Ayutthayan Curse

[Mztr44]

That's a decent explanation for the fact that I have most of southeast asia, but it doesn't explain why I should be losing at all with the most powerful nation in South Asia. I should have been able to accomplish so much more...

And this is the real reason I was losing. I have been playing a Tuscany game and noticed just how much greater I was doing once I consolidated religiously. That was the issue. It was the first game I tried with set army composition, and I didn't recognize how important keeping them at that level is. It wasn't a curse, just me not understanding the one true God that is consolidate.

Consolidation is not always good to use ALL the time. If you're not careful you find yourself with an undermanned infantry line and you start getting penalties to your cavalry. If you're a pretty small nation at the start of the game, yeah, go ahead and consolidate all you want, you probably aren't fielding enough troops to run into too much trouble, and you can always hire a couple mercenary units to refill your infantry if you end up losing individual units, then replace them later on after the war while you are recuperating. Later on though you might consider peeling off individual units that have been near devastated and send them back to friendly territory to reinforce for a few months and then bring them back, units get reinforcement penalties in enemy territory. This will help your income bounce back faster as well if you're riding on the edge of barely affording an active full maintenance army. With a larger army you can rotate stacks in and out of the front lines. Chasing down a large stack you want to try and wipe is the only time you might want to just consolidate willy-nilly.

 

[Less]

Consolidation is not always good to use ALL the time. If you're not careful you find yourself with an undermanned infantry line and you start getting penalties to your cavalry. If you're a pretty small nation at the start of the game, yeah, go ahead and consolidate all you want, you probably aren't fielding enough troops to run into too much trouble, and you can always hire a couple mercenary units to refill your infantry if you end up losing individual units, then replace them later on after the war while you are recuperating. Later on though you might consider peeling off individual units that have been near devastated and send them back to friendly territory to reinforce for a few months and then bring them back, units get reinforcement penalties in enemy territory. This will help your income bounce back faster as well if you're riding on the edge of barely affording an active full maintenance army. With a larger army you can rotate stacks in and out of the front lines. Chasing down a large stack you want to try and wipe is the only time you might want to just consolidate willy-nilly.

Consolidation doesn't reduce your infantry, only moves them into a more effective set of regiments. 10 regiments with 100 soldiers each will get insufficient support just the same as 1 regiment with 1000 soldiers.

Ideally in any war you should be building infantry before the battles actually happen, then immediately consolidating and merging in new soldiers to continue the offensive. At most spend 1-1.5 months reinforcing before the consolidation.

 

[Mztr44]

Consolidation doesn't reduce your infantry, only moves them into a more effective set of regiments. 10 regiments with 100 soldiers each will get insufficient support just the same as 1 regiment with 1000 soldiers.

Ideally in any war you should be building infantry before the battles actually happen, then immediately consolidating and merging in new soldiers to continue the offensive. At most spend 1-1.5 months reinforcing before the consolidation.

What I was getting at is that if you battle, consolidate, chase, battle, consolidate etc without paying attention, you are steadily reducing the amount of infantry regiments available to be reinforced and then you find yourself with an inferior infantry stack that can't support it's cavalry. It can no longer reinforce to a large enough size due to depleting the available amount of infantry regiments.

 

[FloatingOrb]

The only cursed nation that I know of is burgundy, and that is because my King general always dies in the first battle (or the second, I actually kept track of this) causing a massive stack of units to deteriorate. Absolutely soul crushing.

 

[fetusthebard]

Ideally in any war you should be building infantry before the battles actually happen, then immediately consolidating and merging in new soldiers to continue the offensive. At most spend 1-1.5 months reinforcing before the consolidation.

This. This is what I have learned in my Tuscany campaign. I had already known that you regen faster in your territory, that's why I only siege after stack wiping, and only carpet siege when I siege. If I can't fully carpet siege, I keep stacks at 1% attrition and keep them in adjacent provinces.

 

[Less]

The only cursed nation that I know of is burgundy, and that is because my King general always dies in the first battle (or the second, I actually kept track of this) causing a massive stack of units to deteriorate. Absolutely soul crushing.

Every nation that starts with great generals is destined to lose them immediately if played by a player. Aragon has this problem too, you can utterly destroy Castille without any trouble if your god-general ruler is able to survive, but he's nearly 50 and always kicks the bucket before you need him.