That would require me to care enough to work around your bad choices
Infantry Combat ability vs discipline
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That would require me to care enough to work around your bad choices
"My" bad choices? You can't even take a moment to verify who's replied to you. With such laziness, no choice would be good for you
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I disagree, it was a bad choice to put up an illegible sign for non spoiler information."My" bad choices? You can't even take a moment to verify who's replied to you. With such laziness, no choice would be good for you
Egalite, Fraternite could have:
+1 heretic tolerance
and 5% morale recovery speed instead of heathens tolerance
discipline is better than CA overall
but 20 inf CA is more effective than just 5% discipline
i guess
Math : which number is greater 5% out of 0.5 or 5% out of 2.5 ? Answer everything. Of course its still 5% but actual value. As another person said : infantry is majority of your forces early in game (if you play western country you just use cavalry for flanking).
You're missing the point. The absolute value is obviously higher, but it's not the absolute value that matters, it's the relative number. Whether you're fighting 4 vs 4 or 40 vs 40, being 5% stronger matters equally, even though it's more in absolute terms in the second one.
Though you're right about early game vs late game; Discipline gets better the more you stack it, so it naturally becomes better late game when you combine it with other modifiers.
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This is a good point - it depends on how bloody the battles can get, which then depends somewhat on your morale advantage. A high-morale army can sacrifice an awful lot of infantry whilst the artillery pound away at the enemy. In the tech range 16-21 it's pretty close either way, assuming you fill most of the back row with artillery.
Then again, the nice thing about a high CA + high morale army is that it deals morale damage very quickly, and breaking the enemy quickly can spare you a lot more manpower than being able to grind out long fights more efficiently. The first couple of rounds of a battle have disproportionate importance, unless it's a really huge engagement with multiple waves of reinforcements on both sides.
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Since morale leads to more morale damage faster, a big morale lead can end fights fast too. In SP I would argue it's the easiest stat to gouge to win the casualty battle. Camp a few stacks near each other and pinch 2 on the AI same-day on flatland. Big morale lead = 80+ vs 50-60, sometimes without even a general. The AI can't handle this if your morale lead is big, there's a lot of stack wipes there.
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If anyone gets artillery combat ability it should be Russia. You know the guys whose entire military doctrine was based on artillery for the majority of the games timeline and still place a high emphasis on artillery. Versus France who had a famous artillery officer.
Although Paradoxes policy on arty combat ability is to restrict it to incredibly minor powers with horrible start positions like Athens or Smolensk. So if Russia got an artillery idea it would probably be a +1 leader fire.
Judging by observed results and the nation designer, leader fire is more valuable than 10% arty combat. That's applying extra damage for all unit types (though very marginal for cavalry) and directly impacts base casualties more. Apparently the developers agree since it's more expensive to add leader fire to a custom nation than 10% CA on arty.
It's generally not that easy to hit 6 fire, and an advantage in that round can be pretty devastating. Can 10% CA on just arty beat the base casualty advantage of +1 better fire stat?
Looking at the formula it looks like combat ability is insignificant compared to an extra pip. But I'm not sure how CAatk is calculated. If its true though it means offensive is objectively the best military idea group.
Edit: so it seems that while pips are what's important for casualties, combat ability is vastly more important for morale damage.
So it looks like yes combat ability is probably better if you want to win the battle but general pips come out ahead for wars of attrition
And Artillery CA is godly...even if no one has it
Louis XIV engraved all his cannons... He had 'final argument of kings' in latin on all his cannons.
anyways, combat ability combined with quantity and morale bonuses and mercs is a a killer early on (I'm looking at you, Sweden). If you manage to form italy early on for example, you are virtually unstoppable.
discipline gets better as a bonus then combat ability for infantry once artillery gets good fire modifiers... That is at ehhhhh... Let me think, probably tech 16.
So in 17th century taking quality and taking discipline will outweigh your infantry combat ability. But hey, why not both. Discipline artillery combined with combat ability infanty=pain.
I'm looking at you again , Sweden. They can get discipline and combat ability from national ideas pretty early on..
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5% more discipline is 5% more/less casualties, regardless of what the absolute value of tactics is. Even if absolute values mattered, CA would have the same problem, since fire and shock values also start very low and increase with tech.
That is true, but it still only makes infantry CA about half as powerful as discipline of the same value.
Let's do some math.
Early stage your army will be about 70-80% infantry and 20-30% cavalry. Let's suppose a stack of 15 inf + 5 cav.
20% inf. CA is something like to have 3 more infantry for attack purpose (not exactly but similar ).
5% discipline is something like to have 1 more unit for attack/defence purpose.
Clearly 20%CA is better than 5% Dis.
Middle/late stage your army will be about 50% infantry and 45% artillery. Let's suppose a stack of 20 inf + 2 cav. + 18 art.
20% inf. CA is something like to have 4 more infantry for damage calculation
5% discipline is something like to have 2 more unit for attack/defence purpose.
The difference here is less evident. also because artillery can bring a hell of havoc into the enemy stack. I'd say the benefits are the same.
Bottom line: +20% inf. CA is overall better than +5 Disc. during the whole game.
Early stage your army will be about 70-80% infantry and 20-30% cavalry. Let's suppose a stack of 15 inf + 5 cav.
20% inf. CA is something like to have 3 more infantry for attack purpose (not exactly but similar ).
5% discipline is something like to have 1 more unit for attack/defence purpose.
Clearly 20%CA is better than 5% Dis.
Middle/late stage your army will be about 50% infantry and 45% artillery. Let's suppose a stack of 20 inf + 2 cav. + 18 art.
20% inf. CA is something like to have 4 more infantry for damage calculation
5% discipline is something like to have 2 more unit for attack/defence purpose.
The difference here is less evident. also because artillery can bring a hell of havoc into the enemy stack. I'd say the benefits are the same.
Bottom line: +20% inf. CA is overall better than +5 Disc. during the whole game.
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And Artillery CA is godly...even if no one has it
Smolensk and Athen does have artillery CA bonus.
First let's deal with some misconceptions here -
Discipline increase is nice all the time, and it doesn't matter what is the base military tactics. Yes 5% from 3 will be extra 0.15 while from 0.5 will be 0.025, still because of how the tactics work, the actual difference in terms of casualties is the same. (You divide damage by 1.05*Tactics instead of 1*Tactics). Difference may be coming from the fact that, what I call real damage modifiers (RDM) is different at different tech levels, and on some tech levels casualties, are bigger or less when comparing regiment vs regiment on that basis
Combat ability affects only damage done by unit of said unit type. It doesn't DIRECTLY influence casualties suffered. Indirectly though, through dealing more damage than enemy, enemy regiments will be more depleted and as such deal less casualties, so it kinda does reduce casualties suffered (it's byproduct though, and only works on regiments you directly engage, flanking/and/or backrow artillery will be not getting damaged and as such they'll continue to deal unmitigated damage.
Once again, it doesn't matter if the 5% is coming from 0.75 or 3 mil tactics. 5% increase is 5%.
Case above.
Post about inf CA/discipline is in preparation. Expect wall of text.
Discipline increase is nice all the time, and it doesn't matter what is the base military tactics. Yes 5% from 3 will be extra 0.15 while from 0.5 will be 0.025, still because of how the tactics work, the actual difference in terms of casualties is the same. (You divide damage by 1.05*Tactics instead of 1*Tactics). Difference may be coming from the fact that, what I call real damage modifiers (RDM) is different at different tech levels, and on some tech levels casualties, are bigger or less when comparing regiment vs regiment on that basis
Combat ability affects only damage done by unit of said unit type. It doesn't DIRECTLY influence casualties suffered. Indirectly though, through dealing more damage than enemy, enemy regiments will be more depleted and as such deal less casualties, so it kinda does reduce casualties suffered (it's byproduct though, and only works on regiments you directly engage, flanking/and/or backrow artillery will be not getting damaged and as such they'll continue to deal unmitigated damage.
Once again, it doesn't matter if the 5% is coming from 0.75 or 3 mil tactics. 5% increase is 5%.
Case above.
Post about inf CA/discipline is in preparation. Expect wall of text.
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One thing people seem to forget is that unlike artillery, infantry takes casualty damage, so the infantry on the front wont be fighting at 100% during the entire battle. You might start at 50% infantry 45% artillery but after a while you will lose a lot of infantry (while artillery stays the same), and unless you can reinforce, infantry combat ability will count less and less.
It's not easy to account for that in your math but it's good to have in mind.
It's not easy to account for that in your math but it's good to have in mind.
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Some of us forget it, but at least one of us pointed it out earlier in the thread too
.Is that really so? AFAIK CA and base casualties are both increasing casualties, which both increase morale damage. AFAIK morale damage has a basic "time" component, a component based on casualties, and a component based on morale vs morale. I am not seeing how CA and higher base casualties from pips impact this differently.
I tried to figure out when doing my Mongol run if I should go for offensive +1 shock or aristocratic +10 cav CA. My conclusion was that if RNG hates you +1 shock is better since you would need a 10 for CA to be better. Btw all this assumes a full cav army at mil tech 3, as the units get more pips this changes if I read the formula correctly.
Huh... That's weird then, why doesn't the nation who best used cannons during the period (by a mile) have cannon CA? I mean, yeah, it'd make France even more powerful, but still.
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