How to stack combat bonuses?

[Omniburg]

I remember reading a reply to a thread here some time ago where the poster said he could stack morale and/or other combat bonuses in CK2 to pretty much destroy any army and never lose a battle, and I am a bit confused about that. I was unaware min-maxing was even possible in CK2 and would like someone to inform me on how to accomplish it. Thank you guys!

 

[Rags17]

I don't know how to make an unbeatable force, but I have learned how to make a pretty good one.

Essentially, the game resolves combat via a series of rounds. Each round will be one of Skirmish, Melee or Pursuit - each round a trigger is checked to see if the combat progresses to the next stage. It IS possible to go back to a previous stage, the most common involves Light Horse or Horse Archers reverting Melee back to Skirmish.

Every combat round the game works out the combat tactic for each flank. Tactics give bonuses or maluses to that flanks combat strength for that round, the tactic chosen depends mostly on unit composition but is also heavily influenced by commander military ability and traits. Getting a great combat tactic can resulting that flank having up to +300% combat effectiveness, if this outcome was a result of good composition and leadership then this can happen again and again, which can obliterate the enemy on that flank.

You can see all combat tactics here.

This site has a wonderful calculator that allows you to run various scenarios to see what the best combos are.

One final point to remember is that setting up a good unit composition is almost impossible with pure levies - each one will generally have a mish-mash of mixed unit types. This is the main reason why retinues and hordes are so dangerous, being able to set up say a pure LH or Knight formation can yield combat strength much, much greater than its pure numbers would indicate.

 

[LeChacalPuant]

Tactics are important.
But what's insanely important since holy fury is personal combat skill. As far as I know any leadership trait you could have will be impacted, or any modifier you could get with artefact/bloodline/modifiers. You can see total stacked modifiers and their effects on combat modifier (like faster siege etc.). When you get to some important personal combat skill (I don't have numbers in head but you can be a serious pain for huge enemy armies with 150) and the right modifiers, you can win battles really, really easily.
With enough personal combat skill and organizer, you can travel from province to province in a few days. Without any consideration to combat phase, I already defeated mongols armies with duchy of Kiev at like 1:6, and I was tribal so not really good levies.
And in a more recent game, as king of Ireland, I lost against a queen of pictland who had way less levies but had very good scores in personal combat skill. She crushed me in every battles, no matter how many men I could get in the battle.
Many traits increase or decrease your personal combat skill, but it should be easy to raise it to at least 30 no matter what with martial focus, 50 when you know what you're doing, and 100 if you really want it. Add good congenital traits, bloodlines modifiers, warrior lodges etc. and you're a god commander.

Then, you have management of tactics, and it's pretty powerful when well done or with a bit of luck. But this needs constant micro management when at war. Except in rare cases I never create retinues which is probably the best way to get the tactics you want and with pure levies and no specialization of your holdings it's impossible to manage. However you can force your luck with traits that adds chance of such tactic being activated, but the wiki link will explain better than me.

 

[Karlington]

Tactics are important.
But what's insanely important since holy fury is personal combat skill. As far as I know any leadership trait you could have will be impacted, or any modifier you could get with artefact/bloodline/modifiers. You can see total stacked modifiers and their effects on combat modifier (like faster siege etc.). When you get to some important personal combat skill (I don't have numbers in head but you can be a serious pain for huge enemy armies with 150) and the right modifiers, you can win battles really, really easily.
With enough personal combat skill and organizer, you can travel from province to province in a few days. Without any consideration to combat phase, I already defeated mongols armies with duchy of Kiev at like 1:6, and I was tribal so not really good levies.
And in a more recent game, as king of Ireland, I lost against a queen of pictland who had way less levies but had very good scores in personal combat skill. She crushed me in every battles, no matter how many men I could get in the battle.
Many traits increase or decrease your personal combat skill, but it should be easy to raise it to at least 30 no matter what with martial focus, 50 when you know what you're doing, and 100 if you really want it. Add good congenital traits, bloodlines modifiers, warrior lodges etc. and you're a god commander.

Then, you have management of tactics, and it's pretty powerful when well done or with a bit of luck. But this needs constant micro management when at war. Except in rare cases I never create retinues which is probably the best way to get the tactics you want and with pure levies and no specialization of your holdings it's impossible to manage. However you can force your luck with traits that adds chance of such tactic being activated, but the wiki link will explain better than me.

I have never heard anything about PCS affecting your skill as a commander leading troops. What's your source for this?

Holy Fury does make it easier to become a great commander because there are bloodlines that improve commander performance, and those effects are active even when the bloodline is inactive. So a pagan can benefit from the boosts from Christian saintly bloodlines, for example.

(This only applies to the commander boosts, not to any other benefits, which don't work when the bloodline is inactive.)

You can also hop between many warrior lodges and get all their commander traits, stacking some pretty major boosts that way.

 

[jwalche]

There are some simple guidelines that works for a lot of situations, and don't require micromanagement.

For nomad, don't take any horse archers. They causes tactics that make your light cavalry useless. Unless you have too much gold and don't know what to do with it, exclusively use the cheapest LC only hordes. That will have them use a tactic that makes LC 2x stronger. It can beat all AI hordes and feudal army of 1.5x larger easily, without putting any commander.

For tribal, since its levy are primarily LI with 18~19% AR, add more AR to have it over 20% AR, to use a tactic that makes LI 2x stronger. That means building only practice ranges and NOT other levy increasing buildings. And using trappers retinue in the beginning. Later you can switch Hunting parties that uses tactics that makes its LC 4x stronger.

For feudal retinue, unless you have something special, just use Light Skirmish units. It uses the above tactics that makes its LI 2x strong all the time. You can beat same size feudal levy, which is much more expensive easily with it.

For commanders, organizer commanders are most useful as it lets you avoid loosing fights, chase down escaping enemy, and gather your armies to gang on a single enemy. Other than that, I prefer holy warriors of other religion since they gives 30% bonus (60% with 20 martial) regardless of unit and terrain types. Much better than other commanders that gives 20% bonus for certain units only or in certain terrain types only. Your Suomi holy warriors will beat any of your neighbor Tengri enemy. Powerful and no micromanagement.

 

[Rockphed]

I remember reading a reply to a thread here some time ago where the poster said he could stack morale and/or other combat bonuses in CK2 to pretty much destroy any army and never lose a battle, and I am a bit confused about that. I was unaware min-maxing was even possible in CK2 and would like someone to inform me on how to accomplish it. Thank you guys!

While previous posters have given solid advice, let me answer your question.

First, tactics are the primary driver of army effectiveness. Tactics are controlled by commander traits, commander culture, and unit composition. A welsh commander can take the "massive longbow volley" tactic if he has archers in his unit. If he also has enough heavy infantry he can also take the "shieldwall" tactic. Which one he chooses will depend a little on his stats (some tactics are more likely to be taken by geniuses or people with martial over 16), but is ultimately a random choice.

Second, some traits give straight bonuses to commander effectiveness. Battlefield traits (like aggressive) mostly give bonuses. Battlefield experience (which is gained by having a duel on the battlefield) gives +1% morale damage and defense and +1 PCS each time a commander gets it. Aggressive grants extra damage, but also increases damage received. The various "x commander" traits give bonuses to that type of troop.

Finally, artifacts can grant bonuses to troops. Lances give bonuses to pikes and mounted troops. Swords to light infantry and heavy foot troops (or is that axes).

So the guy in question had a commander with high martial, a good troop composition (light infantry and archers which are normally seen as garbage, but read on), several battlefield traits that gave bonuses to light infantry and archers, a bunch of traits that gave bonuses to morale defense and morale damage, and artifacts that upped his morale defense and morale damage. The high martial made the various bonuses from traits even larger. I think he had something like +100% to morale damage, +50% to archers, and +50% to light foot troops.

Now, it didn't make him invincible. If somebody had dropped a large enough army of english led archers on him he could have been destroyed. However, large enough would have been five to ten times his size. Alternatively, a battle where large armies of knights show up right as the previous group breaks and enters pursuit (which I think would change the battle stage from pursuit to melee when knights are awesome and archers are horrible) might have beaten his army.

 

[majdavlk]

Best thing to stack for better commanders are bloodlines, try to create a lot of those that give bonuses to units and make your army of those units, the best bloodline to do this with is probably the perfect Knight one, contrary to what the active condition of the bloodline says, it seems like everyone gets the combat bonus regardless of religion

 

[jwalche]

For commanders, the most powerful and frequently used ones are organizers. Get a strategist from China every year, and boot them right away until you get Way of the Tiger one. Fill your commanders with organizers, and hope for a couple of them to get the Tiger trait soon.

Organizer + Tiger = 50% movement speed. x 20 martial = 100%. Give them your +2 Axes and stackable Saints' foot at 5% each. I had one 130% movement speed commander (before nomadic buff). He can move between 10x larger enemies unstacked, and easily beat them individually or just storm their tribal holdings for 100% war score. When you declare to 10 realms and can send single stack of 5k to storm all their empty holdings before their 30k reaches your nomadic capital, no other battle bonus matters. Or when you can so easily defeat all their levies before they move out of their provinces.

And when you do have a fair fight, you can start moving after an enemy movement is already fixed, and still get there first to get that river crossing or hill defense bonus. The latest patch made those terrain bonus much larger than what it used to be. And it's hard to get advantage of it as the aggressive party since AI is pretty smart about it. But with 100+% movement speed you can easily get them.

And when you chase off the enemy's defeated main stack that's still quite large, you can move after seeing where it is headed, yet arrive there first and get defense bonus when it stops retreating. Instead of following it for the half of the world since retreating army has faster basic movement speed.

Organizer commanders are even more useful when you fight against nomadic enemies. You can send 1~2 stack of only 500 men each, completely avoid all fights and charge on their undefended nomadic capitals, and the war is won.

When I start weak and poor, I still try to squeeze 15 golds to invite an organizer commander of 12 martial. When I get a bit more gold, after first inviting one holy warrior of a different religion, is favor inviting more organizer commanders.

When you are small and your enemy is small, just one holy warrior makes all the difference. Often the enemy will have a weak commander on your right flank. Or not have army on there at all. Put your holy warrior on that right flank, and give him half or your men. While your left and middle flank is defending, the holy warrior will quickly finish off the enemy with 60% attack bonus (20 martial) + flanking bonus, on top of whatever tactics and terrain bonus.

If you are nomad, your neighbors will use LC+HR standard hordes that often fires tactics that make their LC powerless. Instead, you can delete those and use the cheapest pure LC (25 prestige each) units and have guaranteed Disorganized Harass which gives 100% attack on LC. Combined with a holy warrior, you can beat 2x larger neighbor horde easily. It allows early domination of your neighbors when you are all small and weak. And allows even a small time Khagan to amass 30k population rather quickly.

Siege leaders is not as important. You will get one or two without gold eventually. After getting Tiger strategist, you can get 3 Chinese siege engineers at a time. If you keep using them, one or two will eventually get standard siege leader trait. And you will soon see +200% siege leaders since siege bonus has higher percentage.

---------------
Summary: Focus on choosing place and enemy for your battles with organizer commanders. When you fight, focus on making your army 200%~300% stronger instead of 20~30% stronger.

 

[LeChacalPuant]

I have never heard anything about PCS affecting your skill as a commander leading troops. What's your source for this?

Holy Fury does make it easier to become a great commander because there are bloodlines that improve commander performance, and those effects are active even when the bloodline is inactive. So a pagan can benefit from the boosts from Christian saintly bloodlines, for example.

(This only applies to the commander boosts, not to any other benefits, which don't work when the bloodline is inactive.)

You can also hop between many warrior lodges and get all their commander traits, stacking some pretty major boosts that way.

Well, I just checked my facts. Actually, it's nowhere mentioned that PCS affect your army leading modifiers. Neither in wiki or in game. What is mentioned everywhere is that your martial skill affect those modifiers.
But since Holy Fury came out I noticed that a higher PCS meant far more efficience in battle leading. Anyway, this may be based on the fact that higher PCS usually mean higher martial score. But I'm pretty sure leading traits weren't so efficient combined to martial before Holy Fury.
Anyway, I'm still pretty sure that putting a character with five in martial, 60 in PCS and organizer increases movement speed more than a character with 10 in martial, 5 in PCS and organizer. And the reason why I think this is that in my current zunist run finding excellent commanders was really hard in the very beggining and I took a lot of characters with lame martial scores but pretty good PCS and they were doing great at increasing army speed and besieging according to their leading traits. They outrun abbassid armies with good martial commanders and traits that increase army speed. So maybe there's something I'm not seeing and PCS really doesn't affect army leading modifiers. But this is really doubtful imo.
As said, I won some desperate battles against huge armies with better quality than my troops, my martial wasn't this high (well, it was 20 something probably so still good ) but I had terrible PCS and other commanders too.
I need to do some testing, but whether I'm right or wrong on the PCS affecting combat modifiers, I'm absolutely certain that very high PCS even with no leading traits is just a guarantee to win most desperated battles.

 

[jwalche]

whether I'm right or wrong on the PCS affecting combat modifiers, I'm absolutely certain that very high PCS even with no leading traits is just a guarantee to win most desperated battles.

If you are wrong on the PCS affecting combat modifiers, how can you still be sure that it's a guarantee to win any battle?

 

[Wade Aznable]

This site has a wonderful calculator that allows you to run various scenarios to see what the best combos are.

Thanx for the link, it's really useful!
How does it work, exactly? I mean, what should I aim for? Highest ratio, highest effectiveness, specific tactics?
Thanx again!

 

[gedsaro]

If you are wrong on the PCS affecting combat modifiers, how can you still be sure that it's a guarantee to win any battle?

I think what he is saying is that since high pcs and high martial generally go together (there is often a correlation) he can look at pcs as a proxy for martial skill for battles.

Though I don't see why you would not just look at the martial directly, its not like it is hidden by the game, so may as well look at the actual source but meh.

 

[jwalche]

I think what he is saying is that since high pcs and high martial generally go together (there is often a correlation) he can look at pcs as a proxy for martial skill for battles.

Though I don't see why you would not just look at the martial directly, its not like it is hidden by the game, so may as well look at the actual source but meh.

But what he said is direct and clear. I don't think it can be interpreted as you said. - "I'm absolutely certain that very high PCS even with no leading traits is just a guarantee to win most desperated battles."

I think I know for sure that even very high martial is never a guarantee to win most desperate battles. In fact, high martial is never the most important factor in any battle.

 

[junassa]

I have never heard anything about PCS affecting your skill as a commander leading troops. What's your source for this?

Holy Fury does make it easier to become a great commander because there are bloodlines that improve commander performance, and those effects are active even when the bloodline is inactive. So a pagan can benefit from the boosts from Christian saintly bloodlines, for example.

(This only applies to the commander boosts, not to any other benefits, which don't work when the bloodline is inactive.)

I noticed that but I didn't know if it was just a display bug or not (for example the bloodline was inactive but % dmg vs. religious enemies was showing up in my combat modifiers).

 

[BuddyLove]

The only way PCS helps is that if you have a high PCS you can win the battlefield duels to strip them of their commander bonuses, and it lets you navigate warrior lodges and there's a strategy of dipping into different warrior lodges just long enough to make rank 2 and get the extra commander trait--

You can get upwards of 5 or 6 commander traits this way (2 normal ones, then join 4-5 different lodges for a few years each- only limit is nearby religions- seems like Germanic, suomensko, romuva, Slavic, Tengri is doable, but getting Bonn + Zunist would be difficult, and Aztec and Hellenic are only available in very rare circumstances).

 

[Rags17]

Thanx for the link, it's really useful!
How does it work, exactly? I mean, what should I aim for? Highest ratio, highest effectiveness, specific tactics?
Thanx again!

First off, just forget about getting "great" tactics out of levy, I haven't looked too closely but due to the mishmash of unit types I just don't think you can count on any consistent good tactics on those flanks.

Second, always try to have one pure retinue or horde flank with an excellent leader in charge. If you get a decent sized strike force (even if it is outnumbered) then the consistent high multiplier tactics should see it crush anything in its path, after that it should help roll up the rest of the enemy army.

Again, fire up the calculator and run a number of scenarios, the idea is not so much to minimax the outcome but to instead just have a good feel for the numbers so you know generally what makes for a good retinue/horde combo.

 

[Wade Aznable]

@Rags17
Thanx again!
Sure, I forgot to detail but yes, I'm talking retinue, here, the mishmash of troops one gets from levies, unless holdings are extremely specialized (and in any case I'm not sure if you can have a holding produce just heavy infantry and another one just cavalry, for instance), is just that: too mix matched to get good tactics!

Actually I'm aiming for a standing army of about 6000 men made only of retinue (it will be a looooong way!), to use with an organizer / way of the tiger general as a "special intervention task force" for emergencies, while I raise up my slower, and less specialized, levies, and I want to use the calculator to get the best possible combination of troop types.
I have somewhat an idea of how to read the numbers in the calculator you linked, and I presume the higher the better, but what I really would like to understand is how to read them "exactly" - I mean, an 1.25 efficiency is surely better than an 1.07 one, but I have no clue if 1.25 is good enough. Same thing for ratios and percentages in the other fields of the calculator.

Another thing that really surprised me is that pikemen seem to be stronger than heavy infantry! Is it true? Or did I misunderstand the numbers?

I hope I explained myself enough, english is not my first Language so maybe I was not clear enough!

Thanx again for your replies!

 

[Karlington]

Well, I just checked my facts. Actually, it's nowhere mentioned that PCS affect your army leading modifiers. Neither in wiki or in game. What is mentioned everywhere is that your martial skill affect those modifiers.
But since Holy Fury came out I noticed that a higher PCS meant far more efficience in battle leading. Anyway, this may be based on the fact that higher PCS usually mean higher martial score. But I'm pretty sure leading traits weren't so efficient combined to martial before Holy Fury.
Anyway, I'm still pretty sure that putting a character with five in martial, 60 in PCS and organizer increases movement speed more than a character with 10 in martial, 5 in PCS and organizer. And the reason why I think this is that in my current zunist run finding excellent commanders was really hard in the very beggining and I took a lot of characters with lame martial scores but pretty good PCS and they were doing great at increasing army speed and besieging according to their leading traits. They outrun abbassid armies with good martial commanders and traits that increase army speed. So maybe there's something I'm not seeing and PCS really doesn't affect army leading modifiers. But this is really doubtful imo.
As said, I won some desperate battles against huge armies with better quality than my troops, my martial wasn't this high (well, it was 20 something probably so still good ) but I had terrible PCS and other commanders too.
I need to do some testing, but whether I'm right or wrong on the PCS affecting combat modifiers, I'm absolutely certain that very high PCS even with no leading traits is just a guarantee to win most desperated battles.

Having checked, I can confirm that PCS does not help with leading battles - Martial and leader traits do.

Of course, as others have mentioned, you may end up in individual battles and then the PCS will help with that.

 

[jwalche]

Having checked, I can confirm that PCS does not help with leading battles - Martial and leader traits do.

Of course, as others have mentioned, you may end up in individual battles and then the PCS will help with that.

Except that, even if a commander is removed or killed during a battle, his ghost will still lead the battle to the end, with stats that he had at the start of the battle. So I doubt PCS will help even in those situations.

If you have 3 best commanders and have 5 battles that will start one after another, you can replace commanders from your counsel screen, put them back, and assign them for the next battle. That way, you can see the same same commander leading army in five different battles simultaneously.

 

[jwalche]

@Rags17
Another thing that really surprised me is that pikemen seem to be stronger than heavy infantry! Is it true? Or did I misunderstand the numbers?

They are similar. But pikemen is better for defense and worse for offense than HI.