Let's talk army composition

[Orkonkel]

Also, something to consider is that in the first 100 years of the game, you will fight enemy armies that are not at full combat width. Flanking then becomes exponentially powerful; if you engage a 20 stack army and width is at 27, you would deal a lot more extra damage if you fought with ~24 units (more could probably not even flank anyway), especially if you end up with six cavalry or so on the front line. At this point, filling the backrow with cannons is just super costly, and may not be financially viable (24 cannons is a lot of ducats in upkeep).

I sort of preferred when terrain affected combat width, made it possible to be the underdog and still win battles.

 

[Urgat]

Most has already been said. I'll just put the Combat width progression with tech

Instead what you should do is to have an extra army of pure Inf (CW + some reinforcements) behind your main stack and reinforce at some point in the battle. That way you also refresh some morale during battle.

This is a good advice. Thank you sir.

 

[tobias.mb]

You don't ever need to engage with more than CW. You can reinforce later but there's no need to do it with a full CW army, the damaged regiments don't get replaced with new ones.

I'm almost certain, that depleted regiments (0 men) get replaced.
Anyways; The main reason I bring more than CW Inf in my Armies is because I merge them between battles. Meaning some of my regiments are just empty and only there to receive reinforcements.

 

[jdavis86]

Yeah I'm pretty sure the depleted regiments get cycled to the back row. I've read you always want to go over combat width with your front line army -- especially in mid and late game. I think this helps prevent damage to your back row artillery, among other things.

Regarding cavalry, not sure it has been mentioned here...there is something called improved flanking range that comes with military tech. You can see it in the tech screen.

This is a year old but it explains how flanking range works (and general combat) and the most efficient way to use cavalry. So up until tech 18 then 4 cav per front line, techs 18-22 6 cav, techs 23-30 8 cav per stack.

 

[bly08]

Depleted ones do but damaged ones don't. Sending in another full stack is overkill.