Casualties: How do they work?

[bloodshed343]

So here's the short version. Burgundy declared war on one of my allies, and I responded. We have the same land tech. My troops have higher discipline. I was sieging a little province thinking I was cool when a wild Burgundian army appears! I outnumbered them 26k to 24k, had a 6/4/6/1 general to their no general, and my troops had 110% discipline to their 104% (I reloaded to check). We had the same land tech and were using the same units. However, while I was afflicting single digit casualties, they were afflicting triple digit casualties. This happens every time I fight Burgundy. I can only win if I outnumber them at least 6:1. What else do I need to know?

 

[ve3609]

their quantity v quality orientation may decide that.

 

[Concrete]

@ve3609, Quality/Quantity affects discipline, which Bloodshed seems to have checked.

Were they using a different troop type to you? Maybe you were both using troops which were best on offense.
Was the composition of their army different to yours? Did they have artillery and you had none?
Finally, it could've just been plain old dice rolls.

 

[Caban]

Yeah... apparently mixing unit types has a pretty big effect in land combat.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

If you were defending, it means they don't get the terrain modifire, or even get it negative, so i think they may have mixed unit bonus and you don't, or they just had better rolls.
Other than that, they may have +1 morale from having military drill NI. And morale affects casulties somehow i think - if they got it, and mixed unit bonus, and you don't (which in this case mean you got half or more calvary in your army), aspecialy if they got better rolls, mean they can loose less man, and inflict more damage.

Still i think you should look at the battle overview, and see what rolls they got. If they got 9 roll while you got 0, it clearly mean you will lose more no matter how good things you got - it means you're just unlucky. But unless you lose heavily the troops (like 1000 men a day, or even 500 men a day), you should not withdraw, and just wait to get better rolls. If you loose 2-3 hundred man each day - that is quite small loose, and you can eat it, as long as they will start loosing more in next rolls.

 

[safferli]

Burgundy has awesome sliders which may be the issue here. What about NIs? They can make a big difference!

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Burgundy has awesome sliders which may be the issue here. What about NIs? They can make a big difference!

He got better discipline, so apparently it counts more than quality/quantity slider, and propably he got better slider here anyway. So, what sliders do you say about? Anyway i think it may be the NI. But i already mentioned it.

 

[MiracleTortoise]

There's a myriad of factors at work in land combat, many of them (near) invisible and hard to track. For example, if you have no or less guns than Burgundy, their casualties will pretty much definitely be higher. This is because of the way battle formations are drawn up. Cavalry go on the edges of the front line whilst guns go in the second line. Guns fire through to the enemy's front line, which means that they'll have both an infantry unit and a cannon unit hitting your infantry unit. As your unit takes casualties, it'll fight at less than full capacity, and if its morale doesn't break and its numbers don't reach 0, it'll keep fighting. So you could have 100 men fighting 900 men with 1000 guns behind.

What this means is that the very first shock and fire rolls of a combat can be incredibly decisive, as they will wear down your retaliatory ability for 2 or 3 phases thereafter.

If guns aren't in play yet, then the only likely candidates are unfortunate rolls, terrain modifiers, or significant morale differences.

 

[WGPower]

Burgundy has a fully offensive slider -5 or -4 from memory which is quite decisive in land battles but it does sound like you had some horrible rolls too.

 

[Serzis]

Another possibility, although dealing with the same mechanic as Siralus mentioned, is that you may have had 26 000 troops on the battlefield but divided into many weaker regiments of maybe 400 men facing a fully restored Burgundian regiment of 1000 men. When laying siege to France it is easy to group your bigger armies into new formations to remain numerically superior as attrition and fighting melts them away. If a substantial part of the army comprises of weakened troops, however, you may see in the battle overview that your front line actually have fewer troops that will not deliver damage and so the center might collapse bringing humiliating defeat.

Lost a defensive 25-14 battle, withdrew to the homeland, restored them, split them up and won with fighting 18-14.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Offensive slider give better generals, and small 0,10 morale modifier... it does not realy help, if you don't have general, as 0,1 morale is realy small addition. That is why almost everyone takes deffensive slider, unless he need to get a good general, but got low tradition (like 0...)

EDIT: if you got full offensive + full aristocracy, you get 2-3 shock, which is helpfull if you got no good leaders. But later on, shock cease to be so important, and the 25% deffensive starts to actualy help in defence.

 

[froek]

What is your composition of cavalry?
If you have too much cavalry you won't get mixed unit bonus.

 

[unmerged(204522)]

are lucky nations switched on? is burgundy DotF? did you remember to increase your military maintenance slider?

 

[MiracleTortoise]

Another possibility, although dealing with the same mechanic as Siralus mentioned, is that you may have had 26 000 troops on the battlefield but divided into many weaker regiments of maybe 400 men facing a fully restored Burgundian regiment of 1000 men. When laying siege to France it is easy to group your bigger armies into new formations to remain numerically superior as attrition and fighting melts them away. If a substantial part of the army comprises of weakened troops, however, you may see in the battle overview that your front line actually have fewer troops that will not deliver damage and so the center might collapse bringing humiliating defeat.

Lost a defensive 25-14 battle, withdrew to the homeland, restored them, split them up and won with fighting 18-14.

To expand on this - pay attention to your battle line during battles, the little grid between the two sides. If you have higher morale and numbers than the enemy, this doesn't mean you're fighting fit. You could have 4 units on 100% morale because they were out on the wings of the previous battle and didn't get hit. Then you engage in a fresh battle and only have 4 units ready for combat while the enemy army could have 16 units with 5% morale, who, in the first shock and fire phase, rip your 4 units apart.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Yeah... having fully regained regiments, helps. Also over some number, your army size stop to matter, as only part of your regiments will take part in battle (i think it is 32 regiments in two rows, meaning 16 in first row, and 16 in second... or something like that.) Additional regiments only makes reinforcement for those. So making doomstack does not realy help much in battles - it is better to keep reinforcement in adjactened provinces, just to bring them when they are needed. Also bringing armies bigger than 50k is not helping you as you will suffer atrition greatly from too big stacks. Also, the second row, only takes part in fire phase, so best armies are around 16-20 k, with at least 6k calvary. Calvary is better in the battle due its attack multiplier, being higher than infantry (think it is around 3-4, meaning that your calvary with 1 shock is three-four time better than your infantry with shock 1). So if you have as much calvary as possible, while having the mixed arms bonus, which mean 7 calvary 9 infantry for 16k unit, it gives you the best possible army mix. So, if so you need only to bring some units that will be ready to help it in battle when it start loosing men. When later on, fire comes to the battlefield, you can add 16 cannons in the back row - but as artilery is making army movement slower, it is best to keep it in another unit, and bring it to decisive battles. Artilery being in back row, is giving a bonus to defense and attack from the back row, meaning, you will fight in battle more effectively with artilery. Not artilery units in the back row does not help in battle i think, so it mean you waste place not using artilery - and if battle is important, it does count, regardless of artilery strength.

 

[bloodshed343]

I see. I checked it out and it looks like they were using 75/25% infantry/cavalry while I had about 50/50. This was only 1460 so no cannons yet. I reloaded the game to just before the war, remixed my armies with more infantry, and consolidated regiments to account for attrition while marching, and managed to squarely beat them. Thanks a lot guys, this has been incredibly informative.

Edit: What are the best national ideas? I took National Conscripts and Military Drill.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Best, is quite disputive. There are good ones, and not so good ones. National conscripts is quite good if you lack manpower, military drill is good, if you meet simmiliar sized enemy, and you use morale increase to help your troops in battle. But also economic NI's are good... some that are not highly valued, got hidden effects that actualy helps a lot in game. Like merchant ventures, while only give merchant cost decrease, give you a nice decision that increase your TE(merchant shipping act). Also they give few nice events, and make some events faster - and make available event that gives you free marketplace... which is nice. Or there is national trade policy, that gives 10% Trade Efficiency. All NI's are usefull if you know how to use them, but there are some that are more usefull and there are some that seems useless (there are 2 NI's that most player consider useless - Glorious Arms, and Naval glory, as they only give +100 prestige from battles, which is not much of help, and don't give you realy good events or effects mostly - and Glorious arms, even gives an event in which you loose 1 stab or 5 prestige which makes me to advise not to take it). Also some are realy good, but are late time NI's so they don't realy help much.

 

[Serzis]

If you have not checked it out already, the wiki has some nice information on hidden bonuses and event enabling that might fit your taste. For one thing, you will need QFTNW or DV before 1600 to avoid National Decline, but if you have not started colonization by then you are probably doing something wrong. There is also a review, with suggestions but no definitive answers.

http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/National_idea
http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/National_Idea_review

National ideas depend on the situation and focus on trade, war or controlling rebel-infested areas.

 

[Uebergold]

If you have not checked it out already, the wiki has some nice information on hidden bonuses and event enabling that might fit your taste. For one thing, you will need QFTNW or DV before 1600 to avoid National Decline, but if you have not started colonization by then you are probably doing something wrong. There is also a review, with suggestions but no definitive answers.

Huh? Actually I consider (mass) colonizing pretty boring at some point. Especially because you already know where to colonize and what trade goods you will most likely get in those areas. And I hate it to have rebel uprisings in every continent (+ small islands) in the world because ur getting double digit WE while being involved in major european wars. It can be fun to play a colonial dutch, british or portuguese empire for a while but after that I often play landpowers or hybrid nations with very limited colonization. Actually, in most of my games I don't colonize at all (in contrary to games like Civilzation where I play nearly all the time generated worlds).

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Colonizing? AS FRANCE??? For what???

Realy i don't think colonization is usefull for france anyway. It is better, to just grab italy, force PU's on other europeans, and expand SOI in HRE. Also it is not realy bad if you're emperor yourself. Also, national decline, is not realy so big problem, as it only slow you by a small amount. There are many other ways of making france a powerfull nation than colonizing...