EU4 Why does my army SUCK!?

[Jaeger]

I am playing Venice around 1530 and I don't undesrtand why I can't win any battles. I am at war with Savoy and Tuscany; I am 1 military tech level in front of Savoy and same as Tuscany. They have a 2 star general and I have a 1 star. When I am defending with 35k vs 30k units I can BARELY win. If I try to attack, don't even think about it. As far as I know these are the things which affect how well and army does:

Tech level
Ideas
National Ideas
Prestige
Generals
Army tradition
Many small effects from Defender of Faith, events, etc.

However, I have no idea how much each of these things influences the army. I don't know what is shock, manuever, etc. So I guess my question is, how can know if I can kill a country's troops or if they will just roflsomp me? Also, how can I get a better army? Should I always get Quality Ideas ASAP or something like that?

[lordraphael]

When you fight armys following things do matter. Moral, army technique. ( the value beyond moral), discipline, general skill, unit composition. All other things just contribute to those values. Rule of thumb, have as much cavalry as possible but never more than 40 % of your stack. Cavarly is far better than infantry until like mil tech 12. Always take the general with the highest shock skill. Shock is similarly to cavarly the most important skill until like mil tehc 12/ 15 . Both are related since cav deals most shock value the more cav you have the better a high shock skill leader is. MOral is more important than discipline until roughly 1600. You cna lose battles even when you actually kill more units than your opponent simply because your moral is low and your units start routing faster.
Never fight in mountain regions unless you have a fort there. Mountain and hill/ marsh regions give a -2 / -1 penalty on all combat phases. Basically if you roll a 7 you only get a 5 in mountain regions. On the other always fight in mountain regions if your army gets there first. Whoever gets into a region first has the defenders advantage and the opposing army gets the penalty ( exceptions are forts) Try to avoid river crossings if you have a leader with inferiour manouver skill than your opponent as it will result in a -1 penalty. On the other hand try to force opponent army into river crossings if you have a leader with high manouver skills

After 1600 cannons get the damage dealers and therefore you want to have leaders with high fire skills. Cavarly becomes much less important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O63oZQpKt_g

For Ideas id advise you to take quantity over quality as a rule of thumb. Usually you will be starved for manpower and in the end the zuta principle still applies most of the time more stuff >less stuff.
Exceptions are nations with great military ideas like prussia. Rule of thumb, always try to expand the national ideas because it stacks more. If you have national ideas for army quality go for more quality, if you have great ideas for quantity go for more quantity ideas. Neverr take sea related ideas.

[Gendarme]

What a load of unintelligible garbage

[Rikikipu]

I think that's the issue that I face with EU4, it's too complicated, you have billions of parameters, it's not really accessible to understand them all when you are a begginer

[lordraphael]

I think that's the issue that I face with EU4, it's too complicated, you have billions of parameters, it's not really accessible to understand them all when you are a begginer

Thats true. On the other hand its also what players love about this game. They dont want an easy life and id argue it should have even more parameters to tkae even more things that should matter into account. Basically every mod that. Modifies the gameplay, makes the game more demanding and complicated to play. Eu 4 players dont want an easy and accesible gane

[Jaeger]

When you fight armys following things do matter. Moral, army technique. ( the value beyond moral), discipline, general skill, unit composition. All other things just contribute to those values. Rule of thumb, have as much cavalry as possible but never more than 40 % of your stack. Cavarly is far better than infantry until like mil tech 12. Always take the general with the highest shock skill. Shock is similarly to cavarly the most important skill until like mil tehc 12/ 15 . Both are related since cav deals most shock value the more cav you have the better a high shock skill leader is. MOral is more important than discipline until roughly 1600. You cna lose battles even when you actually kill more units than your opponent simply because your moral is low and your units start routing faster.
Never fight in mountain regions unless you have a fort there. Mountain and hill/ marsh regions give a -2 / -1 penalty on all combat phases. Basically if you roll a 7 you only get a 5 in mountain regions. On the other always fight in mountain regions if your army gets there first. Whoever gets into a region first has the defenders advantage and the opposing army gets the penalty ( exceptions are forts) Try to avoid river crossings if you have a leader with inferiour manouver skill than your opponent as it will result in a -1 penalty. On the other hand try to force opponent army into river crossings if you have a leader with high manouver skills

After 1600 cannons get the damage dealers and therefore you want to have leaders with high fire skills. Cavarly becomes much less important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O63oZQpKt_g

For Ideas id advise you to take quantity over quality as a rule of thumb. Usually you will be starved for manpower and in the end the zuta principle still applies most of the time more stuff >less stuff.
Exceptions are nations with great military ideas like prussia. Rule of thumb, always try to expand the national ideas because it stacks more. If you have national ideas for army quality go for more quality, if you have great ideas for quantity go for more quantity ideas. Neverr take sea related ideas.

Thanks for that post! I don't have time to respond in full, but why never take naval ideas? They seem OP for navy. Is it because you should just focus on land? As Venice I tried to build an OP fleet so that I can block the Otto feom crossing by Byzantium.

[pecelot]

One thing I love about EU4 is that you can actually see all the parameters, modifiers and their source. AoE3 lacks that a bit, although it's not that disturbing if you keep track of your improvements and cards, whereas AoE2 is pretty unfriendly in this regard, but bear in mind that in the end, all the expansions notwithstanding, it's a 1999 game.

I think having a major fleet is important when it's valuable strategically. Blocking the Bosfor and Dardanele straits sounds like a good idea, but it eventually is useless once the Ottomans hold provinces on both sides of the Marmara Sea. Denmark and/or Sweden excels at it in early game as they've got their capital in Sjelland, an island on the Baltic Sea, which they block with plenty of galleys. Other than that, navy doesn't really bring too many positives, for instance, they can't influence land combat (they can blockade forts, however), and at the beginning of the game there are many more influential ( ) ideas.

Furthermore, fighting with the Ottomans in the Mediterranean Sea is pretty tough due to the sheer number of vessels they possess.

[Jaeger]

One thing I love about EU4 is that you can actually see all the parameters, modifiers and their source. AoE3 lacks that a bit, although it's not that disturbing if you keep track of your improvements and cards, whereas AoE2 is pretty unfriendly in this regard, but bear in mind that in the end, all the expansions notwithstanding, it's a 1999 game.

I think having a major fleet is important when it's valuable strategically. Blocking the Bosfor and Dardanele straits sounds like a good idea, but it eventually is useless once the Ottomans hold provinces on both sides of the Marmara Sea. Denmark and/or Sweden excels at it in early game as they've got their capital in Sjelland, an island on the Baltic Sea, which they block with plenty of galleys. Other than that, navy doesn't really bring too many positives, for instance, they can't influence land combat (they can blockade forts, however), and at the beginning of the game there are many more influential ( ) ideas.

Furthermore, fighting with the Ottomans in the Mediterranean Sea is pretty tough due to the sheer number of vessels they possess.

What ideas do you think are the best? Usually I do trade, economic, quality (though now I will do quantity) and then idk.

With Otto I got naval ideas first and waited until diplo level 9 or so when you unlock a new galley and immediately built a huge fleet of the best galleys.

[Jaeger]

Also if you want to conquer england later on don't you need to have better fleet than them? And they have a yuuuuuuge fleet, 60 heavies wtf

[hleung]

Hi @Jaeger

So I get it that you are at war with Tuscany and Savoy, and that you can barely win defensive fights despite having an extra 5k men in your army and being ahead by one mil tech. Now there are a few things you did not mention which also have a significant impact on the performance of your army:

[spoiler=List of modifiers that can also affect your army performance]Terrain and river crossing
Discipline
Military tactics (normally we treat it as the second "discipline" stat)
Power Projection (affects morale)
Army professionalism and drill (treat it as if it's discipline)
Military advisors (affects either morale or discipline but not both the same time)
Army composition
Unit selection (fire, shock and morale pips)
Combat width
Dice rolls[/spoiler]

Since @lordraphael beats me to this thread, I will just write down a few things that he did not mention in detail.

The year is 1530 so I would assume you just got mil tech 11 unlocked. Now, aside from giving you a small edge on some rather useless early inf shock and cav fire pip modifiers, the +2 combat width is probably the best thing mil tech 11 can offer in terms of winning battles. The increase in combat width from 25 to 27 means that you can put two extra regiments to fight on the first row and have one of them flanking the enemy on each flank.

Since we just mentioned about combat width, let's talk about it first. Combat width restricts the number of regiments that can be put into a direct fight in each battle phase. Numbers do not matter too much when the total number of inf and cav regiments exceeds the combat width, as some of the regiments can only wait in the second row. In this case, I can probably safely assume that you have about 5k extra reserves in each battle than Savoy and Tuscany. That means you were actually fighting with more or less equal numbers in each battle, and so other factors kick in.

Perhaps I should clarify that none of the three countries can really gain a slight advantage in land battles from national ideas. As for naval warfare, you should have a dominating position over the other two, but let's not get sidetracked there.

Idea-wise, defensive and quantity ideas are more important in the early game when it comes to waging wars (although aristocratic/plutocratic ideas are also good for certain countries/play-styles). If you know your manpower will most likely be above zero most of the time, then pick defensive ideas, just because it offers some juicy early-game advantage that scales well with greed, especially the yearly army tradition and morale bonus amongst other things. Plutocratic ideas can be a good replacement if you are still playing as a merchant republic as Venice and if you intend to play tall, just because the idea set offers some decent economic bonuses whilst still giving you the most crucial early-game military ideas, namely morale bonus and manpower recovery speed (you should have the first military idea set completed at around mil tech 10 or 11). Since you are Venice, you probably will want to do naval ideas. What I will say about naval ideas is that they aren't exactly that good in the game unless you can stack with your national ideas, like GB or Venice, so it might be worth it for some maritime/colonial empires.

Generals can be a deciding factor throughout the game, and it depends on your army tradition, military ideas and a bit of luck (some national ideas and ruler traits also offer bonus to certain pips of generals, but none in this case). Army tradition decides on the range of the amount of pips a general can have, so the higher the number, the higher chance your new generals will have more pips. As for military ideas, offensive ideas offer extra shock and fire pips to your new generals, whilst one of the defensive ideas gives your new general an extra manoeuvre pip (and let's just ignore siege pip here for the sake of discussion). In early game, you will definitely want to get a general with decent shock and manoeuvre pips to combine with the early-game cav advantage; whilst a general with better fire pips will come in useful in mid-to-late game as cav scales poorly unless you are playing a few certain countries where you get shocking bonus for cav. combat (pun intended; Poland/Commonwealth, I am looking at you ).

Morale and discipline are equally important, but more so for morale in early game. The higher the morale, the more bodies you can throw into a single fight before you are forced to retreat due to insufficient morale; but discipline (and army quality) will have an edge in combat in late-game - it is better off to dishing out damage in each phase when combat width becomes a more limiting factor. That is the general rule of thumb, but there is an exception. If you have a cav-heavy army composition, then the extra discipline is usually better off than the morale bonus. With a bit of luck, you can stack-wipe an army of equal size in favourable terrain (enjoy doing that with the horde nations and late-game commonblob).

Military tactics is just as important as discipline, and you will want to make sure you are not far behind on that. As for military advisors and events, they will provide extra discipline or morale, and sometimes other military bonus like army professionalism or army tradition, and siege ability or fort defense depending on the idea sets that you choose and some luck, so choose them wisely according to the situation. It is necessary to adapt.

On certain tech levels, there are often a few choices you can choose for your new upgraded units. Usually, for inf units, we compare them with morale pips first, then fire pips, and shock pips at last. As for cav, it's usually the other way round. As for artillery, always go for the one with most fire pips, then onto shock. If you are being outnumbered, you will want to have more defensive pips for inf and cav units, and vice versa; but the choice for artillery should always be the one with most offensive fire and shock pips because that's how they can dish out the most damage in the back-rank.

As for terrain, army composition, dice rolls and other stuff that I didn't mention, raphael has explained more or less everything already, so I will just skip those. Just that if you are playing as a horde or the commonblob, you might want to consider a cav-heavy composition, but make sure the number of cav regiments stays within the healthy ratio.

That's more or less about it. I hope I haven't missed anything else that's important, because I am quite certain to have missed a bunch of core info that is well hidden inside my muscle memory. Anyway, please feel free to ask for further advice.

[pecelot]

What ideas do you think are the best? Usually I do trade, economic, quality (though now I will do quantity) and then idk.

With Otto I got naval ideas first and waited until diplo level 9 or so when you unlock a new galley and immediately built a huge fleet of the best galleys.

It really depends, I'd imagine. I'm still a relative beginner and don't really want to make fool out of myself in this regard with hleung and raphael lurking around, so I may leave it to them However, if you're not discouraged by the above, I can tell you something from my personal blobbing experience — as, no matter what, each of my games turned into a global expansion fest... In case of building a large empire, there are some no-brainers, like Quantity for manpower, Influence for aggressive expansion reduction and vassal annexing, or Administrative for decreased core-creation cost. The last one may not be too appealing, but the most essential idea is in the 2nd place, so you get that quickly, and combined with some other ideas, you may get some pretty decent policies later on. I also like having the Humanist ones, as they generally help you deal with rebels, which can be real pain in the neck — especially ot your manpower reserves after a swift victory. The order, again, depends on certain variables.

But then again, you may get Exploration and Expansion ideas for colonisation, which can mess with the aforesaid.

Also if you want to conquer england later on don't you need to have better fleet than them? And they have a yuuuuuuge fleet, 60 heavies wtf

About the ships: I'm afraid you may fail to keep your galley number on level terms with the Ottomans as Venice — that's a concern from an outside perspective, but if you already managed it, then I may underestimate your power

In some of my starting games I formed Prussia on 3 separate occasions; the conquest of Britain usually comes last, when I can afford enough ships and have a big-enough force limit to just not be bothered about their naval boni and secure a quick landing spot.

[lordraphael]

When you fight armys following things do matter. Moral, army technique. ( the value beyond moral), discipline, general skill, unit composition. All other things just contribute to those values. Rule of thumb, have as much cavalry as possible but never more than 40 % of your stack. Cavarly is far better than infantry until like mil tech 12. Always take the general with the highest shock skill. Shock is similarly to cavarly the most important skill until like mil tehc 12/ 15 . Both are related since cav deals most shock value the more cav you have the better a high shock skill leader is. MOral is more important than discipline until roughly 1600. You cna lose battles even when you actually kill more units than your opponent simply because your moral is low and your units start routing faster.
Never fight in mountain regions unless you have a fort there. Mountain and hill/ marsh regions give a -2 / -1 penalty on all combat phases. Basically if you roll a 7 you only get a 5 in mountain regions. On the other always fight in mountain regions if your army gets there first. Whoever gets into a region first has the defenders advantage and the opposing army gets the penalty ( exceptions are forts) Try to avoid river crossings if you have a leader with inferiour manouver skill than your opponent as it will result in a -1 penalty. On the other hand try to force opponent army into river crossings if you have a leader with high manouver skills

After 1600 cannons get the damage dealers and therefore you want to have leaders with high fire skills. Cavarly becomes much less important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O63oZQpKt_g

For Ideas id advise you to take quantity over quality as a rule of thumb. Usually you will be starved for manpower and in the end the zuta principle still applies most of the time more stuff >less stuff.
Exceptions are nations with great military ideas like prussia. Rule of thumb, always try to expand the national ideas because it stacks more. If you have national ideas for army quality go for more quality, if you have great ideas for quantity go for more quantity ideas. Neverr take sea related ideas.

Thanks for that post! I don't have time to respond in full, but why never take naval ideas? They seem OP for navy. Is it because you should just focus on land? As Venice I tried to build an OP fleet so that I can block the Otto feom crossing by Byzantium.

navy is just pretty irrelevant and vs ai you can win the sea war evne if you have less numbers and you dont need any ideas. Its justr a wasted idea slot.

[lordraphael]

One thing I love about EU4 is that you can actually see all the parameters, modifiers and their source. AoE3 lacks that a bit, although it's not that disturbing if you keep track of your improvements and cards, whereas AoE2 is pretty unfriendly in this regard, but bear in mind that in the end, all the expansions notwithstanding, it's a 1999 game.

I think having a major fleet is important when it's valuable strategically. Blocking the Bosfor and Dardanele straits sounds like a good idea, but it eventually is useless once the Ottomans hold provinces on both sides of the Marmara Sea. Denmark and/or Sweden excels at it in early game as they've got their capital in Sjelland, an island on the Baltic Sea, which they block with plenty of galleys. Other than that, navy doesn't really bring too many positives, for instance, they can't influence land combat (they can blockade forts, however), and at the beginning of the game there are many more influential ( ) ideas.

Furthermore, fighting with the Ottomans in the Mediterranean Sea is pretty tough due to the sheer number of vessels they possess.

What ideas do you think are the best? Usually I do trade, economic, quality (though now I will do quantity) and then idk.

With Otto I got naval ideas first and waited until diplo level 9 or so when you unlock a new galley and immediately built a huge fleet of the best galleys.

Otto means you blob hard. probably no nation has an easier time for WC than otto. you go admin quantity religious, or admin religious quantity. after that you cna pretty much take w.e. you want edit: diplo is also nice for lower warscore cost for provinces. Makes blobbing evne easier. during age of reformation you can gain - 55 % warscore before any admin efficiency

[hleung]

As Venice, you should be able to build quite an impressive navy. It is probably no match against the British navy outside the Mediterranean or late-game Ottomans, but a fleet of galleys with a good admiral does pack a punch in the Mediterranean until the three-deckers arrive. Naval and Quality idea sets stacked with the Venetian ideas makes the Venetian navy even more powerful, so you should probably consider those options. But like raphael said, you can win most naval battles without the need of Naval ideas, so it's entirely up to you.

If you wish to deal with the Ottomans, try to contain them in early game. Vassalising Byzantium is probably viable if it is not hostile towards you at the start. Always build to naval force limit with galleys. If you are at war with the Ottomans, try to gain naval superiority, then strait-block the Ottomans after you have taken down the fort at Edirne. Since you are a human player, you should not have much trouble taking on a well-contained Ottomans unless you let them get to tech 5 and beyond. If all goes well, it should end with the partitions of the Ottomans.

As for the British navy, unless you plan to play wide as Venice, I would say just don't think about it if it's not a threat, nor can you really match their naval superiority on open seas with the lack of heavies.

I hope that answers your further questions.

P.S.: If you are playing as the Ottomans, just build up to force limits and go full WC mode. The English Channel might be a bit of a problem, but I doubt it's enough to stop you as long as you have got a decent fleet size full of heavies (and some galleys to absorb damage).

[lordraphael]

As Venice, you should be able to build quite an impressive navy. It is probably no match against the British navy outside the Mediterranean or late-game Ottomans, but a fleet of galleys with a good admiral does pack a punch in the Mediterranean until the three-deckers arrive. Naval and Quality idea sets stacked with the Venetian ideas makes the Venetian navy even more powerful, so you should probably consider those options. But like raphael said, you can win most naval battles without the need of Naval ideas, so it's entirely up to you.

If you wish to deal with the Ottomans, try to contain them in early game. Vassalising Byzantium is probably viable if it is not hostile towards you at the start. Always build to naval force limit with galleys. If you are at war with the Ottomans, try to gain naval superiority, then strait-block the Ottomans after you have taken down the fort at Edirne. Since you are a human player, you should not have much trouble taking on a well-contained Ottomans unless you let them get to tech 5 and beyond. If all goes well, it should end with the partitions of the Ottomans.

As for the British navy, unless you plan to play wide as Venice, I would say just don't think about it if it's not a threat, nor can you really match their naval superiority on open seas with the lack of heavies.

I hope that answers your further questions.

P.S.: If you are playing as the Ottomans, just build up to force limits and go full WC mode. The English Channel might be a bit of a problem, but I doubt it's enough to stop you as long as you have got a decent fleet size full of heavies (and some galleys to absorb damage).

if you have gotten to the english channel with ottoman its over anyways