i play as prussia, allied with commonblob, russia and austria, for some reason russia doesnt hate both of them. planning to form germany but austria is blobbing like hell.
My respect for getting to a point in life at wich you can basically read 16 one-line descriptions and then repeat them in your own words and get a good amount of money paid for it, living the dream :D
I've been wishing there was something I was good enough at to teach people on youtube and get paid in ad revenue for years. Obviously he's an entertaining enough orator with enough knowledge on the subject and knowledge on video editing, to create a presentation enough people want to watch to convince youtube to send him a check. Considering how many youtubers are out there, it's probably difficult to get started and get your voice heard in a sea of competing personalities vying for views. But once you pull it off, I figure the reward makes it all worth it. Uploading home made videos speaking on a subject you're both knowledgeable and passionate about has got to be more rewarding than punching in a timecard at a place you don't want to be at and breaking your back to help someone else's business prosper while your wages stagnate. Yeah, livin the dream sounds about right- this guy made it and I'm happy for him
Taking both is a really good thing. Having good generals, morale of armies, siege ability and discipline will result in massacres against enemies with roughly the same size or sometimes even larger armies. I took it in my last game and because of it, I was able to steamroll others, something that is hard when you're as bad at the game as I am.
Honestly I'd rather combo either one with Quality. Defensive + Quality will give +2 army tradition each month, directly contributing to increased morale and general pips, whereas Offensive + Quality will give +10% discipline, which is incredibly good, especially if you add together other bonuses from national ideas or such.
Quality is just isn't that good when the math is done. Getting offensive and defensive both early sounds good but quantity is just too good to pass up.
Quantity makes sense from get go. When you have first 2 ideas you are not that afraid of going in a fight and depleting your manpower and be vulnerable. When the maintenance gets lower and force limit is higher you can loan mercs a lot more before going into bankrupcy. You can win wars you shouldnt be and act like a powerful country. Good alliances makes you safe while paying loans during truces. Thats why quantity is my no 1 at small nations. Makes expanding easier.
quantitiy may be good in multiplayer. in singleplayer its wasted mil points... it may come handy in the first 100-150 years. but as you climb the latter and get #1 power, it is less and less useful. i like to have best quality troops, i need less to fight my enemy, and i take much less casualities. if enemy AI picks 2 military ideas, one of it quantity, and you have 3 (quality, offensive and defensive), you will just crush them, and get a lot of prestige and military tradition to even crush them more with extra morale and better generals. at some point i reach a point, where i have to watch more on ware exhaustion, then on manpower... Last game i played, i have erased my quantity idea from my chosen ones, it was fully expanded, but i just did not need it... For defensive purposes some chosen allies serve the same purpose as quantity ideas, and on attacker side, you can select your target and the time to attack yourself, so not really a need for quantity.
Well the first 100-150 years are the best part of the game/hardest too. Quantity is not only good but the best all game. Explain how having cheaper troops=cheaper mercs=cheaper maintanance for troops/mercs "be less and less useful" mid/late game. It is actually even more useful since the more troops you have the more money you save. But what makes quantity the best is not the man power, it is not the force limit, but the merc pool which late game is going to break or make when you are fighting some 3 coalitions(because of heavy blobbing) + rebels on some 3 different areas of the map. Being able to hire mercs on demand whenever needed and disband after they served their purpose cheaply and fast is what makes Quantity the best mil idea mid/late game. Also colonizing fast with standing armies on full maintenance on colonies makes quantity a must. I usually take either defensive or quantity as my first idea then admin to get even cheaper mercs. Offensive is really a mid/late game option and only after i have both defensive and quantity, but by that time I probably do not need it since I would always be sending more then the enemy is and that translates in nearly never losing battles. Even when I do make mistakes and lose battles I can recover manpower faster then my enemy and thus get better relative strength anyway. Practically the worst thing my enemy could do is fight my armies and if I really want to get serious I would put a front line of mercs to conserve even more manpower and a small seige army behind my main army to reinforce and give moral boost mid fight to grantee victory.
I just started a playthrough as Ethiopia (because Europe and Asia began to bore me) and defensive is just SO FRIGGIN GOOD! Every single idea has proved very useful at some point. As you said, it helps a lot with the strategic and logistic problems of armies, which is critical, as there are loads and loads of underdeveloped provinces in Africa. SO armies tend to suffer a lot from attrition. Also, the continent is just sooooooo huge that manouver is actually really really useful! A couple of times my army arrived just one day before the province would have fallen to rebels. And the forts were essential for defeating/stalling the ottomans. Just very very useful to anyone not playing europe
What do you think of this Defensive ideas -10% army maintenance Economic -10% Quantity -10% War taxes -20% Revolutionary-50% Trading in salt -10% That's -110% Do something with this please, like a game or something
Surprised I haven't watched this yet - really helpful, thanks darkfire. I think this has encouraged me to take Defensive for my Norwegian Wood achievement :) Will use this on my upcoming streams as well; trying to do Ryukyu in Horde mode and damn it's hard.
Hey! I just rewatched this video because I had to choose between these groups for my England campaign. After careful consideration I went with offensive because my luck with generals is notoriously bad and I hate the long time it takes to siege forts. Also I took France out of competition already so I don't have to worry about their morale bullshit. Thanks Dark!
Defensive - If you have a lot of manpower and most of your land is 'good terrain' that give no attacker penalties/fort defenses. It will help you win more battles, but you'll take heavy damage and deplete tons of manpower. It's a good idea when you have little or no natural defenses and your primary method of defense is well defended forts. The 15% morale means you will win more battles than not, however you will take heavy casualties since nothing in the ground improves army quality, so the -25% attrition helps save on manpower whenever you can to allow that. The fort defense means your forts take longer to siege so you can have more time to move from one siege to another before the enemy has taken the fort. And finally, maneuver makes your units move faster, so a guaranteed maneuver helps with that. Really useful if you want to run down an enemy stack that's sitting on a siege before it has time to exit (so they take the penalty), or when crossing over large amounts of land. It's also a good pick if you don't have many mountains around to help defend your lands, so you rely on forts in places like grasslands and farmlands (like france). tl;dr; If in a war you really need to be focused on defending your lands, without many natural defenses, then you should probably take this idea. Ex: France, burgundy, russia. Offensive - If you have limited manpower and you're less concerned about being speed/carpet sieged due to plenty of mountain forts, impassable terrain, straits, and other natural defenses. In the early game, in 1:1 situations, you'll lose the battle more times than not, but if you have greater numbers (more likely because of 20% force limit), your cavalry will start outflanking the enemy and inflicting massive casualties on the enemy. The 5% discipline, leader pips and 20% force limit all increase the chances of Inflicting massive casualties, in the early game, while reducing the casualties you take. Thus winning vital battles and savign on precious manpower so you rely less on expensive mercs. More casualties = weaker enemy troops = less casualties you take. More casualties = More morale damage. More casualties = more troops needing reinforcement for future battles. In cases where you still lost the battle, the enemy would've taken more casualties so their troops would be weaker for upcoming engagements, which is very useful when relieving a fort since you can keep slamming troops into the enemy and watch them get weaker and weaker until the point reaches where they're weak enough to lose the battle. It also works in reverse where you take less casualties on sieges so you have more and more men prepared for the next wave of assaults, so you're less likely to lose a siege by being constantly assaulted. The siege bonus also means you spend less time on a siege, so less time exposed and vulnerable to attacker penalty. If in a war you don't really need to focus on defending your lands, and you have plenty of natural defenses to help keep you secure, then you should probably take this idea. Ex: Austria, England, Spain.
They really should rename them Defensive > Logistics Offensive > Leadership like you mentioned. Personally I usually pick defensive for its logistic advantages purposely to go on the offensive, especially if playing the Teutonic Order to fight against the Polish sphare, 40% cheaper forts means 40% more military spending, using forts to disrupt enemy movements and stack wiping isolated enemies make it possible to overwhelm a vastly larger force.
According to the wiki, the AI should be slightly more likely to pick Offensive, with .77 weight for Defensive versus .94 weight for Offensive. (Quantity should be the most common of the military ideas at 1.00 weight.) But random is random and these things happen. There's also the possibility that the weights on the wiki are outdated, of course.
Sean Wenström it makes sense to change the weight to defensive, the AI is pretty bad with the economy and defensive lower the cost for army and forts. But may be it's really just a coincidence.
Francesco just experienced the same goddam think in every single one of my game (screw you especially Austria with your fort spam) so I think that yeah, wiki's info are kinda outdated
frysebox1 well in most of my game they do, and that's fuckin frustrating lmao, like in my current game, Austria have 7 level 8 forts and have not even annexed yet Hungary (but they Pu'd them tho)
small side note: if you already have quality, go with offensive, but if you've picked quantity, defensive has better synergy (if you've picked offensive/defensive first then it's the same for the qual/quant choice)
Well play muscovy take defensive + quantity ideas, as well as economic ideas and you can go full stalin I mean 60% decreased infantry upkeep aswell as the manpower bonuses from the russian ideas and quantity make sure that shit hits the fan pretty fast.
Wars will be long You will need innovative ideas to get the war exhaustion reduction for this unless you wish to sink a lot of monarch points into it But I go to war a lot so I need Innovative It allowed me to let Ming rampage through Tibet while I pulled my Swedish troops back just a little bit and finishing a war elsewhere with Ethiopia (I was doing a World Conquest)
The fort defense and siege bonus also count for provinces without forts. So it takes those 6 days longer to capture your unprotected provinces and 6 days less to capture your enemies'.
Actually, +1 attrition for enemies is HUGE if you’re a big country such as Russia or the Ottomans, as that’s +1 attrition even if they’re not sieging. You can easily drain their manpower and treasury that way, racking up their casualties by the bunch.
I think that people undervalue maneuver, a river crossing penalty means -1 every round, so that means that if the extra maneuver pip saves you that the one idea is worth both the shock and fire pip of the general.
Recently I was playing with France. Easy-mode you would think. But well...: First I was allied to Castille which banished Portugal and obviously formed Spain with Aragon+Naples. They broke that alliance of course when they had limited choice of rivals. I picked Quantity+Offensive. Spain picked Defensive and later 3 ideas in the offensive group. I was not able to beat them in any wars whatever I tried. Proper army-stacking applied. Didn't help. I couldn't ever overcome these +15% morale. Not even in the mountains. They also had army tradition >20 constantly, of course. I'm never missing out on Defensive Ideas again. I think I will be opting for Defensive + Quantity ideas with already big starting countries...
Dark was too hard on regiment recruitment time, if your training in high base tax provinces it really starts to add up and in 1.1.1 provinces its a force unto itself this especially pertinent as russia in eastern siberia so recruitment times are high, while training induvidual units makes it seem not that good, saving say, 5 days on 40 infantry units is 200 days, not an uncommon amount to train, but over the long run this can save you years of training time that can help you have your guard up when your neighbor comes knocking.
when you build 40 regiments in 1 province it safes 200 days ye... but who builds units like this? and russia doesnt have any problems in terms of recruiting :D... only good for opm's
platoon mexx even if you build it in multiple provinces the total time save is 200 days, even if the total build time is less than 200 days, and if your a global power being able to train soldiers in wrong cultutes provinces faster is helpful generally speaking, im not arguing that its the best thing since sliced bread just saying its not garbage
Pious Ottomans with defensive get 25% morale, even more with army tradition from early wars and prestige from holy cities. Combined with other bonuses(15% discipline) makes them absolutely unstoppable early game, 10 stackwipes out of 10.
I usually doubt between quantity and offensive for the first pick. Quantity is just essential when you want to blob earlygame with low money/manpower. Offensive is good when you do have the money/manpower base for expansion. Defensive is just nicer for attacking into tough nations like Spain, France, Ottomans and Austria. However I prefer playing non-european nations so I rarely pick defensive first.
hey dark nice vid again ;) can you make a video about PU's? how the system works also, should you w8 for inherit a pu or integrate it throne claiming dynastie sharing etc. all that shitty stf :DD
I have limit idea groups off so I've gone pretty heavy on military 😅... Quantity, Defensive, Humanist, Exploration, Aristocratic, Quality, Offensive, Espionage.
jorge margenat not really, had 100 army tradition which gives siege bonus + artillery speeds it up + I have 400k troops on my finished custom nation so there aren't any fortresses to siege 😂 tho the enemy didn't even have time to build them really, only Rome had a high level castle that took like 50K to siege but meh, I gain 3k manpower every month so it doesn't matter to me, I can build another 50k by then. Economy was high af too when I basically had my hands on almost all trade nodes.
Offensive: If you play as a nation in an area with good development provinces and decent economy. Defensive: If you play as a nation in an area with bad development or vast areas, and not great economy. Great for any nation mid to late game.
Both. Offensive gives you better army quality, and allows you build more troops. Defensive gives more morale which can put you on similar footing on a nation that does get morale, for example France, you also get cheaper soldiers which synergizes well with Offensive's force limit idea. I take defensive early game, to get cheaper soldiers, and morale is more important in early game, but offensive is better for late game because discipline matters more.
I wonder if you can get free troops by stacking army maintenance. If you become revolutionary, you get 50% maintenance reduction, another 50% is easily doable with ideas, policies, advisors or salt (trading bonus).
What would custom nation with +1 army tradition and -1% army tradition decay as ideas + choosing aristocratic, defensive and quality make your tradition resting point?
100 is correct, but he only has two decay ideas so he would have -3% decay. Equalling his gain of +3 and making it slower to reach 100. Espionage/Quality policy would get him to -2% decay and make his gain faster, as would any up to date active forts.
The base attrition for "being in enemy territory you don't occupy" is zero. Sieging it adds one, darkfire. With the RoM kill counters, you should know that the +1 attrition is on par with 15% morale in the likely casualties it'll inflict. Also, +1AT per year is way better than the guaranteed pips since it's basically a +1 in every category, on average. I do not understand why some want to give the edge to Offensive Ideas; maybe it's the same as the Defensive event where the nobles are concerned they don't look macho anymore for picking defensive.
btw does the 33% Reinforcement-Speed from the Defnesieve Idea also affect Mercs??? And if so doesnt this alone make this a superb Idea? Like who Needs Quantitiy if I can always have a well stacked Merc-Frontline.
Maybe defensive is better if you already have problems maintaining your army and offensive is better when you have money to spend. Edit: in regions with low army supply limit defensive has the upper hand in my opinion. In these lands there are not that many forts and the reduction in attrition really saves a ton of manpower (and money).
Should I take quality over aristocratic ideas? I think the 10% extra morale and military tech cost with -1 unrest could be useful , but quality has a 10% combat ability for Calvary and infantry,meh ich should I Choose?
Meme_Muncher neither, if you care about unrest get humanism and never have rebels again. For military ideas getting offensive, defensive, and quality will let you conquer the world. Quality is only good for countries like prussia or sweden who get really high quality troops by default. In those cases getting innovative ideas is also essential since you can get an additional 20% infantry combat bonus via modern firearms.
getting -30% army maintenance can give you more than 30% more troops for dettering ai attacks and making aliances is it better to go with numbers or ai looks into army quality aswell?
Don't discount Poland, they have incredible national ideas: Manpower +25% Infantry combat +10% Cavalry combat +33% Discipline +5% Land morale +15% In player hands, integrating Lithuania and using lots of cavalry regiments while stacking cavalry combat ability up to +73% with just three idea groups they are truly devastating in the shock phase. Even in AI hands if they manage to form the PLC they are dangerous.
Early game I prefer defensive when everyone has terrible siege ability and I'm forced to fight multiple fronts. The AI spends 1-2 years on each castle while I trash his allies. Unless you're playing one of the 4 big nations your 1 shock general isn't going to mean much in the overall war, I value maneuver pips more anyway. Unlike offensive, defensive gives you benefits during peacetime by considerably reducing the overhead on your armies and fortresses. I usually save offensive ideas for the midgame.
one mistake I noticed: you say that if you would have -30% army maintenance you could field 30% more troops. bad maths there. if you have, say, 100 regiments and you pay a total of 100 gold for them...then you get -30% maintenance, you pay 70 gold for 100 regiments, that is 0.7 per regiment. you have 30 gold left. 30/0.7 is 42.86 regiments, so you would be able to field almost 43 extra regiments (or 43% extra regiments) also the discipline you say that if you have +5% discipline and would inflict 100 casualities, you actually inflict 105 casualities. if this happens through 10 months it's 50 more casualities. shouldn't it actually be more? the first month you inflict 105, which means that your opponent has 5 less troops than if you didn't have the discipline. this makes their army 5 troops weaker and makes them take more damage, no? the discipline still adds 5% but since on every tick you deal 5% more damage, shouldn't the total extra damage dealt be more than 5%?
Jakub Kováčik with the discipline it's the assumption that you're dealing the same amount of casualties every month, which would never be a reality in game. I was just using that number as an example.
Daniel Morale is the green bar that causes your units to retreat automatically and loses you a lot of war score when it reaches zero. Discipline helps reduce casualties (I think). EDIT: Discipline is a casualty infliction modifier (i.e. no matter if you're in shock or fire phase you will deal more casualties upon the opposing army.
Discipline helps reduce casualties on your side and increase casualties on the enemy's side and slightly increases morale. Morale is the will of your troops to fight represented by the green bar on top, which can lead to your armies fleeing or getting stackwiped.
Take Aristocratic if you're Poland or a Horde. If you are Eastern European tech group, the Cavalry support from Aristocratic are synergystic. Note that Aristocratic also helps with yearly Absolutism and getting mil techs quicker.
