The Great Debate: Early-game army composition, and the significance of Artillery

[DDRJake]

Artillery is very, very expensive and takes double damage on the front row. I personally like CW+50% inf, 6cav and CW art but it's expensive and I've not worked out whether more infantry is more cost effective or not. And then there's the whole idea of spending money on ART to preserve manpower. I've a lot more to experiment with but since I rarely play multiplayer, it's not a pressing concern.

 

[DDRJake]

So the AI was kind enough to throw together a coalition of hundreds of thousands of troops to help me test.

One thing I noticed that I swear didn't happen in EU3 is that you get "reserves" if you have more troops than can fit on the battlefield. This means that all you'll ever need for your main fighting stack is CW artillery and as many infantry as you want, the artillery will be safe in the back row so long as you have enough "reserves" who will take the front-row place of any retreating unit, stopping your cannons from entering the front line where they are in danger and no longer providing their 50% defense.

On a related note, who said mid-to-late-gameplay cannot be interesting?

 

[DDRJake]

Well, do the math.

Take mil 8 as a baseline, cav shock modifier is 1.8, no fire, artillery fire is 1.0, negligible shock. Assuming equal rolls, the cavalry will deal 3.6 times the damage of any artillery. (Remember, artillery deal half damage when they're in the back row) So adding on one cavalry will give me 4 artillery worth of damage. So if I can add more troops onto the front line, cavalry is always better, hands down.

But, assuming the CW is full, what's the difference between adding 1 artillery, or substituting 2 cavalry in for 2 infantry (Assuming we're not yet at the insufficient support point yet) Both are the same cost in money. Infantry have .5 fire and .85 shock. Every 2 phases, the artillery does .5 units of damage, while the 2 cavalry do .9 units of damage. Still, almost twice the damage of adding artillery.

Gets more complicated though when you consider pips. If you have heavy fire, artillery can perform substantially better, but I personally still trust cavalry, especially as I wouldn't have to worry about having my artillery ever getting to the front line, where they get massacred.

Early game artillery is really rubbish and still bloomin' expensive, so I have them only for sieges if I need them, and I usually mix in 1 cannon with each main stack so that I can buy an extra day or two to retreat from a battle which would otherwise wipe my troops.

Mid game though, in a huge battle, CW artillery will always provide 50% defense to the front row troops while attacking for 50% of their attack from the back. This means that all you need in a theatre is one stack of CW cannons and then as many inf/cav as you please. Here's an example from the same war where, after dusting myself off and regrouping, I am able to fight a battle, take losses, then send the losses away for reinforcing while my main attack force loses absolutely no strength, either from lack of morale or men

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It seems that CW artillery becomes more cost effecting the larger the war.