Why is army quality so important in multiplayer?

[Reman]

Quantity ideas are held as one of the best ways to increase your military capabilities in single player. However, I've heard many people claim that army quality is more important in multiplayer. Things like discipline, combat ability, and morale are held in higher regards than things like forcelimit and manpower.

Would somebody care to explain why this is the case for a person who rarely plays mp?

 

[yteek]

I'd say it's all about economy and diplomacy. You can have the most disciplined army, but still lose to someone with more money. MP is such a thing where the situation can change drastically in a moment.

 

[Vetgirig]

In MP people develop space marines. So if you don't have it too, you gonna get stomped by the enemy.

Defensive is usually first idea group - just to get the extra +15% morale from the start. It can make or break you in early wars.

 

[Nuklearius]

#

 

[Incompetent]

I haven't played any MP, but judging from watching MP matches, I'd guess it partly comes down to warfare mechanics and partly to the wider context and psychology of MP.

In terms of the mechanics of warfare:

Due to the limitations of combat width and fortresses, a badly outnumbered player with high-quality troops can hold out for a long time if they can fight on favourable terrain and defend a short front. The infamous 'mountain fort chokepoint' is absolute murder to get past if the defender knows what they're doing. Having hordes of inferior troops is only a good path to victory if the layout of the map physically allows you to swarm and overwhelm the enemy. To win with quantity, you need to batter the enemy with multiple attacks and give their troops no chance to rest, so that the enemy eventually runs out of morale.

In terms of the wider context:

If you're a blob with huge armies (whether due to Quantity ideas or, more likely, due to a huge economy), in a war players will notice it and react to it, fighting in a more cautious/defensive way to wear you out. Also, players are likely to team up against you for balance of power reasons, and because your sheer size/wealth means you've got a lot of stuff to be stolen off you if they can defeat you.

If you've going tall with space marines, it's a bit more subtle (unless you advertise it by forming Prussia or something). Diplomatically, you don't ruffle as many feathers and don't have stuff everyone else wants, so you're more likely to get allies. Even if you don't, a player will see your relatively small army and be overconfident in sending their bigger stack against it, only to be shocked when they take horrible losses, so you can pull off a surprise victory.

 

[hashinshin]

"YOU FOOL" you say to yourself, "I out number you 2:1!"

You march in your doom stack of 200k troops achieved with your quantity administrative influence build.

"What a fool you are to think you could win with half my size! You should have built ideas to let you expand!"

You engage your opponent's mere 100k with your 200k, and the battle begins.

"NANI," sweat begins to pour down your forehead, "those casualties... this can't be right! WHAT DID YOU DO!?"

"Yare yare daze..." your opponent begins, "you spent so much time maximizing your army size that you didn't even take offensive or quality, you're down 15% discipline, 3 leader pips, and 10% damage!"

"NO, THIS CAN'T BE, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" You scream hopelessly as you begin taking 3:1 casualties, your troops barely managing to dent your opponent's count as your army melts off the battlefield. "TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND... STACK WIPED?!"

 

[darth254]

probably cause of merc spam with ultra quality troops commanded by gajillion star generals, and the troops of said merc spam are infinitely reinforced due to merc mechanics (e.g. why Ming can cross through Siberia no sweat)

the new professionalism feature seems to try to give national armies a quality edge to try encourage keeping a legit manpower pool rather than being super dependent on infinitely-reinforcing mercs, but merc-spamming players actually seem to be saying "thanks" due to the further reduction in merc cost at low professionalism.

 

[Incompetent]

the new professionalism feature seems to try to give national armies a quality edge to try encourage keeping a legit manpower pool rather than being super dependent on infinitely-reinforcing mercs, but merc-spamming players actually seem to be saying "thanks" due to the further reduction in merc cost at low professionalism.

There's also drilling, which regulars benefit from but mercs don't. We'll have to see how hard it is to keep your troops drilled (I suppose it will be much easier for countries with elite armies, who can put a general on every stack), but it looks like the bonus for maximum drill is pretty potent.

Then there are Manchu Banners, which are drillable (as far as I can tell) but don't cost manpower.

 

[flogi]

At a certain point numbers are not that important in multiplayer.
Even when fighting against much higher numbers quality is more important as the opponents troops die a lot faster and you take less casulties. Its kinda snowball effect. Policies also play a big roll here. I haven't played vanilla mp in quite some time (playing with mods) but Quanitity Ideas don't give military policies which makes them not an ideal choice for most nations. If you just compare ideas quantity are fine cause the quality difference between just the other military ideas is not that high. Its totally different with policies though.
In other words: If you have a very good army already quantity is still a good choice as you just get more of that good army. If you lack quality its a different story.
Also in lategame wars what makes quality so much better than quanitity is stack management. If you have a huge army you can't have it all in one province, so a good quality army might wipe you easy in certain situations.
This is shown multiple times in dev mps for example. Although the number of people really managing their armies well is limited there also.

So all in all quantity is a good mid to lategame ideagroup in MP. Would not take it as a first or second mil choice though.

But after all there really is not much difference in idea sets in MP anyway cause you need that quality to survive. Thats why we play Idea Variation in our mp group, if you allow me this little self promotion

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

Lots of good stuff here. The only thing I would add is that you can afford to have a subpar army in SP because the AI is very easy to manipulate into giving you terrain advantage. If you're consistently able to have advantage in the mountains you have essentially created quality. Human players are much less likely to allow you to get away with such things.

 

[makaramus]

I think quantity is good idea group if
a)Your nation allready god good military ideas (like prussia or sweden) and it will help you to fill ranks easier
b)If you are gigantic nation that need to fight at multiple borders (especially ming and ottoman and russia) it may help you to fill multiple ranks at once
c)If you got economic ideas (you can spam armies by this easy... almost free units and great income... sure you gonna lose more wars compared to enemy but when their man power over yours gonna be halfway even if you lose their economy will be ruined

Again: Quantity is great idea group if you having trouble at filling ranks

 

[Zephyrum]

From my few MP matches, I take it that it boils down to three things:

1 - Cheaper
In Multiplayer, you don't get to freely blob. As such, money takes a fair bit more effort to come by. You also tend to have large periods of diplomatic lockdown when you have solidified alliance blocks and aligned interests, in which sustaining a huge army, even at low FL, is rather bad.

2 - Stackwipes
Players are more willing to give up when they are defenseless than the AI, which generally only surrenders when the warscore is low enough - a player having his stacks wiped in a solo war typically means a surrender request is coming. Players use unconditionals a lot more often, too. And because players spread their army to prevent you from just rebuilding a large stack of mercs after a wipe, stackwipes are very lethal in MP. Anything that helps you stackwipe - or prevents you from being on the receiving end - finds itself being massively important in MP.

3 - Coordination
When playing MP, ally reliability is much lower than in SP, however if they do join a war in your side, you basically have yourself an ally that (likely) won't send their stack alone into the enemy capital level 8 fort where their deathstacks are hiding while the rest of your men are still on the border. As such, it's not uncommon in skilled players' games to see a DoW immediately after ONE person took an ahead-of-time mil tech for a morale/tactics advantage. Quality armies sinergize a lot since whoever engaged gets to dictate his side's base morale and miltacs.

There's a fourth factor, but it's pretty minor when compared to the rest, so I'm putting it separately:

4 - Roleplay
It's often downplayed, but it usually quite an important silent factor in both MP and SP, on any Paradox games. Assuming the players aren't going to favor what is "cool" over what is efficient every now and then is just wrong - they do, more often than they should. While Quality is typically "noob-bait" in SP compared to Defensive/Offensive/Quantity for this very reason, in MP it's meta-efficient enough to justify picking it up. Mildly understandle, since everyone can dig the thought of 1 2 5 % D I S C I P L I N E at least a bit.

 

[Dutchman251]

At a certain point numbers are not that important in multiplayer.
Even when fighting against much higher numbers quality is more important as the opponents troops die a lot faster and you take less casulties. Its kinda snowball effect.

It's so much this. Numbers don't matter that much if you're both gigantic blobs fielding over 200k troops. Then it becomes far more important to have quality-wise good troops. since there is some kind of exponentially increasing benefits with better quality. Especially when you reach the point where the quality differential is so big that stackwipes start occurring.

 

[Sfan]

I disagree even if that's simply from watching the EU4 devclash.

Most players go defensive/quantity first, and we clearly see that the number advantage plays a huge role even if having a strong army is slightly more important. Just look at Fido last dev clash from instance, despite all his quality, he losed because of inferior economy and FL when fighting Canapés/Imperium.

 

[Zak Preston]

In MP people develop space marines. So if you don't have it too, you gonna get stomped by the enemy.

Defensive is usually first idea group - just to get the extra +15% morale from the start. It can make or break you in early wars.

Defensive is usually taken first if you have an immediate threat of being annihilated. Otherwise it's always quality + economics + offensive + innovative, that give in total +15% Discipline, +30% Inf CA, +1 Shock, +1 Fire and +25% Land FL. The rest bonuses are not that important.

You don't need strong economy, more diplomatic relations slots, diplorep or decreased coring cost if you can't win battles =)
But if you have tons of discipline, morale and different other modifiers, but your econmy is weak, you can just take loans => crush the opponent => grab some land => pay off debts with increased income.