What Military Idea to take?

[Shatter12]

Hello,
I am unsure of which military ideas to take as any nation. I realise that Quantity is largely useless for most nations (unless it’s one of the later ideas and you’re struggling for manpower, etc. when that can be supplemented by mercs), but unsure of which military idea(s) to take as any nation.
Thanks!

 

[Viktor Vaughn]

Honestly it depends entirely on the situation. I couldn't say which one is the universal military idea.

 

[TenshiN]

Quantity is the first military idea group i usually take actually, as it greatly improves your army's sustainability, decreases the time you have to spend between your wars, and gives you more forcelimit to play with. And that forcelimit translates into diplomatic leverage too. More troops -> easier time making friends - less coalitions - lower threat of being attacked.

Besides that, Defensive/Offensive are the obvious first choices if not going for quantity.

Offensive is just generally good and full of useful bonuses: 2 general pips for better generals even on low Army Tradition, Discipline for better troops, Forcelimit for more troops, Siege Ability for faster sieges... Whats not to like?

Defensive's main strength is that it is so front-loaded: army tradition and morale are its best bonuses, and they come as the first two ideas. Well, thats not to say the rest of its ideas are not useful (upkeep reduction and better forts are good and reinforcement speed is even better as long as you can afford manpower to actually reinforce),

 

[makaramus]

quantity is good if you want to go war all the time... after some time quality of army just becomes an overkill
sweden is best example quality + offansive may look good only until you realise you lack manpower+money to support army
instead picking economic + quantity allows you to use your national ideas with great effiency while supporting you to have multiple army regiments on diffrent area

its good idea group when you want to start multi border wars too (as russia if you pick it you can dow sweden while fighting with hordes at east for example)

its not an idea group boosting your combat but instead it incrases your sustain!

about picks its usually about your neighbors and your national idea and your desired gameplay. if your neighbors are small offansive is great idea while aganist enemies like france defensive makes you great thanks to early game morale.
quantity is good for countries having problem at full soldier line or countries that just want to have more soldiers to protect borders/occupy faster.

naval is simply shadowed by maritime ideas and even maritime itself is not considered a lot

Aristocratic is good for poland and countries that want to play more diplomatic game or simply want to become republic

 

[bbqftw]

Quantity / Defensive are your picks in singleplayer if you aren't clowning

Offensive nice utility pick to clean up the world.

Quality is pretty meme.

Obviously different in multiplayer where policy synergy and other factors are very important.

 

[makaramus]

Quantity / Defensive are your picks in singleplayer if you aren't clowning

Offensive nice utility pick to clean up the world.

Quality is pretty meme.

Obviously different in multiplayer where policy synergy and other factors are very important.

quality is meme? its great idea pick when combined with other military idea groups like offansive and defansive since its giving you discipline, overall army ... "quality"? and decent policy group.
just because idea group got few naval idea it doesnt make artilarity combat abilty obsolate

 

[bbqftw]

If you are in a fight for your life, you pick defensive/quantity

If you need a utility slot for faster sieges there's aristo and offensive, the latter also provides a decent chunk of quality.

What role does quality have besides win harder?

Keep in mind that if you pick more than 1 military ideas in the first 5 you will be crippled in some important area.

 

[Shatter12]

Quantity is the first military idea group i usually take actually, as it greatly improves your army's sustainability, decreases the time you have to spend between your wars, and gives you more forcelimit to play with. And that forcelimit translates into diplomatic leverage too. More troops -> easier time making friends - less coalitions - lower threat of being attacked.

Besides that, Defensive/Offensive are the obvious first choices if not going for quantity.

Offensive is just generally good and full of useful bonuses: 2 general pips for better generals even on low Army Tradition, Discipline for better troops, Forcelimit for more troops, Siege Ability for faster sieges... Whats not to like?

Defensive's main strength is that it is so front-loaded: army tradition and morale are its best bonuses, and they come as the first two ideas. Well, thats not to say the rest of its ideas are not useful (upkeep reduction and better forts are good and reinforcement speed is even better as long as you can afford manpower to actually reinforce),

quantity is good if you want to go war all the time... after some time quality of army just becomes an overkill
sweden is best example quality + offansive may look good only until you realise you lack manpower+money to support army
instead picking economic + quantity allows you to use your national ideas with great effiency while supporting you to have multiple army regiments on diffrent area

its good idea group when you want to start multi border wars too (as russia if you pick it you can dow sweden while fighting with hordes at east for example)

its not an idea group boosting your combat but instead it incrases your sustain!

about picks its usually about your neighbors and your national idea and your desired gameplay. if your neighbors are small offansive is great idea while aganist enemies like france defensive makes you great thanks to early game morale.
quantity is good for countries having problem at full soldier line or countries that just want to have more soldiers to protect borders/occupy faster.

naval is simply shadowed by maritime ideas and even maritime itself is not considered a lot

Aristocratic is good for poland and countries that want to play more diplomatic game or simply want to become republic

Quantity / Defensive are your picks in singleplayer if you aren't clowning

Offensive nice utility pick to clean up the world.

Quality is pretty meme.

Obviously different in multiplayer where policy synergy and other factors are very important.

I always thought that Quantity was mainly useless after the first 2 ideas (total manpower and recovery speed)? The +50% force limit is nice, but I remained sceptical due to the fact that your economy may not be able to support it on the larger nations.
So I’m guessing the first military idea will predominately be between what you need more, more soldiers and manpower, or a direct strengthing of how powerful your troops are. What is recommended between Offensive and Defensive usually, or does it come down to who you are, and who you are bordering?
Also, I’m guessing quality is a meme because due to what you said above, I.e. it makes you win the battles you should win faster and makes you lose battles slower (I.e. drag the battles out?)?
Thanks.

 

[Cookiepie]

While bbq is quite obnoxious about it he's pretty much spot on with his advice here. Quality has no place for minimaxing/wc single player runs, for hard starts defensive gives you better early boosts (first 2 ideas are the majority of the groups power) and if you have time to finish up a grp the 50% fl from quantity lets you punch harder/more above your size than any other (and the grp is useful afterwards too). 50% fl is the single strongest mil idea in the game, and is very much affordable (especially with the other ideas in quantity).

Offensive is somewhat useful since it lets you win wars quicker (movement, and most importantly siege), making it a niche pick at later stages. Quality is outshone by defensive and quantity early, and doesnt offer the useful utility that offensive does late (where you're so dominant that additional army power is largely irrelevant). With that said, quality has some pretty great policies and is a very strong pick in multiplayer (even if I wouldnt make it my first mil grp).

To answer your question Shatter12, in the situation you're describing (early fighting power) I'd recommend defensive. Before policies kick in its typically more power than offensive (15% morale is huge), but most importantly it goves you the military power sooner (first two ideas). I also wouldnt underrate quantity, while this is situational I think its overall the strongest mil grp in the game (both for sp and mp), and the cost savings in the grp essentially offset the 50% fl increase (especially if you use the 50% extra on infantry, which often is a solid plan).

 

[Dutch Patriot]

My go to is always offensive. A good general just makes a huge difference in close fights, plus is also has the 20% force limit increase which is handy.

 

[Piotrzeci]

I really started liking Aristocratic. It gives some Cavalry Combat Ability in the first one and Manpower later on, it also gives great bonus of -10% Mil Tech Cost. The rest is a bit of everything, but works as level 5 ADMIN Tech ideas group.

 

[Dokar]

Taken in a vacuum, I think I prefer defensive/offensive first.

However, quality is a really good choice IF you intend to pick up innovative fairly early. Quality, while decent, is subpar compared to offensive/defensive imo until you start combining it with other ideas for policies. I think quality has among the best policies in the game.

And yes, I realise that the value of innovative has been debated to death on these forums (it mostly comes down to it having too much competition in the admin tree) and while I am sure it is often a bad choice for MP or WC campaigns I frequently pick it up early on in SP if I am playing a nation where it fits for RP purposes; and if you pick up innovative, for whatever reason, then quality becomes the best military idea group in the game (by virtue of +20% infantry power).

 

[makaramus]

I always thought that Quantity was mainly useless after the first 2 ideas (total manpower and recovery speed)? The +50% force limit is nice, but I remained sceptical due to the fact that your economy may not be able to support it on the larger nations.
So I’m guessing the first military idea will predominately be between what you need more, more soldiers and manpower, or a direct strengthing of how powerful your troops are. What is recommended between Offensive and Defensive usually, or does it come down to who you are, and who you are bordering?
Also, I’m guessing quality is a meme because due to what you said above, I.e. it makes you win the battles you should win faster and makes you lose battles slower (I.e. drag the battles out?)?
Thanks.

opposite actually: Quantity helps you to have more troops for cheaper Its extremly powerful for sweden and prussia since their army abilities are owerhwelming allready having more men on group making them able to fight multi wars allways even alone

I mean 70 k stack of prussia can alone defeat 150 k france army, now imagine whan you can do with 120 k prussia troops

 

[bbqftw]

Lets talk advantages of quantity that are not the most well-known.

First of all, you need a 2:1 army size advantage to stackwipe someone in the traditional way (excluding "all enemies at 0 morale at battle start" or 10:1 situations). This is something that's not often appreciated, and there's plenty of things you can do with retreats to leave enemy armies at low morale and ready for THE WIPE. If you don't have the requisite army size, you are not getting traditional stackwipes.

Secondly, your force limit (as far as I can tell) is the most important component to favor generation rate. If you play an ally-heavy style being able to freely borrow your allies treasury/manpower pools for your own nefarious purposes.

Thirdly, assaults are actually a really nice way of taking forts late. If you park 40k artillery + support you're looking at taking horrific attrition for an year anyways, why not just spend 30-60 mercs on taking the fort after breach (happens a lot with +5-8 artillery bonused siege)? You're going to lose that or more to attrition anyways. Early game you can reliably assault a 2-fort with 18k mercs using rapid consolidation but money is a lot more tight then.

 

[Cookiepie]

Scratch this, I was entirely incorrect. Sorry about that (the content of my post is quoted by bbqftw below).

 

[bbqftw]

What? Why would you need 2:1 to stack wipe someone? Stacking wiping occurs when you bring someone to zero morale before two fire and shock phases have passed. Having more units than your opponent (to flank) tends to be necessary to accomplish this (unless your quality is vastly superior), but with twice their numbers the majority of your units will simply sit in reserve twiddling their thumbs (unless yours are artillery while the opponent has few). For the purpose of stack wiping a quality group, especially defensive (morale is almost on par with disc for fights as short as these), does it significantly better than quantity (unless your army size is so small that you struggle to field a full combat width). Doesn't mean that quantity ain't great, but stack wiping is not the reason why you get it.

Its not 2:1 before the battle, its 2:1 army size ratio during the battle + morale zero = wipe.

If you don't have a 2:1 army size advantage at the end of 12 days, they retreat at the end of 2 phases if you zero morale them.

One way you can test this is initiate fights with 0% army maintenance, you will be reduced to 0 morale quite quickly but you will not be wiped unless you fall below 2:1 threshold.

Another way to verify is be more attentive when playing stack ping pong, you will notice that the stacks at zero'd morale instantly squish upon hitting the 2:1 threshold.

Once you are cognizant of this fact you can predict the exact day you can stackwipe someone.

So why is this so deadly with quantity? You can initiate a fight, wait until lowered morale, retreat out your forces except for a 1k stack. 1k stack now determines the morale regeneration for the enemy, so they get a very small morale boost. Now re-engage fight with your retreat stack (force march them back in) + fresh reinforcements, you will morale zero them quickly so all that is required is the 2:1 ratio.

 

[Vicodin_Addict]

Have you tried Republic Ethiopia?

Probably no. But the joy of melting Ottomans manpower to 0 in less than 1 year while monopolizing trades in Aden-Zanzibar trade nodes is most satisfying.

And the prerequisites to do that, is taking Defensive-Aristocratic ideas in MIL group

Notes: How can you kill the Ottomans when they overpowered you 1 to 4?
Spamming forts in desert and arid area is the key, along with Defensive Edict and Ethiopians idea. They can't kill you if they can't get in.
How do you manage the ducats for forts upkeep? You must be kidding, controlling Aden-Zanzibar is more profitable than controlling English Channel