Ideal army for 1.8 for the different tech groups

[Ame]

1.7 and before I thought of it as 2 cavalry and everything else infantry and artillery but cavalry look a lot better so what is the best army for the current patch?

For clarification

Is cavalry useful?

How many cavalry is too many if it is?

For a non-western nation is it wiser to try to swarm with infantry and artillery or should cavalry become a major part of the plan now"

 

[Zakath]

Depends. I still prefer my armies to be more or less the same as before as a western nation.

Ideally:
2-6 cavalry regiments
(Combat width - cavalry) infantry regiments
Combat width artillery regiments

In practice a 20 stack will tend to be
4 cavalry, 8 infantry, 8 artillery

A 40 stack will tend to be
4 cav, 20 inf, 16 art

This depends a bit on tech level, income, combat bonus for inf/cav etc. As a poor nation I may not be able to afford that art count, while as a low tech level I may have more cavalry compared to infantry.

 

[Clownie]

I do the same as Zakath, except I never err from 4 cavalry, and I fill the front line with more infantry so the stack doesn't immediately perform suboptimally when combat starts and the infantry start dying.

As muslim nations, I sometimes have a mainly cavalry army. As a horde, I always have 100% cavalry until late-midgame, when I fill the cavalry armies with cannons.

 

[Rinso]

12(14) inf - 4(2) cav - 8 art. This base armies can spit for siege or join together for main battles easily. I think that inf to art ratio must be 3:2 because of casualties. You may form an ideal army with inf-art ratio 1:1, but you always need to keep it at full men.
As for cavarly, its cool but too expensive for that cost. So it could become main force of your armies only if you have good traditions (like Polish ones) and aristocracy.

 

[oldroad]

As soon as I can build artillery, I set up a template to build 2 infantry and 2 artillery. I'll add a cavalry for every one of these builds up to 8 cavalry in the early game and reducing it to four when fire begins to out damage shock. So early game I aim for 12I 6-8C 12A for my main battle stacks, which, by the time fire damage becomes potent, become 12I 4C 12A. Two or three of these stack operate no more than two provinces from the others, and can deter a French death stack from blowing through the lines, especially of allies and vassals are in the area to pile on. Behind these stacks I'll have another stack or two with a 2 to 1 ratio of infantry to artillery to begin a carpet siege behind the army hunters. As fortification levels increase, the amount of artillery also increases to speed up the siege. Having NIs and Ideas that give bonuses to cavalry would of course change how much you use them

 

[ChildeR]

Depends on NIs, chosen groups and tech level. Early on you probably want to keep cavalry near the limit even as a generic western, unless you are poor enough that you can't even hit your FL. Especially so if you take aristocratic ideas. Mid-late game the 4-8 cavalry per army rule starts to hold true, with more cavalry better later due to improved maneuver.

OTOH, as e.g. Poland you want about 50-50 infantry-cavalry ratio through the whole game.

I don't really bother with optimizing it beyond the early game though. Later on I just create conveniently sized small groups like 4/2/6 and stack a bunch of them as needed.

 

[Camtheman]

For Western I usually do:

Infantry = Combat Width minus Cavalry
Artillery = Infantry.

So for a combat width of 21, I'd have 17 infantry, 4 cavalry, and 21 artillery. The cavalry flank, infantry soak up damage, and the artillery go nuts doing damage, in the 2nd row.

I really like the CK2 combat system better tbh, it's more clear and sets up the flanks for you.

Not sure how the other techs work, would like more clarification on that.

 

[Orosius]

I use classic 8-4-8 compo for 20 stack. Not optimal (I could add 4 artillery) but if i have some infantry dying, my artillery don't take too much dmg.