EU4 - Ideal Army Composition - Is Cavalry worth it? | Combat Basics Guide - Part 3 | Tutorial 

For those wondering, Poland has many reasons why it completely and utterly ignores most issues for CAV: It simulatiously gets a -10% CAV cost reducction, a base -10% all regiment cost reduction, CAV to INF ratio boost, and a fucking 33% boost to CAV combat ability. This makes them much cheaper...expect it gets even better, because this is ignoring ideas, policy, and estates. So with ideas, we can get aristocratic ideas. The first pick in it is Noble Knights. Which is 10 bonus to both the cost and CAV CA. Meaning we now have a 30% reduction in cost for poland by the time we have 15 ideas. Thats nice. Now, we dont get any more CAV buffs from Artiso ideas. But between aristocratic and polish ideas, we get a nice 58% boost to manpower. So lets take Economic Ideas next. Which realy just makes things more affordable by just making us more money, with a very nice maintenance reduction near the end being most relevant. We can also take quantity. We have in quantity an extra 10 cost reduction to all divisions. We also just add another 50% to manpower, for 108%, because you naturally need to draft their mother as well. We can also get Quality for more CAV CA. Also, get espionage. This puts it at 40% for CAV and 20% for INF and ART. This means INF costs 8, CAV 15, and artillery 24 ducats respectively. The most important economically being actually the artillery, due to artillery being just that expensive. There was a reason why it was the Kings last argument: only the king usually could afford them in reasonably large numbers. But we arent done yet. Because I had you take economics for a reason. We get to a policy with that: Court of Wards and Liveries. This gives us a 10% tax increase and another 10% buff to cav cost. Which is now at 50% for poland, at 12.5. Which is much more reasonable. We can also get another 20% CAV CA from an espionage policy. And still isnt actually the Winged Hussar's final form. Because the Cossacks now get to enter into this. At max possible buff, the cossacks provide yet another buff to CAV cost of 20%, CAV CA gets another 20. And we get yet another ratio boost. For CAV boosts, we have 93% at max buff. Cost is down 70%, and we have a 70% CAV to INF ratio. When poland wants to make a CAV regiment, they pay a grand total of 7.5 ducats per CAV. Their INF costs 8. It is literally cheaper to use CAV over INF. Poland therefor should keep about 40% of their frontline as INF, and the Rest CAV. For other idea groups, take humanist to ignore rebels, defensive because BTW, did you notice you end polish ideas with Elan, and what isnt more hilarious then making your maintaince costs even cheaper, forsts cheaper, and having just an extra chunk of morale. Then choose either trade if you want more money or offensive if you just want to stack even more discpline because between the other ideas and policies you have, this means 20% Disc. Now, you might be able to get CAV cheaper, but this requires having a parliament with expand the army as the chosen law, trading iron, using expansion and trade as the later ideas, somehow being tengri....but you can pretty much only get 2.5 more off it. This is because while your cost reduction will hit over 80%, this is lessthan the hard-coded min cost of CAV at 5 ducats. And that is all you can do by this point: regiment cost reductions. Which are more useful for ART by this point over CAV. And since this requires expansion and trade ideas, when you are already having to decide between humanist, administrative, defensive, and offensive...and have only 3 idea group slots left. TD;LR: Polish ideas are very strong, but it requires basically using most your idea groups to make it work.

Cavalry is an artificial means of extending your manpower and improving your pure force strength in the first half to 2/3 of the game. It gives a marginal improvement over the combat strength of equivalent infantry while *not going over your force limit*. There are *many* times where you're limiting factor is being purely strong enough to defeat enemy stacks and finish battles quicker to save manpower and you are more than happy to pay the extra ducats cost.

You should really make a video about mercenaries

4:22 Okay thanks for this explanation, it's really enlightening. And I can't believe that this is how the game actually works. If I have decimated the enemy line to the point that my cavalry can't find enemy pips within flanking range, and they will just be useless until the end of battle, that's just stupid isn't it? In real life, those cavalry units would try to encircle the enemy right?

Drilling artillery is quite useful because artillery don't suffer attrition if they are grouped with infantry, nor do they suffer from combat losses if the front line holds. Having 2 regiments of cavalry in a stack is quite useful when your flanking range is maxed out, since they can attack without being retaliated against.

Short Answer - Use them until mil tech level 9 then go for infantry with 1 artillery for siege then after mil tech 16 use infantry with artillery

Good ol' Artlery.

Thanks for this guide! You're pretty good at explaining eu4.

I'm very curious about your opinions on mercenaries, please make that your next video. I dont think I use them right

Once you get to mid game, not using as many mercs means you can afford to constantly drill your troops and stay at higher maintenance. Mid game, I usually don't need all of my stacks in any average war, so I'll have a main stack with a few mercs mixed in, then another stack or two for more sieging and reinforcements, then 1 or 2 stacks tucked away doing nothing but drill and build army professionalism and occasionally stamping out rebels. Seems to work ok.

I drill purely to use the slacken recruitment, having an extra pool of manpower has saved me in countless of wars..

Thank you for the tutorial!

Hi Radio Res. Could you please review the mechanics of estates at some point as well? Not in the Combat Guide obviously but some other EU4 series. Thank you!

keep up the good work

Once you get 20% professionalism you get click to boost drill by 40% for 15% increased army maintenance specifically for the reason you mentioned about it being weak. The issue is if it's strong enough then it's overpowered, and if its weak no one uses it.

Stable video👍

Short Answer: Not really Unless you are a Horde, Poland, Mamluks or any other nation with very high bonuses to Cavalry, Especially Poland which can get up to 93% Cav. Combat Ability and Cav is cheaper for them. Otherwise you should have some cav, but not much of it- 4 units per army should be more than enough and really less than that is good. Cav is much better in the Early to Mid Game as it has more Shock and Morale than Infantry, but over time it goes down, to the point where Cav is Actually worse than Infantry in terms of Cost vs Pips. That is once again except for Poland and other Cavalry Specialist Nations.

Nice Video

make video whats the best way to use mercenaries, when i play i am not sure when and how much mercenaries should i hire, for example do i disband them while i am at peace?

The moment i get the tech for Artillery i build 1 or 2 in each army and i keep that until people have way more Artillery than me or i have a pretty good economy.

Would be really cool, if cav could attack the back row, if it isn't under attack. So you could put more cav in your army, which does more damage, so your combat width will be larger than the enemy's at some point and your investment will pay off.

VERY nit-picky here: I've heard several guides saying that cav is 250% MORE expensive than inf. but if it costs 2,5x the amount isnt it just 150% more expensive?

9:48 2000 hours and I *just* learned that arty gives its defensive pips to the frontline. Paradox games really are something.

It makes logical sense that cavalry decreases in power later in the game, as the invention of guns made the cavalry's mobility less effective vs the sheer power of muskets during that period of time. I think/wish that cavalry has some more usefulness in the mid game then declines rapidly afterwards. Maybe a readjustment of military tech to give +1 flanking range at earlier levels (+3 @ mil tech 15 and +4 @ tech 20?). This would be one way to make calvary more influential in the mid game and would be a better transition into infantry + artillery compositions. I also wish there was a guerrilla warfare mechanics at this point that cavalry could use. While historically guerrilla warfare doesn't become more utilized until the early 19th century, the time frame for EU4 has advancements occur a little quicker than history imo, so adding guerrilla warfare tactics in the game would be interesting and make combat more tactical.

Does Professionalism lock? Meaning if I get to 100 and have it drop down to say 20%, do I continue getting the 40/60/80/100% bonuses?

Can you please make a tutorial on mercenaries?

So I have a question: Mughals get 20% calvary combat ability and I tent to pick Aristocratic, which adds 10% more. My cav is not winged hussars, but it is a solid cav. At the beginning I tend to have 5 mercs inf, 5 regular inf and 5 regular cav. At which point is it worth ditching the cav then?

usually my main army comp by 1500 is 15k infantry, 4k cavalry, and 8k artillery. then every twenty years or so I add an additional 2k artillery and 2-4k infantry, and keep the cavalry the same. why do I keep them even though they're "useless"? because they provide a very convenient way to detach a small portion of my army to seige down other non-castled provinces, and most AI armies are small enough through most of the game to where the cavalry can still be useful for flanking bonuses. also the 15-4-8 scaling model is just low enough to not suffer attrition in most european provinces, and later on in most other provinces yet still be combat efficient in most scenarios, either against natives or against other powers that don't have enough to beat you outright. They also make a very efficient independent force that can easily be combined into other corps of the same comp for bigger battles, yet still maintain enough strength to conduct independent operations and secure multiple objectives without suffering massive attrition. the cavalry in each of these scenarios is there for two reasons: they provide flanking and better shock bonuses in battles, and they can be easily split off to back-cap.

Pdx could fix this by moving the cav unit toward the center if it doesn't have anyone else to fight within its range

Radio res how can I give province to my subject or which DLC did I need? Pls help

Isn't the point of Calvary that it makes better use of the force limit and manpower? It's a trade off. Ducats for more maximum strength, given your manpower and force limit. So, ideally, if you have money left over after maxing out your force limit, you would spend that money on on Cavalry.

So basically use cavalry if you have big bank and a limiíted force limit. Late game when you will most likely not fill your force limit up all the way and its not an issue infantry is always better because 2x infantry is better than 1 cavalry

This is my army composition 6 infantry 3 cavalry 3 Cannons ,mid-game infantry 7 cavalry2 cannons 3, late game infantry 7 cavalry 1cannons 4

Is the 4th guide out? i cant find it...

switzerland guide!

@2:41 .35 + .05 = .40 All day long. Where did you get .85 from? What kind of maths do you guys use where you are from? We use Arabic arithmetic.

*ARUMBA HAS ENTERED THE CHAT

Great info, but significantly outdated. Primarily, mercs cannot be integrated into regular armies. I've never been very dependent on merceneries, so I'd love to see am update to this video to see if this strategy still holds true .

So with Poland what army composition would you have?

Hi Radio Res. Could you please do as Mallaca form Malaya. Thank you (sorry if my English is bad)

Maybe guide on Madyas

inFANtry is OP!

I usually choose a cav just because of national ideas that give cav CA.

drilling definitely needs some tweaks

sunset invasion :D

Cav is manpower efficient though, really only worth it early game

So, I've always used manpower and drilling with focus on achieving 100% professionalism and I avoid mercs like the plague because if a whole army is raised my professionalism plummets. I admit that I genuinely don't understand the use of mercenaries at all. Then again, I also avoided corruption like the plague before I took advantage of its bonus to unrest.

naval combat is spam heavies to force limit

I wish you had done a calculation on artillery like you did with cavalry.

Why not have 40 inf 4 cav and 40 artillery for late game ?

"Is cavalry worth it?" Short answer: No Longer short answer: Only if you're Poland.

If a tank is 10.000.000x more expensive than an infantry, it should hit 10.000.000x more damage

Drilling = what you do in multi player when you are low manpower or afraid to Dec because your main enemy will make a two front war.

this just made me wanna play another bharat game. so fun to blob

So the point of cavalry is basically just to protect against enemy cavalry. Because even in the later game, if you dont have cav, your armies will get melted.

To be honest, I drill my armies and go to 100% professionalism as much for the bonuses as for roleplay. ;) I just like the idea of having a strong, perfectly-trained army and not a bunch of peasants with muskets.

Isn’t cavalry’s speed much higher than infantry ?

>Playing Mongolia in 1500s on VH with no allies and bankrupt >Ottomans DoW me because I only have 60k units >40 of the are banner cav 100% front line cav >they proceed to run away from me >finally catch them, wipe 100k Ottomans while bankrupt >they white peace Yeah I'd say Cav is pretty good.

Since you based your thesis around money couldn't i just say, "cavalry is worth it late game because money is irrelevant and thus not a valid point for the argument" as an antithesis?

I don't think you lose professionalism anymore... in the early days you had to keep a 1 sized army drilling full time to avoid decay, but now it just never decays.

I disband cavalry and replace them with mercs

Without even watching the video I expect that the best army is the merc army.

IN-fn-tree.

Did you ever make that naval combat guide? It's not on the playlist EU4 navy: so pointless that nobody bothers to make guide about it

I don't think it would hurt to have 2k cav per army

R-TILL-err-EE....you're welcome. LOL

Unconvinced! You didn't compare an army with cav compared to an army without if you ignore costs. Why would you ignore costs? Most countries in the game can easily afford cavalry, most times that the cost is important is if you have shit land or are bad at money management. Yes cav cost more but if you have an army with as much cav as possible it will easily beat an army without cav!

Prussia: NO!

Why is manpower always forgotten in the cav debate. A cav unit costs the same manpower as an inf unit, and gives more power. Manpower is so much more valuable than money. And then with force limit on top of that. The arumba can argument is stupid.

I disagree with the arty info you provide. I usually get at least 4 ASAP. It basically guarantees a stackwipe against an army with lower numbers and little or no arty.

If game calculated how to position your cav each. Good Luck with fps drops in each Day of each battle.

Hi

Yeah, I think drilling is pretty useless either. It usually goes back to 0 after one or two battles and even if you siege it is slowly decreasing. You also always have to plan months ahead.

I'm late lol

Go ask Mongols

Are you indian?

Short answer, no, not even slightly.

Infantry - pronounced In fun tree. Not being a smart arse

There's more costs than just money you dingus. Cavalry costs the same manpower and force limit, which is often the bigger limiter than money.

Why do you keep saying in faan try ?

Is Calvary Worth It?---No.

Referring to Arumba is a thumb down. Your vid was excellent, just avoid this :-) Edit: also saying mercs are broken is just inviting less fun in the game. Really think about what you say in context of the result on the game.

He absolutely cannot pronounce artillery, cavalry, or infantry. Might should have picked a different subject to make a video on.