How to win wars

[Pellaken]

I tried a game as Austria and managed to get into a war rather quickly with Burgundy. I lost hardcore even with the HRE behind me.
So then I tried a game as Burgundy and managed to get dragged into a war with Austria, which I lost hardcore.

So what's the secret to winning wars?

 

[Demusch]

Euhm, there's quite a list actually...
Try fighting on the defensive, especially in mountain regions
Make sure you have a (good) general
Don't fall behind in military tech
Keep a healthy manpower pool
Military ideas where you can fit them in
More allies

etc etc

 

[londoner247]

Your primary objective is to destroy the enemy's troops so that you have freedom of movement. Once you've done that you can leave small sieges in place in every province you can cover and a small army to roam around the unsieged provinces killing any new recruits your enemy trains.

For winning individual battles, tech level differences, ideas, generals and terrain can make massive differences so look at these factors to see if you are making some bad choices.

 

[americanu197]

MOAR ARTILLERY at least half your force

 

[Demusch]

half is quite a bit, about 1/3 seems to be a good number (especially when factoring in that you lose infantry a lot faster than artillery). Still, given his story, i doubt that he's even at lvl 7 mil tech just yet

 

[TheBloke]

MOAR ARTILLERY at least half your force

This is a big one. People often think they need 3 or 4 artillery per stack. In fact you want as many as you have infantry.

At Military Technology level 8-9, which is around the year 1500-1510, a decent stack (supply limits permitting), would be: 10 infantry, 6 cavalry, 10 artillery.

That's because your combat width is 10 at that point, so you want to fill your rows with infantry and artillery, and have a bit of cavalry for the flanks. You could go higher than 10/6/10, to give some reserves to fill up the ranks as troops get skewered. But definitely not less.

 

[TheBloke]

Some factors:

• Pick the right war.
  • ​Very basic. Don't fight a war you can't win. But more than that, pick a war you can win.
  • Want to fight Burgundy, but can't fight Burgundy AND Austria?
    • Wait until Burgundy attacks someone else; if they don't bring in Austria, then boost relations with the defender to +100, then Enforce Peace on Burgundy. This will inject you into the existing war, against Burgundy, without Austria. And you can see specifically whom you are going to fight before you Enforce - no Alliance Chain surprises.
  • Another way:
    • Want to fight SmallOPM, without them calling in ally Austria? Don't DOW SmallOPM. See who else they are allied to, and DOW them instead.
    • If they're allied to AnotherSmallNation, who has no other allies, DOW them instead. As long as AnotherSmallNation remains WL, they will call in SmallOPM, but no-one else.
    • If possible, pick a CB to DOW on that won't allow WL change at all.
• Morale. What's your morale? What's their morale? Morale is king.
  • The Military Idea Group Defensive is hugely recommended, for its +25% morale bonus.
    • Most of your AI enemies will have it, so you're at a big disadvantage if you don't.
  • Get the Military Advisor who gives +10% morale.
  • Having high Prestige and high Army Tradition also help a lot.
    • Consider fighting a bunch of small, easy wars before a big, difficult one: to boost both your Army Tradition and your Prestige.
• Military Technology
  • Never let yourself fall behind.
  • Check your enemy's, and their allies, before starting a war. Don't go into it unless you're on a par with tech.
• Military Ideas​
  • Get a military idea as your first or second idea group.
  • As I mentioned in my first point, you'll probably want to get Defensive first.
  • Read this thread for more thoughts: Relative strength of different Military Ideas.
• Stack make-up / combat width / artillery
  • I covered this in my post above.
  • In brief: Have at least as many infantry and artillery as your combat width. Have 4-8 cavalry as well, but not much more.
• Generals - are you assigning a good leader to each stack? Your AI enemy certainly is.
  • If you only have one good leader, consider making one good stack and trying to use that as much as possible.
  • Don't waste troops on a leaderless or very-poor leader stack.
• Terrain - keep an eye on the terrain for each province. Attack only when favourable. If need be, wait to be attacked.
  • An attacker can get up to a -4 penalty, if he attacks into mountains which also have a river crossing.
  • Don't even consider doing this unless you heavily outnumber the enemy, and have good morale and good leader.
  • You can often bait the AI into attacking you when the terrain is against him. Manoeuvre a stack to avoid the enemy and end up sieging one of their mountain provinces. Leave it there. Either you win the siege, and get WS, or else he comes attacks you, and you massacre him even when other factors are against you.
• Battle management / rotating stacks
  • Consider making two stacks, and rotating them in battle.
  • Attack the enemy with stack 1. Keep a close eye on the battle.
  • Before morale reaches 50%, move your second stack into the battle as well.
  • As soon as it arrives, move your first stack out again.
  • Repeat once the first stack has regained morale.
  • Keep an eye out for other enemy stacks that could engage your backup stack, especially if you can't give it a good leader.

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

This is a big one. People often think they need 3 or 4 artillery per stack. In fact you want as many as you have infantry.

At Military Technology level 8-9, which is around the year 1500-1510, a decent stack (supply limits permitting), would be: 10 infantry, 6 cavalry, 10 artillery.

That's because your combat width is 10 at that point, so you want to fill your rows with infantry and artillery, and have a bit of cavalry for the flanks. You could go higher than 10/6/10, to give some reserves to fill up the ranks as troops get skewered. But definitely not less.

Actually your combat width is 25 there, there's also a 15 base width

Usually I base my stacksize almost entirely on supplylimits. But then I bring both (or more) my hunterstacks together in a big battle. My general ratio is 4/1/3 as the infantry will take almost all the damage so you want a few more. I don't like having equal amounts because then you're going to have to reinforce with more infantry every battle anyway, might as well send them along in the first place.

 

[TheBloke]

Actually your combat width is 25 there, there's also a 15 base width

Usually I base my stacksize almost entirely on supplylimits. But then I bring both (or more) my hunterstacks together in a big battle. My general ratio is 4/1/3 as the infantry will take almost all the damage so you want a few more. I don't like having equal amounts because then you're going to have to reinforce with more infantry every battle anyway, might as well send them along in the first place.

Oh yeah

Yeah, say 12/6/10 might be good, and fits into most provinces. Your ratio implies lower cavalry, but I'm not sure I'd go below 6 in most cases. I've not tested this particularly thoroughly. I just think "three on each flank".

This doesn't maximise combat width even at Tech 8, but to do that with ample artillery is going to blow most any supply limit. But yeah I often end up combining two such stacks at some point anyway, certainly once they're in battle and attrition doesn't apply for a while.

I don't get too worried about supply limits. Within reason of course. I'd far rather take 1% attrition here and there, but then win my battles, than the other way around. The enemy is going to do more harm than attrition will, if my stack isn't optimal. Of course, I say this as someone who always seems to have ample Manpower, so it's not universal.

A lot of attrition management goes out the window when you have vassals. If you have big manpower problems and are suffering from attrition, then you might need to always build smaller stacks, which are more numerous. Of course you end up with a decent stack anyway because the vassal is complementing it. This might also save you a general to use elsewhere, if they have brought a good one (of if they've brought a monarch, who will always get used regardless of how good he is! )

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

Oh yeah

Yeah, say 12/6/10 might be good, and fits into most provinces. Your ratio implies lower cavalry, but I'm not sure I'd go below 6 in most cases. I've not tested this particularly thoroughly. I just think "three on each flank".

Yeah well, if I'm flanking I don't really need more flanking since I'll win the battle easily anyway, if I'm not flanking I don't really want any cavalry at all :d
But also, by military tech 10 I'll generally be running around with at least 2 16/4/12 stacks, which actually gives a bit too much cavalry when they get together for the big battles.

Mostly I just want a ratio that will always work and splits up nicely, so I use 4/1/3 x 2^n the whole game to make it easier for myself :d

 

[Anthropoid]

TheBloke has pretty well written the bible for how to win wars up there (condensed version). The only thing I could add to that that he doesn't seem to have covered is: micromanage your stacks _intensively_. It is hard to sum up in a few words what that means, but put it this way: the AI 'thinks' much faster than you. He looks at everything he can see every couple milliseconds and when he sees a shift in the numbers he acts according (moves, or doesn't move). While he has the advantage in deeply 'understanding' the underlying maths of combat and having the quantitative predictive power of well . . . of a computer, You have the advantage in having control of the pause button and of being an unpredictable, unconventional and innovative human. Even if you have neglected any of the strategic factors described above you can to a considerable degree compensate by using your 'operational' war fighting advantage and micro-managing your stacks.

 

[dstarsboy]

This is just a few tips, usually works for me most of the time.

Diplo
- If you have a military idea chosen, only ever invest in it if you're "ahead" on the tech tree. If you're not ahead, then buy the tech first until you get ahead. This should also be done with Administrative ideas (so you can unlock more ideas groups faster). As for Diplo ideas, if you're not a naval power (like Austria or Burgundy) then just blow through the ideas as they pop up.
- Get allies... and get big ones. Choose a huge country that's a historically friendly neighbor or the next big country after your big neighbor. Never ally with a big neighbor country if you aren't historically friends (aka, like Poland and Lith or Austria and Hungary). For example, France should probably ally with Aragon (historically friendly neighbor), Hungary (one country past neighbor HRE), Denmark (one country past neighbor HRE) and Portugal (one country past neighbor spain). You only need a couple of big allies but you can usually keep these for a huge bulk of the game if you follow the format above. You should always be checking their relations and improving it as needed.
- The Military Defensive Idea group should be one of the first things you snag because of the battle plan below

Your Army
- You should have 2-3 medium sized stacks of troops sitting around (even 12 troops each is more than enough early game).
- A few medium sized stacks should win you most wars even late game because you don't want to blow your manpower pool in the first 3 months of a war by having monstrous blobs, especially since your war allies are blobaholics and just eat your manpower alive with attrition.
- Your troop build up should be something like 50% infantry, 25% cav and 25% artillery. Don't neglect artillery and cav because they're expensive, they are very good.
- Keep your stack troop count an even number, if you can. Like 12, 16, 20 each or something. This is for the sieging note below.
- Buy generals for your stacks when war breaks out, even if it means a military point penalty it's worth it.

Battles
- Battle defensively only. Whoever starts the attack "usually" gets hit with an attack penalty.
- When war breaks out simply get your stacks and don't carpet siege but simply stand there sieging a close group of enemy provinces and wait.
- Let them mess around (even if they're carpet sieging you) and do whatever they want and eventually they're create a big stack and attack one of your stacks.
- Once they attack, jump into the battle with your other neighboring stack(s). Remember, you're not trying to conquer territories at this point, you want to kill off their manpower. With the attack penalty + troop count, you should win the battle.
- Then rinse and repeat. Do this until you're confident that you've widdled down most of their major stacks then go on the "wipe them out" offensive, only initiating battles if you have a huge troop count advantage. If not, go back to doing the siege/wait routine.
- Once you've actually wiped most of their major stacks, only then should you start carpet sieging to win the war.
- Don't carpet siege using the button to "break off a piece of stack for the siege". Do it using the "split stack in half" button. This avoids getting the cavalry ratio penalty and decreasing your fighting power. I usually only split in half ONCE, it lets me siege twice the provinces while still keeping my troops very safe. If I know I can cover 100% of their provinces, I'll split more times.
- Always keep your troops sieging nearby one another and always make jumping into any new defensive (aka, attack penalty for them) battles that pop up a priority above completing the siege.
- Try to siege the war leader's weak allies first and make separate treaties with each one, save the war leader for last. This gets your max rewards.
- Keep your stability up to +1 and kill off War Exhaustion whenever you can, however, try to be super stingy with Diplo power during a war (aka, don't buy Diplo techs and ideas that come up until after the war). You need this for negotiating.

 

[dstarsboy]

This is a big one. People often think they need 3 or 4 artillery per stack. In fact you want as many as you have infantry.

At Military Technology level 8-9, which is around the year 1500-1510, a decent stack (supply limits permitting), would be: 10 infantry, 6 cavalry, 10 artillery.

That's because your combat width is 10 at that point, so you want to fill your rows with infantry and artillery, and have a bit of cavalry for the flanks. You could go higher than 10/6/10, to give some reserves to fill up the ranks as troops get skewered. But definitely not less.

I always want to try this route but it's extremely expensive until late game and by then you're steamrolling most anyways. Didn't they just patch in a huge boost to Cavalry?

 

[Anthropoid]

This is just a few tips, usually works for me most of the time.

Diplo
- If you have a military idea chosen, only ever invest in it if you're "ahead" on the tech tree. If you're not ahead, then buy the tech first until you get ahead. This should also be done with Administrative ideas (so you can unlock more ideas groups faster). As for Diplo ideas, if you're not a naval power (like Austria or Burgundy) then just blow through the ideas as they pop up.
- Get allies... and get big ones. Choose a huge country that's a historically friendly neighbor or the next big country after your big neighbor. Never ally with a big neighbor country if you aren't historically friends (aka, like Poland and Lith or Austria and Hungary). For example, France should probably ally with Aragon (historically friendly neighbor), Hungary (one country past neighbor HRE), Denmark (one country past neighbor HRE) and Portugal (one country past neighbor spain). You only need a couple of big allies but you can usually keep these for a huge bulk of the game if you follow the format above. You should always be checking their relations and improving it as needed.
- The Military Defensive Idea group should be one of the first things you snag because of the battle plan below

Your Army
- You should have 2-3 medium sized stacks of troops sitting around (even 12 troops each is more than enough early game).
- A few medium sized stacks should win you most wars even late game because you don't want to blow your manpower pool in the first 3 months of a war by having monstrous blobs, especially since your war allies are blobaholics and just eat your manpower alive with attrition.
- Your troop build up should be something like 50% infantry, 25% cav and 25% artillery. Don't neglect artillery and cav because they're expensive, they are very good.
- Keep your stack troop count an even number, if you can. Like 12, 16, 20 each or something. This is for the sieging note below.
- Buy generals for your stacks when war breaks out, even if it means a military point penalty it's worth it.

Battles
- Battle defensively only. Whoever starts the attack "usually" gets hit with an attack penalty.
- When war breaks out simply get your stacks and don't carpet siege but simply stand there sieging a close group of enemy provinces and wait.
- Let them mess around (even if they're carpet sieging you) and do whatever they want and eventually they're create a big stack and attack one of your stacks.
- Once they attack, jump into the battle with your other neighboring stack(s). Remember, you're not trying to conquer territories at this point, you want to kill off their manpower. With the attack penalty + troop count, you should win the battle.
- Then rinse and repeat. Do this until you're confident that you've widdled down most of their major stacks then go on the "wipe them out" offensive, only initiating battles if you have a huge troop count advantage. If not, go back to doing the siege/wait routine.
- Once you've actually wiped most of their major stacks, only then should you start carpet sieging to win the war.
- Don't carpet siege using the button to "break off a piece of stack for the siege". Do it using the "split stack in half" button. This avoids getting the cavalry ratio penalty and decreasing your fighting power. I usually only split in half ONCE, it lets me siege twice the provinces while still keeping my troops very safe. If I know I can cover 100% of their provinces, I'll split more times.
- Always keep your troops sieging nearby one another and always make jumping into any new defensive (aka, attack penalty for them) battles that pop up a priority above completing the siege.
- Try to siege the war leader's weak allies first and make separate treaties with each one, save the war leader for last. This gets your max rewards.
- Keep your stability up to +1 and kill off War Exhaustion whenever you can, however, try to be super stingy with Diplo power during a war (aka, don't buy Diplo techs and ideas that come up until after the war). You need this for negotiating.

Yep! +1 that is how you do it.

 

[unmerged(465279)]

Yep! +1 that is how you do it.

I like the tip on a bunch of armies close together ready to pounce and get the -attack modifier for the enemy. I usually carpet siege with single regiments and use my doomstack to protect them, thats probably a bit faster but it does cost a lot of manpower.

 

[Buckley]

Tons o good advice here already. My 2 cents:

1. Be conservative, meaning... don't go chasing armies and launching yourself into every battle. Maneuver and bait. Insist on the ground you will fight. Best to defend on ground of your choosing than attack. Keep in mind that even as late as late 19th century warfare it was a rule of thumb that attackers need 2:1 manpower to have a chance of winning.

2. Even more general... be strategic about getting into war in the first place. Resist entangling alliances unless you have to have the protection. (As Burgundy or Austria I'm not sure that's possible... but still likely applies. Seems to me if you aren't careful as either of those things can spiral out of control very quickly.)

3. Bait by figuring out travel times from province to province and tricking the AI into attacking a small force that a larger one can respond to rapidly. Pin them into battle then pounce.

Remember Sun Tzu... the outcome of a battle is usually determined before it's ever fought...

 

[axzhang]

No one added using mercs. Especially as Burgundy (and pretty much as any decently sized country), I use mercs well into the 1600s. Use only infantry though to cover your combat width.

Infantry mercs are for dying and not impacting your most precious resource, manpower. Use your regular troops in cav/artillery to inflict the majority of damage.

Also a general tip - if manpower is scarce, click on the "consolidate" regiments button in your army. Non-full strength armies have severe penalties that will make you lose the battle.

 

[unmerged(184583)]

One thing I see missing is simply; have more men.

OP seemed to be having early troubles, before you can even build cannon. Day 1, you have full maintenance, have a decent general, and have more men, you will win almost guaranteed. The only caveat i would say is if the numbers are close, and they have good terrain, but you will eventually get the feel of what will win and what will likely be mince meat.

Keep all you men together until you kill their doomstacks, then only then split them all up and siege away. Watch the war panel to see how many armies they have left to see if it is safe to start the siege, if they are large and have lots of fog of war.

 

[Anthropoid]

One more comment on stack composition. I agree that more arty is better, and that up to 6 cav is good . . . in theory.

But in practice, outside of a combat province, running around a stack with that 'ideal' composition is often not optimum in terms of (a) supply limit; and (b) manpower / unit limit / geographic constraints. While the ratios may stay similar, I find I change my stack compositions considerably from early, to middle to late game as supply bonuses go up.

As an example of the sorts of things to think about: in early 1540s France still has one province that has a supply limit of 22 (Auvergne). This as far as I can tell is the lowest supply province in France. I don't really want any of my stacks to have more than 22. . . sure, sure, when they get to a strategic spot where the supply limit is higher, or when a combat occurs, I'll move in two, three, even four stacks all into the same stack. But in terms of organizational units "divisions" or "corps" or whatever they are supposed to be, I like to keep them right at the minimum supply limit for my home country.

Given that, I find that a 12/2/8 stack is a pretty good compromise. 12 is still woefully below combat width in 1545, but by bringing two such stacks into the same combat you have 24/4/16 and three of them 36/6/24.

If memory serves, the maximum number of cav that will actually deploy on the front row is 6 and 36 infantry is enough to cover the combat width for most of the game I think. 24 arty is not a 1:1 infantry to arty ratio, but then I don't think that is realistic in practice, both because of build cost, maintenance cost, supply weight (arty "weighs" more) and the need to always have the full combat width covered with infantry + cav on flanks.

 

[dstarsboy]

No one added using mercs. Especially as Burgundy (and pretty much as any decently sized country), I use mercs well into the 1600s. Use only infantry though to cover your combat width.

Infantry mercs are for dying and not impacting your most precious resource, manpower. Use your regular troops in cav/artillery to inflict the majority of damage.

Also a general tip - if manpower is scarce, click on the "consolidate" regiments button in your army. Non-full strength armies have severe penalties that will make you lose the battle.

Another good thing about mercs is that they recover their forces more quickly than your standing army does.

I NEVER consolidate forces, it's insanely expensive to rebuild your army after the war and the only thing you get out of it is a boost in a few upcoming battles. Definitely not worth it.

If my manpower gets into the 100s and I haven't killed off their stacks yet, I'm pretty much calling for any peace I can get because the war becomes very ugly at that point.