalry; basically beetween mil tech 16/22 you should aim for full canon row.

I disagree with mixing cav and infantry; as a horde I found that manpower is scarce; infantry isn't good manpower wise so yeah cav is costly but a small cav army can just stackwhipe larger army without home shock, especially early on, that will save you a lot of manpower. Later on you can certainly go and mix infantry as fire phase becomes stronger and stronger. Also I tried mixing a few merc infantry but that just doesn't work, they get bullied but keep being in the centr of your army, so even if you outnumber the ennemy you start with a center of units with 100/200 men that keep getting killed if you don't have time to let them replenish; they will just keep dying and being useless while more resilient cav will always be much faster in fighting shape.

 

[indika_tates]

Early in the game if you can afford it, full cavalry. Later on the game when cannons start to have decent pips (tech 13+) combat width +5/6 cavalry for the first line, combat width of cannons for the second.

 

[Maldazar]

Early Cannons are really only usefull for sieging, so put at least one in each sieging army (you will always get one bonus siege and better break-wall-chance if you have at least 1(000) cannon units).
Lategame you will want more cannons, both for sieging and for attack once fire becomes a viable and important stat, though you probably still want to seperate cav and inf/canons to use the speed of the first to catch weak armies, and only consolidate against large/strong armies (ottomans, commonwealth and maybe ming might be good enemies for this)

This 'myth' that early game cannons are only good for sieging should really be tackled at some point..... because it's just total b*llsh*t...

Yes, cost effective they are very expensive for what they add, and, if you can replace them with another ACTIVE unit those units by then do more damage... BUT cannons fire from the backrow, a place where any other unit is useless.. So in any major fight (or fights in closed spaces) your damage from having 100 infantry or having only 20 (if your combat with is 20) is exactly the same. (of course, having some extra for reinforcement is usefull, else your army runs out of steam quickly)

So in any army that is at combat width size, cannons are just extra free damage, sure, it's not much at this point, but it is still damage, free damage which there is no way for extra infantry to be doing at that moment. And, the second big bonus from cannons is that it gives you extra defense on the units it is 'covering' (standing behind) so it also end up making your front row (infantry/cav) more effective.

Of course, also this is still not that strong, but it helps and in big/long battles can certainly make a huge diference.

So basicly, the golden rule is:

Infantry/Cavalary (only cav if you are horde) until combat width and then artilary.

Of course, if you don't have the forcelimit/money to support this then go with infantry/cav > artilary early on.. Also, always get a more frontrow then you need for the reinforcement/replacement from weakened units... But if you have the money/forcelimit artilary is certainly worth it from tech 7.

 

[User4035]

For those wondering how to mix infantry into your horde armies:

First: You do not put them in same army group. You have your infantry stack and your cav stack.

If your short on manpower then you can get a merc infantry stack for sieges. For battle you send your merc infantry in first and your cavalry stack a few days later.
This will soften the enemy up so their regiments don't do as much damage. Then you retreat your infantry which makes all your cav units take the front line and smash your foe. You can also use this tactic when your enemy has a better or equal general or than you.

If you got a manpower infantry stack, and your short on manpower, you do not send these guys in first. You send your cav in first and then you send your infantry in later in the battle just to boost morale. You typically do this when fighting countries with better morale than yours.

If your fighting a long difficult war then you'll just have to take loans and hire merc cav and always send the full cav army in. It is still worth it to have some manpower infantry stack to reinforce for morale. This will save a bit of money.

 

[Chimerae]

If you are rich enough, just put cav up to combat width + a few reserves, and add artillery up to combat width. Totally ignore infantry.

 

[Thrake]

This 'myth' that early game cannons are only good for sieging should really be tackled at some point..... because it's just total b*llsh*t...

Yes, cost effective they are very expensive for what they add, and, if you can replace them with another ACTIVE unit those units by then do more damage... BUT cannons fire from the backrow, a place where any other unit is useless.. So in any major fight (or fights in closed spaces) your damage from having 100 infantry or having only 20 (if your combat with is 20) is exactly the same. (of course, having some extra for reinforcement is usefull, else your army runs out of steam quickly)

So in any army that is at combat width size, cannons are just extra free damage, sure, it's not much at this point, but it is still damage, free damage which there is no way for extra infantry to be doing at that moment. And, the second big bonus from cannons is that it gives you extra defense on the units it is 'covering' (standing behind) so it also end up making your front row (infantry/cav) more effective.

Canon cost is 2.5 times infantry.

First canon has no fire/shock DEFENSIVE pip, this means it only deals damage, no support (perhaps the defensive morale pips? I don't know if those are transfered).

I still find an inactive infantry much better than a canon; if I have only infantry, then I can have 75% more troops than you. Good luck killing about twice my amount of infantry with yours canons+infantry. It also allows for roughly two armies instead of just one, so you can have one fighting and one besieging. Not to mention that you'll need to start as a monster to be able to field a full row of infantry+canons by the time you unlock canons. At first I barely have 1 or 2 canons for sieging; anytime I tried fielding more I did find myself with a patheticly small army and terrible economy.

 

[kmh42]

Wow! Some much Information at once :O I didn't expect to initiate such a huge discussion. I reading all this carefully and allready planing to start a new game with those infos in mind.

 

[Oddb@ll]

I'm also reading this with great interest!

 

[Maldazar]

Canon cost is 2.5 times infantry.

First canon has no fire/shock DEFENSIVE pip, this means it only deals damage, no support (perhaps the defensive morale pips? I don't know if those are transfered).

I still find an inactive infantry much better than a canon; if I have only infantry, then I can have 75% more troops than you. Good luck killing about twice my amount of infantry with yours canons+infantry. It also allows for roughly two armies instead of just one, so you can have one fighting and one besieging. Not to mention that you'll need to start as a monster to be able to field a full row of infantry+canons by the time you unlock canons. At first I barely have 1 or 2 canons for sieging; anytime I tried fielding more I did find myself with a patheticly small army and terrible economy.

Sure, totaly true, but I often find that manpower is a LOT more valuable of a resource then money, money in most of my campains I have more then enough (even building all the buildings), while manpower for a lot longer is more valuable, so sure, you can have 2x the amount of units, but if my units are killing more of yours and we have the same manpower pool (and i just retreat in strategic times) I most likely will still win the war just by wearing you down. Sure, you can come with the argument that you can use mercs, but that destroys your entire theory of you having twice the army size because mercs are not 2.5x cheaper then artilary.

Anyway, it depends a lot on the game, I have lots of games where I don't build lots of cannons early on, but in games where money is no issue (starting in rich regions) the cannons do actualy add a lot... and specialy they help make my armies as effective as possible, saving me the very valuable resource of manpower.