Question again about army tradition

[Apollyonna]

I did a few test wars and noticed that the losing party gains army tradition. I stackwiped 2 armies (13k and 19k) and the losers gained 8.3 and 11.5 army tradition respectively (while I gained 0.5 or so).

Why is this the case ?

From an 'experience' point of view, they learned not much except not to stand near large and stronger armies.

The main reason I asked is that in a test run using console, I took a 9999 9999 9999 9999 leader and smashed into the Ottoman armies and right after the war they got their Janissary event (which requires army tradition to fire) which I though was strange.

 

[Dominion]

Army tradition gains are increased the more losses you suffer. Kind of a balancing thing to give the beaten nation a way to bounce back.

 

[Apollyonna]

Army tradition gains are increased the more losses you suffer. Kind of a balancing thing to give the beaten nation a way to bounce back.

hmm.... so if i want to get a few 100 tradition generals, i need to sacrifice some smaller stacks then.

 

[3ishop]

hmm.... so if i want to get a few 100 tradition generals, i need to sacrifice some smaller stacks then.

Or build it with the passive gains, up to date and manned forts, ideas and policies.

 

[Vetgirig]

You gain 1 AT for each fort you siege down. Add to it ideas that prevent losses of AT and having 1 up to date fort for every 50 development and you can have a rather high AT.

So no need to sacrifice real manpower just to gain some small AT in battles. Its not really worth it.

Taking Defensive, Aristocratic and Quality and using forts gives a normal AT of 75 (+4/0.04 = 75) without any battles.

 

[oros]

According to the wiki : "AI gets significantly increased naval/army tradition from battles.".
It's one of their cheats, so don't be surprised to see highest gain for them.

 

[Ketilsen]

I did a few test wars and noticed that the losing party gains army tradition. [...]

Why is this the case ?

From an 'experience' point of view, they learned not much except not to stand near large and stronger armies.

The AT gain can be thought to model "Aah, so that's how you do it!"

 

[3ishop]

The AT gain can be thought to model "Aah, so that's how you do it!"

and the survival of the fitest. People who don't know how to survive get knocked off.

 

[Dominion]

hmm.... so if i want to get a few 100 tradition generals, i need to sacrifice some smaller stacks then.

As @Vetgirig said, taking losses to gain AT isn't worth it. Your net income over time will come from idea groups mainly. Idea groups, not policies though. Can't think of any from the top of my head and it'd only kick in during midgame anyways.

Quality or Defensive enables you to sit at 30-40 without much pressure. Combining both will get you a stable 50-60 even with normal warfare.
Worth noting that stackwipes give additional AT, which is one of the reasons why Horde nations can easily hit 100AT early on.

Aside from that it's constant warfare.
Sacrificing stacks for AT, however, is almost never worth it.

Pick the right ideas, siege down some stuff, fight a lot.

Don't suffer losses on purpose.

 

[Zaddy]

The sad part about army tradition is that for a player forts are almost never worth their absolutely massive cost, so for me at least I never ever get that bonus army tradition for forts, or at least not enough to matter. Like in the late game when I have 4k development I'll build a few forts so when you're fighting trivial little minor nations they don't do that irritating carpet seige they so love doing, but it's purely a convenience thing. Aside from a few edge cases of mountain forts in good positions, I delete all forts I obtain. Forts end up being a awkward convenience tool in the lategame. Early game ignoring edge cases you should delete pretty much all forts. Its sad how most optimal starts and advice for new players given on the forums begins with "Delete all forts". It's mystifying to me that PDX insists on keeping the fort costs at current levels when its obvious the playerbase finds them to be expensive garbage, and then attach some really neat bonus to forts that you aren't allowed to have if you play optimally.

And seriously, the AI carpet seige thing is without a doubt the most irritating thing about war in this game IMO, even beating the unwieldy fort ZOC rules. The fact that it can in real time split perfectly into 10 1k stacks and fan out over an area is bloody annoying!

 

[fyfaendeluxe]

And seriously, the AI carpet seige thing is without a doubt the most irritating thing about war in this game IMO, even beating the unwieldy fort ZOC rules. The fact that it can in real time split perfectly into 10 1k stacks and fan out over an area is bloody annoying!

Well as a player you can(and should) pause and do the same thing. You don't even need to pause, really. Just spam detach siege on an unfortified province and fan out your troops . AI's been taught to do this recently, because players did it. AI imitating player behaviour is a good thing.

 

[Zaddy]

Well as a player you can(and should) pause and do the same thing. You don't even need to pause, really. Just spam detach siege on an unfortified province and fan out your troops . AI's been taught to do this recently, because players did it. AI imitating player behaviour is a good thing.

Sure, you CAN do this. Should? Much more debateable. The vast chunk of warscore comes from forts, and generally you can easily 100% any opponent just sieging forts. The real issue is that the AI can very easily punish you for splitting into 1k stacks to carpetseige; meanwhile, the AI is automatically bale to detect when your stacks are moving to destroy their carpeters and will generally consolidate back into a whole stack before you can arrive to punish their move. Meanwhile, the player must CONSTANTLY spam pause/unpause to avoid the AI punishing this greedy move (and it will).

For this reason I very rarely do these kind of strats in a war; maybe at the beginning of the game in a hard start where you need to micro your wars, but when you're finishing up a Great Khan achievement run and you control Russia + Persia + India + most of China? Nah, I'm not bothering with that. If you have the devotion to micro that hard all game, I commend you, but I think you would be in a very firm minority there.

I'm not arguing the AI shouldn't do it; I suppose when a 3k development monster attacks you as a 300 dev nation, your only real option is to carpetseige and try to annoy the player into going away. And thats my whole point, the carpeting is very very seldom actually effective, it just makes combat much more tedious and micro intensive in the late game. When you have 3k development it doesn't matter if the AI carpetseiges Russia; it's still not winning the war, and its extremely tedious to have to resiege all of that land when there isn't a easy macro button to do that. Detach siege works but is still tedious.

I'm not saying the AI shouldn't do it, I'm just saying that doesn't stop it from being bloody annoying and basically killing the late game for me. I actually couldn't bring myself to finish a Great Khan run that was nearing completion because i was getting soooooo tired of playing hide and seek with AI carpet siege armies in Central Asia, where they would just run as soon as your stack got close to them, and as soon as you dropped your attention to actually fight the important part of the war, they would promptly resplit and try to carpet again.

 

[Apollyonna]

Sorry and correct me if I am wrong, but if you own all of India and most of China, you still feel the need to remove forts ? Surely your income is high enough to keep them ?

Carpet sieging stops others from rebuilding armies so it's quite an effective tool to stop you from re-enforcing from everywhere if needed.

The only 'problem' i see is states with tributaries continue to spawn troops inside the tributary countries, you can't siege those down to stop that from happening, instead you either park troops there or live with it.

Edit: but this is going away too far from my original post

 

[Apollyonna]

The largest problem i see is trying to maintaining 80 or higher. Certain countries, while getting beaten, are able to hire good generals due to their sky rocketing army tradition while their armies are getting whipped. As a player, you are pretty much 'forced' to take specific idea groups in order to gain army tradition, or reduced army tradition decay - and depending on your national idea-set, you may have to have fully maintained forts. In the end this may well be a balancing act. If as a player you can stackwipe left and right, why should you have the need for 3 star generals.... (?) However, if as a player you do decide to choose the idea groups in order to get to a steady 100 tradition then it's somewhat unfair that others can choose espionage, maritime and other 3rd rate ideagroups and yet get the same effect because they stink in warfare.

 

[Zaddy]

Sorry and correct me if I am wrong, but if you own all of India and most of China, you still feel the need to remove forts ? Surely your income is high enough to keep them ?

Carpet sieging stops others from rebuilding armies so it's quite an effective tool to stop you from re-enforcing from everywhere if needed.

The only 'problem' i see is states with tributaries continue to spawn troops inside the tributary countries, you can't siege those down to stop that from happening, instead you either park troops there or live with it.

Edit: but this is going away too far from my original post

No, I kept forts at the Ming border as a convenience tool. The issue was, fort ZOC is wonky and opaque, and they would always slip past my forts and siege Central Asia. And no, I wasn't rich enough to afford spamming forts across my entire empire. Building the convenience forts already took a healthy chunk of change out of my pocket.

 

[ep1c_fail]

Sorry if someone already answered this, but what is the maths behind forts and AT?

 

[Zaddy]

Sorry if someone already answered this, but what is the maths behind forts and AT?

One up-to-date level, fully maintained fort per 50 development.

 

[FrogCrusher]

I have one question with the current implementation. Your allies/vassals' generals. In a battle, the discipline which is displayed is the one of the country having the best general.

Myquestion is : does the discipline is global or not ? I always see my 115% becoming 102% when I got reinforced by my vassal who has a better general because AT gain when he lost battles.
I want to say 'yes, my troops become bad with this fu***ng discipline' but I am also afraid to be in a confirmation bias effect...
Can someone enlight me on that topic ?

 

[Zaddy]

I have one question with the current implementation. Your allies/vassals' generals. In a battle, the discipline which is displayed is the one of the country having the best general.

Myquestion is : does the discipline is global or not ? I always see my 115% becoming 102% when I got reinforced by my vassal who has a better general because AT gain when he lost battles.
I want to say 'yes, my troops become bad with this fu***ng discipline' but I am also afraid to be in a confirmation bias effect...
Can someone enlight me on that topic ?

Each army retains the respective discipline of it's owner regardless of what is displayed.

 

[rinehime]

One up-to-date level, fully maintained fort per 50 development gives +1% AT/year .

FTFY .

Also, it's a scaling modifier (from 0 to 1 I believe). Not sure how "up-to-date" is scaled, probably a "total fort levels" or something similar. Or maybe out-of-date forts are just ignored....