ARMY ATTRITION AT LAND
CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. ARMY UNIT
3. SUPPLY LIMIT
3.1 GENERAL
3.2 BASE VALUE
3.3 NAVAL BLOCKADE
[/SIZE]
4. ATTRITION NUMBERS
4.1 MAX ATTRITION
4.2 ATTRITION SUFFERED
4.3 DISPLAYED ATTRITION
4.4 ORDER OF ATTRITION
5. HOW MAX IS CALCULATED AND MODIFIERS TO DSL
5.1 TYPE 1 – ADD TO MAX
5.2 TYPE 2 – ADD TO DSL
5.3 TYPE 3 – ADD TO MAX AND SUBTRACT FROM DSL
6. NORMAL MOVEMENT ATTRITION
7. WHICH PART OF A COMPOUND ARMY IS HIT BY THE ATTRITION
8. EXAMPLES
9. SUGGESTIONS FOR PARADOX
1. INTRODUCTION
Attrition means that an army will decrease in size although not in battle or via an event.
It can occur in two situations
a) An army moves during the turn of a month
b) The size of an army (together with other armies present in the province) is greater than the supply limit for the province
The FAQ mostly discusses attrition of type b). From the context it will be clear when attrition type a), "movement attrition", is discussed.
The information about attrition given in the manual and in-game is not very clear and some of the features are also bugged. This FAQ tries to unravel these mysteries. The two basic questions are
- When does attrition take place?
- How large is it?
Credits: Lawkeeper and ws2_32 have been most helpful in the creation of this FAQ. In fact some parts are even written word by word by them. A huge thank you
2. ARMY UNIT
The concept of “army unit” is fundamental for the understanding of attrition.
Each 1000 infantry, 1000 cavalry and 10 artillery is one army unit. Thus 1001 men infantry and 2000 men infantry are both 2 army units while 2001 are 3 army units.
When you have several types in a province each type is calculated for itself. I.e. all infantry are added to one sum of army units, all cavalry to another sum and all artillery to a third sum. Then these sums are added. E.g. assume a 5,000/10,999/23 army. Its “weight” is 5+11+3=19 army units. This means that if you split an army it doesn't matter, its weight stays the same.
3. SUPPLY LIMIT
3.1 GENERAL
The supply limit is the cap for how many army units you can have without attrition taking place.
It is made up of one base value and a lot of modifiers. It may be very difficult to calculate it. In the province info screen there is a Supply Limit row. It will be called the displayed supply limit (DSL). Unfortunately this number only gives a rough estimate of the real or actual supply limit (ASL), i.e. the one that really decides how many army units you can have. The displayed SL number (DSL) can be green, yellow or red. The meaning of these colors will be explained further down where "out of supply" is discussed.
The base value will be defined below while the modifiers will be defined in chapter 5.
3.2 BASE VALUE / DSL
It is the DSL that has been chosen as the base value in this FAQ.
The DSL is calculated according to the following.
Owned provinces:
- Base Tax Value (BTV)*5
- + Fortification level*10
- + 10 for Conscription Center (if built)
- Naval blockade: 2*
Other country's province
- BTV*2
- Military Access: BTV*4
- Controlled enemy province: BTV*3
- If controlled province is owned by MA-granting country : BTV*4
- Naval blockade: 2*
Ally-owned province
- BTV*2 at peace
- If ally is in the same war: BTV*5
- Naval blockade: 2*
Vassal status has no effect on DSL, nor any modifier to tax income (it's the basic tax value that matter), nor population size, nor manpower, nor officials, nor manufacturies. Being the Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) at war (gives you access to all provinces in the empire) also doesn't effect DSL
TPs and colonies apply the same rules as cities.
Unsettled province : not displayed (but it is the BTV)
3.3 NAVAL BLOCKADE VALUE / DSL
Blockade by navy during siege doubles the DSL (after MA modifier) as described above. There are four cases when this bonus ceases to exist
1. Once the fortress falls and you control the province
2. If you take your whole besieging army and starts to move it. But if you keep a covering/besieging army and start marching with the rest of the army the marching army still benefits to the full extent of the naval blockade.
3. If the besieging army involves in a battle
4. If the blockading fleet involves in a battle
4. ATTRITION NUMBERS
4.1 MAX ATTRITION
In the province info screen, just below the DSL, a "Max attrition" (MAX) number is displayed. This number can be e.g. 10%. It has to do with how much attrition (in percentage) you can suffer at most at the turn of a month.
How this value is calculated will be explained in chapter 5.
4.2. ATTRITION SUFFERED
For each army unit above the ASL you will suffer 1% attrition. Say the ASL is 24 army units and you have an all infantry army in the province. Then you will suffer 1% attrition if you have from 24,001 men up to and including 25,000. For each 1,000 more you suffer 1% more attrition up to MAX, the cap.
4.3 DISPLAYED ATTRITION
The game provides three types of in-game information of how much attrition you will suffer on the turn of the month.
A) ARMY WINDOW ATTRITION
When you look at an army (in the army information window) there is a value indicating the attrition for the army. This one is bugged. It shows 1% less than what the attrition really is. Which means that when you suffer 1% attrition it displays as zero. This is very annoying. It does of course not mean that when it says 0 it is always 1%. If the attrition is 0% it also displays as 0.
Beside the attrition number there is a scull that can have different colors. The default value is yellow in tropical provinces and green in the rest. If you are suffering from attrition a green scull turns grey but a yellow stays yellow. The scull may also be red. A red scull is displayed when you are in a foreign province. No extensive analysis of these sculls has been made.
B) SIEGE WINDOW AND BATTLE WINDOW ATTRITION
In the siege window and in the battle window you can also find an attrition number. In both of these the attrition numbers are correct.
A very easy way to see this display error in the army window is to start moving a part of a besieging army. The attrition displayed for the army on march will now be 1% less than for the one displayed in hte siege window for the army that stays in the province. But in reality the attrition will be the same for both armies.
4.4 ORDER OF ATTRITION
When there are armies of different countries in the same province, all troops are summed in each individual catagory infantry,cavalry,artillery for calculating the number of army units.
Two separate caluclations of attrition are performed. The first calculation is for any and all armies not in control (and not in control through an active alliance) of the province. All of those armies are reduced in size according to the calculation.
After non-controlling armies are reduced in size, a second calculation is performed for the controlling armies. In cases where a non-controlling army is large and attrition is high, the order of attrition can greatly reduce attrition for controlling armies. For controlling armies, the attrition actually suffered may be less than what is displayed in a army window, siege window (regarding retreating army), or battle window.
For example a 20,000 infantry army that is in control of a province arrives, at the end of the month, in a province with a 20,000 cavalry force present that is not in control of the province. If the ASL for the non-controlling army is 20 and the MAX attrition is very high, the non controlling army suffers 20% attrition reducing the size to 16,000 cavalry. If the ASL for the controlling army is 36, then the controlling army suffers no supply attrition. Note that 40,000 troops were present but the controlling army suffers no attrition at an ASL of only 36.
5. HOW MAX IS CALCULATED AND MODIFIERS TO DSL
This chapter has a twofold purpose.
1. It explains how the MAX value is calculated. This is not very important for the player. You can just look in the province information screen and hover over the MAX row and the number will be explained.
2. It explains those modifers that creates the ASL from the DSL. A modifier either adds or subtracts to the DSL, i.e. DSL + modifiers – other modfiers = ASL. This is very important. Without it you cannot calculate the ASL and, as indicated above, the ASL number - in contrast to the MAX number - cannot be found in-game, you have to calculate it yourself.
There are a lot of things that influence these two things. They have been grouped into three different types.
Type 1 - only adds to MAX
Type 2 - only adds to DSL
Type 3 - both adds to MAX and subtracts from DSL
5.1 TYPE 1 – ADD TO MAX
Tech level x%
Looted 5%
Out of supply 10%
Desert 8%
Mountain 5%
Marsh 2%
Desert is a problem. First, when you hover over MAX it says “Desert 5%”. That is wrong. In reality it is 8% and this is correctly added to MAX.
Secondly not all provinces that are depicted as desert on the map (i.e. yellow color) get the Desert penalty. Examples of this is the Chagatai desert provinces. And some provinces that are not yellow gets it. Examples of this is the provinces around the Nile that in-game are displayed as Plains but as we all know mostly consists of desert in real life. This has to do with the fact that "Desert" is a type of terrain as well as a type of climate. The Desert penalty we speak about here stems from "climate". The climate for a province can be found in the provinces.csv file were a value of 4 or 6 means that the province has a "Desert climate". Thus Nile (terrain: plains) gets a desert penalty while the Chagatai provinces (terrain:desert) does not.
The tech level percentage is made up by subtracting a value from 10, i.e. 10 - x. The x value is 0 at Land tech 0 and then increases with 1 for every 6th land tech level up to 54. E.g. when you reach Land tech level 6 x will increase to 1 thus giving you a tech level penalty of 9%. And when you reach Land tech level 54 x will increase with 1 from 8 to 9 giving you a tech level penalty of only 1%. It will not increase to 10 a level 60, thus you will never reach 0 tech penalty.
Out of supply occurs in all provinces except the following
a) provinces controlled by you (the DSL number is green)
b) provinces controlled by an allied nation if you are in the same war (DSL green)
c) provinces that are covered by you and to which you can trace an unbroken chain through 0 or more covered provinces to a province type a-b (DSL is yellow)
d) provinces adjacent to a), b) or c) (DSL is yellow)
If out of supply the DSL number is red. You can also detect that this is the case by looking at the info displayed when you hover over the MAX number.
5.2 TYPE 2 – ADD TO DSL
A conquistador adds 4*maneuver value to the ASL. Other leaders adds 2*maneuver value. By hovering over the leader stats you can see which value is the maneuver value.
5.3 TYPE 3 – ADD TO MAX AND SUBTRACT FROM DSL
Tropical 5%
Winter 10% (25% if you do not own the province)
This is a source for much confusion. Say the DSL is 20 and you are in India (tropical). Normally you could have 24 military (20 plus 4 for the leader). But in reality you can only have 19 (24 minus the 5% tropical penalty), i.e. less than the DSL. In winter climate a player will not be as surprised that attrition may occur.
6. NORMAL MOVEMENT ATTRITION
When an army is on the move on the turn of the month it will suffer a 1% attrition of its infantry and cavalry. This attrition is not added to the attrition stemming from being above the ASL. If the latter occurs then no movement attrition occurs, thus movement attrition only occurs when the army does not exceed the ASL. An army led by a conquistador will never suffer from movement attrition.
This means that if you start an army on its march somewhere during a month and it arrives in the new province on the 1st of the next month it was moving on the turn of the month. If it arrives on the 30th or earlier it was not on march. This may be easier to remember if you imagine that all start and stop of marching takes place at midday.
However, if your infantry and/or cavalry is so small (e.g. non-existent) that attrition hits your artillery then the percentage (for all army types that attrites) only 0.67, i.e. two thirds of a percent.
Note that an all-artillery army may be so small that the attrition cannot be seen in the display. Assume you have an army consisting of 100 pieces of artillery only. If it moves on the turn of the month it will now consist of 99.330 pieces and that will be displayed as 100 (but if you look in the savefile you can see that it really is only 99.330). If you move it once more it will sink below 99 and thus be displayed as 99. Thus an army of 25 guns will attrite 1 gun every fourth month. This can be utilised when you wish to move artillery. Instead of sending a huge artillery army, instead split it and avoid attrition. The same kind of math applies for infantry/cavalry armies but such armies rarely have fewer than 100 men.
7. WHICH PART OF A COMPOUND ARMY IS HIT BY THE ATTRITION
If an army contains more than one type of army unit the following will occur
Army with Infantry + Cavalry: The infantry will take 5/6 and the cavalry 1/6 of the attrition
Army with INF+CAV+Artillery: Same as the previous one
Army with INF + ART: The INF will take all the attrition
Army with CAV + ART: The CAV will take all the attrition
If the number of infantry according to the formula above is higher than the actual existing number, then all infantry will attrite and the missing part will attrite from the cavalry, and so on.
Note: artillery will never attrite as long as other types exist.
8. EXAMPLES
In this example, as in all other, I will assume you have a standard leader with a maneuver value of 2.
EXAMPLE 1
A normal plains province in Europe and under your control. I.e. no winter or other special feature. The MAX will now be the tech level penalty only.
Assume the DSL is 20 and assume MAX is 5%.
This means you can have 20 army units plus 4 for the Leader, i.e. 24 army units in the province without suffering attrition at the turn of the month. If you have 25 units the army will suffer from 1% attrition at the turn of the month, 26 units = 2%, ... 29 units or mote 5%.
EXAMPLE 2
A looted mountain province under your control in tropical climate. MAX will now be tech level penalty + 5% for mountain + 5% for tropical + 5% for looted.
Assume the DSL is 20 and MAX is 20%. This means you can have 20 plus 4 for the Leader minus 5 for tropical, i.e. 19 army units, in the province without suffering attrition at the turn of the month. If you have 20 you suffer 1% attrition. If you have 39 or more you suffer the maximum attrition possible, i.e. 20%.
COMMENT
As can be seen, when calculating the ASL it is convenient to start with the DSL.
9. SUGGESTIONS FOR PARADOX
1. Let all modifiers be included in the DSL (with default leader assumed), thus it will show a true value (the ASL) when you have a default leader. Since MAX is updated each month (depending on winter e.g.) it cannot be too difficult to check the DSL value monthly as well. And the algorithm to establish what this value should be already exists because it (minus Leader influence) must be used when the displayed attrition is calculated.
As a minimum let the DSL include the tropical and the winter penalty; hence you will never suffer attrition as long as you do not exceed the DSL.
2. When a blockaded province is controlled the bonus from blockading is removed. The new bonus given (based upon tax value) is smaller. If anything, one imagines the supply in reality would be easier when you control the province than when you do not. Either ships outside the coast could still give you a bonus or the new bonus could be increased.
CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. ARMY UNIT
3. SUPPLY LIMIT
3.1 GENERAL
3.2 BASE VALUE
3.3 NAVAL BLOCKADE
[/SIZE]
4. ATTRITION NUMBERS
4.1 MAX ATTRITION
4.2 ATTRITION SUFFERED
4.3 DISPLAYED ATTRITION
4.4 ORDER OF ATTRITION
5. HOW MAX IS CALCULATED AND MODIFIERS TO DSL
5.1 TYPE 1 – ADD TO MAX
5.2 TYPE 2 – ADD TO DSL
5.3 TYPE 3 – ADD TO MAX AND SUBTRACT FROM DSL
6. NORMAL MOVEMENT ATTRITION
7. WHICH PART OF A COMPOUND ARMY IS HIT BY THE ATTRITION
8. EXAMPLES
9. SUGGESTIONS FOR PARADOX
1. INTRODUCTION
Attrition means that an army will decrease in size although not in battle or via an event.
It can occur in two situations
a) An army moves during the turn of a month
b) The size of an army (together with other armies present in the province) is greater than the supply limit for the province
The FAQ mostly discusses attrition of type b). From the context it will be clear when attrition type a), "movement attrition", is discussed.
The information about attrition given in the manual and in-game is not very clear and some of the features are also bugged. This FAQ tries to unravel these mysteries. The two basic questions are
- When does attrition take place?
- How large is it?
Credits: Lawkeeper and ws2_32 have been most helpful in the creation of this FAQ. In fact some parts are even written word by word by them. A huge thank you
2. ARMY UNIT
The concept of “army unit” is fundamental for the understanding of attrition.
Each 1000 infantry, 1000 cavalry and 10 artillery is one army unit. Thus 1001 men infantry and 2000 men infantry are both 2 army units while 2001 are 3 army units.
When you have several types in a province each type is calculated for itself. I.e. all infantry are added to one sum of army units, all cavalry to another sum and all artillery to a third sum. Then these sums are added. E.g. assume a 5,000/10,999/23 army. Its “weight” is 5+11+3=19 army units. This means that if you split an army it doesn't matter, its weight stays the same.
3. SUPPLY LIMIT
3.1 GENERAL
The supply limit is the cap for how many army units you can have without attrition taking place.
It is made up of one base value and a lot of modifiers. It may be very difficult to calculate it. In the province info screen there is a Supply Limit row. It will be called the displayed supply limit (DSL). Unfortunately this number only gives a rough estimate of the real or actual supply limit (ASL), i.e. the one that really decides how many army units you can have. The displayed SL number (DSL) can be green, yellow or red. The meaning of these colors will be explained further down where "out of supply" is discussed.
The base value will be defined below while the modifiers will be defined in chapter 5.
3.2 BASE VALUE / DSL
It is the DSL that has been chosen as the base value in this FAQ.
The DSL is calculated according to the following.
Owned provinces:
- Base Tax Value (BTV)*5
- + Fortification level*10
- + 10 for Conscription Center (if built)
- Naval blockade: 2*
Other country's province
- BTV*2
- Military Access: BTV*4
- Controlled enemy province: BTV*3
- If controlled province is owned by MA-granting country : BTV*4
- Naval blockade: 2*
Ally-owned province
- BTV*2 at peace
- If ally is in the same war: BTV*5
- Naval blockade: 2*
Vassal status has no effect on DSL, nor any modifier to tax income (it's the basic tax value that matter), nor population size, nor manpower, nor officials, nor manufacturies. Being the Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) at war (gives you access to all provinces in the empire) also doesn't effect DSL
TPs and colonies apply the same rules as cities.
Unsettled province : not displayed (but it is the BTV)
3.3 NAVAL BLOCKADE VALUE / DSL
Blockade by navy during siege doubles the DSL (after MA modifier) as described above. There are four cases when this bonus ceases to exist
1. Once the fortress falls and you control the province
2. If you take your whole besieging army and starts to move it. But if you keep a covering/besieging army and start marching with the rest of the army the marching army still benefits to the full extent of the naval blockade.
3. If the besieging army involves in a battle
4. If the blockading fleet involves in a battle
4. ATTRITION NUMBERS
4.1 MAX ATTRITION
In the province info screen, just below the DSL, a "Max attrition" (MAX) number is displayed. This number can be e.g. 10%. It has to do with how much attrition (in percentage) you can suffer at most at the turn of a month.
How this value is calculated will be explained in chapter 5.
4.2. ATTRITION SUFFERED
For each army unit above the ASL you will suffer 1% attrition. Say the ASL is 24 army units and you have an all infantry army in the province. Then you will suffer 1% attrition if you have from 24,001 men up to and including 25,000. For each 1,000 more you suffer 1% more attrition up to MAX, the cap.
4.3 DISPLAYED ATTRITION
The game provides three types of in-game information of how much attrition you will suffer on the turn of the month.
A) ARMY WINDOW ATTRITION
When you look at an army (in the army information window) there is a value indicating the attrition for the army. This one is bugged. It shows 1% less than what the attrition really is. Which means that when you suffer 1% attrition it displays as zero. This is very annoying. It does of course not mean that when it says 0 it is always 1%. If the attrition is 0% it also displays as 0.
Beside the attrition number there is a scull that can have different colors. The default value is yellow in tropical provinces and green in the rest. If you are suffering from attrition a green scull turns grey but a yellow stays yellow. The scull may also be red. A red scull is displayed when you are in a foreign province. No extensive analysis of these sculls has been made.
B) SIEGE WINDOW AND BATTLE WINDOW ATTRITION
In the siege window and in the battle window you can also find an attrition number. In both of these the attrition numbers are correct.
A very easy way to see this display error in the army window is to start moving a part of a besieging army. The attrition displayed for the army on march will now be 1% less than for the one displayed in hte siege window for the army that stays in the province. But in reality the attrition will be the same for both armies.
4.4 ORDER OF ATTRITION
When there are armies of different countries in the same province, all troops are summed in each individual catagory infantry,cavalry,artillery for calculating the number of army units.
Two separate caluclations of attrition are performed. The first calculation is for any and all armies not in control (and not in control through an active alliance) of the province. All of those armies are reduced in size according to the calculation.
After non-controlling armies are reduced in size, a second calculation is performed for the controlling armies. In cases where a non-controlling army is large and attrition is high, the order of attrition can greatly reduce attrition for controlling armies. For controlling armies, the attrition actually suffered may be less than what is displayed in a army window, siege window (regarding retreating army), or battle window.
For example a 20,000 infantry army that is in control of a province arrives, at the end of the month, in a province with a 20,000 cavalry force present that is not in control of the province. If the ASL for the non-controlling army is 20 and the MAX attrition is very high, the non controlling army suffers 20% attrition reducing the size to 16,000 cavalry. If the ASL for the controlling army is 36, then the controlling army suffers no supply attrition. Note that 40,000 troops were present but the controlling army suffers no attrition at an ASL of only 36.
5. HOW MAX IS CALCULATED AND MODIFIERS TO DSL
This chapter has a twofold purpose.
1. It explains how the MAX value is calculated. This is not very important for the player. You can just look in the province information screen and hover over the MAX row and the number will be explained.
2. It explains those modifers that creates the ASL from the DSL. A modifier either adds or subtracts to the DSL, i.e. DSL + modifiers – other modfiers = ASL. This is very important. Without it you cannot calculate the ASL and, as indicated above, the ASL number - in contrast to the MAX number - cannot be found in-game, you have to calculate it yourself.
There are a lot of things that influence these two things. They have been grouped into three different types.
Type 1 - only adds to MAX
Type 2 - only adds to DSL
Type 3 - both adds to MAX and subtracts from DSL
5.1 TYPE 1 – ADD TO MAX
Tech level x%
Looted 5%
Out of supply 10%
Desert 8%
Mountain 5%
Marsh 2%
Desert is a problem. First, when you hover over MAX it says “Desert 5%”. That is wrong. In reality it is 8% and this is correctly added to MAX.
Secondly not all provinces that are depicted as desert on the map (i.e. yellow color) get the Desert penalty. Examples of this is the Chagatai desert provinces. And some provinces that are not yellow gets it. Examples of this is the provinces around the Nile that in-game are displayed as Plains but as we all know mostly consists of desert in real life. This has to do with the fact that "Desert" is a type of terrain as well as a type of climate. The Desert penalty we speak about here stems from "climate". The climate for a province can be found in the provinces.csv file were a value of 4 or 6 means that the province has a "Desert climate". Thus Nile (terrain: plains) gets a desert penalty while the Chagatai provinces (terrain:desert) does not.
The tech level percentage is made up by subtracting a value from 10, i.e. 10 - x. The x value is 0 at Land tech 0 and then increases with 1 for every 6th land tech level up to 54. E.g. when you reach Land tech level 6 x will increase to 1 thus giving you a tech level penalty of 9%. And when you reach Land tech level 54 x will increase with 1 from 8 to 9 giving you a tech level penalty of only 1%. It will not increase to 10 a level 60, thus you will never reach 0 tech penalty.
Out of supply occurs in all provinces except the following
a) provinces controlled by you (the DSL number is green)
b) provinces controlled by an allied nation if you are in the same war (DSL green)
c) provinces that are covered by you and to which you can trace an unbroken chain through 0 or more covered provinces to a province type a-b (DSL is yellow)
d) provinces adjacent to a), b) or c) (DSL is yellow)
If out of supply the DSL number is red. You can also detect that this is the case by looking at the info displayed when you hover over the MAX number.
5.2 TYPE 2 – ADD TO DSL
A conquistador adds 4*maneuver value to the ASL. Other leaders adds 2*maneuver value. By hovering over the leader stats you can see which value is the maneuver value.
5.3 TYPE 3 – ADD TO MAX AND SUBTRACT FROM DSL
Tropical 5%
Winter 10% (25% if you do not own the province)
This is a source for much confusion. Say the DSL is 20 and you are in India (tropical). Normally you could have 24 military (20 plus 4 for the leader). But in reality you can only have 19 (24 minus the 5% tropical penalty), i.e. less than the DSL. In winter climate a player will not be as surprised that attrition may occur.
6. NORMAL MOVEMENT ATTRITION
When an army is on the move on the turn of the month it will suffer a 1% attrition of its infantry and cavalry. This attrition is not added to the attrition stemming from being above the ASL. If the latter occurs then no movement attrition occurs, thus movement attrition only occurs when the army does not exceed the ASL. An army led by a conquistador will never suffer from movement attrition.
This means that if you start an army on its march somewhere during a month and it arrives in the new province on the 1st of the next month it was moving on the turn of the month. If it arrives on the 30th or earlier it was not on march. This may be easier to remember if you imagine that all start and stop of marching takes place at midday.
However, if your infantry and/or cavalry is so small (e.g. non-existent) that attrition hits your artillery then the percentage (for all army types that attrites) only 0.67, i.e. two thirds of a percent.
Note that an all-artillery army may be so small that the attrition cannot be seen in the display. Assume you have an army consisting of 100 pieces of artillery only. If it moves on the turn of the month it will now consist of 99.330 pieces and that will be displayed as 100 (but if you look in the savefile you can see that it really is only 99.330). If you move it once more it will sink below 99 and thus be displayed as 99. Thus an army of 25 guns will attrite 1 gun every fourth month. This can be utilised when you wish to move artillery. Instead of sending a huge artillery army, instead split it and avoid attrition. The same kind of math applies for infantry/cavalry armies but such armies rarely have fewer than 100 men.
7. WHICH PART OF A COMPOUND ARMY IS HIT BY THE ATTRITION
If an army contains more than one type of army unit the following will occur
Army with Infantry + Cavalry: The infantry will take 5/6 and the cavalry 1/6 of the attrition
Army with INF+CAV+Artillery: Same as the previous one
Army with INF + ART: The INF will take all the attrition
Army with CAV + ART: The CAV will take all the attrition
If the number of infantry according to the formula above is higher than the actual existing number, then all infantry will attrite and the missing part will attrite from the cavalry, and so on.
Note: artillery will never attrite as long as other types exist.
8. EXAMPLES
In this example, as in all other, I will assume you have a standard leader with a maneuver value of 2.
EXAMPLE 1
A normal plains province in Europe and under your control. I.e. no winter or other special feature. The MAX will now be the tech level penalty only.
Assume the DSL is 20 and assume MAX is 5%.
This means you can have 20 army units plus 4 for the Leader, i.e. 24 army units in the province without suffering attrition at the turn of the month. If you have 25 units the army will suffer from 1% attrition at the turn of the month, 26 units = 2%, ... 29 units or mote 5%.
EXAMPLE 2
A looted mountain province under your control in tropical climate. MAX will now be tech level penalty + 5% for mountain + 5% for tropical + 5% for looted.
Assume the DSL is 20 and MAX is 20%. This means you can have 20 plus 4 for the Leader minus 5 for tropical, i.e. 19 army units, in the province without suffering attrition at the turn of the month. If you have 20 you suffer 1% attrition. If you have 39 or more you suffer the maximum attrition possible, i.e. 20%.
COMMENT
As can be seen, when calculating the ASL it is convenient to start with the DSL.
9. SUGGESTIONS FOR PARADOX
1. Let all modifiers be included in the DSL (with default leader assumed), thus it will show a true value (the ASL) when you have a default leader. Since MAX is updated each month (depending on winter e.g.) it cannot be too difficult to check the DSL value monthly as well. And the algorithm to establish what this value should be already exists because it (minus Leader influence) must be used when the displayed attrition is calculated.
As a minimum let the DSL include the tropical and the winter penalty; hence you will never suffer attrition as long as you do not exceed the DSL.
2. When a blockaded province is controlled the bonus from blockading is removed. The new bonus given (based upon tax value) is smaller. If anything, one imagines the supply in reality would be easier when you control the province than when you do not. Either ships outside the coast could still give you a bonus or the new bonus could be increased.
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