Unless you have amazing manpower recovery speed is 10 4 10 and other similar army compositions really bad since you will end up with cannons on the front lines and too few infantry is 14 4 10 better?
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Isnt 10 4 10 a terrible army composition?
- Thread starter Politic Revolutionnaire
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I tend to use 10-2-8, unless I have some special national ideas, and am doing well with that. In general I try to go with around 50% more infantry & cavalry compared to artillary to compensate for losses in battle. 10-4-10 should actually work for eastern / cavalry specialised countries.
Also manpower recovery speed has nothing to do with how effective your army composition is. That's just how much your manpower pool grows each month. If anything you mean reinforce speed; and even that is irrelevant. Just consolidate your infantry and fill your armies up with infantry mercs.
Also manpower recovery speed has nothing to do with how effective your army composition is. That's just how much your manpower pool grows each month. If anything you mean reinforce speed; and even that is irrelevant. Just consolidate your infantry and fill your armies up with infantry mercs.
Yeah i meant reinforce speed with 10 2 8 though arent you losing flanking potential?
Allways going like 10-2-10 then moving towards 12-2-10, allways 4 more front units then canons, 2 cav if western 4 cav if cav type nation.
18-2-16 > 22-2-20 > 28-2-26
Usualy stop at 28-2-26 since that sort of maxes out sieges with a spare canon incase of disease outbreak, and larger just means more atrition. Just keep another stack of 56 units next to it for reinforce and pick off small stacks around you. Then split split in to 4 small units for carpeting.
18-2-16 > 22-2-20 > 28-2-26
Usualy stop at 28-2-26 since that sort of maxes out sieges with a spare canon incase of disease outbreak, and larger just means more atrition. Just keep another stack of 56 units next to it for reinforce and pick off small stacks around you. Then split split in to 4 small units for carpeting.
AFAIK only 4 cav can flank at the same time. (Or was it 6?) Since I usually send 2 (or even more) armies into a battle, more than 2-3 cav / army would be too many. Those 20er stacks are mostly for standing around without taking attrition.
Cav is also rather expensive (almost as expensive as cannons - 2.5 x as expensive as inf), so you don't want to have more than 2-4 flankers. Not to mention that western tech cav is rather weak. In fact assuming both armies are fighting at full combat width countries like Sweden or Brandenburg do even better with no cav at all.
Cavalry specialised countries (Poland, eastern tech, ottomans) are obviously different though.
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Well.. for me early game money is often important. And it is more effective to be at force-limit with lots of infantry than to have only half your force-limit but lots of art. / cav. Also, early game art isn't all that strong.
Early game I tend to use 10-4-4 or 10-2-4 depending on money & national ideas (With Poland I use 10-6-4) until I can afford to field my 10-2-8 armies. If I am playing a poor country or Russia I often use 12-2-6. With cavalry specialised countries like Poland or Hungary I use more cav (because I want it for more than just flanking). Someting like 8-6-8 or 10-6-8 after westernising usually works.
Early game I tend to use 10-4-4 or 10-2-4 depending on money & national ideas (With Poland I use 10-6-4) until I can afford to field my 10-2-8 armies. If I am playing a poor country or Russia I often use 12-2-6. With cavalry specialised countries like Poland or Hungary I use more cav (because I want it for more than just flanking). Someting like 8-6-8 or 10-6-8 after westernising usually works.
I tend to delete my forts so i usually can afford such extravagencies though it is inefficient
The best thing you can do all game is fill your combat width perfectly. Four cavalry, infantry to width, and as many cannons as you can afford. As combat width expands, you may need to march two armies side by side into battles to achieve width without suffering attrition. But trying to do this army comp thing is pointless if you don't put enough bodies on the line.
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Why would you think you'd end up with cannon on the front row with that composition? All the cannon would be protecting all the infantry, and in fact it's a very strong stack as long as you have enough morale and other quality modifiers for your infantry to hold the line while your art and flanking cav batter the enemy.
If you're worried that your infantry will in fact rout and your cannon will end up on the front line, what you want to do is bring enough inf into battle *on the first day* to get the flank advantage, as much art as you can afford up to the combat width, then bring extra inf reinforcements into the battle afterwards.
In fact, if you're focused on winning a given battle decisively, and if you can stand the micro, it can be well worth it to bring extra cav in the first day of battle—even enough cav to fill your entire front line with no inf—since, in general, cav units pack a bigger punch than inf. But because the algorithm automatically uses only enough cav to flank, assuming you have enough infantry, you have to deliberately subtract inf from your front line in order for all the extra cav to be used. Then you time a second stack of inf to arrive in battle on Day 2 of the battle, so you don't suffer insufficient support. Even if you don't care to do this kind of mental arithmetic and troop movement micro for every battle, understanding how the troop disposition algorithm works is an important step to mastering battles.
By the same token, you should be thinking less in terms of "what go-to stack composition should I be using?" and more in terms of "how many regiments and of what type should I be bringing against this enemy stack in this particular situation to defeat them with maximum efficiency?"
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Depends on your force limit.
If you have 100k troops, then having 50% of your troops be cannons is just a complete waste. Even if HALF your army has a fight you'll have 25k cannons on the backline, more than enough to fill it and no reinforcements for the front line.
Realistically going like 16-4-10 is better.
If you have 100k troops, then having 50% of your troops be cannons is just a complete waste. Even if HALF your army has a fight you'll have 25k cannons on the backline, more than enough to fill it and no reinforcements for the front line.
Realistically going like 16-4-10 is better.
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Force limits are but a number. If you can afford to, it makes perfect sense to build up to near your forcelimit with cavalry and artillery only and hire merc infantry as needed (and maybe some regular inf for the colonies or rebel hunting).
I don't worry too much about army composition because it's constantly changing throughout my wars as I add mercs and consolidate regiments.
Ideal for me has always meant:
Infantry = Combat Width * 1.5
Cavalry = 4
Artillery = CW
So the numbers will change as the game goes on. Your force limit will dictate if you can meet those numbers, but never have fewer infantry than artillery, and never go under 2 cavalry.
Also, when manpower/money allows, any extra force limit should be backup infantry, ready to reinforce during or after the battle. And at the beginning of a tough war, it's often best to go -over- your FL with infantry, and merge the wounded infantry as you take losses to keep them at 100%. I do this even if it pushes me into debt, as the cost of extra troops for the start of a short war is far lower than having to raise them over and over throughout a long war.
Infantry = Combat Width * 1.5
Cavalry = 4
Artillery = CW
So the numbers will change as the game goes on. Your force limit will dictate if you can meet those numbers, but never have fewer infantry than artillery, and never go under 2 cavalry.
Also, when manpower/money allows, any extra force limit should be backup infantry, ready to reinforce during or after the battle. And at the beginning of a tough war, it's often best to go -over- your FL with infantry, and merge the wounded infantry as you take losses to keep them at 100%. I do this even if it pushes me into debt, as the cost of extra troops for the start of a short war is far lower than having to raise them over and over throughout a long war.
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I always try to have 4 cavalry when playing western as only 4 cav can flank at a time. Any less than 4 and you lose potential flanking damage, anymore and you just have them doing nothing but wasting money. My stacks generally go 10-4-1 when artillery becomes available and then gets upgraded to a 12-4-6 at mil tech 13. Later on a tend to use something like 18-4-10. Not sure if it's optimal but it is definitely a very good general stack.
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They might only be able to flank with 4, but from the battle statistic someone made, armies of entirely cavalry will wipe the floor with most armies anyway 
So it does make sense to put more cav into the mix... I usually go with 6-8 at times as western, depends on how the battles fares (the enemy i´m against) since I sometime lose battles then I try to mimic their composition and factor in their tech and national ideas, but still... the best composition I´ve found is actually with 6-8 cav, artillery being 2/3 of infantry...
So it does make sense to put more cav into the mix... I usually go with 6-8 at times as western, depends on how the battles fares (the enemy i´m against) since I sometime lose battles then I try to mimic their composition and factor in their tech and national ideas, but still... the best composition I´ve found is actually with 6-8 cav, artillery being 2/3 of infantry...- 1
Absolutely. Now let me expose my heresy that figure ratios per se are not that important...
Exact figures / composition are meaningless early on when combat width isn't a big issue and you're scraping for units anyway. Then the only rule of thumb that will work for most circumstances is: take a bigger army to the fight than your enemy. Once you can do that, try to take at least four more units for the flanking, at least two of those being cavalry. In general (ie excluding specific issues such as big quality differences which early on means things like morale, horde bonuses etc), always think flanking if you want to win, or at least win well.
If you take a smaller army (especially early on when armies are small anyway) you'll tend to lose (even if you win you take high casualties because of the flanking), unless you fight smart by never attacking, keeping your army size up to combat width if you can, defending in mountains or across rivers or both, better generals, close to allies etc.
As for artillery, it's ineffective early on, but it's still expensive. So I just keep some around for important sieges. I tend to standardize on total 3 minimum, 6 if possible, these give me useful multipliers for multiple sieges because of the way it factors for level 1/2/3 forts) until I get culverins. Then, whenever I'm fighting or planning to fight a significant enemy, I manufacture a few more for battle to protect the front line on defense, this helps reduce casualties. It seems to me that it's only from tech level 13 (when arty fire pips and combat value become more significant and beyond which I rarely play anyway, time pressure) that arty numbers and composition start to have a big effect on battle.
Slightly OT, what type of artillery do people prefer and why? Ultimately this must affect composition slightly. For the reasons stated, as a casually boring min-maxer I always prefer culverins to pedrero. But others disagree, for example I think DDRJake chose otherwise in his horde beta game. I'm baffled, maybe I have something wrong?
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Im using CW-4/4/CW until tech 16ish, then CW/0/CW. I never use more units per stack then CW and rather have a stack to reinforce going over the CW limit will just make my troops lose morale for no reason.
My thoughts exactly. The cannon-heavy army might have a greater starting firepower to make battles shorter, but whether the battle gets dragged on for a bit longer than expected, your front rows quickly deplete and your most expensive units start taking the heat. I used 15/4/11 as my standard 30k-stack before, now i switched it for 18/4/8, and while its initial damage is lower, i feel like it does more damage thorough the course of a battle, because the frontline can actually last through the entire fight. Not to mention it also costs less to maintain and more suitable for subsequent battles.
I know cavalry has been nerfed heavily since its old glory days, but I probably still use too much given the numbers I'm seeing here.
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The problem is that 10 2 10 or 10 4 10 and other similar compositions suffer casualties and 14 4 10 or 12 2 10 would accomplish the same without the need to micromanage