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Is army professionalism worth it in a WC?
- Thread starter Reman
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Info from dev diaries is usually not final and PDX regurarly include disclaimers that everything shown is WIP.
I did WC + One faith as Coptomans last patch without using a single merc. It's clearly doable (even if there were some nerfs to Ottos I think it's possible). Going to try to do it as France this patch. The issue I see is that drilling effects depends on your force limit, and a general is also needed. I don't see how to keep a general for drilling since the general limit didn't change at all, and even if I manage to get one for it, it will not raise pro really fast.
Drilling seems like a bad investment outside of fringe cases. If you're fighting a war that isnt completely trivial your generals and most of your armies have better things to do. If you're not at war you should usually lower maintenance - unless you're supressing rebels in which case drilling armies is fine, but youll need to do it for years for a noticeable effect that then is removed completely with one major battle. The army prof gain is also abysmal unless you're really small.
Professionalism boni are decent but not game-changing, its nothing like absolutism where you prepare yourself in advance to max it asap. The kicker is the ability to pay army prof to gain manpower. You don't need to drill to get it though, there are a bunch of events that grant it, and you get 1% for each general you recruit. I haven't done the math but rerolling for better generals is now a much better short-term gain for excess mil power than developing - you pay 250mil for 25% of your max manpower instantly.
I'm sure someone will do the math on the whole money to bodies conversion on upgrading mil advisors so you can boost army prof to then slacken standards for manpower versus just buying more mercs. considering you'll end up with some sick generals i think theres potential, particularly after you get to 80 army prof for half price generals.
Professionalism boni are decent but not game-changing, its nothing like absolutism where you prepare yourself in advance to max it asap. The kicker is the ability to pay army prof to gain manpower. You don't need to drill to get it though, there are a bunch of events that grant it, and you get 1% for each general you recruit. I haven't done the math but rerolling for better generals is now a much better short-term gain for excess mil power than developing - you pay 250mil for 25% of your max manpower instantly.
I'm sure someone will do the math on the whole money to bodies conversion on upgrading mil advisors so you can boost army prof to then slacken standards for manpower versus just buying more mercs. considering you'll end up with some sick generals i think theres potential, particularly after you get to 80 army prof for half price generals.
Drilling is okayish if your army isn't doing anything else and you know you won't be DoWed. If you can afford to keep it maintained at least. If you weren't going to put maintenance down anyway and it's safe to drill, then go for it. I wouldn't mind seeing the scaling for general pip increase chance changed from force limit to combat width, though. If he's drilling a full sized army he should get full benefit regardless of your FL.
That professionalism bar - that is like a super-sized stash of manpower. It certainly gives you a powerful way to not use mercs and not run out of manpower. If you start as a major then building professionalism is viable well into the game, even all the way. I strongly suspect that keeping it floored and using mass mercs is more efficient, though.
I suspect that once I hit 80 and can buy 2 years of manpower for 125 MIL I'll manage the late stage of a WC just fine. I'm playing tallish for the early phase which probably synergises well with building professionalism
That professionalism bar - that is like a super-sized stash of manpower. It certainly gives you a powerful way to not use mercs and not run out of manpower. If you start as a major then building professionalism is viable well into the game, even all the way. I strongly suspect that keeping it floored and using mass mercs is more efficient, though.
I suspect that once I hit 80 and can buy 2 years of manpower for 125 MIL I'll manage the late stage of a WC just fine. I'm playing tallish for the early phase which probably synergises well with building professionalism
Nope.
not when you're desperate with manpower like starting in Arabia, and starts poor.
And the standing bonus itself is only 10% CA for your army. meh.
not when you're desperate with manpower like starting in Arabia, and starts poor.
And the standing bonus itself is only 10% CA for your army. meh.
You'll struggle a lot more with the gimpy conversion power than you will with manpower if you're decent with war micro to limit manpower losses, especially because subjects will be quite trash at conversions.
The Islamic mechanics are respectable in other ways but pretty weak for converting now.
Yeah, that's my concern too. On the other hand, I wonder how propagate religion and exploit development will help with conversions.
But the base missionary strength for Muslim religion is the same pre and post-patch, no?
Base strength is the same for every religion. It's decisions and triggered modifiers that make the difference.
1.23 Sunni will consistently have 4% less missionary strength than 1.22 Sunni, due to legalism/mysticism flipping piety and the removal of one of the most typical +1% ruler-stat decisions.
Basically, picture yourself using generic animist conversions before tech 8, except with more missionaries. Your subjects will not get any sources of conversion strength aside religious and cathedrals you build for them. Going religious does give you an extra 2% vs heretics, which matters since Islam is difficult to convert.
It's doable but Christianity and even Buddhism are better one faith candidates this patch. On the bright side, if you run max legalism you save 1200 ADM over 20 techs, which is comparable to what you'd save by coring 1200 development directly if using the Coptic 10%, before factoring dhimmi.
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I don't think drilling is ever really worth doing. Professionalism has some decent bonuses, but drilling wears off really fast. I played a couple of games and had no problem getting my professionalism pretty high/maxed by mid-game through events alone. I never drilled but I still easily outpaced the AI in terms of professionalism. As long as you don't use it for manpower it's pretty easy to max out. Using mercenaries doesn't drop it by too much, so you're good as long as you don't constantly spam mercs and delete them after every single war. In fact, the "Cruelty of Mercenaries" event even has an option giving professionalism, so using mercs can actually help raise it.
^ At minimum, you want to drill as OPM type positions between wars unless you're really hurting for cash badly. Eventually you're in war, fighting rebels, or likely both constantly so it stops being relevant.
Like you say OP, starting as an OPM you can quickly build up professionalism as you're more likely to be at peace for longer in the first 100yrs. I got it over 50 as Karaman myself in that timeframe.
As Mamluks however I've been able to throw my weight around a lot more and I've barely been at peace at all in the first 25 years.
On this Mamluk run I'm hoping to get to a point where I can leave half my FL drilling most of the time.
It will take a bit more micro-ing compared to my normal playstyle (where I throw 3 times the soldiers into a war than would really be necessary).
As Mamluks however I've been able to throw my weight around a lot more and I've barely been at peace at all in the first 25 years.
On this Mamluk run I'm hoping to get to a point where I can leave half my FL drilling most of the time.
It will take a bit more micro-ing compared to my normal playstyle (where I throw 3 times the soldiers into a war than would really be necessary).
Considering most of your expansion in a WC is done later in the game, the very limits of expansion mean drilling is a good idea. And, drilling armies still give the unrest reduction as if they were at full morale, and I always drill while reinforcing and waiting for manpower to grow. Once you have 20 professionalism, drilling takes very little time to do. A neglected fact is also that drilling can improve your generals, which is very useful.
I prefer max even on WC runs mostly for faster siege ability and having high professionalism saves manpower in the longrun because of better troops.
But this is considering running quantity ideas, and once your empire is really big (like 3000 dev or more), exploit development serves the same purpose and won't ruin your manpower pool too much since you'll just be conquering more anyway. Paying 125 sword mana for manpower is also a decent trade off, and more valuable than two artillery barrages in my opinion, since good players on normal difficulty probably won't need more than quantity ideas for their WC's, and perhaps offensive if they really hate sieges.
I say it's optimal to get 100 professionalism and sack it for manpower once you have 125 sword mana to spare. Over the course of a game, it's really easy to grab from recruting generals and events, and manpower can be gotten in other ways, namely quantity ideas, building barracks in your states, and exploit development once you have so much development that it no longer really matters. On normal difficulty, you should only have to do it 2-3 times if you don't manage your armies well.
On VH it's probably a different ball game, where manpower is more important, but at least with quantity ideas, careful army management is usually enough except the largest of wars. And when you have 2000+ of manpower development, it's easy to grab a quick 50k if you need it from exploit development (which you'll just be replacing anyway with further conquests).
It's also worth noting that max army tradition plus offensive ideas gives 40% siege ability, and if you take diplomatic ideas, having a spy building a network ahead of time is easy to arrange. 40% siege ability shouldn't be discounted on WC attempts, as your sieges will be going almost twice as fast which makes chain warring Ottos, Ming, and late game HRE far more efficient.
But this is considering running quantity ideas, and once your empire is really big (like 3000 dev or more), exploit development serves the same purpose and won't ruin your manpower pool too much since you'll just be conquering more anyway. Paying 125 sword mana for manpower is also a decent trade off, and more valuable than two artillery barrages in my opinion, since good players on normal difficulty probably won't need more than quantity ideas for their WC's, and perhaps offensive if they really hate sieges.
I say it's optimal to get 100 professionalism and sack it for manpower once you have 125 sword mana to spare. Over the course of a game, it's really easy to grab from recruting generals and events, and manpower can be gotten in other ways, namely quantity ideas, building barracks in your states, and exploit development once you have so much development that it no longer really matters. On normal difficulty, you should only have to do it 2-3 times if you don't manage your armies well.
On VH it's probably a different ball game, where manpower is more important, but at least with quantity ideas, careful army management is usually enough except the largest of wars. And when you have 2000+ of manpower development, it's easy to grab a quick 50k if you need it from exploit development (which you'll just be replacing anyway with further conquests).
It's also worth noting that max army tradition plus offensive ideas gives 40% siege ability, and if you take diplomatic ideas, having a spy building a network ahead of time is easy to arrange. 40% siege ability shouldn't be discounted on WC attempts, as your sieges will be going almost twice as fast which makes chain warring Ottos, Ming, and late game HRE far more efficient.
40% siege ability is good but most WCs after a certain point are limited by coring time and cost rather than siege time. After the first war vs. Ming there shouldn't really be any wars that take longer than 5 years.
With that said, professionalism will go up anyway over the course of the game without needing to drill at all. As manpower is cheaper than ever it's probably better to run as few mercs as possible while rushing +5 advisors.
With that said, professionalism will go up anyway over the course of the game without needing to drill at all. As manpower is cheaper than ever it's probably better to run as few mercs as possible while rushing +5 advisors.
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