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A big part of composing stacks for me is making them easily divisible, so I nearly always go with even numbers, and make sure that every stack is identical. 12/4/8 for instance, that way you can cleanly split it up into 4 parts for carpet sieging and then consolidate them without too much effort. Or mash them into one giant mound and then split it up from that to send to two different fronts without having to fuss over one area having a huge imbalance of artillery. The "ideal" ratio changes a lot depending on terrain (this patch anyway) and in the mess of war it's easy to lose track if you're got messy stacks, so cleaning them up in peacetime, even when your clean stacks aren't necessarily perfect, results in much less hectic wars, I find. It really depends on the point in the game though. In the early game cavalry are super good even when you're not a horde, so there's no harm in having more than just the few for flanking on the sides as long as you can afford it, so long as you don't run into their insufficient support penalties. Then in the later game they fall off hard and you only want them for flanking really. But then the flanking range improves, so you can afford to put more on the wings. "Ideal" ratio for a big doom-battle you're planning and are able to coordinate properly though, where both sides are full combat width, is artillery up to combat width, infantry to combat width -4 or 6 or so for cavalry at its wings. Then as the battle progresses, feed in fresh infantry to refresh your morale and replace your losses so your artillery doesn't get overrun. Usually it's trickier to actually coordinate that though, so you want a significant surplus of infantry over your artillery even though they might not be able to actually do anything other than immediately replace losses.
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Nov 3, 2016 18:31
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Thanks for all the help! I'm playing my first serious run as Spain and plotting for an actual serious war against the current end boss of mega-France, since they are my only real competition in South America and the Eastern United States. Of course I'll just probably just lure them into my line of doom forts on the border and grind them out but nice to know what to do when I go on the offensive!
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Nov 3, 2016 18:38
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Zikan posted:I'm trying to figure out how to build the optimal army stacks and am having trouble figuring out how combat width works. It only refers to the line itself, and not the total number of units that can fight in a single battle, right? Yes you're correct on both accounts. Combat width is how long your line is, and you have two lines front and back. Artillery take huge penalties in the front line so they'll always deploy in back. Ideally you want a front line equal to the combat width, it's actually better to keep additional units in a nearby province to reinforce rather than sending everything in at once like the AI does due to how morale works. You only need 2-4 cavalry early in the game if you're poor but they're stronger than infantry if you can afford more. Early game artillery is kinda lovely in battle and mostly for sieges, starting around 1600 you want to have as much artillery as you can afford, before then just bring a handful for sieges. Edit: since you are playing Castile/Spain, your best bet is to lure them into mountain forts in the Pyrenees. Let them siege for a bit, then send in your army. You'll get the defensive bonus from mountain terrain and also a smaller combat width, allowing you to beat much larger French forces. Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Nov 3, 2016 |
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Nov 3, 2016 18:42
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Yashichi posted:Corruption is still a garbage spite mechanic that the game didn't need but almost everything else has been great. I was worried that the state system would be horrible but it's actually really engaging. It was a spite mechanic at first when it was fairly barebones and only impeded the player, but debasement has been extremely useful to me that I often now find myself running with a bit of corruption. I've gone as high as like 38 when I did a peaceful Japan formation run (it was a super dumb thing), where I integrated all the Daimyo without ever raising army maintenance. Being able to print money off is way more useful than you think for rapidly expanding in odd ways. For example, I often find myself either trading off loans for corruption (if I accidentally take a loan due to events or poor planning) or to just embrace an institution rapidly. You would think 38 corruption would be a death knell, but it really didn't slow me down at all - I became the no. 1 GP by 1520, and overtook France and the Ottomans in tech extremely quickly despite the early slowdown. I had something like 23 loans with 28 corruption, but the second I integrated the last Daimyo and stated that land, I just printed off 5 lots of money. The jump in income from the integration meant that I got far more money from debasement than my previous loan size, so I could repay something like 20 of those loans right at that moment. Then I was no longer paying interest off, and could afford to pay down my corruption extremely quickly. It ended up affording me a lot of flexibility and really brought me around to understanding corruption as a non-spiteful mechanic. It is a situational use tool and I see that being the best future of the corruption mechanic. The addition of unrest reduction should also add a bit more depth to the mechanic and turn it into a genuine tradeoff between longterm stability and efficiency. It probably still needs another wrinkle to add a bit more depth to it, but it is on track to be a non-spite mechanic with genuine strategic depth. For example, a nation like the Timurids could make great use of the proposed change to corruption early game by immediately printing off 500 ducats, taking 10 corruption, getting some unrest reduction which is used to control the Persians and then spending that new money on conquest into Delhi and an inquisitor, which turns into razed monarch points and higher religious unity... Horde institutions means you aren't exactly going to be getting cheap tech immediately anyway. I'm not sure what corruption needs right now to add some more depth. Perhaps an option to take on some corruption to provide estate loyalty, like the prestige and legitimacy options, or perhaps just flat bonuses. For example, overlooking a less ethical proselytising conversion process in return for greater conversion speed. Or illegally requisitioning goods for military use to provide some combat ability or something like that. Rather than encourage players to keep corruption low, the mechanic should offer tradeoffs worth considering. I'm thinking fairly powerful short term bonuses with long term consequences in paying it off again.
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Nov 3, 2016 18:47
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Koramei posted:A big part of composing stacks for me is making them easily divisible, so I nearly always go with even numbers, and make sure that every stack is identical. 12/4/8 for instance, that way you can cleanly split it up into 4 parts for carpet sieging and then consolidate them without too much effort. Or mash them into one giant mound and then split it up from that to send to two different fronts without having to fuss over one area having a huge imbalance of artillery. The "ideal" ratio changes a lot depending on terrain (this patch anyway) and in the mess of war it's easy to lose track if you're got messy stacks, so cleaning them up in peacetime, even when your clean stacks aren't necessarily perfect, results in much less hectic wars, I find.  Building armies I don't have to micro the gently caress out of is far more important to me than having the ideal composition all the time. Another random tidbit for newer players wondering about army composition: if your regiments have taken damage in battle and lost a lot of men, they fight proportionally poorly as well. So if you have 12 regiments, all with 200/1000 men, they'll still look normal (but faded) when they deploy in battle, but in actual fact they're performing extremely badly. That why it's often a good idea, if you need to fight a battle right away or are low on manpower, to consolidate regiments (or maybe just your infantry regiments) and then hire a bunch of mercs to replace them.
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Nov 3, 2016 18:58
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Another random tidbit for newer players wondering about army composition: if your regiments have taken damage in battle and lost a lot of men, they fight proportionally poorly as well. So if you have 12 regiments, all with 200/1000 men, they'll still look normal (but faded) when they deploy in battle, but in actual fact they're performing extremely badly. That why it's often a good idea, if you need to fight a battle right away or are low on manpower, to consolidate regiments (or maybe just your infantry regiments) and then hire a bunch of mercs to replace them. other secret eu tech: shift-clicking 'consolidate' will merge units but will leave 0-strength units around instead of disbanding them, which is nice if you don't want to pay to remake them later. (this can be worse if you're over your force limit already, though, or if you're trying to save manpower for cav/artillery instead of infantry.)
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Nov 3, 2016 19:03
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i build 6 cav units these days in my stacks let chaos reign
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Nov 3, 2016 19:06
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currently running around with several 20-5-10 stacks, or 25-5-10 in places where large groups of rebels (30k+) are likely to pop up it's surely not ideal, could use more artillery and 1 more cavalry I guess, but who cares, I have 6 of them I just point them in the enemy's direction and say "kill them or die trying"
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Nov 3, 2016 19:12
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Another Person posted:i build 6 cav units these days in my stacks If you can afford it, this isn't a bad idea early game. Also if memory serves cavalry loot at a higher rate than infantry, so if you have a sizable cavalry detachment in your army you can settle the main body down to siege and spin off the cavalry to just pillage the poo poo out of all the unfortified provinces.
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Nov 3, 2016 20:30
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I took a look at the great powers list and Ming is still on it when Global Trade spawned. That's scary. What's even more scary is that they are sitting on 250% tech cost.  Don't you just love it when your republic tradition dictates that it's the current -20% better relations ruler who's going to get re-elected and then he turns out to be cruel for the convenient +2 revolt risk as well. He also died a couple of months into his third term. 
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Nov 3, 2016 20:32
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skasion posted:If you can afford it, this isn't a bad idea early game. Also if memory serves cavalry loot at a higher rate than infantry, so if you have a sizable cavalry detachment in your army you can settle the main body down to siege and spin off the cavalry to just pillage the poo poo out of all the unfortified provinces.
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Nov 3, 2016 20:38
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Has tag switching always recalled your missionaries? I turned into Great Britain and I was 70% into converting an annoying center of reformation in Inverness. When I did it recalled him and now I have to teach those Scots how to be proper Protestants all over again.
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Nov 3, 2016 23:51
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Did they change something with the AI in the last patch or two? I decided to restart my This Is Persia run with the new patch and I can't beat those 20 man stacks that the Timurids have in the mountains with 13 infantry anymore because they are actually mostly comprised of infantry now.
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Nov 4, 2016 00:20
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Finally, I can trigger Sabaton at will whenever appropriate.
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Nov 4, 2016 00:31
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Fintilgin posted:Finally, I can trigger The Stonemasons at will whenever appropriate. Fixed that for you.
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Nov 4, 2016 00:32
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Fintilgin posted:Finally, I can trigger Sabaton at will whenever appropriate. How come absolutely no one ever cares even slightly what you do to holy places? Conquer them, convert them and culturally genocide the place? Fine. As long as you're not a fellow filthy Catholic taking over Rome there is absolutely no problems whatsoever. Construct minarets all over St Peters Square for the glory of Allah? No one is bothered in the slightest. Replace the Kaaba with a giant statue of Buddha? Why would anyone be upset about that? Raze Jerusalem down to 1/1/1 for the faith with a wonderful Tengri/Nahuatl and drown the city in a flood of blood of human sacrifice? Why get worked up about it? Don't disturb the head of the inquisition as he is relaxing in a beach chair sipping cocoa imported from the Jewish new world.
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Nov 4, 2016 00:48
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Oh cool, they're adding the peasant republic of Dithmarschen into the game. It'll be neat to hear about what their whole thing is.
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Nov 4, 2016 00:58
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EU4 has music?
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Nov 4, 2016 01:24
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Wafflecopper posted:EU4 has music? Yea, and SA has a front page.
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Nov 4, 2016 01:52
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Poil posted:"och förlåt oss våran skuld" *burns down the Vatican*
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Nov 4, 2016 02:20
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oh my god yes
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Nov 4, 2016 02:24
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Maybe it is because I suck at the game and do not understand some of the mechanics, but it seems fighting anything but much smaller nations late in the game is a fool's errand now. I was playing with an imported megaempire and even with nearly inexhaustible troops and resources they made grabbing just one larger province a hassle. Their nation was littered with forts that take forever to siege and the AI is too smart about dropping troops behind your lines. Attrition does nothing to them, and neither does war exhaustion it seems. They were eventually sitting pretty at -20 for years and their nation was just fine, their economy was healthy even with embargoes and blockaded ports all over. I had almost exhausted the mercenary pool and my regular armies were just barely holding on when he raised two more massive armies to take land from me again. I had managed to grab my single county wargoal and so asked for a few colony provinces before his new blobs countered me. The end result was over 400k troops lost for essentially nothing so I guess I gave the world a preview of ww1.
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Nov 4, 2016 02:54
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Deutsch Nozzle posted:Yea, and SA has a front page. Yeah I know about the forum index
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Nov 4, 2016 05:54
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Japan is incredibly broken right now, and not in the good way. None of the special CBs work properly, and the daimyos are constantly declaring war on the emperor, only to demand nothing but war reparations for even a total victory.
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Nov 4, 2016 08:29
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Man, EU4 has so much complicated poo poo going on now, I'm confused  Used to be my go-to 'Play around while I'm on a Netflix binge' game, but now there's estates and other new stuff that I don't understand (I was never good at the game to begin with, mind. I still have no idea how to evaluate what buildings to buy and where, for example). Has the tutorial been updated with all this new stuff, or do I need to settle in for some LPs?E: And even if the tutorials are actually good now, suggestions for a recent mechanics/tutorialish LP would be appreciated. Preferably someone who doesn't have an obnoxious as hell voice. Lprsti99 fucked around with this message at 08:56 on Nov 4, 2016 |
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Nov 4, 2016 08:44
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Lprsti99 posted:I still have no idea how to evaluate what buildings to buy and where, for example That's really not complicated at all. Temples gives a tax bonus, so build them in high tax provinces, ie the ones with admin development points. Workshops in high production (diplo) provinces, barracks in high manpower (military) provinces, and marketplaces in high trade value provinces, ie anywhere with a centre of trade or river estuary (you can see these in trade mapmode). All of the above buildings also put an overlay on the map when selected, telling you how much of their specific benefit they'll give in each province. The ones with the highest numbers are the best places to build them. Forcelimit buildings wherever you have room, usually lovely low-development provinces you have no other use for building slots on. As a rule of thumb I build temples/workshops anywhere they'll give +0.15/month or higher, and barracks anywhere they'll give 500 or more manpower, give or take a little depending on how much gold I have to invest. A few shipyards wherever you want to build your navy from, or lots of shipyards everywhere possible if you want a higher naval forcelimit. Docks are useless, don't build them. Courthouses anywhere that has high unrest that you can't or don't want to deal with in other ways. They can be handy on estate provinces if you're like me and tend to piss your estates off often. They're changing next patch though to reduce state maintenance instead of unrest, so you'll want them in high-maintenance states. I'm not sure on the exact mechanics of state maintenance, but I think it's higher the further they are from your capital and maybe also higher for high development? Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Nov 4, 2016 |
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Nov 4, 2016 10:29
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I do wish there was a button next to each building that just built it in the province in your empire in which it would have the greatest effect. A lot of the time my process goes: 1. Click temple 2. Scour map for highest number 3. Click number And it would be cool to have that reduced to a single step. Presumably the process is needed in order for the AI to handle this stuff in any case.
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Nov 4, 2016 11:14
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Gort posted:I do wish there was a button next to each building that just built it in the province in your empire in which it would have the greatest effect. A lot of the time my process goes: In EU3 there was a ledger page where you could look at the relevant stats for your provinces and build directly from that page. I'd like that back at least.
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Nov 4, 2016 12:32
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Yashichi posted:Corruption is still a garbage spite mechanic that the game didn't need but almost everything else has been great. I was worried that the state system would be horrible but it's actually really engaging. How is the state system engaging? As far as I can tell, you make everything a state, unless a) it's in a Trade Company b) the pop-up says it would cost more than it would earn or c) you've run out of state slots and the area is not one of your X richest ones. I suppose you could be starved for manpower but high on money and end up creating unprofitable states just for the troops, but then you'd just use mercenaries instead. It seems to me as if it could easily be a wholly automatic process. It's definitely an improvement over the old overseas / not overseas mechanic, but "engaging" is one thing I definitely wouldn't call it.
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Nov 4, 2016 12:32
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What's a good first idea group for Tunis?
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Nov 4, 2016 13:12
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I like the silly singing man from The Cossacks DLC!
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Nov 4, 2016 13:45
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Bishop Rodan posted:What's a good first idea group for Tunis?
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Nov 4, 2016 14:33
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Bishop Rodan posted:What's a good first idea group for Tunis? I've always been partial to exploration. If you are aggressive enough at taking out Tlemcen and Morocco, you can be one of if not the first person to colonize the new world. A colonist will also let you get into central Africa easily where you can grab some gold mines and easy to take land. (Economic ideas are good for this, but it's usually my 3rd or 4th idea group). Defensive also works well with your national ideas (namely +1 attrition). I'll usually kill Castile/Portugal by just letting them die as they try and work their way through my territory. Forts and attrition are deadly! Lastly, trade can also work, especially if you can grab Alexandria before the Ottomans do. Build trust with them and they shouldn't mind you taking it.
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Nov 4, 2016 14:39
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The ledger is so stupid I don't even bother with it. I tried to minmax my estates by putting nobles where there was high base manpower only it sorts the column alphabetically instead of numerically so a province with 900 mans appears before a province with 2,000 mans (or if you reverse it, 2,000 mans province before 4,000 mans province)
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Nov 4, 2016 17:32
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I've got a few hundred hours in the game but there are certain things I still never really figured out. You guys talk about how morale is useful in the early game but drops off in the midgame and that's one of those things I never really noticed or understood. Can someone give me a summary on how the combat pips change in effectiveness over time? When I unlock new units I'm basically picking one at random since I don't really understand how important shock or morale is at any given point in time.
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Nov 4, 2016 19:09
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skasion posted:In EU3 there was a ledger page where you could look at the relevant stats for your provinces and build directly from that page. I'd like that back at least. That was in EU4 too, but was removed a few patches ago after one of the big building system revamps. (There've been so many...)
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Nov 4, 2016 19:11
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Xinder posted:I've got a few hundred hours in the game but there are certain things I still never really figured out. You guys talk about how morale is useful in the early game but drops off in the midgame and that's one of those things I never really noticed or understood. Can someone give me a summary on how the combat pips change in effectiveness over time? When I unlock new units I'm basically picking one at random since I don't really understand how important shock or morale is at any given point in time. Morale is important because morale damage is based on the attacking unit's maximum morale. If one side has 2 morale and the other has 1, then the latter will take twice as much morale damage. When a unit runs out of morale, it can't contribute to the fight, and if an army runs out of morale, it's forced to retreat. Combat pips basically determine the base for how many casualties the unit can give and take. Offensive pips contribute to the casualties the unit inflicts, and defensive pips mitigate the casualties they receive. Note that this is true for both sides of the fight, and has nothing to do with which army attacked first. Generally speaking, you want cavalry and artillery to focus on offensive pips and infantry to focus on defensive.
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Nov 4, 2016 19:29
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Fister Roboto posted:Morale is important because morale damage is based on the attacking unit's maximum morale. If one side has 2 morale and the other has 1, then the latter will take twice as much morale damage. When a unit runs out of morale, it can't contribute to the fight, and if an army runs out of morale, it's forced to retreat. Thanks, that's pretty useful information. I'm assuming shock is just straight up casualties, but I don't understand its relation to fire, unless those are just different phases of combat which I've always sort of assumed they were. Even if they are, I'm still not really aware of how to optimize for them. Discipline seems to be all-around the best thing ever, but is there ever a reason to not try and get as much of it as possible?
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Nov 4, 2016 19:37
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Xinder posted:Thanks, that's pretty useful information. Yeah shock and fire are the two phases of combat, each day (or so?) is a phase with its own die roll and it switches back and forth (fire first). Shock starts off strong and calvary have a ton, later on infantry and especially artillery get a shitload of Fire
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Nov 4, 2016 19:38
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Xinder posted:Thanks, that's pretty useful information. Every three days, the fight switches between shock and fire phases, with each stat being used in its respective phase. Discipline is good, but it's hard to get in large amounts. Morale, on the other hand, can stack to ridiculous heights. One of the reasons France is such a terror is because they get a +20% morale idea early on.
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Nov 4, 2016 19:48
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