Isnt 10 4 10 a terrible army composition?
- Thread starter Politic Revolutionnaire
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Adding reinforcement infantry to a battle to cover casualties is a basic tactic that everyone should master, but it doesn't have much bearing on the question of how effective a specific stack composition is going to be in a specific situation.
These don't have to be in the initial doom stack though. If your Inf+Cav covers the combat width, you're good until those casualties manifest, which can be covered by sliding in more infantry later such as the freshly-minted merc armies. If CW is 20 and you are operating with a 30 wide infantry line, those troops are causing unnecessary attrition and possibly taking unnecessary morale hits for no reason. If you are operating with a 20 wide line and shoveling mercenary infantry in mid-fight, and not losing horribly, you should pull through without taking a bunch of damage to the back row. The initial stack only necessarily has to be optimal for as long as it is the only stack. It could literally just be a wall of two dozen merc infantry blocking a choke that you reinforce with more inf and your cav/arty if engaged. It could be a CW/4/CW stack you shovel more infantry in as the fight goes on. It could be two half-CW stacks that meet at the same time. It could be something else.
Manpower is a resource just like money. Using mercs when your manpower is fine is probably wasteful, and fighting with depleted stacks and 0 manpower when you can just borrow and merc up is also probably wasteful. If you are cutting cavalry and arty because they're too expensive, but are paying out the butt for mercs because you have manpower problems, and meanwhile choosing idea groups like defensive and quality... I do question your play. Manpower is something I consider to be managed well when it's regularly in flux. Capped manpower when not stuck in regency I hold to be like having thousands of ducats while below FL and open building slots. Zeroed manpower is like being in debt; there's good reasons to hit that stage, but it should be controlled and predicted and managed.
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10 - 4 - 10 is indeed a terrible battle composition. You need actually a lot more infantry + cavalry than your combat width in order to make sure none of your combat width cannons ever take any damage. If your front line is close to your combat width, you will very quickly start taking damage on your cannons, which take double damage and are very costly.
Generally, you should organize your army as follows (for multiplayer):
1) Primary stack: CW+6 infantry (60+% mercs), 4+ cavalry (depending on your cavalry combat modifier), CW cannons;
2) Secondary stacks: CW+6 infantry (20+% mercs), 4+ cavalry (depending on your cavalry combat modifier), CW cannons;
3) Reinforcements stacks: CW infantry (0% mercs), 0 cavalry, 0+ cannons;
Concretely, at mil tech 14 you want your primary stack to be 35 (20mercs + 15 regular infantry)/4/29. Since that stack is higher than the supply limit you should only have it at war. You probably want to divide it in two stacks during peace time that can quickly be united. However during war it is preferable to initiate battles with a stack that deals full damage on the first ticks despite taking some attrition damage to reinforcing with another stack that has the other half of cannons one or two days late.
For long battles you do not want secondary stacks to reinforce your primary stack if possible because you will be needlessly taking attrition on cavalry and cannons. That's why you should have an infantry reinforcement stack. This can also be used to consolidate your other stacks.
Secondary stacks should only reinforce the primary stack if you are planning on cycling stacks in and out of the battle or if it is crucial you win a specific battle.
You want to integrate cannons ASAP. They already make quite a difference even at early military tech. Plus they also make you siege that much faster. Ultimately, the time and money you get by reducing casualties is worth the extra cost of cannons.
Generally, you should organize your army as follows (for multiplayer):
1) Primary stack: CW+6 infantry (60+% mercs), 4+ cavalry (depending on your cavalry combat modifier), CW cannons;
2) Secondary stacks: CW+6 infantry (20+% mercs), 4+ cavalry (depending on your cavalry combat modifier), CW cannons;
3) Reinforcements stacks: CW infantry (0% mercs), 0 cavalry, 0+ cannons;
Concretely, at mil tech 14 you want your primary stack to be 35 (20mercs + 15 regular infantry)/4/29. Since that stack is higher than the supply limit you should only have it at war. You probably want to divide it in two stacks during peace time that can quickly be united. However during war it is preferable to initiate battles with a stack that deals full damage on the first ticks despite taking some attrition damage to reinforcing with another stack that has the other half of cannons one or two days late.
For long battles you do not want secondary stacks to reinforce your primary stack if possible because you will be needlessly taking attrition on cavalry and cannons. That's why you should have an infantry reinforcement stack. This can also be used to consolidate your other stacks.
Secondary stacks should only reinforce the primary stack if you are planning on cycling stacks in and out of the battle or if it is crucial you win a specific battle.
You want to integrate cannons ASAP. They already make quite a difference even at early military tech. Plus they also make you siege that much faster. Ultimately, the time and money you get by reducing casualties is worth the extra cost of cannons.
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from 1.14 patch changelog:
- Reworked mercenaries: Instead of a pool that randomly refills, each country now has a mercenary support limit of 20 + 33% of force limits, and can recruit up to this number of mercenaries of any mix of types they want. Mercenaries can now also be included in Army Planner templates, and will automatically upgrad when you change your unit type.
I think another thing these hypotheticals overlook (and can't help doing so) is that reality is not as rigid as theory-crafting here makes it out to be. In the 29 CW example mentioned earlier, the ideal was listed as CW+6/4+/CW, aka 35/4/29, which is basically correct. In practice though there are limitations here and questions that may seem unresolved - what if your force limit is 50? What if you can't afford this and need to make cuts somewhere? How do you maneuver this 68-stack? Is splitting it in half as 17/2/15 and 18/2/14 (or thereabouts) better than a 29/4/1 and 6/0/28 split?
I think the golden rules are to always fill combat width before other considerations like a back row, and never have your back row tanking any rounds of damage. For this reason things like walking around with half stacks or arty stacks and having them get caught out is horrible, and spending so much on cannons that you find yourself unable to field or reinforce a full front row by mid war is also horrible.
I think the golden rules are to always fill combat width before other considerations like a back row, and never have your back row tanking any rounds of damage. For this reason things like walking around with half stacks or arty stacks and having them get caught out is horrible, and spending so much on cannons that you find yourself unable to field or reinforce a full front row by mid war is also horrible.
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I have no idea what you are talking about. By the time your entire infantry line in that stack is dropped and the cannons actually come to the front, you are basically seconds away from shattered retreating anyways. Early game where those are stacks fighting independent battles you aren't going to be anywhere near to filling out CW, so extra units usually won't do much. Come midgame you will probably have two of these stacks participate in major battles where against non player opponents you still usually won't need additional infantry meatshields.
When it comes to MP I do agree that you will require a higher infantry component, and will most likely use rotating infantry stacks anyways once it comes to all in pitch battles.
I absolutely agree. I gave the theoretical standard for a 150 (1 primary / 1 secondary / 1 reinforce stacks) to 250 (1 primary / 2 secondary / 2 reinforce stacks) forcelimit, which can be expected of a relatively strong country in MP at mil tech 14. If you can't afford this, the most important things are indeed to always engage at full frontal combat width and to retreat when your backline starts taking too much damage (when you stacks starts being visually represented by cannons).
However the grim reality is that if you can't afford this, you won't be able to fight your human opponent who can. Whether you can afford to or not, this is the type of composition you have to field. As a matter of fact, waging war in MP always leads to considerable loans for the majority of countries because the quality/quantity and composition standard is set so high.
I'm only discussing combat between experienced and skilled multiplayer opponents. It happens quite often that the backline starts taking casualties before morale is shattered because of (1) how many troops and stacks are involved, (2) because of the constant consolidating during the war and (3) because of stack cycling. This is precisely why we came up with the idea of reinforcing stacks as a way of maxing army strength without crippling one's income excessively.
I don't know about this. What about for high discipline/combat ability stacks?
If you can inflict enough damage to destroy knock the regiments in the center of your opponent's line out of the battle quickly, then being outflanked isn't that big a problem. E.g. fighting natives. So, maybe there is a situation where it's better to have a shorter front rank that is fully backed up by artillery, vs. a full CW front rank, but no/little artillery in the back rank.
I feel like this is the sort of thing someone must have looked into. Anyone have a link?
I think people need to make clear if they are talking about MP or SP here, because behavior and requirements are going to be very different in those cases.
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No such thing as the "best" army composition. If you are sticking with the same setup with every nation, in every situation, at every point in the game then you are doing things very very wrong.
Combat width + 6 Infantry, 4 cavalry and combat width artillery works very well late game, with European Western tech nations. But for many other situations (early game, Muslim tech, Poland etc) it is a massive waste to use that composition. You really should not apply any universal rule.
At the point at which the Artillery would have a more meaningful contribution to the battle than just having more infantry, you should easily be able to afford the combat width....if that point is even ever reached
Edit: I am talking MP, in SP wars tend to be less equal. That said, the same composition rules tend to apply if you are going for the most effective army.
Combat width + 6 Infantry, 4 cavalry and combat width artillery works very well late game, with European Western tech nations. But for many other situations (early game, Muslim tech, Poland etc) it is a massive waste to use that composition. You really should not apply any universal rule.
At the point at which the Artillery would have a more meaningful contribution to the battle than just having more infantry, you should easily be able to afford the combat width....if that point is even ever reached
Edit: I am talking MP, in SP wars tend to be less equal. That said, the same composition rules tend to apply if you are going for the most effective army.
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High disc and CA making a flanked back row better? I can't fathom a situation where CW is 20+ and a 10/0/10 is better than a 20/0/0 against an opponent running at least 20 infantry, even if you're Ryazan, and never mind the cost difference. You would need that back row damage to equate to more than a comparable-size front row would deal AND still more to justify the extra damage taken in return from being flanked. I don't think the math exists because it's absurd in the first place. I certainly welcome you to prove me totally wrong though if I am.
This is one of the harshest realities of any MP play, and not just in this game - everyone cannot win. You can discuss an optimal army, but the bitter reality might be that you are at a standing disadvantage and now must make that awful choice of what loses more/faster than another. It may also be that you are fighting an opponent that has other enemies and you simply need to lose gracefully enough that someone joins your cause. Maybe you're just stalling.
Yes I've seen that before but I don't see any tooltips showing how many mercenaries I can support in total at a point. So I'm kind of in the dark about the actual mercenary force limit at any time.
I don't like the idea of a 10/4/10 army...Because that annoys me greatly so I would use a 8/2/10 army(Maybe to little cav but what ever) and I don't just have one lonesome stack to fight a battle
As commonwealth with 93% cavalary combat, wouldnt be better to use CW+6cav (or even 8 cav with 6 shock general?) (talking about late game)
If you're the Commonwealth, you're rich enough to fill an entire front line with cavalry and stackwipe almost anything that comes at you. If you're using only 6 cav in a fighting stack, you're fighting far, far below peak efficiency.
Oh, hadn't noticed that. Should probably be added to the force limit tooltip. Not too hard to calculate it though once you know the formula.