How do you win wars?

[unmerged(46069)]

Playing as Castille then Spain, I've managed to build a colonial empire, establish near monopolies on the two most profitable COTs in the world and currently am making the most money in the world, with income almost double the country at second place. With that kind of money, I've been able to be pretty much near the top of every tech. All this by the year 1570.

If I'm not mistaken, I think I am doing very well in this game so far. Problem is, I can't seem to win any wars, even with 3 or 4 province minors. Even though I'm really ahead of the pack in land research, and I'm using all the latest available units, I can never seem to even inflict the same amount of casualities as my enemies, let alone seize a decisive victory. In my last war, I was fighting against Milan and Savoy and they totally owned me! How can this be possible??

One thing that they seem to have that I don't are leaders. But the problem with that is that I find it nearly impossible to reach high levels of military tradition. Highest I've ever reached is 30% and that was after almost a decade of constant war in Europe AND in the new world against the natives. My enemies on the other hand always seem to have spectacular leaders with extreme shock bonuses.

My questions are:
1- Why am I losing?
2- How to reach high levels of tradition?

 

[rahlus]

I'm still a noob, so I hope that these next few lines aren't a waste of bandwidth.

1. How is your research in Land Technology coming along? How is your army's morale? This may be the key to why you are losing wars.
2. I've heard that military tradition gain rates are determined by the sheer scope of your military. The smaller your overall military, the more hardy it needs to be to survive. Ergo, with a smaller military winning battles nets you more tradition. The larger your military, the more diluted your armies' experience is.

Does this make sense?

Can someone more experienced elaborate better, or am I way off base?

 

[knaak250]

1. the AI allway's goes full offencive/quantity. giving them alot more of moral. in 1.21 moral is the major decider and not the leader.

2. win big battles with an equel or smaller army then the enemy's army's.

eg, i had my naval tradition going up from 10 to 100 thnx to 1 single battle, ivolving 1 carrack and 2 cogs from me against 5 galley's.

 

[c00lizz]

1. the AI allway's goes full offencive/quantity. giving them alot more of moral. in 1.21 moral is the major decider and not the leader.

2. win big battles with an equel or smaller army then the enemy's army's.

eg, i had my naval tradition going up from 10 to 100 thnx to 1 single battle, ivolving 1 carrack and 2 cogs from me against 5 galley's.

Exploring provinces is an easy way to gain tradition. Suprised you don't have a lot with a colonial empire.

 

[Ofaloaf]

1. While your land tech may be migh up, what units are you using? Are you still using the basic Late Midieval Infantry, or do you actually select the more advanced troops?

2. What is the consistency of your armies? Are they all infantry, all cavalry, all artillery, or a mix thereof? How many men are in a typical army of yours?

3. When at war, what's your military maintenence rate? If you spend the least you can on troop maintenence, then troop morale will be terrible and they will never regen men.

 

[knaak250]

Exploring provinces is an easy way to gain tradition. Suprised you don't have a lot with a colonial empire.

in 1.21 most the tratidition gained that way is allready lost again at the end of the year because exploring takes 3 times longer than in 1.1. so it's neglectible.

 

[unmerged(46069)]

1. While your land tech may be migh up, what units are you using? Are you still using the basic Late Midieval Infantry, or do you actually select the more advanced troops?

2. What is the consistency of your armies? Are they all infantry, all cavalry, all artillery, or a mix thereof? How many men are in a typical army of yours?

3. When at war, what's your military maintenence rate? If you spend the least you can on troop maintenence, then troop morale will be terrible and they will never regen men.

1- I'm using the most advanced troops availabe: Maurician for the infantry, demi-cannons for the artillery and the new cavalry (newer than latin knights).

2- My typical army is 6000 men: 4000 infantry and 2000 artillery. I figured that by 1570 cavalry have lost their edge over infantry so I shifted over to infantry completely.

3- My army maintenance is at max whenever I'm at war so I know that's not the problem.

 

[Storey]

2- How to reach high levels of tradition?

I believe the national idea "Glorious Arms" gives a bonus to your ability to accumulate land tradition. I don't like fighting long wars and I find that this helps a lot.

Joe

 

[knaak250]

maybe your underestimating your cavalry, cavalry is still very strong in the shock departmant, while infrantry and artilery rule in the fire department.

1. keep your stacks seperated for maximum effect (you can combine infrantry with cavalry however, but not more than 2 regiments of cav per infrantry army)

2. artilery should only be used for seiging, infrantry for defending seiges and cavalry for chasing armies with low morale.

3. the infrantry, cav army's should be used to break the other army's morale.

 

[Storey]

2- My typical army is 6000 men: 4000 infantry and 2000 artillery. I figured that by 1570 cavalry have lost their edge over infantry so I shifted over to infantry completely.

I believe you're making a mistake here. Cavalry still have an impact on your battles. Usually I have my armies split 50-50 between infantry and Cavalry. Why such a small army? I find that if I outnumber the enemy 2 or 3 to 1 with a decent (not great) leader I can win most battles.

Joe

 

[Hartman]

Cavalry are at least the equal to infantry practically up until the end of the game. Always have some in your armies, unless you're just using the army to besiege provinces.

Also, 6,000 is a really small army.

 

[Chris8b]

Tiny armies with no cavalry seem to be the obvious problem here.

 

[moloko]

My questions are:
1- Why am I losing?
2- How to reach high levels of tradition?[/QUOTE]

pay attention to the terrain, the defender gets bonuses in combat in provinces that are heavily wooded or mountainous. rivers also penalize the attackers, though its sometimes hard to determine if rivers will affect a given battle due to the map layout.

in all given roughly equal odds and generals the defender will win most of the time.

as the other posters have said calvary is effective in combat all through the game. a good tactic is to keep several all cav armies in reserve. they can then reinforce other combats bringing fresh strength and more importantly fresh morale. i had the same mindset as you... late in the game so i don't need so much cavalry. persia changed my tune on that when i lost battles in which i had greater odds and a land tech advantage of 41 to 14. i noticed their armies typically had 5-7,000 calalry while mine had only 1-2,000. the next war with persia you could hear my cavalry's hoofbeats across their entire empire!

when you do win a battle always try to persue the defeated army and make it fight again before it regains morale, cavalry is ideal for this as they will often reach the province that the enemy is retreating to first, thus forcing the already low moral enemy to attack.

building a war college in your capitol will help maintain military tradition and there is at least one national idea that helps with this also, but the bottom line is that unless you fight often military tradition errodes. so when you do get some military tradition that is when to recruit generals.

some countries historically have excellent generals and others nver get decent generals, though i'm not sure how relevant that is with EU III's non historical leaders/events

hope that helps, keep looking through the threads there's lots more info on battles/campaigns out there.

 

[unmerged(3921)]

To get high land tradition, get QFtNW and send a conquistador with 3 or so cav regiments out exploring. Have them beat up on natives. You'll be at 80+% land tradition in no time. Then any time you need more land tradition simply repeat. Do try to colonize any provinces where you completely wipe out the natives.

 

[Scott1964]

Cavalry. My war with Liege lasted a few months. My stack of 6 Cavalry units quickly took the forts down.

 

[unmerged(47003)]

1.1 or 1.2?

If 1.1, then your 4k infantry and 2k artillery will get absolutely shredded by their cavalry. Which would account for their beating you despite your better tech and I assume superior numbers.

But even in 1.2 I'm using cavalry almost exclusively in 1600.

They are just better. Especially for a big, rich nation like you trying to take out dinky 3 or 4 province nations.

And in 1570, artillery is only useful for besieging provinces. It does no real damage in battle. Check the ledger page 9 and it will say something small like ".1" for artillery shock and fire modifiers. They'll get higher as you progress later in the game and then artillery might actually be useful in battles.

 

[blizz]

i find it interesting that you all really like cavalry, im playing as france and my armies are usually 9,000( 7000 inf, 1,000 cav, 1 artilery). But then i use alot of smaller armies of 3-4000 infantry that i keep in reserve to send into battle wherever things are going bad
its 1570, i have all frances starting vassals annexed britanny,burgandy,northern italy,castille and portugal diplo-annxed or won through war ,aragorn,austria(around30provinces),england,hesse(5provinces),meckelberg(6provinces),brandenburg(7provinces)
and venice(5 provinces) as vassals. All of germany and italy are either under my control or one my vassals with the exception of about 5 provinces. i get 650+ at the end of the year, i havent done any colonizing only focused on europe my only colonies are from portugal and spain. My badboy was really good since i only went to war with people i had a claim on or defensive wars or i got countires as vassals through war. But when i diplo-annexed castille my badboy went to something like 45+/35.

All my national ideas have been things to make my army strong, i got conscripts as my first idea in the 1450s, everyone who warred me got over-run no one can put as many men into the field and have the number of re-inforcements i do. My maximum manpower is 200k+ and i have curia and HRE controlled.

Anyways, my advice is what are you national ideas and other stuff like quality,land,offensive/defensive/serf/free that kind of stuff because maybe yours are making you weaker than everyone else?

Goodluck with your campaign i hope you figure out how to beat up one those smaller countries

 

[GAGA Extrem]

1) Use your ruler as leader, unless he is a 8/8/8 genius you dont want to see dead (they die really quickly!)
2) Use at least 2k CAV in every stack for the flanks. Until ~1600, you can even play CAV-only strategies. Later, you might want to use a mixed force of about equal INF/CAV/ART (in the very late game a little less CAV maybe)

Btw, I remember a similar situation in my first game. I played Castille as my first country in the full version and had dominated portugal, Aragon and Grenada, but one of this a bit larger african countries kicked my ass and i had to fight with cruel manpowerlosses just to get a white peace, despite i had tech, morale AND leader advantage...
...and later I realized why: They had over 10k CAV in their main stack...

Anyways, my advice is what are you national ideas and other stuff like quality,land,offensive/defensive/serf/free that kind of stuff because maybe yours are making you weaker than everyone else?

Sliders are overrated for armies.

They are often the last thing i touch in my games to improve my armies. offensive <-> defensive has very little impact on your army, 0.05 morale is a very, very minor advantage, 1 shock/fire is also not worth 5 or more slider moves, cheaper ART is imho the best thing from here. Remember: You need leaders to get the bonus shock/siege values, so you have either to use a large single stack or you gotta buy dozens of leaders.

Quality <-> Quantity is another thing. Why loose over 10% manpower for a little 0.05 morale when i even have to pay a hell more for my troops? In EU2 I was almost every time max QUAL, but in EU3, quantiny seems so much more useful for everyone except very large majors...

The land <-> naval slider is still the most important (imho), but here you get a -5% economic penalty. Ouch.

Aristocracy <-> plutocracy is the CAVmongers choise, bonus diplomats, cheaper CAV - what else do you want?

As for the NIs - Drill is only good in the early game (0.5 is about 2-3 techlevels advantage), but in mid 1500 you no longer need it. Okay, maybe useful for MP games, but I think we talk about SP here.
Conscripts is very useful for minor/medium countries (best military NI imho).
Engineers need also leaders to work properly. Maybe useful if you are maxed defensive and have the money for a lot of leaders...
And the rest? Well, Glorious Arms is somehow useless imo, Grand Army - well, use mass CAV and you dont need a grand army. Minors benefit, but thats all. (Again it might be a good MP army, dont know about his)

 

[blizz]

Yeah the sliders arent too great i havent used them in about 40 years just because i dont think anything is worth losing -1 stability for. The only thing i really did was max out land just for the manpower. France is a beast (ile de france has a manpower of 4,500+ lol)though and i think everyone who has played them or played against them will agree with me, and with maxed land and conscripts before 1500 i dont think a unified france can be stopped really. i steamrolled england and portugal,castille,and aragorn in 3 wars none lasting more than 3-4 years resulting in me vassilizing them.

Back to topic, how many men are you actually sending over to italy? you should just be able to flood their countries with men and wear them down in less than a year? Losing a battle isnt any big deal against a small country when you have another 3 armies you can send in :rofl:

 

[Surt]

Using all cavalry armies make me feel like I cheat unless playing some steppe nation so instead I try to use mixed forces.
In your case your armies are simply too small or usable only as siege armies, 5-7K Inf, 1K art, 2-4K cav should be your standard armies, if an enemy proves troublesome stack 3-4 of these against him, you got the men he doesn't.
The battle AI should places the inf in the front line of the battle with hopefully the art in 2nd line, as you outnumber the enemy the cav will flank him making you attack each of his units with 2 of yours.
To get tradition do successful sieges (assault better/worse?), real battles (not pursuit of already beaten units), explore with conquistadors did/does? give tradition.