Choices of Military ideas for Castille/Spain

[unmerged(390989)]

I'm trying to pick a Military idea for my second choice, and just can't decide. The way I see it, all the options are good.

Aristocratic: the bonuses seem a bit scattershot, but they are very solid. The best part is the diplo bonus, tho, so I may take Diplomatic in the mid-late instead.

Offensive: I tried this before and it worked extremely well. The Forced March special bonus is extremely useful and has let me insta-kill several AI stack once I made them run. Apart from that, good leaders won me battles, even against France.

Defensive: France surprised me with this, but it definitely works. The final bonus is more of a nicety, but the defensiveness improvements will help... ironically especially against France. But also in dealing with the odd rebels here or there. The interesting thing is the early morale boost, which is a nasty thing in peacetime, as it lets you have solid morale while keeping the army budget slider low.

Quality: It actually looks a little weak, but has some really good points. It's the only military idea with substantial effect on your navy, the morale regeneration is a small but very helpful bonus, and the final Discipline boost is a real killer (ba-dum-kssh!) One of the nice things about this is that it lets you be much more effective in terms of transporting troops. You can't easily drop an powerful army anywhere you need it, but this allows you to move smaller, more powerful forces easily.

Quantity: With Spain, you expect this to be less important as you can eventually stack even basic armories into a massive manpower pool. Then again, Quantity does a lot more than that: quick resupply, high force limits, low cost.

My though is to go Defensive -> Quantity -> Offensive, and thus beat France at their own game. I'm actually thinking to bypass Naval altogether, and take Exploration -> Expansion -> Diplomatic. While this means I'd have a weaker navy, I can also have the raw naval numbers to pwn anyone anyway. Thoughts?

 

[unmerged(495697)]

I was a big fan of Quality and Offensive, but after trying the Defensive I have to say it's a beastly idea group if picked early. The attrition halving basically allows you to doomstack with impunity. The early wars always result in fairly big attrition losses especially at winter and on low supply provinces, and forces you to play with smaller stacks, and that one idea eliminates that and makes your life easier.

 

[Xeorm]

So far, I've preferred quality the most. Especially as it helps the navy while still being a very useful for military. Your troops are about ~15% better, and that's amazing for me.

I really liked offensive as well, as it provides the better leaders, more discipline, and quite a hefty force limits boost. 25% is huge considering quantity only gives 33%.

Defensive would be my third choice. It works very well as a first choice though, given that the first two bonuses are amazing for the early game. Less attrition, upkeep reduction, and reinforce speed are all amazing for later IMO.

Don't really like quantity. Your troops are a little less expensive, and you get a good bonus to force limits, but I've found that with ample military points I'm able to build plenty of military buildings so manpower isn't as much of a huge deal.

Aristocratic is good as a first idea if you're looking for something as more of a administrative idea, but have ample military points. Reducing WE with diplomacy is funny though. I had one war with France where we slugged it out and 500k troops later we both have less than 2 WE combined. Talk about some good propaganda.

 

[sterrius]

Defensive, later Offensive.

Defensive give you enough morale to stand up against french troops (your main threat), better leaders (Army tradition make better learders, also give more morale, manpower regen and moral recovery), less upkeep, faster sieges (What you need vs weak countrys) and also make sure that if you are atacked you have time to gather you troops around the world for the fight.

Offensive is a perfect combo with defensive later on. Your already good leaders become gods of war (also faster sieges with luck), you get more force limits (You should start to need as you get big) and discipline. Also don´t forget forced march, it will make wars against big countrys more easy (finally you can decide wars vs france in one battle).

Aristocratic is only good for countrys that already have a bonus for cavalary, as they willl use tons of it, Spain lifesforce is the infantary as you need to go close or pass the force limit. The bonus alone is not worth it, and you don´t need extra diplomats as you will be papal controller for life sooner or later. (as long you keep getting bigger and bigger with catholic provinces).

Quality while it will help you win battlers its not what you really need. You have numbers and already have discipline, so you can make up for the lack of quality. Most countrys that use quality are very far from you, or too poor in money or manpower to keep up a war with you.

Quantity is for countrys that are too big to rely on mercenarys but too small in manpower to keep a army. Also they need help to keep that army at 100% and in a good size.


I did a Spain game with Defensive (second idea) + QUality (5º idea). THe quality was a waste of time as france and ottomans are the only countrys that gived me trouble, and by the time i got the quality idea i was avoiding wars with france because i was not interested in conquering her . (Also finished tripoli what finished my problems with the ottomans).

So i used my quality idea gainst the professional Swahili troops......

 

[Vence]

I'm playing Spain right now and i have to say that Defensive idea is a life saver for all the reasons already listed above, also quantity idea is nice for the 33 % bonus to your army limit.