Why am I being steamrolled by the Europeans?

[Dominion]

You mean, the only fights that matter at that point?

What point? You said early game.
My first question was "what's early game for you".

We need to clarify what we're talking about or else we both end up being right and argue for no reason.

Hitting 40% bonus morale is a given for any player country (AT + Prestige + PP), and it might be considerably higher given my NIs and religion. That means by tech 15, roughly 1575 if my memory serves, my Morale is quite likely over 6. I don't see how that constitutes more than half the game.

I didn't reach that morale with 100 Prestige + AT + PP in 1575 and I played with defensive, +10% morale from NIs and a morale advisor.

Besides, 1575 is already almost half the game.
You're halfway done in 1630.
If we're not arguing time, but game stages instead you're even more than halfway done in 1600.
That's deep midgame where you start cleaning up minor goals and to prep triggering desasters.

By then, in a singleplayer campaign there will be a handful of nations that still require thought to fight against. I'm going to want sturdier troops if I want to face them in battle, not slightly more morale. Especially since I'm likely down 1-3 military idea groups on them.

Sounds like you're substituting idea groups for other means of gaining combat power or not trying to gain it at all.

An interesting tradeoff and I love watching the style, but it shouldn't allow you to sit at 100AT since it changes priorities and pathing altogether compared to the normal "blob out asap".
On the other hand you calc as if you had max pp, prestige and AT.

I am extremely confused. (maybe I confused myself somewhere along the lines).

The AT gained from events decays at the same speed (5% of total before modifiers) regardless of amount. +5 AT from an event will still mean that 20 years later your AT is 1.88 higher than it would be without the event. For events giving 15 AT (loads of events gives 10 to 20 increase/reduction) the result is 5.66 higher AT after 20 years.

That's still not what he said.
He wanted to "hog those points from events".
5 AT gained in 1500 is zero AT in his 1800 war against France.

I only replied to his comment. We are not arguing here.

 

[Brynjar]

That's still not what he said.
He wanted to "hog those points from events".
5 AT gained in 1500 is zero AT in his 1800 war against France.

The single event in 1500 won't make much difference (although in theory it may not be 0 contribution, that depends on how the game is handling rounding)
If the event occurs every 2 years from 1500 to 1800 will mean you have 46 AT (before getting 5 more in 1800) if he always picks the AT, ignoring any other gains.
If the event occurs every 5 years you'll sit on 17 AT from those events (again before getting the 5 extra in 1800).

I'm not saying that he should always pick the AT from that particular event, but there are plenty of AT events, and the option you pick will matter for a long time.

 

[Dominion]

I know what you are saying, I did put my glasses on before logging in ^^

You are also absolutely correct. But we're still not arguing against each other.

 

[Aythne]

What point? You said early game.
My first question was "what's early game for you".

We need to clarify what we're talking about or else we both end up being right and argue for no reason.

Besides, 1575 is already almost half the game.
You're halfway done in 1630.
If we're not arguing time, but game stages instead you're even more than halfway done in 1600.
That's deep midgame where you start cleaning up minor goals and to prep triggering desasters.

That's still not a useful question: am I roleplaying or powergaming or is this multiplayer? The answer changes every time. For a new player who is asking about how to fight a war in 1800, though, the entire timeframe is relevant. Just saying "morale is the most important factor" is not helpful.

What point? You said early game.I didn't reach that morale with 100 Prestige + AT + PP in 1575 and I played with defensive, +10% morale from NIs and a morale advisor.

Base morale at Tech 15 is 4. You only need +50% modifiers to get there, or 5% modifiers from sources other than the aforementioned AT/PP/Prestige. I'm not sure how you managed not to get to 6 morale while having +80% morale.

Sounds like you're substituting idea groups for other means of gaining combat power or not trying to gain it at all.

An interesting tradeoff and I love watching the style, but it shouldn't allow you to sit at 100AT since it changes priorities and pathing altogether compared to the normal "blob out asap".
On the other hand you calc as if you had max pp, prestige and AT.

I am extremely confused. (maybe I confused myself somewhere along the lines).

I'm the one confused here. Getting to 100 prestige and PP is easy even in a roleplaying campaign, but if you're doing any sort of blobbing then 100 AT just from sieges is a breeze as well. Checking my SS from a laughably slow AAR I'm doing, it's 1565 and I've had perma-100 AT since about the turn of the century without a single military idea or NI. And in any case, my initial post quoted a 40% modifier, assuming that most people could at least hit 80 AT (20% morale + 20% from Power/Prestige, rather than the full 45%).

 

[Dominion]

Oh god, please don't force me to talk about Multiplayer. It's such a different beast from SP. We'd sit in this thread until March

Tech15 kicks comes in 1585. That's almost halfway through. Early game is over by that point, no matter your metric.

Reason I was talking about morale was because everyone keeps repeating morale is only useful early game, which is an incorrect statement in my opinion.
Early game is your opening until 1500 if even.
As soon as you're not in danger of getting eradicated early game is pretty much over, but morale keeps being useful way beyond that.

And I'll check out that AAR.

 

[Kergan]

How do you suggest to tackle this problem? If I understand correctly, I need higher military tradition to get better generals.

Simple: be at war on a near constant basis. Outside of Europe (where League Wars gives a bonus +.5%) your army tradition usually drops by 2-3% per year without policies - Defensive, Quality, Aristocratic, Fort bonus all help. Unless you've been constantly sieging forts and slaughtering enemy armies to compensate that drop, your army tradition will be much lower than France, who likely has been warmongering its way to Japan.

And honestly, from the sound of your post it sounds like you've been playing as, well, Japan. If you haven't conquered half of Ming by the time you meet Europeans, then for sure they have a much higher military tradition than you do.

 

[Rocketskates]

stay away from the french in age of absolutism, they get a nasty bonus to their fire

 

[PhoenixG]

Technically, if you wanted to gank someone in 1444 Discipline would probably be your best bet. Sounds weird, but if you look at these numbers (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ulties-done-by-units-values-infograph.902702/) both Infantry and Cavalry deal almost as much damage at Tech 3 as they do at 16 (counting artillery support!). That changes immediately at tech 4 (with the addition of Tactics), but it only adds to @Dominion 's point that this shit is really, really contingent on the situation. Even the numbers I linked only deal with intra-Tech group combat, since different units appearing at different times throws the entire balance out the window.

I did some testing the the console about the morale advisor vs discipline advisor. All I can conclude is at all tech level the morale advisor will always win against the discipline advisor, due the extra 10% max morale that you get, but you will always have more losses.
This is tested with a fixed dice roll, no leader, no rivercrossing, no terrain penalty, same unit count/type, with/without cannon support, same tech, 0 prestige, 0 pp and 0 professionalism.

Funny thing is the 5% discipline and 10% morale deals about the same morale damage each day. The difference is smaller than 0.01 morale in favour for disciple. While the 5% discipline can't close the 10% extra morale gap, it just grind more men to dust.

 

[Aythne]

I did some testing the the console about the morale advisor vs discipline advisor. All I can conclude is at all tech level the morale advisor will always win against the discipline advisor, due the extra 10% max morale that you get, but you will always have more losses.
This is tested with a fixed dice roll, no leader, no rivercrossing, no terrain penalty, same unit count/type, with/without cannon support, same tech, 0 prestige, 0 pp and 0 professionalism.

Funny thing is the 5% discipline and 10% morale deals about the same morale damage each day. The difference is smaller than 0.01 morale in favour for disciple. While the 5% discipline can't close the 10% extra morale gap, it just grind more men to dust.

Thanks for taking the time to test! Unfortunately, assuming 0 morale from prestige/pp/at is a pretty important caveat that never happens in-game (for a player, anyway). The difference between a morale advisor and not with 0% from other sources is (and this is surprising) 10% morale. But add 100 prestige, 50 PP and 60 AT (basic targets for a non-blobbing campaign), or 30% morale, the extra 10% only makes a relative difference of 7.7%. Add religion, NIs/Defensive and higher levels of PP and AT to the mix, and the advantage dwindles even further. The same is true for discipline, but it's far easier to stack morale (and almost impossible not to) so the effect is pronounced.

Also what tech level is "same"? Because pips, damage modifiers, tactics and morale do not scale evenly. what is true at 3 isn't necessarily relevant at 10 or 16 or 25.

I don't mean to be overly critical, but whenever someone runs a basic test people are often seduced into believing it applies as a general rule.

 

[Dominion]

Another thread of this kind slowly coming to the conclusion that the whole system is too complicated to find a one-for-all solution, though I'm tempted to say a rule of thumb would be to pick morale if you want to win, discipline if you want to minimize losses.

Then again, this can't necessarily be applied to multiplayer because a player's reaction time means max morale can be more valuable than discipline even lategame just to prolong combat, giving allies and yourself a chance to reinforce.

Interesting to note how the only noticable change in recent years has been the addition of PP, increasing average morale overall. Aside from that it's still the same system and we're still on square 1 with our discussion.

 

[PhoenixG]

Also what tech level is "same"? Because pips, damage modifiers, tactics and morale do not scale evenly. what is true at 3 isn't necessarily relevant at 10 or 16 or 25.

I don't mean to be overly critical, but whenever someone runs a basic test people are often seduced into believing it applies as a general rule.

Well I tested at tech 1,3,4,15,16 and 32. And each test the result was the same. Both took the same amount of morale damage. Discipline deals more damage, but morale still win due having more max morale. So my conclusion was all those stuff does scale evenly.

The way I tested was only the single out the two advisors. 10% morale vs 5% discipline, while all other stuff are the same.

 

[Aythne]

Well I tested at tech 1,3,4,15,16 and 32. And each test the result was the same. Both took the same amount of morale damage. Discipline deals more damage, but morale still win due having more max morale. So my conclusion was all those stuff does scale evenly.

The way I tested was only the single out the two advisors.

Very interesting! I still think you're making a mistake by isolating the advisors from other "basic" morale modifiers (since they're never really isolated in-game), but I didn't expect the tech thing to hold. Thanks again.

 

[PhoenixG]

Very interesting! I still think you're making a mistake by isolating the advisors from other "basic" morale modifiers (since they're never really isolated in-game), but I didn't expect the tech thing to hold. Thanks again.

Well the problem is with I did that, morale will just win hands down on the base having more.

In terms of dealing morale damage, 10% morale and 5% discipline is the same.

 

[GaiusJulius]

Hey, OP here. Seems like I've been gone for 24 hours and the post now has a life of its own.

I learned a lot from the discussion and I'll try to implement some conclusions for the next run. I'll start with a morale advisor and then switch around between morale and discipline in mid-late game to see the results. I was also making tons of cash at this point, so I should have considered changing my advisor more often.

He wanted to "hog those points from events".

I was hogging the ADMIN points. I should have picked discipline occasionally, but (probably like most new players) it was tough managing my admin points.

 

[Dominion]

I'd still pick admin points over AT.

Warfare and passive AT gives you so much more in comparison.

Force yourself to blob harder. Use free admin points to core and watch AT from conquest skyrocket.

Thing is, AT can be created out of nothing when you need it.
If you prepare for a huge war, throw in a few minor ones before that and increase your tradition.
Monarch points can only be gained passively.
Admittedly it changed a bit with promoting advisors, Estates, etc. but unless you absolutely need to pack a punch and do it just a little bit harder to break someone I wouldn't take AT over admin.