Army compositions?

[Filip de Norre]

Hi there fellow EU4'ers
What is the optimal compositions of armies depending on tech level and unit groups. Usually I play Western and use 16-4-12 per army. In my current game I play Jiangzhou/Manchu and used something like 10-15-7 with cavalry being banners. Now I formed Qing and use Chinese units. Will the old 16-4-12 be good or would something else be optimal. I suppose cavalry will still be banners and then as much infantry as possible as banners.

 

[jonjowett]

Here's some fairly generic advice:

• {{Full combat width}+4} of inf/cav
  • Combat width increases as the game progresses, based on mil tech. It's one of the numbers in boxes in the centre-left of the mil screen.
  • For most nations, cav is mainly useful for its increased flanking ability, so you want at most 4 cav in the early game to at most 8 in the very lategame. (Cav flanking ability also increases over time.)
  • (EDIT: Alternatively, for many nations, inf is MUCH better than cav in the lategame, so they might want to have zero cav after ~1650-1700.)
  • Qing with banners MAY be one of the unusual nations which have amazing cavalry, to the point where cav are better frontline troops than infantry, and for these nations you want as many cav as possible without risking the insufficient support penalty. (If your limiting cav/inf ratio is 75%, take at most ~50% cav in your armies, just in case.)
  • (EDIT: The reason for "+4" is so that 4 frontline units have to be killed/routed before the expensive artillery behind them is forced to the frontline, where they will probably be slaughtered. If you make an error in judgement, this "+4" gives you a little bit of a buffer to bring up reinforcements or retreat. If you don't have a full backline of artillery, eg. due to cost, then this extra buffer is less relevant.)
• {Full combat width} of artillery
  • If you can't afford this many artillery, try to bring enough to get decent bonuses vs forts.
  • (EDIT: If the wiki or in-game tooltip says you need X artillery to get a +Y bonus vs fort level Z, in practice you actually need X+1 artillery. This compensates for the fact that your art will not be at exactly 100% strength all the time, due to attrition and negative siege events.)
• If necessary, split your armies in half to avoid attrition, and only unite them for battles.

 

[The Macedonian]

You could start with this:

Ideal army composition and unit types in eu4 - Sheet 1 - Ideal army composition for every tech Mil - Studocu

Share free summaries, lecture notes, exam prep and more!!

www.studocu.com

Your mileage may vary.

In early game, I tend to create a base template -- let's say 12 INF 4 CAV and then add +5 INF and/or +5 ART as my tech levels increase. I will make a separate template for Siege Stacks -- 11 INF + 3 ART to start, and then add more ART as the game goes on. If I'm going to have a big battle, I'll combine two armies or an army and a siege stack.

 

[Jarvin]

You could start with this:

Ideal army composition and unit types in eu4 - Sheet 1 - Ideal army composition for every tech Mil - Studocu

Share free summaries, lecture notes, exam prep and more!!

www.studocu.com

Your mileage may vary.

In early game, I tend to create a base template -- let's say 12 INF 4 CAV and then add +5 INF and/or +5 ART as my tech levels increase. I will make a separate template for Siege Stacks -- 11 INF + 3 ART to start, and then add more ART as the game goes on. If I'm going to have a big battle, I'll combine two armies or an army and a siege stack.

I don't wanna come off as rude but please, please don't use this

That guide was awful back when it was made, and it only got worse over time, now that it's horribly outdated after the changes from 1.33 and 1.34
You don't want to overstack like it recommends you to. You don't want to use as much cav as it recommends to, nor as much artillery (in general when it comes to artillery it's best to think of it in terms of your entire army rather than individual stacks)
The guide also completely ignores how tech timings in this game work, ie. even if for some reason you want to use cavalry on other techs, there's no way to argue that it's good to use it on tech 6, when cavalry is straight up inferior to infantry in a 1to1 comparison.

And the unit choices it recommends were often wrong back when the guide was made and it's even worse now, after the pip rework.

 

[jonjowett]

One point that I agree with @The Macedonian on is that it can be useful, mainly in the mid- and late-game, to create special siege armies. (Or, my preferred approach, have an easy way to create a highly-artillery-focused siege army from a battle army. Endgame example: 36-8-40 -> 18-0-40 & 18-8-0; requires 2-3 left-clicks and a right-click.)

Compared with parking your whole battle army on the siege, a special siege army means you take significantly fewer attrition losses while maintaining the increased siege speed from having a LOT of artillery.

If you keep a large army directly adjacent to your siege army, the AI can always see it before attacking (because the AI can see 1 extra province into fog of war), and it will incorporate the existence of that potential reinforcing army into its calculations when it decides whether to attack the siege army. IE: Unless the odds are massively in its favour, the AI will probably avoid attacking the siege army if it has large adjacent reinforcements.

 

[A Pink Duck]

I mostly use some "Jack of all trades" armies that I occasionally increase the size of based on mostly supply limit. I basically have 4 templates; pre-cannons, "tech 7", ~tech 15-18, and then a late game one ~tech 25. Essentially, whenever I start needing 2 stacks to win battles that's when I move to the next tier.

Having dedicated siege armies or updating them every time the combat width changes is more micro than I generally want to deal with.

 

[jonjowett]

Having dedicated siege armies or updating them every time the combat width changes is more micro than I generally want to deal with.

I will confess to an irrational attachment to armies where every component is a multiple of 4 (early game), 8 (mid game) or 16 (late game). You can create tiny armies for carpet sieging by spamming the split button. And regrouping after carpet sieging is a lot less painful when you can select any 16 tiny armies, instead of needing to find the specific 16 that originated in each army.

 

[A Pink Duck]

I will confess to an irrational attachment to armies where every component is a multiple of 4 (early game), 8 (mid game) or 16 (late game). You can create tiny armies for carpet sieging by spamming the split button. And regrouping after carpet sieging is a lot less painful when you can select any 16 tiny armies, instead of needing to find the specific 16 that originated in each army.

That does sound good. I may have to try it.

 

[Cavalry]

Hi there fellow EU4'ers
What is the optimal compositions of armies depending on tech level and unit groups. Usually I play Western and use 16-4-12 per army. In my current game I play Jiangzhou/Manchu and used something like 10-15-7 with cavalry being banners. Now I formed Qing and use Chinese units. Will the old 16-4-12 be good or would something else be optimal. I suppose cavalry will still be banners and then as much infantry as possible as banners.

Don't forget the troops pip and your strenth vs enemy.

One common goal is to stack wipe enemy, then use more cavarly. Cavarly with morale attack pip or shock attack pip (I value them the same). And go with high morale.

When both side have numerous troops cover combat width and have a lot of artillery, Some prefer morale defense pip for infantry. Cavalry still want morale attack or shock attack pip. After defeat the enemy full stack, then we go to stack wipe smaller stacks.

If we have special banner cavalry, then don't use banner infantry but save the room for banner cavalry.

About under tech 10, cavalry is king, get them as much as possible with highshock generals. Later use 4 or 6 for flanking. For Manchu cavalry may be good for a long time.

 

[KRBLACK]

TLDR: Cav -> More = Slightly Better
Art -> More = Better

Cavalry is approximately equal in strength to infantry depending on tech group and tech level.
A benefit is that bonuses for cavalry are easier to acquire than infantry buffs, which makes cavalry generally a bit stronger.

The main benefit is the flanking range, but 4 to 6 cavalry is not enough to guarantee you have full flanking width all the time.
This is because as enemy units retreat, their width decreases but your cavalry stays on the outside of your width.

So even early game it may be beneficial to use more cav, especially when army sizes are small (in HRE for example), because an extra 2 units attacking enemies is more impactful when the total width used by enemies is only 10.

Artillery is also an interesting case. On the surface these units look horribly cost inefficient.
But even on tech level 7 these add about 33% of an infantry unit worth of damage. I am ignoring any siege benefits for now.
Adding 10 of the buggers adds 3,33 units of damage. At tech 7 the combat width 24. That about 14% extra damage.

So ironically, artillery acts more to extend combat width whereas cav functions to efficiently use combat width.

In this game concentration of force is more important than cost efficiency. As evidenced by how highly discipline is valued.
But 5% discipline increases combat strength by 10,25%.
At tech level 7, about 8 artillery adds the same combat buff to a full-width infantry army as 5% discipline.
24 art = no art + 15% discipline.

And Ottomans often get both discipline AND full artillery.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Before tech 16, a full backrow of artillery is generally not necessary since infantry outdamages artillery at a third of the cost. You still want some artillery for sieges, but for pure combat efficiency it is generally better to just throw more frontline units into the grinder. If you are very rich you can go more heavily into artillery to create the most potent stacks possible (especially if you fight enemies that fight at far below combat width), and of course Spain should go full cannon backrow immediately.

After tech 16, and especially after tech 22, artillery becomes the main factor in land combat, making a full backrow of cannons a necessity.

Before tech 16 I generelly use stacks of 4 cav + infantry to combat width + 3/5 cannons (to ensure that any fort can be barraged)

After tech 16 I switch to half stacks consisting of combat width / 2 + 2 infantry and combat width / 2 artillery. In low supply limit regions (steppes, SEA, Mesoamerica, Peru) even smaller stacks might be advisable.

 

[Jarvin]

The main benefit is the flanking range, but 4 to 6 cavalry is not enough to guarantee you have full flanking width all the time.
This is because as enemy units retreat, their width decreases but your cavalry stays on the outside of your width.

So even early game it may be beneficial to use more cav, especially when army sizes are small (in HRE for example), because an extra 2 units attacking enemies is more impactful when the total width used by enemies is only 10.

I really don't get the talk about cavalry being able to flank when
a) inf can flank too, and so can artillery
b) flanking only happens below combat width
c) flanking can genuinely hurt you sometimes, which most people won't notice (ie. by making you stay in lost battles for longer, due to having edge regiments beat out the opponent's regiments and stay in battle, while majority of your troops retreat

But even on tech level 7 these add about 33% of an infantry unit worth of damage. I am ignoring any siege benefits for now.

This is a bizarre take. I assume you arrived here by just dividing artillery's tech modifier (0.5) by infantry's tech modifiers sum (1.5)
but this ignores

a) that as the battle goes on, infantry's strength will decrease, and artillery's wont; overall an average strength of an infantry regiment tends to sit somewhere between 70-80%
b) that artillery adding extra damage output results in your opponent's regiments losing their strength faster.. thus making your infantry take less damage

you just can't make comparisons like this

Not to mention other stuff like:

a) artillery will last you 2.5 infantry regiments in a battle before retreating
b) while losing 0 manpower.

But 5% discipline increases combat strength by 10,25%.

Is it you going.. 105/(1/1.05)? But this completely ignores how combat formulas are affected by other modifiers; don't look at modifiers in vacuum
Not to mention that combat modifiers will scale exponentially. I could maybe get a "increases combat strength by roughly 21%" but even that's a simplified way to look at it

At tech level 7, about 8 artillery adds the same combat buff to a full-width infantry army as 5% discipline.

This completely ignores that artillery will result in the middle regiments of your opponents retreating faster, whereas 5% discipline will apply uniformly, which has its own quirks



In general, you are making a lot of weird claims that I don't think are particularly supported by anything valid.

 

[Cavalry]

a) inf can flank too, and so can artillery
b) flanking only happens below combat width
c) flanking can genuinely hurt you sometimes, which most people won't notice (ie. by making you stay in lost battles for longer, due to having edge regiments beat out the opponent's regiments and stay in battle, while majority of your troops retreat

a. Cavalry flank father, and they do full damage while artillery in the back line only do half, in early tech is about 1/4 attack of cavalry. And cavalry often have much more morale attack than infantry, and cavalry save manpower.
b. Still it happens a lot in end phase of battles, and is often the difference between stack wipe or not.
c. A good general always use the Run button when needed! Probably even at equal strength. Only engage with advantage. Infantry will need artillery or terrain to withstand an attack of large cavalry force. In early time, always look at the cavalry number of both size to guess who win the battle. If we want to win that, have at least cavalry superiority.

 

[KRBLACK]

This is a bizarre take. I assume you arrived here by just dividing artillery's tech modifier (0.5) by infantry's tech modifiers sum (1.5)
but this ignores

a) that as the battle goes on, infantry's strength will decrease, and artillery's wont; overall an average strength of an infantry regiment tends to sit somewhere between 70-80%
b) that artillery adding extra damage output results in your opponent's regiments losing their strength faster.. thus making your infantry take less damage

you just can't make comparisons like this

Not to mention other stuff like:

a) artillery will last you 2.5 infantry regiments in a battle before retreating
b) while losing 0 manpower.


Is it you going.. 105/(1/1.05)? But this completely ignores how combat formulas are affected by other modifiers; don't look at modifiers in vacuum
Not to mention that combat modifiers will scale exponentially. I could maybe get a "increases combat strength by roughly 21%" but even that's a simplified way to look at it


This completely ignores that artillery will result in the middle regiments of your opponents retreating faster, whereas 5% discipline will apply uniformly, which has its own quirks



In general, you are making a lot of weird claims that I don't think are particularly supported by anything valid.

Yes. I just divide the tech modifiers.

a) This only further strengthens the case for artillery
b) See above

a) See above
b) This is implicitly assumed by regarding artillery as a buff to your infantry regiments.

Yes you can look at modifiers in a vacuum. Ceteris paribus assumption.
If I have an army with no modifiers and add 5% discipline, damage increases by 5% and damage taken by 1/1.05. Overall effectiveness: 1.05 / (1 / 1.05) = 1.1025
If I now have an army with 10%, 15% and 20% inf, cav and art combat ability, then adding 5% discipline makes that army also 10.25% more effective than it was before the buff

Again. This just further strengthens the case for artillery.


At the start of a battle arty buffs your damage output by 33%. This only gets better as the battle progresses.
You can also argue that fire is better than shock, as it will reduce enemy strength before shock phase is rolled. Another bonus for arty
Arty also flanks, and so won't lose effectiveness as much as infantry does.

The whole point is that at tech 7, in the worst case scenario, full arty is a 33% damage boost.
'Just' a 33% damage boost is equivalent to 15,32% discipline in terms of damage dealt per damage taken.

 

[TeutonicTortoise]

I really don't get the talk about cavalry being able to flank when
a) inf can flank too, and so can artillery
b) flanking only happens below combat width
c) flanking can genuinely hurt you sometimes, which most people won't notice (ie. by making you stay in lost battles for longer, due to having edge regiments beat out the opponent's regiments and stay in battle, while majority of your troops retreat

I agree Flanking is overrated once you have 1 more on each side it snowballs inward so whether thats a cav or an inf on the end same thing happens just a little quicker on the 2nd most outer regiment and its not like that Cav then moves inward to maximise damage as the enemy dies. For me Cav is purely looked at from the perspective of Full Combat Width vs Full Combat Width in this situation Cav is just better then Infantry and by this line of though should be maximised in all situations.

The counter to this is Cav has main two flaws main one being that they are way more expensive relative to their proportional strength advantage. Cav is limited by Cav:Inf ratio which needs to be managed since even if running like 10:5 your infantry takes the damage more so in future battles you might have like 6.5k/10k inf with 4k Cav which applies the Cav ratio malus so you can just go numerical maximised number prewar.

Theres some minor things though such as the fact Fire stage goes first and since damage is represented by regimental strength Cav make their first proper attack with an instant malus, Cav unit upgrades are usually more spaced then Infantry (compare Western between say tech 10-17 for example).

So mainly for composition it just depends on your country and situation if you can finance and in my opinion feel this investment can pay for itself in battles and wars then go for as much cav as possible for your ratio staying slightly under for the greater infantry casualties but with this line of thought you of say max money which is one of the main factors in this regardless of it not actually being combat related then that means tech 7 full combat width cannon aswell and if were going to spend money on that why not just go full infantry and just go way other forcelimit.

Cav does have other advantages aswell since they're stronger in a regiment v regiment situation they are more manpower efficent so a nation like Burgundy at game start which has money from good trade goods and trade but not amount of mil Dev so struggles without Mercs if they want say a French War or to vassalise Electors so its more an incentive there while Austria its the opposite with high manpower and forcelimit but not the money to fill that number initially all infantry is better. Cav combat ability is easier to stack and more widespread in national ideas. Many majors like Poland, Ottos, Hungary, France, Muscovy, Oirat, Persia etc have an early game Cav combat bonus while Infantry is mostly Sweden, Japan minors, England and Portugal early game.

Note Cav doesnt become weaker later into the game its just the role of the Front row changes as the importance of a Back Row for being the damage dealers demotes the front to the sponge but again Cav>Inf in 1v1. It does have awkward gaps Infantry is scaling rapidly while Cav is waiting for a new unit to come with a tech. The whole distribution of Pips is a whole rabbit hole though that awkward to talk about since youre talking from like 8 different perspectives which is the whole justification for heavy horse armies with Nomadic nations.

So really theres no "optimal composition" its more about feel whats being asked our the armies and whats the resources to work with. In terms of Single Player you can easily run no mil ideas a bad mil nation idea set but WC hence why so many people go full Infantry since they dont go into wars which asks too much of armies they clean up and just snowball their country and maintain better finances throughout since Infantry. A realistic "composition" if were talking wanting to make an effort is just splash cav in to formations similar to Cannons which many people revolve the amount around common siege Arty thresholds and not specifically them on battlefields.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

In my experience, there are only a handful of tags where cavalry are useful to recruit/use en masse:

Poland
Qing with Banners
Early Hordes

For everyone else, they are a unit that costs 2.5x as much as an infantry, and the limited battlefield role they have is in no way worth their additional cost. Add in that they are usually a tiny minority of the army and do not share all the combat bonuses the infantry get, and there’s really no reason to invest in them at all.

While cavalry historically were useful/critical in wars, in EU4 they are just super expensive infantry with a nearly useless special ability.

 

[theauthor]

Your army composition shoudl preferably simply having a large army and stacking comvat modifier that no one dare attack your besieging army. :v

That said though...

In my experience, there are only a handful of tags where cavalry are useful to recruit/use en masse:

Poland
Qing with Banners
Early Hordes

For everyone else, they are a unit that costs 2.5x as much as an infantry, and the limited battlefield role they have is in no way worth their additional cost. Add in that they are usually a tiny minority of the army and do not share all the combat bonuses the infantry get, and there’s really no reason to invest in them at all.

While cavalry historically were useful/critical in wars, in EU4 they are just super expensive infantry with a nearly useless special ability.

Add anyone with Qizilbash estates to the list, also QQ and AQ. And also Najd/any Arab with tribal starts. I think there's one African nation as well with strong horse but i forgot which(i think Benin?)

But yeah unless the cavalry really buffed they had a mixed result, i had make a Transoxiana with 45% cav combat ability and they're only strong enough to keep up with most of the AI army in 1600-ish. If i need 45% buff just to make mid game viable then maybe the problem is the cavalry unit as a whole.

 

[Cavalry]

But yeah unless the cavalry really buffed they had a mixed result, i had make a Transoxiana with 45% cav combat ability and they're only strong enough to keep up with most of the AI army in 1600-ish. If i need 45% buff just to make mid game viable then maybe the problem is the cavalry unit as a whole.

the Transoxiana Cavalry don't need to be better than AI army, they just need to be better than a Transoxiana infantry replacement. Probably the problems lie elsewhere, not in cavalry vs infantry.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

Your army composition shoudl preferably simply having a large army and stacking comvat modifier that no one dare attack your besieging army. :v

That said though...

Add anyone with Qizilbash estates to the list, also QQ and AQ. And also Najd/any Arab with tribal starts. I think there's one African nation as well with strong horse but i forgot which(i think Benin?)

But yeah unless the cavalry really buffed they had a mixed result, i had make a Transoxiana with 45% cav combat ability and they're only strong enough to keep up with most of the AI army in 1600-ish. If i need 45% buff just to make mid game viable then maybe the problem is the cavalry unit as a whole.

Most Arab tribes, nor AQ, have the economic strength to build or maintain large cavalry-heavy armies.

But otherwise, yes. QQ can have major success running cavalry-heavy armies. Thank you for correcting my oversight.

 

[jonjowett]

In my experience, there are only a handful of tags where cavalry are useful to recruit/use en masse:

Poland
Qing with Banners
Early Hordes

For everyone else, they are a unit that costs 2.5x as much as an infantry, and the limited battlefield role they have is in no way worth their additional cost. Add in that they are usually a tiny minority of the army and do not share all the combat bonuses the infantry get, and there’s really no reason to invest in them at all.

While cavalry historically were useful/critical in wars, in EU4 they are just super expensive infantry with a nearly useless special ability.

This is somewhat true, but it's worth noting that you can stack discounts and buffs much higher for cav than for anything else. Eg: Horde ideas, aristo ideas, gov reforms, permanent mission rewards, national ideas, special cav (cossacks/hussars/banners/etc). If you can easily get 3 of those, it may be worth using cav as your hammer instead of inf. The more of those you can get, the more likely it is to be worthwhile.