Everything that I mentioned in the Video took place in the early Game. And I showed that this was already giving me an almost Gamebreaking Advantage in battles. The Army Drill Modifiers get even stronger and stronger the later the Game gets and the higher the Base Damage in battles gets. And as soon as Artillery becomes relevant and is drilled the Drill Modifiers are basically more important than anything else as Artillery Damage can be devastating for your Infantry (which Drill reduces a lot) as well as it basically gives you a permanent +10% Damage Modofier for your Backrow Artillery as Artillery ideally won`t take ANY casualties in Battle and therefore will never loose their Drill at all!
@@DarkwingGames Focus on Military, Take Noble Officer Rights Estate Privilege, have high Innovativeness, start the Golden Era and then Spam Generals :)
Thanks! Any tips on keeping high innovativeness? I usually try to take tech when it's ~ a year head of time, however I can't seem to reach high levels of innovativeness reliably. @@thestudentYT And thanks you very much for making the videos, I like the informative matter of fact and non-clickbaity presentation!
@@DarkwingGames Increase your Mana generation is the best thing for Innovativeness so that you can also take some techs way ahead of time for inno if it is needed. And Mana comes from Advisors mainly so increasing your economy is the best thing to do for inno :)
@@thestudentYT For the first bit: The -25% damage taken wasn't the only thing that contributed to surpassing the enemy's 0.2 flat tactics (40% difference), they also had -1 terrain modifier which meant they were, with 4, doing ~20% less casualties than you were, at 5.
@@vartosu11 But they had the Terrain malus also in the other Battle... so I am talking only about straight up differences between Drill and no Drill and EVERYTHING else was the same!
I always loved using drill, didn't realize how easily you could stack the drill loss modifiers, and didn't realize how bad shift consolidating messed it up. Absolutely insane modifier
Fantastic video on a mechanic that I agree is very forgotten! P.S. To lose is with 1 'o'. "Loose" is an adjective meaning "not well-fitting" or "vague". :)
From Cradle (Nov 2017) to Emperor (Jun 2020), Army Drill was absolutely not worth doing for its own modifier, because there was no scaling Drill Loss modifier from Professionalism (or anywhere else besides special units), decay was twice as fast, and it was only -10% Shock/Fire damage taken instead of -25%. So it was a significantly weaker buff, and was impossible to maintain. Anyone who played back then had it baked into their brains that Army Drill is not worth caring about, and was only worth doing for Professionalism. And honestly, not many people noticed this gigantic buff at the time, even though it took Army Drill from not worth thinking about to actually pretty strong and situationally worth going for. Domination (Apr 2023) introduced the Sustained Discipline government reform, which is what IMO really took Army Drill from pretty nice when you can use it, to kinda broken cause it lasts forever.
It seemes even that this is such an important modifier that you just have to use it if your opponent uses it because otherwise you would just lose the battle
If the part with the Morale in battle didn`t suprise you then it seems that you must be a developer of the Game as not even the most expirienced MP Players could say how the damage reduction affects the Morale exactly ;)
@@thestudentYT i admit that i didn't know exact numbers on this, but i recognised some time ago that drill also affects morale in a way you described it.
The main problem I have with drilling is it costs so much money to have your army fully maintained, I never used it before cus I prefer to save up money to invest in buildings and scale
But if you stack it like this then you just have to drill it once to 100 and then you can turn the maintanance of and after a war you'll still have like 40-50 Drill left easily so then it takes even less time to get to 100 again, so it's more like a short time of investment for a big change in battle quality
I didn’t realize drill was the forgotten modifier. I always drilled my armies as best as I can, once I’m not afraid for my life (IE: once I don’t need to rely on mercs).
@@thestudentYT I certainly didn’t know the math on drill loss, but I love having all my armies at max drill. Just feels very Roman, and if you’re not roleplaying a nation full of people roleplaying the Roman Empire, you’re playing EU4 wrong. Yes, this applies to playing ROTW.
I hate how army professionalism is gated behind not using mercs, there's not enough money sinks late game besides "spam x building in the macro editor"
Drilling is only worth it if you have a decent amount of drill loss reduction because otherwise drilling will only give you Professionalism which imo is more efficient to get with Generals and Mil Mana
-25% of 5 million is a lot.... But anyways the MP wars that I have fought in the lobby playing against probably the most expierienced MP players in the entire communities were basically only consisting of battles... And I mean A LOT of battles in A LOT of various wars... Maybe you play a lot in RP Lobbies :)
15:38 I'm pretty sure this modifier can go negative, meaning that you can gain drill without actually drilling. Maybe it's not that noticeable if you're just a few percent above 100.
Very good video, I would however like you to test your theory in the last segment, drill reinforced, drill shift consolidate + reinforce and no drill reinforcement, no drill shift consolidate, no drill consolidate, I think these combinations would cover those metrics. Assuming you force retreat vs. it automatically retreats (scatter retreat), thinking about low province supply limit (being over it on the way to arrival) and not over province supply limits, I believe this would also factor in Movement Speed and Manouver, and attrition crossing provinces. This would ofcourse have to be able to be repeated by others, if we are doing science here, and a document for setting up identical environment for the tests. I believe there is a file you can put commands in that the game will recognize, and use console to make the commands apply in game, I have just never used it.
I think my only question is when should you start drilling troops. Assuming you don't start in a nation that can afford having your army maintance up at all times.
1 the reason you do more damage and more morale damage is because in reality damage received is not a defensive modifier but a very aggressive one. Unit damage and morale damage calculations take into account how many troops are in a regiment. A 700 men regiment deals 70% damage instead of a full one that deals 100%. By losing less men in battle you are doing more damage. Its so good that 10% shock damage will always lose to 10% s damage received even with very good rolls. Maybe pin this because its the main thing that your video missed about professionalism buffs
2 also i think it would be a great system if certain army modifiers like damage, damage received, siege ability were applied to drilled units (scaling) instead of just the army. I can see why the random peasant off the street might have higher morale but i cant really see how he could be more disciplined or inherently know how to siege forts or avoid cannon shots or stay in formation without proper training. Add that plus something like a military command that i can customize with buffs and debuffs. Maybe my recruitment standards are high and i get less manpower recovery but better soldiers or i am better at sieging and bad at battles or better at shock and worse at fire. Would be 2 very simple changes that would make warfare so much more interesting in eu4
It is not exactly because of the higher Damage though because in the current patch Damage actually doesn't effect the Morale Morale directly (you could see that in the ethiopia example where I had the exact same Morale on my own Army even though I lost WAY less troops in one battle) it is actually affected by the relative amount of units in Battle... So the less you lose the better your ratio gets and the bigger the Morale Difference (that is why you get a morale boost to your Army if you reinforce)
Army drill bonuses are nice, but hard to maintain since you will be losing men through attrition. It's nice to have early on but impossible to utilize later, particularly if you're fighting on multiple fronts at the same time since you're going to be stretched for manpower. Even if you have the forcelimits for 1M troops that 50k drilling somewhere could be used better on carpet sieging or hunting for rebels. Maybe one could derive some use for it with an arty backrow stack since the drilled regiments wouldn't be suffering the brunt of the enemy casualties, but even then you'd be looking at a marginal increase in damage output since backrow arty deals only half the damage to the front row. Getting the 100% army professionalism is nice if one can afford it since it provides the siege ability
If we're going to be realistic - that modifier is exactly as it should be. Exercise and maintaining fitness is extremely important. Military drill is also training in formation and combat. In my opinion, the drill should also raise the discipline of the units.
i ve always been a drill person and i did wonder if i should make a custom nation with -100% drill loss ( using a mod to allow such numbers ) and you just answered my biggest worrie - does it affect reinforcements :D ❤ btw at the start of the game i always pick the defensive reform - that attrition etc are just always too juicy for me ^^ ---> i usually pair it with defensive + infrastructure for a total of +3 max attrition i like watching the ai kill themselfs on my mountains :D tho i think you might have a lil missconception at the beginning of the video ( ethiopia part ) - i dont think drill affects moraldmg directly - i think the difference in the moral outcome is based on your drilled army losing less soldiers therefor losing less moral while the enemy army lost more soldiers in the same ammount of time and therefor its moral droped lower
I never said that it affects the Morale Damage... I said that it affects the enemy Morale and that is because of the relative troop count in Battle affects the Morale and if you lose less Troops then you have more Troops compared to your enemy and therfore better Morale
i once tried a army drill game and was dissapointed as i lost drill way to fast in battles after having that army stand still and drill for multiple years. lower drill loss i clearly the better modifier of the two.
Wait this is forgotten? I thought everyone used it cuz it's very good, I always have one or two stacks with full drill as a Vanguard for my wars. They go in and mess up the enemy armies while the rest of my troops go in for sieges
No I think there is basically no one out there except you that actually drills for the Modifiers (everyone does it for the Proffesionalism) because most people think that they loose all of the drill after 1 battle
my thoughts too, except if I'm not in a war I'm drilling my entire force limit of troops, and if I'm in a war any troops that are 'excess' to what is needed are always drilling. It's a habit at this point 1. I know drilled troops are just better 2. I just want to get to 100% professionalism as fast as possible.
@TenzikTens it's actually easier to get professionalism by lowering the general cost and saving military mana as much as you can and then hiring generals. That way you don't have to drill for hundreds of years and simply get it in a few decades where you have excess military mana
Sustained Discipline is a huge factor in making drilling worthwhile. Without it, drilling is kind of a luxury, since it costs a lot of ducats and opportunity just setting your men to do nothing. The combat buff is huge, but how does it compare to having a significantly larger army at 0 (half) maintenance? Especially when you lose so much of it after a single battle, and you're spending Professionalism on mercs or manpower anyway (at least before 1.34). With Sustained Discipline, it's actually viable to have drilled troops not lose half of their drill just marching through enemy territory to get into battle. Back when it was first introduced, there wasn't any way to preserve your drill and the buff was only 10% damage received (which is still nice, but like 1/3 as strong). A lot of people just internalized that it's not worth it back then (except for professionalism) and ignored the buffs. To me, Sustained Discipline was the clincher, it's good just for the attrition reduction, and then I noticed Drill lasted forever.
And the other Reforms (not any unique ones) have way less impact on your army quality than the Drill Reform. But the Maintanence and the Money is no a Problem as you can just drill the Army and then after that turnp it off... with all of the additional drill gain modifiers this only takes you like 50 months one time per Army to maintain it and after that you`ll be never down to 0 Drill ever again with the drill loss modifiers so that keeping the Drill up takes way less time then and if you turn the maintanece of completly then you still don`t loose a relevant amount of drill
Wait, it even gives movement speed? Oh thats nice, movement speed is one of the nicest modifiers because it means you can catch the AI running away a lot easier. All the modifiers are scaling too so even with the fact it seems you can't completely remove the drill loss from reinforcement quality hit isn't that bad. Does mean that after a few battles you'd need to send an army back to drill up if you want to take full advantage of the modifier, which unfortunately even for a month drill means taking time for morale to return so 3 minimum, but it seems like with the manpower saved and the ability to win battles easier it could be v. worth it. Like there is the downside that it's on 0 morale, which once I have more than enough money is why I don't usually turn off my army maintenance. But realistically there's a decent chance even playing it risky against the AI giving it 1 month tick to recover morale could do plenty considering it appears to take comparatively less morale damage compared to what it deals (which i would imagine is due to losing less troops each phase so the next phase you do more damage?)
The Morale difference that I showed in the Ethiopia example was because the Battle Morale is tied to the relative Numbers in Battle, so If I have more troops remaining on the Battlefield then my enemy gets less Morale (that is also why you gain Morale from Reinforcing Battles) but yes basically it means that Army Drill gives you better Morale in Battles
@@thestudentYT Ohhh that makes sense. Got confused because of Morale Damage modifiers, and I thought that the reinforcement morale was just averaging out the morale of the new troops plus the original ones.
Yes it is nice to get the drill even faster but it doesn't matter for keeping the drill and it makes the entire Army 10% more expensive so it is kind of a luxury thing if you have more than enough money
Some consideration on drilling 1. Constant war = No time to drill 2. You need to pay full maintenance for your army while drilling. Early game when you are not strong enough you have many peace time. But at same time you want your money for other things unless you are already a rich nation. Late game you will be strong enough for constant war so no time to drill. 3. Without stacking these modifier you need to drill for a long time to get to 100%. Even then all of that drill will be lost after 1-3 battle. Unless you can afford to do in this video you wouldn't have time to drill.
Amazing! I will play next week a Vanilla MP, i will put to use the drill like never before! Can i ask what is the meta for Idea groups nowadays? is still Quality+Eco for first 2 Idea groups?
At 100% Professionalism and Drill you get +10% Damage from both, so together +20% But stacking positive Modifiers is not as strong as stacking negative modifiers so it is not OP or something
How do you get your innovativeness so high so fast? I feel like you couldn't possibly reach 60% by 1500 consistently, save for the rare case of nations which both have a good starting ruler and enough money to consistently hire level 2+ advisors. Do you open innovative ideas for the innovativeness gain, not take anything else in it, and then just consistently hit first techs since you're unlikely to be getting idea group innovativeness?
No I just try to make me a good ruler by making bad ones a General, trying to look for strong Consorts that I could let rule etc. and then I do Humiliation Wars whenever I can (mostly worth only when playing small to mid sized nations), I try to get my PP up asap and then I spend most of my Money on Advisors and look very closely for cheaper ones in events and so on... And then I try to take most of the inno from Techs by watching closely how far I am ahead and how much mana I can spend to still get the next tech with inno
@@thestudentYT do you have a benchmark that you stick to for how many years ahead of time you should be ready to get the next tech? I try to do similar things, but I feel like there's always some OPM in the HRE who ends up getting it with like a 6 year early penalty.
Yeah sure 6 years early is pretty typical... keep in mind that I also played in Italy here so Renaissance was no problem and Money also not. There are just some nations in Game that are way harder to get so much Inno so early and some Nations are way easier and the rest is probably mainly expierience of a lot of hours if failure :)
I feel like title of this video is something very obvious and that suggests me that somehow not everyone is doing this. (To be fair i also don't do it after 1550 if i am constantly in war state)
There are some very niche cases where it definitely is, but i would also argue it could be worth it if youre small and concentrating out of unaccepted culture will make a big difference (dev in 50% autonomy and bad culture is better in your capital, even if you lose half of it in the process, and saves adm)
Some may criticize that you were fighting natives, I personnally don't care, but you should have fought them in a province were they didn't face any malus. Natives are always the attacker, so what you've shown me is that 0,2 combat ability is even stronger than you said thanks to the -1 on every dice roll. I still think your point is valid, just that your exemple isn't perfect.
Every Example is is good as long as it is compareable which this example was as the Natives fought on -1 in literally both battles... so there was literally NO difference except the Army Drill and that makes it a perfect example Also everyone knows that the African Natives are actually stronger than normal Units in 1444 so Idk what you mean if you say "criticizing for fighting Natives" because it literally doesn't matter (the Tactics difference was even very good to show how strong drill is)
@@thestudentYT Late answer, but I just got recommanded your video again and watched it again, forgetting I already did so lol What I meant in my past comment is that I would have try to fight them in any true flatland terrain type (grassland, steppe, farmland or arid) which are the terrain that doesn't give any more maluses to the attacker. Everyone knows that being the defender puts you in an advantegeous position, and a garanteed -1 on dice rolls of the enemy is quite the advantage. It's not for nothing that fighting defensively and baiting the enemy on mountains forts is a real, well known strategy. Also, your selection of units can influence the result of the battle. If you choose to use the defensive type of unit, the distibution of pips will affect the outcome of the battle. I don't think you ever mention it, but the fact that your first exemple is such a specific exemple that may have stack the deck strongly to your advantage overstate the advantage army drill brought. Or maybe you could have mod the game to give the native a dice roll of 6 to counteract the malus? Just an idea. The drilling mechanic is still defenitively overlook and underused, don't misunderstand me. I do think you have a valid point. Let's just not pretend this is like the (honestly, quite dryer) EU4 tutorial videos of old youtubers, like Reman's Paradox for exemple, where they brought out the spreadsheets and did the maths. I don't think we should go back to that era though. There's a reason most of those channels don't upload anymore, and most of them stayed relatively obscure at the time, altought with a few exceptions. The new era of EU4 content of the last three years has been much more entertaining and dynamic, and there's a niche open for creators that wants to make videos about mechanics, especially for a game as complex and (let's be honest) bloated game as EU4, while being entertaining. I just think there should be a rigorous study and analyse of the mechanics in context before presenting them to viewers, outside of just shouting "it's strong! Here's a single exemple!" I reiterate : your point is valid, and it's still a good video. It makes me realize that I often, even to this day, forget to use the mechanic, even if drilling is a passive thing that you set and forget while you're at peace. I just think that the presentation of your exemple could have been more rigorous. That's all. There's no shame to modding the game or using the console when you want to explore and explain a mechanic.
From a few tests, the rolls seems pretty similar, but high variance. There is a modifier "Assault Fort ability" on ottoman Janissaries, so I feel like Drill should say if it had an effect.
Drilling is only worth it for sp for mp its a bit different cause you should have a large army and its better to set maintanance to 0 and use the money to build up and get an even larger army as you cant expand as well as in sp but unless u use a balance mod that changes how drill works and/or buffs army profesionalism its only worth it to drill ur arty as you shouldnt lose it in battles meaning the more fire dmg can be used for a lot longer
That is just really wrong... First of all most MP players drill their Army all the Time because of Professionalism which is Manpower which is always way more worth than Money in MP... and then also Money is way less of a Problem in MP than in SP exactly because you have so much time to micro your economy. And then if I asked one of the most expierienced MP players of the Lobby that I have played in then they would all say me that they would love to pay as much Money as they have for a -25% Damage Reduction Modifer because that modifier alone not only saves you insane amounts of manpower (that as I said is a WAY more important source than money in MP) but it is also so much that it will be the one Modifier that wins you the important battles (or looses them if you don't have it)
I feel that itnis only forgotten by these youtubers with their constant "Free companies" and also by random idiots. I've never abandoned army maintenance ever since I bought this DLC (Rule Britania iirc)
If you drill them to 100 and have that high drill loss reduction than you can turn the maintanence off after that and still not loose any drill while not paying anything extra on your army
@@thestudentYT to be fair, drill was pretty garbage when it was first introduced. It was only 10% damage dealt & received, and there wasn't any significant source of "drill loss prevention", so it just disappeared from attrition and didn't even give movement speed. And it drained 3x faster as a baseline even without casualties. They buffed it basically every patch since. Not everyone has realized it's kinda strong now, and really easy to maintain without going to far out of your way.
