EU4 Proper Army Compositions 

lutin grognon There is no luck. It will happen eventually, if you attack with half a million men.

lutin grognon I'm not talking about morale, it was full. I'm talking about every regiment of the French army consisting of 200 men. Although I was able to get some delicious stackwipes in my England game with literally one dude defeating 40k.

I did that as the Ottomans for a PU over a metastasized France and force-converted them to Protestant. Protestant Ottomans are not broken at all. :)

Depleted France's Elan + quality with their ridiculous manpower base? With shitty quantity troops? Wow man good job beating France at the end of your world conquest game you impress us all.

+Just me Quantity is a waste IMHO, even Aristocratic ideas are better. Especially as a country with some bonuses to military traditions. The extra manpower is nice, but it's nothing special. I'd still say that Quality is the shittiest group because you have 3 mediocre bonuses for your armies and 1200 mana wasted on navies (who the fuck wants navies anyway when you can make your enemies squeal with superior, offensive tactics) - the only worth while things in that idea groups is the extra discipline and tradition decay, which is also undermined by two guaranteed pip's provided by Offensive ideas.

nosirrbro i always did 40% cavalry of my infantry lol

Just go 2/4/6 with cav, buy as much artilery as your combat width can allow and use the rest for your infantry. Just make sure there's more infantry than artilery since artilery is slow as fuck to recover and will cost you shitload of manpower, gold and time. Cheers.

+Nightowl Is the first available artillery still worth getting? I see it only has one fire pip. (OK, it has one siege pip, too, so I know it will be useful in sieges.) I'm currently playing as Korea, and I keep fighting Ming, so I clearly need all of the advantages I can get. But artillery is expensive and slow to recruit, and I've only got the first artillery in the game, which doesn't seem to be very good (just one fire pip, as I say). My economy is pretty good, though, so I _could_ afford it. And it's not as though I've got the force limit or manpower to steamroll Ming through numbers. Any ideas?

Ive just been doing 34k stacks (20 inf, 4 cav and 10 cannons). Have worked wonders for me. But its just up to a certain point. You will need more inf/art later on

viikmaqic what point is that because I'm new to the game and need some tips on army comp.

Trade +200 per tick in 1600 +trade ideas

dont use trade ideas , watch the ae and if you are in Iberia , north germany , france or italy try to go to either genoa lubeck venice and english sea. Give all centers if trade to burgers , upgrade to level 2 and make states only the ones that give allot of trade powet , i was Religious defensive adm quantity humanist france ans was making 150 duccats from trade and i didnt have italy , and i was making 250 duccats per month so yeah , i was holding 100k arty with 100k mercs and i was still making money.Always take quantity.you can even hold maybe one third or half of your inf as normals

TheDefeatedGamer no, arty gives half of their pips to defend the unit in front of them

TheDefeatedGamer The tactics advantage resulted in approximately a difference between taking 61% damage instead of 70% damage from the Ottoman units, or 610 casualties instead of 700 per 1000. 9% fewer casualties is significant, but not enough that it obscures the meaning, nor enough to matter in the battle alone, though even after 100 phases you would only have taken an extra 9000 casualties, which is easy to restore over the time it would take to fight said battles.

Yeah but the reason tactics is so OP is because it stacks - the ratio between troops quickly gets more and more in your favour you keep dealing roughly the same amount of dmg while theirs drastically falls as their center completely breaks and the more men they lose the more morale dmg they take, the shorter the battle is and that just seals the deal

One little math note - 61% damage compared to 70% damage is not a 9% decrease in actual damage taken. It's actually a 13% decrease because 61/70 means you're taking 87% of the damage you would have been taken.

interesting

Not good artillery on front takes x3 damage from enemy

kethup so you're saying we need 3x more artillery. good idea, MORE CANNONS

This man predicted artillery only before artillery only was a thing

Dan oh my

Daniel Jakes oh gee..

lul the troll from Dora the Explora

What convincing do you need? All OP said is facts, honestly, look at the title of the video - it's obvious that you can win with shit army composition against an enemy with crap ideas and shit military tech, but when fighting a stronger or equal opponent this stuff matters.

Dude.... i hate the dice system... I know if im gambling im not rolling a snake eyes as much as EU4 screws me over in the game! Ive had a 23k stack get cut down to 8k after rolling continuous 0s against 12k enemy army.. no river crossing penalty.... I was +1 on mil tech.. Why am I mad despite winning? Manpower and ducats per month took an unnecessary blow

....outnumbered

racist comment deleted. take that shit elsewhere.

stfu sjw trash

lmao same

Shellshock97 same here almost 500 hours in always lose and still a noob. Don't know why I even try to play but I'm determined to get better

Small stacks helps to avoid attrition but they are vulnerable I usually keep my "small" stacks near each other and then combine forces when attacked to fill the combat width and avoid huge losses.

I've passed 1000 better late than ever....

MrDanno2 saw a Smolensk run on reddit with full cannon stacks. With both the front row and back row full of cannons and the fire phase being first resulted in quick battles if a bit casualty heavy

Bloody Dk how to make a powerful trade 1-make sure you are the powerful in your home node 2-now conquer the next powerful node (the one that you can deal with) 3-colonize 4-make sure your home node can connect to the new world's trade node 5-if not then conquer a node with connection to the new world 6-conquer india and whole spice islands also the ivory coast and the cape of good hope 7-now you have a trading empire

Juls Bern man its hard to have it flowing right as Ottomans. This smugglers are so annoying unless i conquer them all

make trade ships, that usually works

You should have prefaced that with "Start as a babby nation in Western Europe"

Arumba has a good trade vid

vytarrus physically hurts seeing all that attrition loss from player deathstacks

vytarrus I'm aware, I was trying to show how unit stacking works.

vytarrus just split armies in half or thirds to march around then regroup before battle

John Carr That's a good solution!

never really notice attrition..just split em up when not fighting and keep them a tile away from each other for fast reinforcement if needed

Martin Haller except that we had a battle where the Ottomans had a better general.

Martin Haller shows what you know. You completely ignored national and chosen ideas. Which WOULD also make a difference in battle.

would you always have the same tactics and generals?

If you look at the formula in the wiki, morale doesn't actually cause damage unless the enemy troops rout entirely.

rip... #blamearumba

I was kinda stunned by it too. Morale is still really important, but in the late game if you fight an enemy with like 120% discipline vs your 100% but you have much higher morale, you'll still win the battle but your casualties will be noticeable higher.

well then... does that mean janissaryderp isnt so strong then?

Sometimes though simply getting the extra warscore is enough, especially if your the defender and are just trying for white peace.

Why? FOR SATAN OFC!

By late game, the shock phase doesnt even matter.

1inamillion & Co so sad what is a canon even...

This is about how the army composition should look in reality.

Bobby Monroe it'll negate the negative manpower effects of having to replenish all your regiments, though obviously you'll end up with a less numerous army.

He is talking about proper battle stacks, not the actual armies you want to move around on the map. Just make a proper stack, then split it in two (or even three if need be) to avoid attrition. Keep the smaller stacks 1 province apart, and just combine them back to your proper battle stack when you know that combat is imminent.

Nyarl's channel Click the trade map, the rest becomes clear from there. At least that how I began to learn how it works.

It is a good idea to split armies for sieges as they'll take less attrition; this video was more to show how to maximize your competence in a battle specifically. Quantity helps with achieving maximum combat width, but having a large empire works fine as well.

Nope, I'm certain it's the opposite. Front row will always deal full dmg, back row either none, if cavalry/infantry or half if artillery. Once your front row of foot soldiers dies and the artillery shifts to the front line you'll usually see the damage being done is increasing by alot in the fire phase, however since artillery has no defense, they will also die as quickly.

Cannons do double damage if they're in the front row but also take double damage according to DDRJake

Juicysilver Lol, what no they TAKE double damage in the front row. They deal normal damage in the front row and half in the back. Check out the wiki and see for yourself.

kraze1982 Um, stack is not just an eu4 term in fact it's been used long before. Yes it refers to an army. The last bit where you say that you are confused by saying that a proper stack is 30k is just down to your poor comprehension or english skills since if you understood you would know that just because something isn't proper doesn't mean that it's not that thing...

I'm not sure that I'm the one with questionable "comprehension or English skill". I simply asked if a proper stack was 30,000 soldiers and the numbers he referenced were in regard to that proper stack.

a proper stack the way he means it is having the right composition of troops relative to your tech. Not about the total troop count.

The basic unit of infantry/cavalry/artillery is the "regiment." Troops are recruited by the regiment. Regiments have 1,000 men at full strength, but they can go as low as 0 men. (These are called "empty" regiments.) A "stack" is one or more regiments that have been grouped into an army. ("Stack" and "army" have the exact same meaning in EU4.) Armies/stacks are usually referred to by their current size rather than their full-strength size. For example, an army of 20 regiments at half strength (so 10,000 men) would be called a "10-stack." After reinforcing back to full strength it would be called a "20-stack."

Late answer, but with "proper" stack he means the army you want to engage with in an actual battle, not the smaller sized armies you run around with on the map. A "proper stack", or a "doomstack" is an army that's built for optimal battle, ignoring attrition totally. You would usually split this stack into two smaller armies to avoid attrition. If you are fighting in really bad terrain, it might even be worth it to split it into three. Early game this is usually just up to your max combat width of mixed Inf/Cav, with a few extra Inf regiments. The more Cav the better, as long as you avoid insufficient support (your Inf/Cav ratio). At tech 13 and 16 Art gets noticeable bonuses, so you should start adding more and more Art to your armies at this point. Late game armies start at tech 22, when you basically want max combat witdh of Inf AND Art, with extra Inf for reinforcements. Cav is not worth it in lategame armies. At this point, the only thing that matters is the Fire phase, and Cav does almost all of its dmg in the Shock phase. Might keep 2 around in each proper stack, just in case you aren't fighting a full combat width battle.

I almost quit the game cause i didnt know why i was loosing thanks man

but a cav is better than an inf early

Ragatokk Um no, 50 percent cav would mean that the moment you enter battle you have over 50 percent cav.

I think it is the point here that cav are better then inf. Of course cav are more expensive, so you don't want them taking any damage. So 4 cav on the flanks will result in more flanking damage without taking any damage too the expensive units.

Dzejdzejkab ... what... ofc that knowledge would help, more effecient troop usage means that your manpower goes further.

countered by the massively increased attrition and the inflexibility however, you could see the ottomans were everywhere whereas he had to pick one fight at a time

You need infantry in reserves to refill casualties, not ones in the back. Your entire back line should be filled with artillery to have an optimal amount of damage. However many infantry and cavalry it takes to fill your front line, you should have that plus an additional 6-10 regiments to replace casualties as the battle rages on.

Yeah, I was asking about those extra 6-10 regiments to replace casualties. where do they stand in the stack before the battle begins? Do they form part of the back row or they dont show up in the srack at all untill casualties occur?

okie, thanks for the clarity.

I literally just lost a battle where i fought 46k polish troops with 125k of mine help me omg

This might sound stupid, but did you change the regiment type/model in the army tab, next to the religion tab? I guess you are also teching up the military technology?

But he stated that at 5:58 :/

+50% flanking range, and Albania being eastern tech gives them 60% supply modifier. So, if I did the calculations right, you should have +4 more calvary than the west at the start, +5 from level 17, and +6 from level 23 mil tech. But still though, never have more calvary than infantry in an army !!

+Red Oblivion Well, Albania is not a Horde... But if you're a horde, you can have all calvary stacks untill you have westernized/reformed government...

/nevergowesternbecauseyoucanjustdothatthingwhereyougetfreemonarchpointsareyouabletoreadthisthengoodjobtoyoumisteranderson

The Meekofpie it should be around your combat width. The example I gave in the video was at 27 width, so you would want 27 people to cover your frontline, so 23 infantry and 4 cavalry in that "proper" stack, then add an additional 6-8 regiments of infantry to cover losses.

Ok I see Thanks! This is really helpful!

Granted your comment is a year old but someone might find this and wonder the same thing: Sieging doesn't work like normal combat. You just need X troops based on the garrison size, the exact number of regiments needed to siege it are listed as number near the top right of the siege window I think. It's there somewhere on the siege window Then the # of cannons is based on fort level gives you the bonus to the roll. If you mouse over it the bonus roll # (Cannon icon I think) will tell you how many cannons = what + to the roll. Now that is counting in 1000s. So if you have 3999 and need 4K you wont get it. But you can have 10 regiments at 50% strength (5000 total manpower) and still get the bonus. So I normally bring 1 more arty reg with just in the off chance I lose a few but up to you. Then whatever I feel like in inf as an escort to prevent insta stack wipes. (Main army is always close enough to bail them out if jump my siege stacks). If you have enough guns you can spend 50 mill mana to blow a hole in the wall as well. Helps if you really need to get it over with. Or can't blockaded it to help offset the -2 from it not being blockaded. You can also assault the fortress with inf if you have breached the walls (Normally or by cannon). If I recall only 5K can fight per day? But the more siege skill you have the better chances you have. It's normally a huge manpower waste to assault forts unless they are tiny or I have some huge morale boost. Horse's do nothing to help minus help meet the min army size needed to progress the siege. Well that and defend your army if it gets attacked while siegeing (Normal combat then). But But keep in mind the nation helping their forts counts as the defenders when relieving a fort under siege. So if you plan on playing turrtle with forts a pure defence blip unit types would be better as you are the defender even if "attacking" a hostile army that is sieging YOUR fort(s).