Hey everyone!
I'm by no means good at this game and I don't really understand combat, so I've been mostly using an army comp that I read online some time ago, which consisted of 8 infantry, 2 cavalry, 10 artillery, and then later when supply limit allowed it I kept the ratio and increased it (so 16/4/20 or 32/8/40 in late game). It's probably not the best comp but so far it worked just fine. Most of the time I adjusted my armies to the supply limit of my provinces, so if I most of my provinces had ~20 supply limit, I made my armies into 8/2/10s and later expanded them when supply limits increased. That meant that I was under the combat width but it didn't seem to be much of a problem most of the time. But after 1.33 the composition doesn't seem to work as good as before. I barely win any fights and in most of my fights it seems like I'm starting with half the morale of my enemy.
I've read the dev diaries and if I understand it correctly, the combat changes make filling up combat width more important than it was before the update. I could try to start the game by filling up my armies to combat width at early game but considering that most European nations start on mil tech 3 with 20 combat width, that would mean at least 20 units in one army which is later expanded to 40 at mil tech 7 when I slowly expand the army to 16/4/20. But this way one army takes a good portion of my force limit, and also exceed the supply limit in all of my provinces, thus it would constantly take attrition until much later in the game, but even later it would need to be expanded to fill in the combat width again. As I said I'm not very good in the game yet so I'm not sure how important artillery or cavalry actually are, so maybe this ratio can be improved or even scrapped entirely.
So my main questions are:
Thank you very much for the help in advance!
I'm by no means good at this game and I don't really understand combat, so I've been mostly using an army comp that I read online some time ago, which consisted of 8 infantry, 2 cavalry, 10 artillery, and then later when supply limit allowed it I kept the ratio and increased it (so 16/4/20 or 32/8/40 in late game). It's probably not the best comp but so far it worked just fine. Most of the time I adjusted my armies to the supply limit of my provinces, so if I most of my provinces had ~20 supply limit, I made my armies into 8/2/10s and later expanded them when supply limits increased. That meant that I was under the combat width but it didn't seem to be much of a problem most of the time. But after 1.33 the composition doesn't seem to work as good as before. I barely win any fights and in most of my fights it seems like I'm starting with half the morale of my enemy.
I've read the dev diaries and if I understand it correctly, the combat changes make filling up combat width more important than it was before the update. I could try to start the game by filling up my armies to combat width at early game but considering that most European nations start on mil tech 3 with 20 combat width, that would mean at least 20 units in one army which is later expanded to 40 at mil tech 7 when I slowly expand the army to 16/4/20. But this way one army takes a good portion of my force limit, and also exceed the supply limit in all of my provinces, thus it would constantly take attrition until much later in the game, but even later it would need to be expanded to fill in the combat width again. As I said I'm not very good in the game yet so I'm not sure how important artillery or cavalry actually are, so maybe this ratio can be improved or even scrapped entirely.
So my main questions are:
- Is there an ideal army compostition that works in most cases?
- How do I improve army morale so I won't start with half in every fight?
- Can someone explain to me how combat works so I can try to understand why I'm losing fights and how to improve on my gameplay?
- I also have an unrelated question about Burgundy. Since the last patch every time I played France and tried to ally Burgundy, they set my provinces as vital interest which made it near impossible to ally them, how do I fix that quick enough that I can royal marry + ally them before the inheritance happens?
Thank you very much for the help in advance!
Its a lot of ugly grinding wars against Ottomans, and there is less ways to gimmick the fights as you can with say France. . Maybe conquer novogorod, open with diplo, use the steal vassal age ability to swipe sweden and norway from denmark, then use them as a springboard to grow fast enough to avoid doing endless bloodbath wars with the ottomans?
