why do my military suck?

[DeCazz]

Srlsy my army dies within the first battle.
Was fighting a war aginst Austria, and a army of 10,000 austrian men fought against my 22,000 army.
the moral was full, and mataince at max. we both was land tech 14 and my slider were full quality, -4 on landvsnavy and -1 ofvsdeff

we fought and my entire army died, WHAT THE F##K
I don't understand why, it's the same when i face of others armies sometime, i lose so much men in one battle, fouth against anhalt they had 2000 men and i had 15000, i killed their army but had 4600 men left

 

[Serzis]

Possible reasons:

Did you raise the maintenance slider at least 2 months before you engaged the enemy? Morale doesn't reach 100% immidiately and if you engage the army, it can't regain morale at all during the battle.

Do your enemies have militery drill while you do not? 1+ morale counts for a lot.

Is your army predominantly cavalry? If you have too much cavalry compared to infantry, you'll lose the "combined arms" modifier, resulting higher casulties for each hit the army gets.

Is a substantial part of your army composed of old mercenary regiments? Mercenaries have weaker morale and will not upgrade even when you unlock new unit types (same as with ships).

 

[DeCazz]

took some months before we clashed.
i have military drill and so did austria.
i hade 12000 infantry, 6000 cavalry and 4000 guns
no mercenarys

 

[Serzis]

What country are you playing as, where did you engage the austrians, who attacked and did someone have a superior general?

(Also, you haven't had the bancrupsy event, have you?)

 

[DeCazz]

i'm playing as Bavaria and engage them at Franken, they had no general and i hade one

i have not gotten that event

 

[Serzis]

Nothing worth noting there then.

Tbh, there might be a number of fairly specific reasons -- like accidently recruiting units from a non-core province that doesn't upgrade -- but since we've rattled off all the semi-obvious reasons and we lack a screen shot or a save file, I'll just assume that you were unlucky.

Artillery doesn't really add to your army at LT14 so that part of your army should just be discounted. You might have gotten a few really bad dice rolls. If your centre collapsed and the artillery shuffled forward, the battle might have been over fairly quickly.

 

[marshon]

If it only happend one, or a few times, it was most likely just bad luck

 

[Kovax]

I've had battles with 3:1 odds in my favor, roughly equal techs, and generals and terrain modifiers that basically offset and cancelled each other....an even fight, except for my numerical superiority....and lost, badly. 3-4 miserable "melee phase" die rolls later (my "fire phase" rolls were excellent, but had virtually zero effect at that early date), my entire army was broken, then pursued into the next province and annihilated. In one case, I rolled two 0's and a 1, the AI rolled two 8s and a 9. Each round, I lost 500-1000 men, and they lost around 20-30. At the resolution screen, it showed my combat losses as over 4000, and theirs as just under 100 (40:1 casualty rates). I rage-quit, reloaded to a few week before, and refought practically the same battle, and the die rolls were almost even, so I won with about a 3:2 casualty rate in my favor. I'm sure that if I had rolled spectacularly and the AI came up with abysmal numbers, they'd have been wiped out with hardly any losses on my part. The die rolls are THAT ridiculously important to the outcome.

Note that if you were playing an Eastern European nation and fighting a Western nation, those losses would have been normal, because the Eastern European foot troops are simply that bad after the first decade or two. The West gets Sergeants at Arms, and you get......nothing. Then a few tech levels later, they get a SECOND advance, and about a level after that you get your FIRST, which is hardly better than their first. On the other hand, your cavalry will outperform theirs for about another century, and you're allowed a higher proportion of cavalry to infantry, but it costs considerably more to maintain cavalry. Since you were playing a Western nation, it seems like nothing more than bad die rolls.