Ideal Army Composition?

[GAGA Extrem]

Early game, at least until LT 13:
Mostly pure CAV. If you are in a geographic situation with lots of mountains and hills, you might want to consider a mixed approach.

Later: 50-60% INF, 50-40% ART and 2-4 CAV as flankers.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

ART can shoot from the second row (w/ 1/2 of it's regular fire attack), giving you maximum firepower per frontage. In addition, 1/2 of the ART defence value is given to the unit in front of it.

 

[ForzaA]

Used to be primarily split inf (10k) and cav (12k) type of player, with some mixed armies thrown in for areas in which I couldn't "afford", for one reason or another, to have both..
But since cavalry lost it's speed advantage, I've been experimenting with various setups of mixed stacks.. For now settled on 4cav-6inf; seldomly get to mid- or lategame, so I haven't really developed a prefence for those.. The few times I do get there, I've mostly up-scaled my armies by adding 4art-1inf (for some reason, I like multiples of 5k as standard size)

 

[Trin Tragula]

I've actually started to throw some artillery into my stacks now that they don't reduce speed anymore (at least I don't think they do). Helps greatly with seiges and I'm also thinking it might affect the new mythical tactics value that rewards you for balanced force compositions (or atleast I had a lot of more losses before i started to throw in some artillery but I can't be sure the difference was due to this as the influence of "tactics" isn't shown anywhere).

I suppose the tactics boni are in the game files but I haven't been poking around in those particular files yet (been getting very acquainted with the new history and decision files though).

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I've actually started to throw some artillery into my stacks now that they don't reduce speed anymore (at least I don't think they do).

Unfortunatly, ART is still much slower than INF/CAV.

1.0 #MDEF_INFANTRY_SPEED_,
1.0 #_MDEF_CAVALRY_SPEED_,
0.75 #_MDEF_ARTILLERY_SPEED_,

Improving ART speed to 0.8 wouldn't have been bad, esp. with the CAV speed nerf.

I suppose the tactics boni are in the game files but I haven't been poking around in those particular files yet (been getting very acquainted with the new history and decision files though).

If you find anything, let me know. I looked through commons, but failed to find it. Maybe it's in the .exe

 

[Trin Tragula]

Unfortunatly, ART is still much slower than INF/CAV.
[...]
Improving ART speed to 0.8 wouldn't have been bad, esp. with the CAV speed nerf.

Actually for the same reasons that cav and inf don't differ in march speed now I'd say artillery shouldn't either. There are loads of heavy stuff being moved around with armies anyway and an army entirely without artillery would be very unusual for most of the game period.

If you find anything, let me know. I looked through commons, but failed to find it. Maybe it's in the .exe

Was just a guess though but I will look around for it. I wish there was some way to see in the game what bonuses/maluses affected battles in regards to the new tactics values. Everything else is so very visible so it seems a bit strange to have this so hidden.
I did experience a big difference when I included the cannons, but I was at somewhat high tech too so it might just've been the new fire phase doing it's thing (unrelated but: isnt't tech a lot slower now? It's 1700 in my game and europe is around 30 in all techs, which is the suggested tech for 1650, this goes for all nations in europe).

 

[GAGA Extrem]

In that vein, perhaps a CAV speed of 1.2 would be a decent balance the other way? I think that may be one of the first changes I make, just to see how it plays out, after a good time using the system "as is" for a base line.

T

The problem with speed 1.2 is that CAV-only armies will outrun retreating stacks again. Now take into account that (1) the terrain penatlies are more severe - giving the retreating units even less chance to win or even tie the next battle and (2) with the new combat system (morale defeat in the first 12 days = army destroyed), the first retreat of an army - even asap after 12 days - will mean unavoidable destruction.
With this I feat battles would become even more deceicive. And the AI, which usually doesn't play the "all CAV" strategy will perform even worse on the battlefield...

Maybe this was the very reason why they reduced CAV speed to 1.0.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

With the default HT ruleset, I try to make my armies roughly one-third cavalry. You always want more infantry in the army now - after some early experimentation with old-style all-cavalry armies, I realized that "tactics" is a subtle bonus that's making a huge difference in battles.

Is there any way to get some numbers about tactics?
Because: When my CAV is fighting without terrain penalties, they usually chew up any force up to 2 times their size... As for me, I have yet to notice any effect of "tactics" in battle...o
...maybe it's time / LT related?

edit: Aha, found an enty @ land_tech.txt - tactics increases from 0.5 up to 4 during the gameframe. Still - whats the exact effect? Maybe a defensive dice roll bonus?