Relative Merits of the Different Military Ideas

[sgt.stickybomb]

Go for defense, it gives morale bonus, and morale is KING!

 

[Xeorm]

Discipline increases damage done; Tactics decreases damage taken.


Every Merchant you have increases naval forcelimits by 5, so Trade is actually pretty good for the navy.

Huh. So it does. For some reason, I remember that not always being the case. I wonder when/if it changed. My bad.

 

[Van Tuber]

Go for defense, it gives morale bonus, and morale is KING!

I disagree with this. Morale really doesn't matter that much unless you're facing an equal or superior force. Whether this is a big enough concern to prefer moral is situational, but there are few situations where inflicting casualties isn't useful.

 

[TheBloke]

I disagree with this. Morale really doesn't matter that much unless you're facing an equal or superior force. Whether this is a big enough concern to prefer moral is situational, but there are few situations where inflicting casualties isn't useful.

Inflicting casualties is always useful. But a significant proportion of battles end long before either side is completely destroyed, or anything like completely destroyed. It ends because one side has lost its morale. Morale really is king.

Besides, "doesn't matter that much unless you're facing an equal or superior force" - that alone sounds like it accounts for a significant proportion of battles.

Or put that another way: "unless you have decent morale, you must outnumber your foe." Doesn't that sound like a pretty major implication? And in any case, I've seen many battles where the superior morale force beat an army much larger than it.

There's no doubt that Discipline is important too. But in terms of number one single factor:

I think most agree,
that since 1.3,
you must make them flee!

​

​I'll get my coat.

 

[hauptman]

Ignore everyones Opinion in the above posts, and base your descisions on what you want/need. Having said that, always take defensive.




Offensive primarily effects your generals. Better generals generally mean more damage done in fights. Lucky nations tend to have god generals, so even with this tree, they may still beat the snot out of you, especially since this is usually france's first mil choice.

Defensive is a jack of all trades. It gives you more morale (best single idea for military) and better generals through more army tradition. Faster wars via the seige bonus, and larger armies due to the 10% cost reduction.

Quality generally improves your units. the 10% bonus to all damage done across the board isnt much, but it stacks with everything else. Easilly doubling damage output for very powerful NI sets such as Sweden and Prussia/Brandenburg.

Quantity is a good money saver. and more man power is always good.

Plutocratic is a very nice set, more morale, a merchant!, faster manpower recovery... all kinds of goodies.

Aristocratic is a bonus for the AI's to hamper the player... I imagine it could be useful for a cavalry heavy player nation however.

 

[ringhloth]

Plutocracy isn't that great. There are a couple of okay ideas (people REALLY overestimate how much tech/idea bonuses are) but there are also a couple useless ones, as well as the terrible events it provides...

 

[hauptman]

I disagree with this. Morale really doesn't matter that much unless you're facing an equal or superior force. Whether this is a big enough concern to prefer moral is situational, but there are few situations where inflicting casualties isn't useful.

How exactly do you expect to inflict casualties as your army runs away? I mean you didnt take defensive so there's not even the attrition of them chasing you down.

Morale is the single most important stat. It is the difference between a lost war and releasing half your nation or a quick victory and balkanizing france.

nickle and dimed damage increasers such as combat ability and discipline are not war winners, all they do is make a won war easier to finish.

 

[hauptman]

Plutocracy isn't that great. There are a couple of okay ideas (people REALLY overestimate how much tech/idea bonuses are) but there are also a couple useless ones, as well as the terrible events it provides...

Having an important tech a year (or more) before your worst enemy is pretty huge yo.

Monponies are the single biggest limiting factor in the game. saving 10% on every tech adds up pretty quick, basically adding 6 buildings for free to each tech. Buildings are the single most powerful tool in making your nation the world powerhouse, or a do-nothing backwater.

A single province with completed building lines is easily worth 5 - 10 buildingless provinces.

 

[Laurwin]

more provinces gives you better force limits (?) --> very good advantage if those extra provinces are relatively well protected (like siberia, I mean whose going to invade siberia, the polar bears, the moose?)

 

[DasWood]

In my Brandenburg -> Prussia playthrough I was able to stay competitive and take on France's god generals and coalitions but still lose. I had incredibly high discipline, but France would always forced march every unit in 1500 miles into battle and eventually route my armies despite inflicting farrrrr more casualties. My armies had quality, quantity, admin and econ. I just never had enough morale to finish a battle as the winner while France's armies would take 10s of thousands of more casualties over the course of a single battle but my troops would eventually be routed, caught unable to flee then destroyed outright. Repeat that 5-6 times and eventually even the most advanced country will run out of men AND mercenaries to recruit. Once that happens you are just going to be picked apart piece by piece and it stops being fun.

 

[Pandadan]

In my Brandenburg -> Prussia playthrough I was able to stay competitive and take on France's god generals and coalitions but still lose. I had incredibly high discipline, but France would always forced march every unit in 1500 miles into battle and eventually route my armies despite inflicting farrrrr more casualties. My armies had quality, quantity, admin and econ. I just never had enough morale to finish a battle as the winner while France's armies would take 10s of thousands of more casualties over the course of a single battle but my troops would eventually be routed, caught unable to flee then destroyed outright. Repeat that 5-6 times and eventually even the most advanced country will run out of men AND mercenaries to recruit. Once that happens you are just going to be picked apart piece by piece and it stops being fun.

A Lucky Nation with full Offensive ideas has generals with +2 shock, +2 fire, and +1 maneuver over one that's neither, on top of the other bonuses from Offensive like +discipline, +combat ability, and Forced March.

 

[trojan1234]

In my Brandenburg -> Prussia playthrough I was able to stay competitive and take on France's god generals and coalitions but still lose. I had incredibly high discipline, but France would always forced march every unit in 1500 miles into battle and eventually route my armies despite inflicting farrrrr more casualties. My armies had quality, quantity, admin and econ. I just never had enough morale to finish a battle as the winner while France's armies would take 10s of thousands of more casualties over the course of a single battle but my troops would eventually be routed, caught unable to flee then destroyed outright. Repeat that 5-6 times and eventually even the most advanced country will run out of men AND mercenaries to recruit. Once that happens you are just going to be picked apart piece by piece and it stops being fun.

Managing 2 stacks would help you a lot. When your 1st stack engaged in, park your 2nd stack nearby. Send in the 2nd stack around the time the 1st stack has low morale and 60%~70% of full size. As soon as the 2nd stack arrived, remove your 1st stack from the battle then reorganize (merge / add up more mercs) in your home. Even if your 2nd stack lose the battle, reorganized 1st stack could spare a time for the routing 2nd stack to reorganize.

 

[ringhloth]

Having an important tech a year (or more) before your worst enemy is pretty huge yo.

Monponies are the single biggest limiting factor in the game. saving 10% on every tech adds up pretty quick, basically adding 6 buildings for free to each tech. Buildings are the single most powerful tool in making your nation the world powerhouse, or a do-nothing backwater.

A single province with completed building lines is easily worth 5 - 10 buildingless provinces.

Okay. Except it takes 3200 monarch points to get there. In order to get that back, you'd need to invest into 52 techs. So it's definitely not a "take plutocracy for the sake of this" thing.

• +50% mercenaries. It's a lot, but mercenaries aren't hard to come by in the first place.
• +10% morale. Morale is okay, but +10% is not a lot.
• -1 RR. I guess it's better than +1 tolerance. Not by much.
• +1 merchants. Strong.
• +20% production efficiency. Strong, but hardly unique.
• +2 tolerance of heathens. Terrible, if not outright damaging to the player.
• +20% manpower recovery. Strong, but on the weaker side.

So that's 3 strong effects. Compared to the other military trees, it's pretty weak overall. Not to mention fairly bad bad events and lackluster good events.

 

[lordelenath]

Well, I don't know about you, but I tend to invest into more than 32 techs throughout a game.

 

[ringhloth]

Well, I don't know about you, but I tend to invest into more than 32 techs throughout a game.

Oh. Yeah. I was dumb for a second. It's late. It's 17 techs into each tree, then. Which means you wouldn't get the points back until roughly 1650, I guess. And that's if you waste one of your earlier slots on a non-diplo enhancing tree.

 

[Korashy]

I personally take Offensive first because that +1 shock can make a huge difference. Especially early game getting a 3 shock + 1 additional shock or even 4 + 1 shock general can mean you can wreck entire armies with super low casualties.

 

[grumphie]

it really depends. no idea group is mechanically better than the other. quatity is great if youre playing an small aragon focussed on the naval aspect and still wnating to match castille's strength, while quantity for russia is pretty useless most of the time. quality is great for brandenburg, but probaly less effective than defensive for russia.

i generally pick 2 of offensive, quality and defensive, with quantity used in more specific cases as i tend to blob enough to make it with NI's and offensive's increas ein manpower and forcelimits.

then, i ask myself questiions and depending on the answers i choose the groups.

quality:
do i plan on using an decent amount of naval?
would having mor epwoerfull units tilt the edge of quality in my favor?
will i be able to keep the initiative in an war?

defensive:
do i have land to give up in case of war?
are my troops prone to suffering a lot of attrition and will the enemy do so if they invade me?
is the losing factor in an war wether my forts get sieged too soon or that my armies get destroyed?
will an enemy suffer enough attrition to make giving up land worth it?

offensive:
can i make use of forced march?
how are my forcelimits and manpower?
will i be warring enough to keep my tradition high?
are my neighbours just outnumbering or just not outnumbering me, and will i be able to win wars by numbers alone?


i tend to gravitate towards quality+offensive, as it makes my troops pretty damn strong, give my navy an small boost and alllow me to fight wars on my terms. if thats less of an option and i will do little naval wise ill often drop quality for defensive, and if im not planning on ebing very warlike while keeping an decent navy and army(i.e. castille/spain focussing more on the colonial aspect) i generally use defensive with quality.

 

[gaius valerius]

With bigger countries I tend to take Offensive as a first idea, because of the discipline, for the smaller nations I generally take Defensive, regardless I always take them both eventually I personally prefer discipline above morale, but indeed with the idea trees as they are, Defensive gives you a morale bonus earlier than the discipline bonus you'll get from either Offensive or Quality. I also always check the national ideas of my country and what they deliver, if morale is present early on, I'll more likely go Offensive as first idea.

Bigger countries have an edge because they have more territory and allow wars to be fought over a bigger swap of land, this is why I don't mind waiting a tad longer for the discipline bonuses to kick in with either Offensive or Quality. Playing as France I used to get beaten by Burgundy a lot in the beginning, I figured out it was because they took Defensive as their first idea while I used to take a non-military idea set first. So when our equally sized armies met in the field, I - even on the defensive - always drew the short end of the straw. Pretty frustrating. Then I figured out all I needed to do was wage war differently. The AI tends to invade in force but once across the border they are prone to a form of carpet sieging. So while drawing back from the border I simply lured the Burgundians deeper into my own and picked them of piecemeal. Rinse and repeat till they'd used up their doomstack and then I turned the tables on them, no amount of Defensive ideas could save them after that. A small country however as a rule does not have that luxury as such I am often inclined to - if I'm taking a military first idea - take Defensive, as I'm prone to being caught anyways.

I've only resently began to make use of Forced March actually and I really like it to deal deathly blows to an enemy army. I'm not sure whether discipline vs morale is in favour of the former or the latter.

Also, can anyone explain the exact merits of the Quality Ideas? The plus discipline idea is pretty obvious, but the others, just how meaningful are they, and do they make a difference? Is that difference significant enough when 2 armies are at odds in numbers?

 

[lordelenath]

They simply add 10% of damage to the respective unit type - pretty straight forward.

 

[gaius valerius]

They simply add 10% of damage to the respective unit type - pretty straight forward.

So +10% combat ability basically just +10% damage? I read people in the past claiming this benefit is doubtful, is that truly so?