|
On August 21 2013 16:50 Tobberoth wrote:
Would love to get some discussion going on army composition, I feel semi-lost at the moment.
From what I've read in EU4 wiki and on the forums, it seems that the most basic idea is to fill up your combat width with infrantry+cavalry, then have 50% of your combat width as artillery behind that (since you can't have more than 50% active ART). Most people also seem to agree that CAV is too expensive and falls off too quickly, so you want very little CAV, some people saying as few as 2 or possible 4 regiments per stack, just for flanking.
Now, this seems very logical to me. The problem, however, is that combat width is actually very big. The BASE combat width is 15 (so with 0 military tech outside of mountains and forests). This means that an army, even in the early game, should be composed of 13 INF, 2 CAV and 7 ART. But that's at military tech 1, by the time you get ART, you will already have a bonus to combat width, so you need even more than that, say 18 INF, 2 CAV and 10 ART if you have 20 combat width. This gives you a 30 man stack, at a point in the game where you will very rarely find provinces which won't give you attrition for such a number. Hell, I'm in 1600 right now in my ottoman game, and with 15 base combat width, I have 30 combat width. That's 4 CAV, 26 INF and 15 ART, giving a stack of 45, which I can't even put in my own capital without getting attrition.
How do you guys handle this issue? Do you keep smaller armies and merge them together during combat and simply eat attrition while fighting, or do you allow yourself to stay below your combat width? I find it risky to stay below combat width unless I know the terrain favors it, since it really sucks to have ART placed in the front row...
You're overthinking it. EU4 isn't that complicated in terms of compositions.
Have at least 4 Cav to cover your flanks. I like to have more cav early on because it's strong as shit and just in case for attrition and the like. Early on have more infantry than arty, but as tech improves you'll have the same amount of arty as infantry.
Early on I do 6/4 and then I move into 10/5 (more cav if an Eastern/Muslim nation0 and then 12/5/3 and progressively reduce infantry and increase arty until I reach 8/4/8. If I need more combat width or more troops I got plenty more 20 man stacks that I can put into combat and there's nothing wrong with splitting a stack in half (4/2/4) and putting them into a battle as well.
I'm not a fan of doomstacks, frankly. I like having a shit ton of smaller stacks that I can combine and split as needed. That's just how I learned to play with EU3 and Vicky 2 and it works wonders for my sanity.
|
On August 22 2013 03:45 Fruscainte wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2013 16:50 Tobberoth wrote:
Would love to get some discussion going on army composition, I feel semi-lost at the moment.
From what I've read in EU4 wiki and on the forums, it seems that the most basic idea is to fill up your combat width with infrantry+cavalry, then have 50% of your combat width as artillery behind that (since you can't have more than 50% active ART). Most people also seem to agree that CAV is too expensive and falls off too quickly, so you want very little CAV, some people saying as few as 2 or possible 4 regiments per stack, just for flanking.
Now, this seems very logical to me. The problem, however, is that combat width is actually very big. The BASE combat width is 15 (so with 0 military tech outside of mountains and forests). This means that an army, even in the early game, should be composed of 13 INF, 2 CAV and 7 ART. But that's at military tech 1, by the time you get ART, you will already have a bonus to combat width, so you need even more than that, say 18 INF, 2 CAV and 10 ART if you have 20 combat width. This gives you a 30 man stack, at a point in the game where you will very rarely find provinces which won't give you attrition for such a number. Hell, I'm in 1600 right now in my ottoman game, and with 15 base combat width, I have 30 combat width. That's 4 CAV, 26 INF and 15 ART, giving a stack of 45, which I can't even put in my own capital without getting attrition.
How do you guys handle this issue? Do you keep smaller armies and merge them together during combat and simply eat attrition while fighting, or do you allow yourself to stay below your combat width? I find it risky to stay below combat width unless I know the terrain favors it, since it really sucks to have ART placed in the front row... You're overthinking it. EU4 isn't that complicated in terms of compositions. Have at least 4 Cav to cover your flanks. I like to have more cav early on because it's strong as shit and just in case for attrition and the like. Early on have more infantry than arty, but as tech improves you'll have the same amount of arty as infantry. Early on I do 6/4 and then I move into 10/5 (more cav if an Eastern/Muslim nation0 and then 12/5/3 and progressively reduce infantry and increase arty until I reach 8/4/8. If I need more combat width or more troops I got plenty more 20 man stacks that I can put into combat and there's nothing wrong with splitting a stack in half (4/2/4) and putting them into a battle as well. I'm not a fan of doomstacks, frankly. I like having a shit ton of smaller stacks that I can combine and split as needed. That's just how I learned to play with EU3 and Vicky 2 and it works wonders for my sanity.
That tactic might have worked well in EU3, but you should be aware that it's fairly suboptimal in EU4 since ART was nerfed. If you have 8 inf 4 cav and 8 art, 2 of your ART is unused during combat, you can only use 50% of the space behind your forward troops as active ART.
|
So playing as Castile and got the quest "Resume the Reconquesta" which gave me a conquest CB on Tangiers. Ceuta, Melilla and Oran. Ok, fine! Then I can get the No Barbary Pirate modifier for -10% cost of ships and +1 Prestice.
But while I invaded my king died and this mofo came into power:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AEUUDPA.jpg?1)
0-0-0!
And the 4 provinces I was about to conquer costs 400+ admin power to core, each !
Atleast my heir was decent:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Wgs6vjC.png?1)
Now I am using my King as unit commander hoping he dies..
Bonus image, Denmark doing the personal union thing:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OcLJpHn.png?1)
|
Which idea group should I go for first/second/third as Brandenberg?
I'm thinking like diplo/quality/offensive but I'm not sure which order.
|
After my failure as Aztec I have decided to try Norway and go the colonization route, but I have still to find a way of breaking the personal union and not get annexed.
|
I think the most retarded thing about this game is how the AI has perfect control so if your army is bigger he will never engage you.
|
On August 22 2013 09:52 randombum wrote:
I think the most retarded thing about this game is how the AI has perfect control so if your army is bigger he will never engage you.
thats bullshit the ai is dumb as a box of rocks. Just got to do stuff like move your army to wherever they're moving their army and that will freeze it up to a point where you can move your army directly at their army and start the fight. otherwise its just manuvering to corner their army.
|
On August 21 2013 22:14 Velr wrote:
Burgundy seems to be really "fun" in EUIV...
IIRC i started around ~5 new games since i have it. In 2 of them Burgundies King died in the first ~5 years and Austria immediatly inherited.
If you are a human player you can never get inherited, nor will the burgundian succession event ever occur
|
Really I don't think a place should be able to rebel every 2 months... fucking annoying dealing with the aftermath of a difficult war (15+ exhaustion) when I get 5 or 6 popup of rebels every months. I have 4 stacks of 20K running around for 20 years killing rebel stacks on 3 continents while I just have to wait for war exhaustion to get down while I just click close on infinite popups :/ That's really killing my fun there to be honest.
Give me a real war to fight or something so that it just stop if I'm able to win.
Or how the hell do you avoid it after a painful war with France
|
On August 22 2013 10:43 rezoacken wrote:
Really I don't think a place should be able to rebel every 2 months... fucking annoying dealing with the aftermath of a difficult war (15+ exhaustion) when I get 5 or 6 popup of rebels every months. I have 4 stacks of 20K running around for 20 years killing rebel stacks on 3 continents while I just have to wait for war exhaustion to get down while I just click close on infinite popups :/ That's really killing my fun there to be honest.
Give me a real war to fight or something so that it just stop if I'm able to win.
Or how the hell do you avoid it after a painful war with France
I'm having fun making raideing parties and just burning the whole nation provnice by province while blockading france from the start. It doesn't take much for her to break into all her minors with massive revolts and what not. and when shes dealing with trubles on the homefront you start to siege and punt until you can pounce on the stacks right after they get finished fighting a rebel stack.
Just don't get involved with a land war with france or a sea war with britian.
|
Just throw my game away, that was just boring, and reloaded an earlier save, I'll just tiptoe and use diplo points that time to just not get such a high war exhaustion.
Still not sure what I'm supposed to do once you get so high.
|
Czech Republic11293 Posts
There are at least some issues with the AI, I had one AI stack changing paths every few days for a year (!) and not getting anywhere, while I just sieged his provinces. That was just an isolated event though, otherwise the AI seems pretty good at not taking fights it is going to lose.
|
On August 22 2013 11:11 Scip wrote:
There are at least some issues with the AI, I had one AI stack changing paths every few days for a year (!) and not getting anywhere, while I just sieged his provinces. That was just an isolated event though, otherwise the AI seems pretty good at not taking fights it is going to lose.
It's called playing chicken :D
The AI knows the time you take to get there, and will try to mess with you using that, changing paths. (for example, you take the direction of the place he was headed for, he stops, you stops, he do it again). If he's lucky, there is a short escape route from his province, so you can't just click where he departs from and catch him. If you still do, he goes in the other direction, and you end up chasing him around with his small army catching your sieges or stuff like that. Really annoying. The only solution I've found is to swamp him with a suicide unit, too small to beat him, so he doesn't flee, then you engage. But you loose a bunch of troops in the process.
|
Czech Republic11293 Posts
In this case though I had no moving units on the map whatsoever. That's why it was strange.
|
The AI is notoriously bad at making decisions and sticking to them. Its really easy to manipulate, but also sometimes has a difficult time doing stuff because it reevaluates its movements every day with no regard to previous history.
|
On August 22 2013 18:06 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
The AI is notoriously bad at making decisions and sticking to them. Its really easy to manipulate, but also sometimes has a difficult time doing stuff because it reevaluates its movements every day with no regard to previous history.
Yeah. The fact that the AI is dumb isn't really a problem. The fact that you need to move your troops every day to avoid a bad move from yourself is bad design though.
|
Yeah, it's quite annoying that the game lets you cancel moves in this manner because it leads to this kind of gameplay. It's really easy to exploit as a player, but it's also very frustrating. One of the best ways to abuse it is to go with a huge stack to the province they are in. They will move away so you can't catch them, but after a few days, you send another stack to where he's going and he'll cancel. That way, you first stack will definitely catch him and you don't have to move with the second stack, just cancel it. This problem becomes more manageable if you max the offensive idea group because you get the forced march order which makes a stack move faster, so they generally can't escape, and it only costs 1 military point.
Another thing which is good to know and never stated in the game: You can't cancel 1 day before arrival, so if an enemy will reach a province on the 3rd march, you can send your stack to the target province on 2nd march and they won't cancel, giving you an extra day to catch them which is usually enough.
|
On August 22 2013 22:07 Tobberoth wrote:
This problem becomes more manageable if you max the offensive idea group because you get the forced march order which makes a stack move faster, so they generally can't escape, and it only costs 1 military point.
But thats why I felt limited by the military ideas. You basically need Forced March, since I dont wanna play on slowmotion and you also need defensive idea imo, because france/russias 80k stacks walking around/fleeing without suffering attrition can only be stopped with equal numbers. You can lure them in and move 3 30 stacks into the fight, but they wont suffer many casualities this way if the province is like a 15+ days march. So with standard ideas, you play 80% of the game with the same kind of feeling to your army.
Also 3rd one would be Quality, since Quantitiy is really aweful and best points in Aristocraty/Plutocraty are the -tech% points which wont have much fruit for another 50 years to play
I edited the vanilla ideas and am testing around (mostly militaristic and admintech, which is way too expensive for the return) and am really wondering why there is only one major mod out there that changes ideas, but also changes half the gameplay/slows the game down alot.
I really felt a lack of choice ideawise, but noone seems to be complaining.
|
Am I the only one not really able to pick an Administrative Idea ? On the eight available, by the end of my game I have picked 1 Admin idea and had trouble finishing it...
Unless you play a peaceful game where you don't need coring I can't really see myself putting much points there seeing how much coring and stability boost cost.
|
On August 23 2013 03:12 rezoacken wrote:
Am I the only one not really able to pick an Administrative Idea ? On the eight available, by the end of my game I have picked 1 Admin idea and had trouble finishing it...
Unless you play a peaceful game where you don't need coring I can't really see myself putting much points there seeing how much coring and stability boost cost.
Same here. Playing as Ottomans, I can barely get any administrative tech going since I'm coring constantly, and that's with Ottomans having pretty cheap coring. Unless you have amazing rulers or don't get overextension, I can't see administrative ideas being viable. Then again, I don't feel any of them really supports a warmonger nation anyway.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
