Vicky 2 Combat Logic

[SacremPyrobolum]

During large battle with nations that are on par with me technologically, I mobilize reserves to act as disposable "shock troops" to weaken the enemy. They are put into large stacks and are then simply thrown at the enemy. I then send in a regular army with proper cavalry, artillery, and engineering support as well as guard units.

The logic is that the conscripts will take most of the initial casualties while my more valuable units can deliver the final blow. However, I've found that in battles where there are enough conscripts to fill up the front and back lines neither cavalry nor artillery nor engineers seem to appear in the back line to support the troops.

If I send in my proper army first, however, my guards are quickly shredded and even my back-line supporting brigades take heavy casualties while my fodder remains in the reserves twiddling their thumbs. This is particularly vexing when I'm on the defense but can't station conscripts with regular armies due to attrition.

I remember one battle I fought with Italy where I stationed regular troops in the pass in South Tirol and held off a massive force of conscripts. Despite quickly reinforcing the battle with my own conscripts, my valuable troops were decimated while my conscripts were nearly untouched.

tl:dr: How does the game deploy units during a battle?

 

[mergele]

Are you coming from eu4? Unlike eu4 reserve frontline troops don't replace shattered frontline troops. When your frontline dies what was your back row moves up and potential reserves fill the backrow. So if you reinforce a battle the new army will only take damage once the first army has been almost completly been defeated.
You can put consripts and regulars in the same armies.
What timeframe are we talking about? Early- and late-game wars are drastically different.
In my opinion regular infantry is actually less worth than conscripts, because regulars will at least somewhat reinforce and possibly after some time be usable again. Though if they are recruited from a POP which also provides cannons you might want to save those reeinforcements for them.
For the precise formular which unit goes where I think I once saw something of that nature in the wiki but I couldn't find it at the moment.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

Are you coming from eu4? Unlike eu4 reserve frontline troops don't replace shattered frontline troops. When your frontline dies what was your back row moves up and potential reserves fill the backrow. So if you reinforce a battle the new army will only take damage once the first army has been almost completly been defeated.
You can put consripts and regulars in the same armies.
What timeframe are we talking about? Early- and late-game wars are drastically different.
In my opinion regular infantry is actually less worth than conscripts, because regulars will at least somewhat reinforce and possibly after some time be usable again. Though if they are recruited from a POP which also provides cannons you might want to save those reeinforcements for them.
For the precise formular which unit goes where I think I once saw something of that nature in the wiki but I couldn't find it at the moment.

I should clarify that by "regulars" I mean the regular army which uses guards exclusively as its infantry component.

And what do you mean by POPs which provide cannons? I've never gotten artillery out of a mobilized POP before, but I would really like to.

 

[General WVPM]

In some mods there is a distinction between mobilized infantry, which form conscript units and normally recruited infantry, which are called regulars/regular infantry.
In vanilla they are the same, but the terms regular and conscript will still be used in this post. Conscript = mobilized troops, regulars = normally recruited troops.

Conscripts (in vanilla) can only form infantry units (and maybe irregular units for uncivs, but not sure). They reinforce slower and are drawn from civilian pops (labourers, farmers and craftsmen).

Regulars are recruited from soldier POPs. Soldier pops can be used for every unit type (though there can be limits based on culture, again not sure for vanilla). This means that you could create regular infantry or you could use those POPs for artillery, engineers and cavalry (not actual cavalry units, since they suck, but dragoons and such).

What mergele explained is that units will always try to be on the battlefield. They won't make room for support units.

 

[Kovax]

I find it most effective to send in a modest conscript force to fill most of the front line, then reinforce the battle with enough of my regular army to fill the second line, mostly divided evenly between regular infantry and cannons. The cannons will then tend to support the conscripts in the middle, while the regular infantry will fill up the second row on the flanks of it. Additional units that reinforce will then stack up behind (not shown on the battle screen).

If you toss in too many conscripts before your cannons arrive, the guns will initially be placed too far back to do any good, and you lose a lot of your future work force for a minimal tactical gain before they come into play. I tend to adjust my corps size to match the current frontage, so I've got some control over what gets placed behind what.

As an added trick, my initial conscript force often goes without a general, and I send in a reinforcing unit with a general best suited to the situation: either high attack or defend modifiers, etc.

[ I also try to separate out the Craftsmen from the Farmers and Laborers, and hold the Craftsmen back as later siege troops (rather than take heavy combat losses). My factories are generally back up to near full capacity within days of ending the war, despite building new factories and expansions during the war. ]

 

[mergele]

And what do you mean by POPs which provide cannons? I've never gotten artillery out of a mobilized POP before, but I would really like to.

Soldier POPs you have recruited cannons from.