Army - How it works?

[Castios]

Hello,

I would like to know everything about army, how is damage calculated, how defense power is calculated etc.

My questions:

How morale works? For example let's look at this screenshot http://i49.tinypic.com/s24ns5.jpg Let's say that marked army has 0.0 morale. Does it still fight? Or just "exsist" there because 2nd army still has morale?

Should I use cannons or it's not neccessary? Let's look at those modifiers.

So I have 6 shock general and my cav has 4 points modifier of shock damage. Cannons have 1.25 modifer on fire damage. So that means that my cav is far better than my cannons? It is true that cannons, somehow, are able to fire more turns than infrantry? When is time to switch to cannons, can someone tell me unit name? The point when cannons start doing more damage than cav. Also, inf. fight on 1st lane, so it takes most damage right? So it's better to have high defensive infrantry? Or maybe morale is even more important than fire/shock damage on infrantry?

Different army units have different shock/morale/fire damage in defensive or offensive. Defensive is when my army is attacked in province and offensive is when I attack, right?

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Well, if army have 0 morale, it rout, unless you have another army still fighting. Unless it's the army that have your best military leader with it, you should withdraw this unit from the battle into safe place, so it morale and manpower will refill.

About rest, look at eu3 wiki, at page about warfare.

 

[Castios]

So it's better to have a lot small regiments instead of one big so I can pull out some regiments with low morale during bigger battles?

Army with 0 morale doesn't fight?

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Well actualy, it depend on what type of army you use, what enemy army size is, and many other factors. At first place, if you have 1k vs 10k it is instant wipe. IMHO if you want to have many small armies, their size should be at least 5 regiments(5k men), to avoid risk of insta wipe. With time, this size will grow, because army size grow. Army with 0 morale does not fight, that is true. So, actualy making lot of small stacks is valid strat, until fire comes in, or unless your military leader have high value of maneuver. Because in 3 first days, your army fight in fire phase, and thus, the loss of morale and men is minimal until fire comes in. Also, when fire comes in, army size, grow quite high, so it copes.

In addition to this, there is risk of being outflanked by enemy army, because new regiments come into battle, 1 day after they appear in province. Also, there is risk of your enemy wiping out your small stacks, unless they are stacked together in one province, because he comes faster than reinforcements. Anyway, each army have its own attrition rate, depending on leader they use, so if you have high maneuver value, you should stack army together when not expecting a fight(you can allways split in half some time before enemy regiments come).

Late game, you can easily support 100k in one province for some time, which means that armies of size 10k and lowere will be insta wiped, so your normal armies should be of size 20-30k. There was a screenshot of one man, making 1KK(one milion) men stack which was able of wiping 100k armies, but such stack is going to generate lot of attrition, and i doubt much player would make such, unless of course, in case of battles, even in which situation, it would propably mean very much players needed to participate in(or very big players).