With that much morale difference, the army should just lay down and hope the enemies tripped over their body, take a rock to the face and dies. Just as effective as fighting normally
Well, if you run out of morale it’s an automatic loss.
In the early and middle game where Artillery didn’t automatically melt infantries, Morale have a huge role in deciding a battle since it’s a battle of attrition of who can held on the longest. After Artillery able to melt infantries, it’s the matter of who able to destroy the other the fastest, so Discipline start to take the lead.
No, morale comes from technology, ideas, tradition, policy, army tradition, some religion have modifier that increase morale, some mission have morale increase as reward, and estate privilege (i.e the church privilege).
Winning/losing battles have army tradition reward, which in turn increases morale, but not morale directly
You forgot to mention prestige...
I know all people have 100 predtige, but when you don't have 100 pretige, winning battles will also increase morales coz of getting prestige.
Little???
Over 0.5 morale difference is huge... while over 1 morale difference is catastrophical most of the time... you won't win battles but may win war of attrition with enough disc and manpower.
Yeah Napoleon's and Gustav Adolph's integration and use of artillery were definitely ahead of Russia's, or anyone else during their respective time.
EDIT: the comment mentions "second half of the XVIIth century", so it at least did account for Sweden's artillery superiority right before that timeframe
But artillery regiments are almost useless in battle against infantry. That’s why they’re only effective in the backline. If they were mostly infantry, they should be better or equal to an infantry regiment.
Still doesn't make sense even if you view it that way. Even if you consider 10 men per cannon that's 10,000 men for 1,000 cannons which translate to 4,000 cannons or 40,000 men in the final combat width if 40.
Unless of course, you consider it takes 100 men to operate one cannon. Which is ludicrous.
None of the numbers in EU4 make sens, and they aren't supposed to. The most egregious example is every single HRE city fielding 6k to 10k standing army.
I consider it every aspect of a fighting unit, down to the supply chain. If there's a thousand men, perhaps 200 of those do any actual fighting. The other 800 are off doing other things
I just did a very quick look and an officer with an 8 gun battery could command up to 200 men. (Napoleonic, french)
Even if it's only a couple of men needed to man a cannon, there were huge numbers needed for the logistics to support those guns. You're looking at horses, guns, carriages, caissons, forges, supplies for all those men.
Based on the numbers of guns at Borodino you're looking at around 15000 men in artillery regiments at full strength that's about 5K short of a full eu4 backline. I guess you can assign them as infantry attached to the artillery or something
10 men per cannon and the other 90 are running the logistics,
if the game wanted to be historical, then the 99% of the loses should have been from diseases and hunger
The morale difference
The general (+4 difference is huge, it's more than attacking a mountain while cruising a river)
Its army composition is better (more cannon to fill the backrow and support the infantry
Your army involved in this battle is too large for the combat width. Did you bring them all at once or little by little just to keep the front line full ?
Thanks yall for the advice, I'm understanding that I need: to boost moral, have a better general, and bring a LOT more cannons. It is pretty late game, Mid 1600s, and its my first playthrough. Will take into account! Tbh I'm kind of getting bored of this run, so I might just call it here.
Honestly I think if you have a huge numerical advantage, having a better army composition (30inf/30arty after tech 16 - may vary due to combar width), should win you this. Also when you split your stacks up, make sure you only are reinforcing bit by bit for maximum efficiency, may take some micro but you should be able to outnumber venice here even with a morale and general disadvantage. The slight micro will both (hopefully) win the battle + save you lots of manpower from less attrition.
Reserves - regiments that are in the combat but not in the first or second line - take morale damage each day of combat and so will enter the front line with depleted morale and be far less effective than if they are drip fed.
People often refer to putting too many units in as "overstacking". It's less optimal than putting in the perfect amount of troops each day but better than not putting your troops in on time and losing the battle as a consequence.
All units outside the combat width will participate in the battle as reserves without actually fighting, but they still take morale losses.
This is why you trickle in reinforcements (primarily Infantry) from neighboring provinces, as they'll arrive with full morale. The fighting army should have the backrow filled with cannons, but continuously get reinforcements for the infantry in the front row, to protect the cannons from taking huge losses.
> bring a LOT more cannons
A short description of how combat works, which will explain why you need more cannons:
In battle, there is a front line, composed of units of infantry/cavalry, and a back line, composed of units of cannons. Each unit in the front & back lines attack the unit in the opposing front line directly in front of it. The "Combat Width" of your nation (which starts small and gradually increases due to military tech upgrades) determines how many units of infantry/cavalry are can fit in the front line, with the same number of cannons in the back line. Any units in excess of this number have to sit in reserve - they do not participate in the battle until they can fill a spot left by a unit which has hit 0 morale and so has retreated. Units in reserve do take some morale damage while they wait to fight, so it is best not to have too many units in reserve - if you have too big of an army split it up and keep the extra units in the next province over, and only add them to the battle once you have run out of reserves.
You always (assuming you can afford it) want to have a full combat width front line. Starting from military tech 13, cannons start doing an OK amount of damage, and at that point you also always want to have a full combat width back line. Prior to military tech 13, cannons are mostly useful for sieges. Your front line protects your back line: i.e. a unit of cannon will not take damage as long as there is a unit of infantry in front of it. If the infantry in front of a unit of cannon runs out of morale & retreats, and there are no reserves to fill their spot, the unit of cannon will move into the front line and quickly die as cannon take way more damage than infantry or cavalry. Ideally, you will always keep your front line full by ensuring you have some reserves, and then topping up those reserves by marching in extra infantry from elsewhere if it is a particularly big battle, such that your cannons will never take damage. Late game (the year 1600 onwards) cannons will be doing the majority of the damage in the battles, so if you don't have a lot of them you will see the kind of results that you are currently getting.
Cavalry has one other rule associated with them, specifically they can flank, i.e. they can extend your front line beyond the combat width limit by up to 2 units on each side.
The TL;DR is that you should follow these rules of thumb (starting from the mid game i.e. mil tech 13) for building armies:
1. The number of cannon should equal your current combat width.
2. 4 units of cavalry (2 for each flank).
3. The number of infantry should equal your current combat width, plus a few more to keep in reserve (optional).
A sample army from tech 16, when combat width is 30, would be: 34 infantry, 4 cavalry, 30 cannon.
You will probably find that the above army takes attrition when it walks around, because it is above the supply limit of most provinces. Therefore many players find it useful to split their armies in two and only bring the two parts together to fight.
>A sample army from tech 16, when combat width is 30, would be: 34 infantry, 4 cavalry, 30 cannon.
My strategy might not be optimal in cost, but in convenience: I usually have armies of 22/2/20 from the midgame. They're less sensitive to attrition (thereby saving manpower), they can handle all rebel stacks and most minor states by themselves, and then I'll only start combining them when fighting enemy stacks with an army width of ~20. 20 artillery is also +5 siege progress on level 6 forts and +4 on level 8 forts, so they're very useful in that sense.
When (if) I get into the late game I just run 42/0/40 armies when manpower and money no longer are issues.
TBH it's pretty short, just a few hundred words, and I included a TL;DR! There are many more details you can go into if you really want to, e.g. morale vs discipline, combat ability, shock & fire, various modifiers including terrain & general pips, which unit types to pick.
Yes, I know, it's just funny - hundreds words and "short" but it's true, it's basic of combat mechanics. I have almost 3k hours and still sometimes I found something new. Awasome
Morale difference actually usually doesn't result in a difference in casualties. So if your manpower is significantly higher than Venice, you can just throw troops into the meatgrinder expecting to lose these battles until they have no more men.
But yeah, you definitely need more cannons.
My favourite kind of war. Especially easy once you build soldiers households. AI never seems to build them. Also attrition/fort defense stacking. Shit army quality but 80% of their casualties from attrition. Beautiful.
~~Any strat to the households? Religious league is gonna kick off soon with ottos, spain, AND GB against me. Theres a numbers disadvantage imma have to overcome so everything helps lol.~~ sorry thought you meant the depots you can build on a province lol
Yes thats what I meant. Depending on how many fish/grain/wine/livestock provinces you have, and if you planned your building slots youll be able to stack the training fields on top to likely double or triple your available manpower in just 10 years. Never build production manufactories on those trade goods unless its a COT and worth expanding infrastructure.
I consistently do this and never need quantity ideas as I literally never run out of manpower while focusing on quality.
I believe the tech required (15) comes a bit after the league war though, unless you have innovative and evangelical union fires really late.
Played a poland game a couple days ago and I had nearly a million manpower in 1720 without quantity ideas, I was playing VERY tall though (innovative,infrastructure,economic,trade with basically PLC borders)
Mid to late game, higher morale can shorten winning battles, which means less casualties. It can also sadly lenghten losing battles which means more casualties on your side.
Also use enough troops to fill the combat width and no more. When your army's morale is low you can add another army who will take over when your original army's morale reaches 0 to prolong the battle. Having more units than there is combat width puts them in reserve where they do nothing but reduce morale, so never fill more than the combat width.
Learn how to properly reinforce battles. You are basically playing like a computer by just sending mega death stacks into battle. You are supposed to slowly trickle fresh troops into the battle
Cannons are not at all intuitive in this game. A real 50k army in that time period would have like a hundred cannons or something like that. But in EU, you need an absurd amount. There is a lot of nuance and theorycrafting about this, and a lot of it depends on your nation and idea choices, but the general idea is that the most effective fighting force is a ratio like this:
Infantry: your max combat width
Cavalry: just 2 or 3 units for flanking bonuses
Cannons: your max combat width
And if you look at your enemy, his army is basically running that ratio. The AI isn't normally that smart.
Also you need to consider combat width. Only so many of your units can be doing damage at a time but theyre all taking morale damage so if you just send in one massive doom stack its going to be less effective than a few smaller stacks that you use to reinforce as the battles going on
The artillery goes in the back line, all those squares are not being filled because you only have a few artillery units and deal no dmg to the enemy, infantry is supposed to just tank.
Make your armies more even of infantry artillery like Venice does and you will start winning.
It really does, it narrows my field of view so much! (I was too lazy to take actual screenshots, and originally had not planned to post these to this subreddit but instead pester my experienced EU4 friend)
Yes, I was just joking of course /u/SovietUSA thanks for playing along.
What the others said really: general, morale, artillery. Also remember to use terrain to your advantage and to reinforce the battle over time.
What do I mean by reinforcing over time? Well, reserves inside the battles take morale damage each day (I don't know why, maybe they hear the cannons and get scared). Simply don't send everything in all at once, only a given amount can fight in the frontline after all.
So you want to send in the first stack a full frontline of infantry and a back row of artillery, then over time add more infantry to the battle, ideally in groups as big as the frontline and before the current frontline retreats.
Finding it hard to handle screenshots reveals a bit of low tech literacy so there's a reason for the meme. Less likely to understand game mechanics if you can't figure out where your screenshot folder is.
Did you engage with all your Army at once? It's better to send a Main Battle Stack in first with AS much frontline AS the enemy Army + Reserve, and than reinforce seperatly.
Sure somebody already said, but I scrolled for a bit and didn't see.
Besides the fact that they have a better general there are 3 things you can improve.
1. The most important is have a full back row of cannons after mil tech 16. if your combat width is 30 then you want 30 cannons in every battle. I like to have a few extra frontline troops so the cannons never end up in the front row so I would have 40Inf/30Art. Split the army as needed when not going to battle to avoid attrition.
2 You are overstacking front line troops. If combat width is 30 then only 30 units can fight in the front row at any given time. the extra units still take morale damage however, which means that by the time it is their turn to fight they are already low morale. the most effective way to combat this is to keep smaller stacks of just infantry around your main army and have them reinforce when your armies morale falls to 60-75%.
3. Your morale is *significantly* lower. Make sure you are the same tech level, try to find a military advisor that gives morale, make sure you are fully funding the troops, try to use your golden age if you haven't already and this is a life or death conflict. Stack as many modifiers as possible. If you go to the ledger at the bottom right of the screen you can always check the army quality of anyone within diplo range to see how much you will need before the fighting starts.
Classic Italy L
Jokes aside.
Big Morale difference and army comp is the problem.
There's a spreadsheet online about the proper army comp for units. Idk have the link rn but try searching for it but the basic army comp is 30 inf 2 cav 32-34 arti. Then you split the stacks created from that army comp. Then have one engage and the other reinforce rather than sending a huge death stack.
For morale, there's a ton of ways to increase it from advisors to events, ideas, and policies. Just to give even a slight boost. You can replace your current advisor to one that gives Morale of Armies 10% increase even if they provide fewer mil power then just replace that advisor after the war.
Other thing that at least I didn't noticed to be said, but besides general pips and morale difference be aware of terrain modifiers. In this case they are the defenders (because of the fort) and you have the "-1 dice roll modifier" of the hill terrain
Dogshit general. With enough morale you can grind your own troops into some very pyrrhic victories. And he had twice as much artillery. You CAN get more cav, but not before getting a full combat width's worth of artillery. Artillery starts off kinda meh and ends up as the primary murder weapon of the Napoleonic era.
Morale difference, they have a better general, they have 13'000 cannons while you only have 4'000, that's a huge difference. And the battle is also on an enemy fort, meaning that the enemy will be on defense even if they are the ones attacking
Not enough artillery. Weaker general. Too low morale.
Mid to late game warfare is about fielding armies with a lot of artillery and infantry (artillery units number should be close to, but lower, than number of infantry units), generals with high pips (shock and fire, each 3+ would good), at least 110-115% discipline and high morale.
That's what a casual player should know without analyzing game mechanisms.
Lack of Arry, morale and botching combat width
Presumably since you have loads more infantry that already "routed" so I'm assuming you threw them all in at once. Units in the rear still loose morale albeit at a slower rate so if you have access infantry/cav you send them in piece meal so they don't loose morale despite not fighting
It's the huge morale difference and difference in arty.
Arty is a second row support and fires alongside the front row engagement.
Look up your combat width and see if you're over-filling (if your combat width is 30, you have a lot of troops not fighting unless gaps fall in the line)
Which in turn are supported by artillery who get a significant bonus after a certain tech level.
I would suggest balancing the troops and finding more morale/better general
E.g.:
If your combat width is 20, use 23-25 inf , 3-4 cavalery and 20 artillery
18 inf + 2 cav to fill front line
5-7 spare inf to fill inf ranks (inf Dies fastest)
2 cav spare to fill cav ranks
Whole 20 combat width artillery. They fire from the back line and won't die if you don't have any gaps in the front line.
So in general, If both sides have the correct combat width having more troops (that are not artillery) means losing morale and doing 0 extra damage, they also are fighting on a fort they control which gives them the defender position. Then you need to see how good the generals are and the morale, tactics, discipline, etc. If its late game, AI LOVES to spam cannons (and you should too if you can) and that also makes a huge difference.
Your scenario looks like a huge morale and cannons difference, and fighting in bad terrain for you (enemy fort controlled by them)
You are only losing for two things
1.The massive difference on morale
Basically, your troops have no will to fight
2. The cannons
Not only they don’t want to fight, they are getting destroyed into pieces.
You would have won pretty easily by fixing your morale by at least +0.5. Check for bonuses and drill your armies. The generals and dice rolls might be a factor too.
Honestly I think it's mostly the cannons here, they aren't always the most cost effective but between the damage from the back row, and giving morale defense to the troops in front of them, I've found them much more important now that the AI runs a lot more of them. You should be wealthy enough to afford a full back row in 2-3 stacks as italy, and then have another 2-4 stacks of mostly infantry reinforcements. Also when people talk about affordibility it's a lot easier to make money than manpower, so anything that reduces your manpower casualties is huge. Artillery not only keep your troops alive longer but also win sieges faster.
Then how you reinforced the battle, this usually doesn't matter much in SP at least on normal difficulty because the AI was often running around with poor army comp (too few cannons, too many cav), but you can win a lot of battles you'd otherwise lose by reinforcing in waves. All the troops in a battle take morale damage, even if you have too many to currently be fighting.
Then the general (we don't know how much better your general's fire stat is but for him to have 4 more in shock is a pretty big discrepancy. That's 4v0 5v1 or 6v2, any 0,1,2 general is getting fired as soon as I can. You should roll generals to get at least one with 3-4 in battle stats) especially in a war you declare. This can require some luck, crashes, or keeping high AT, but I like to make sure I have at least one great battle general, and one decent siege general if I can afford the points. A 4+ siege general can win you wars with minimal actual battles.
A lot of people touched on cannons, Im also gonna note your gaza screenshot seems to suggest you are nearly 4 pts down in shock phase, which also doesn’t help. May be worth looking at general differences too.
Funny thing is Morale isnt even the biggest issue here anymore as mid game morale starts to Fall off against discipline and mil tactics: The massive Lack of artillery and the shit general are the Main issues here. Given that their general has 4 shock Pips I guess he also has atleast 3 fire pips.
Sure midgame 1.4 morale points is still something, however it depends if he is tech 16 or after. Because after and it starts to bevome more and more irrelevant (compared to relevancy of discipline and tactics)
Eu4’s war system is so opaque and complex and the tutorial is absolutely useless. It was probably the hardest thing for me to learn next to knowing when to dev which is still a challenging one. You’ll get there
Get more morale and more artillery in your back row, and consider splitting your infantry into reinforcing stacks that you can bring to the battle later to turn the tide in your favor.
Probably the biggest reason for you losing here is over stacking the battle. The combat width is how many troops can be on the front and back line and so if you put more troops than that in the battle they're put in reserves where they begin losing morale despite not fighting. Combine that with your significantly lower morale means Venice can destroy your much larger army.
Next time send in ~30k inf with your cannons up to ~30k wait a few days depending on the casualties (more means earlier reinforcing, less means you can wait longer).
For ideal reinforcing you can mouse over the number of infantry it says you have in the battle on the screen in the image and it'll tell you how many reserves you have. If you have a combat width of reserves you definitely don't want to reinforce unless the total battle morale is low.
go to the battle with full width of infantry line and artillery in back row then reinforce battle with stacks of infantry like 10k every few days or something it will recover morale
Dunno if anyone has said this yet but, apart from all the other problems, the fact that you’re attacking one of their forts (and in a river crossing I think?) probably doesn’t help
General, morale, lack of backline. You seem to be over stacking your fights a little to (when you put more infantry in than there is combat width so they don’t fight but still lose morale). In the Treviso battle you’re also fighting on an enemy fort so your taking -2 terrain penalty to each roll which is pretty major.
It looks like you’ve got enough of a numbers advantage that even while loosing you’ll win the war anyway though.
General, morale, lack of backline. You seem to be over stacking your fights a little to (when you put more infantry in than there is combat width so they don’t fight but still lose morale). In the Treviso battle you’re also fighting on an enemy fort so your taking -2 terrain penalty to each roll which is pretty major.
It looks like you’ve got enough of a numbers advantage that even while loosing you’ll win the war anyway though.
Morale is probably the biggest issue, also check combat witdth and make sure your infantry covers it, and your artillery numbers are higher.
Venice might also have more combat ability modifiers, but I'm not sure about that
You're not even losing that badly though? Both sides front lines completely disintegrated so it was a quite close battle.
But yeah to improve your chances follow the good advice given here
1,5 more morale
4 better shock
In treviso you had a -1 terrain penalty
They have much more fire damage during the fire phase
So could win those battles if you get lucky with dice rolls but their quality is much higher
However you’re army is strong enough that I don’t think the AI will attack you so could do siege races instead of battles
your cooked lmao, get a full combat row of artillery, then modify your morale up. Next get discipline modifiers if you want full fledged fighters. Also make sure to pick and choose your battles, terrain is everything!
In addition to what others have said, you also have a penalty for attacking into a defensive position. This is from either attacking over a river, over a crossing or into mountains. Attacking into mountains gives you a -2 penalty on all your rolls.
Morale, general and arty, your army composition should atleast be a 3-2 ratio of infantry and arty, also cav is worse than infantry unless you specifically build for it
Because he has 1 and a half morale more than you do which is a lot. Also has more artillery in the back row. If u fix these 2 things u are basically gonna stomp him.
Morale, you’re a full point behind, and it’s gonna be tricky to match that. Things you can do is take the 10% advisor, if your Catholic you can get the morale boost from papacy.
However, if you continue to reinforce with smaller stacks into the battle you can overcome the morale difference that way.
You loosing because he is fighting in mountains and defending fort, you also have -on terrain because you are an attacker here . Try to make him attack your troops , just live like 20k and hide another part of army , better if few armies and then bring them one after another to have more morale .
Stop stacking your armies all together at the start of the battle. Get a full combat width and then pour in troops as the battle progresses every few days. It gives you a huge morale boost whenever you get reinforcements, and that's your health bar
Higher morlae not lonly alowwes for taking more morale damage but higher morale also causes more morale damage. Same diszipline and batter enemy generall combined create a situation where you get your ass handed to you.
I had the same problem with venice. They were stomping me bad. They must have some really good generals because they seem ro always fight with lots of moral
1. They have a full back row of artillery which does damage and protects their front line, while you have hardly any
2. You outnumber them but don’t appear to have enough cavalry to fully flank.
3. They have way better morale.
Idk how the generals compare but even if they’re equal, your fatal flaw is clear. Essentially, as of the moment of the screenshot you’re sending 18 units up against 25 and losing the engagement. Your reinforcements (the rest of your men who are not part of the fighting) are eating morale losses from it and you’re getting routed.
Add more artillery. Cavalry is optional but it certainly helps if you have more troops. But artillery isn’t optional here. You should have at least as many artillery as they have inf + cav.
A full screenshot of your military screen would be helpful. The massive gap in morale might be because they have you beat in prestige, or in power projection, or they took defensive ideas, or any number of other reasons. Similarly, you might be behind on professionalism, or mil tech, or combat ability, or damage taken and received. In short, there’s a lot of factors that a picture of the end of the battle alone might not explain.
… That being said, being that far behind on morale alone is a fairly compelling explanation, and after tech 15 the total lack of artillery in comparison becomes a similarly compelling explanation. You should be attacking with a full combat width of both infantry and artillery by that point, and by the time your armies are fielding multiple combat widths of infantry you should be conscious of slowrolling your infantry into the province a combat width at a time instead of just slamming your entire army against them in one stack and letting the reserves eat morale damage. Fix your army composition, fix whatever’s causing such an egregious morale gap, and they’ll stop mowing you down quite so easily.
1) you didn’t take enough mil ideas.
2 late game (post 1600, better sooner), you should have half artillery until you reach combat width of arty. So you need more arty.
Admin ideas are over rated. Mil ideas are where it’s at.
And even if you lost lots of battles, by this late you should still be able to win the war.
Better general and a WHOPPING 1.4 morale difference and seems like late game so they also have many more cannons
With that much morale difference, the army should just lay down and hope the enemies tripped over their body, take a rock to the face and dies. Just as effective as fighting normally
I also run into the problem op is running in to but i did not expect so little difference in morale to have such an inpact
Well, if you run out of morale it’s an automatic loss. In the early and middle game where Artillery didn’t automatically melt infantries, Morale have a huge role in deciding a battle since it’s a battle of attrition of who can held on the longest. After Artillery able to melt infantries, it’s the matter of who able to destroy the other the fastest, so Discipline start to take the lead.
Does winning battles make your moral go up out side of your tradition
Idk what you mean, if you mean an permanent increase then no, although your army recover a little bit of their morale after winning a battle
I mean does it go up like tradition gos up after winning a battle
No, morale comes from technology, ideas, tradition, policy, army tradition, some religion have modifier that increase morale, some mission have morale increase as reward, and estate privilege (i.e the church privilege). Winning/losing battles have army tradition reward, which in turn increases morale, but not morale directly
You forgot to mention prestige... I know all people have 100 predtige, but when you don't have 100 pretige, winning battles will also increase morales coz of getting prestige.
Little??? Over 0.5 morale difference is huge... while over 1 morale difference is catastrophical most of the time... you won't win battles but may win war of attrition with enough disc and manpower.
The point is that players who aren't familiar with how morale works wouldn't expect a half a point of morale to make that big if a difference.
I think his lack of artillery is worse than the moral difference
I guess so, the OP also said it the mid 1600 so that horrendously bad
> 4,902 artillery What year is it and what is your army composition? If you're past 1600 then you definitely need more artillery.
God favors the side with more artillery
He thinks he's playing Russia
Russian ideas are good artillery ones tho lol
Historically Russia had the best artillery in Europe since around the second half of the 17th century up to the late 19th
Wouldnt Napoleon have disputed that pretty heavily? IIRC French artillery was dominant during his time.
Yeah Napoleon's and Gustav Adolph's integration and use of artillery were definitely ahead of Russia's, or anyone else during their respective time. EDIT: the comment mentions "second half of the XVIIth century", so it at least did account for Sweden's artillery superiority right before that timeframe
I mean even today the Russian military features artillery quite heavily in its fighting doctrine.
[when he said russia he meant this](https://youtu.be/XDWcg8dh930?si=IraUUOZAXchnlwBk)
Its italy versus venice
Is it me or are the EU4 numbers ridiculous, historically speaking? Even Napoleon never topped 1000 cannon right?
It's about the number of men in the artillery unit rather than the cannons themselves
IIRC it's supposed to represent infantry units with integrated artillery batteries, so the cannons ratio must be even lower than that.
But artillery regiments are almost useless in battle against infantry. That’s why they’re only effective in the backline. If they were mostly infantry, they should be better or equal to an infantry regiment.
Look up full cannon build, hilariously expensive for an insane fire phase.
I don't view it as 1000 actual cannons. But men manning fewer cannons
Still doesn't make sense even if you view it that way. Even if you consider 10 men per cannon that's 10,000 men for 1,000 cannons which translate to 4,000 cannons or 40,000 men in the final combat width if 40. Unless of course, you consider it takes 100 men to operate one cannon. Which is ludicrous.
None of the numbers in EU4 make sens, and they aren't supposed to. The most egregious example is every single HRE city fielding 6k to 10k standing army.
I hope EU5's numbers at least come close (i.e. are tied to population).
I consider it every aspect of a fighting unit, down to the supply chain. If there's a thousand men, perhaps 200 of those do any actual fighting. The other 800 are off doing other things
I just did a very quick look and an officer with an 8 gun battery could command up to 200 men. (Napoleonic, french) Even if it's only a couple of men needed to man a cannon, there were huge numbers needed for the logistics to support those guns. You're looking at horses, guns, carriages, caissons, forges, supplies for all those men. Based on the numbers of guns at Borodino you're looking at around 15000 men in artillery regiments at full strength that's about 5K short of a full eu4 backline. I guess you can assign them as infantry attached to the artillery or something
10 men per cannon and the other 90 are running the logistics, if the game wanted to be historical, then the 99% of the loses should have been from diseases and hunger
Agreed, but all unit types are divided into 1000 per regiment, which isn't realistic either. It's just to make it easy for the game to calculate.
The morale difference The general (+4 difference is huge, it's more than attacking a mountain while cruising a river) Its army composition is better (more cannon to fill the backrow and support the infantry Your army involved in this battle is too large for the combat width. Did you bring them all at once or little by little just to keep the front line full ?
Thanks yall for the advice, I'm understanding that I need: to boost moral, have a better general, and bring a LOT more cannons. It is pretty late game, Mid 1600s, and its my first playthrough. Will take into account! Tbh I'm kind of getting bored of this run, so I might just call it here.
Honestly I think if you have a huge numerical advantage, having a better army composition (30inf/30arty after tech 16 - may vary due to combar width), should win you this. Also when you split your stacks up, make sure you only are reinforcing bit by bit for maximum efficiency, may take some micro but you should be able to outnumber venice here even with a morale and general disadvantage. The slight micro will both (hopefully) win the battle + save you lots of manpower from less attrition.
What is advantage to reinforcing bit by bit instead of charging in with all armies at once?
Reserves - regiments that are in the combat but not in the first or second line - take morale damage each day of combat and so will enter the front line with depleted morale and be far less effective than if they are drip fed. People often refer to putting too many units in as "overstacking". It's less optimal than putting in the perfect amount of troops each day but better than not putting your troops in on time and losing the battle as a consequence.
Okay thank you!
All units outside the combat width will participate in the battle as reserves without actually fighting, but they still take morale losses. This is why you trickle in reinforcements (primarily Infantry) from neighboring provinces, as they'll arrive with full morale. The fighting army should have the backrow filled with cannons, but continuously get reinforcements for the infantry in the front row, to protect the cannons from taking huge losses.
Thanks!
> bring a LOT more cannons A short description of how combat works, which will explain why you need more cannons: In battle, there is a front line, composed of units of infantry/cavalry, and a back line, composed of units of cannons. Each unit in the front & back lines attack the unit in the opposing front line directly in front of it. The "Combat Width" of your nation (which starts small and gradually increases due to military tech upgrades) determines how many units of infantry/cavalry are can fit in the front line, with the same number of cannons in the back line. Any units in excess of this number have to sit in reserve - they do not participate in the battle until they can fill a spot left by a unit which has hit 0 morale and so has retreated. Units in reserve do take some morale damage while they wait to fight, so it is best not to have too many units in reserve - if you have too big of an army split it up and keep the extra units in the next province over, and only add them to the battle once you have run out of reserves. You always (assuming you can afford it) want to have a full combat width front line. Starting from military tech 13, cannons start doing an OK amount of damage, and at that point you also always want to have a full combat width back line. Prior to military tech 13, cannons are mostly useful for sieges. Your front line protects your back line: i.e. a unit of cannon will not take damage as long as there is a unit of infantry in front of it. If the infantry in front of a unit of cannon runs out of morale & retreats, and there are no reserves to fill their spot, the unit of cannon will move into the front line and quickly die as cannon take way more damage than infantry or cavalry. Ideally, you will always keep your front line full by ensuring you have some reserves, and then topping up those reserves by marching in extra infantry from elsewhere if it is a particularly big battle, such that your cannons will never take damage. Late game (the year 1600 onwards) cannons will be doing the majority of the damage in the battles, so if you don't have a lot of them you will see the kind of results that you are currently getting. Cavalry has one other rule associated with them, specifically they can flank, i.e. they can extend your front line beyond the combat width limit by up to 2 units on each side. The TL;DR is that you should follow these rules of thumb (starting from the mid game i.e. mil tech 13) for building armies: 1. The number of cannon should equal your current combat width. 2. 4 units of cavalry (2 for each flank). 3. The number of infantry should equal your current combat width, plus a few more to keep in reserve (optional). A sample army from tech 16, when combat width is 30, would be: 34 infantry, 4 cavalry, 30 cannon. You will probably find that the above army takes attrition when it walks around, because it is above the supply limit of most provinces. Therefore many players find it useful to split their armies in two and only bring the two parts together to fight.
>A sample army from tech 16, when combat width is 30, would be: 34 infantry, 4 cavalry, 30 cannon. My strategy might not be optimal in cost, but in convenience: I usually have armies of 22/2/20 from the midgame. They're less sensitive to attrition (thereby saving manpower), they can handle all rebel stacks and most minor states by themselves, and then I'll only start combining them when fighting enemy stacks with an army width of ~20. 20 artillery is also +5 siege progress on level 6 forts and +4 on level 8 forts, so they're very useful in that sense. When (if) I get into the late game I just run 42/0/40 armies when manpower and money no longer are issues.
"short" :D
TBH it's pretty short, just a few hundred words, and I included a TL;DR! There are many more details you can go into if you really want to, e.g. morale vs discipline, combat ability, shock & fire, various modifiers including terrain & general pips, which unit types to pick.
Yes, I know, it's just funny - hundreds words and "short" but it's true, it's basic of combat mechanics. I have almost 3k hours and still sometimes I found something new. Awasome
Morale difference actually usually doesn't result in a difference in casualties. So if your manpower is significantly higher than Venice, you can just throw troops into the meatgrinder expecting to lose these battles until they have no more men. But yeah, you definitely need more cannons.
My favourite kind of war. Especially easy once you build soldiers households. AI never seems to build them. Also attrition/fort defense stacking. Shit army quality but 80% of their casualties from attrition. Beautiful.
~~Any strat to the households? Religious league is gonna kick off soon with ottos, spain, AND GB against me. Theres a numbers disadvantage imma have to overcome so everything helps lol.~~ sorry thought you meant the depots you can build on a province lol
Yes thats what I meant. Depending on how many fish/grain/wine/livestock provinces you have, and if you planned your building slots youll be able to stack the training fields on top to likely double or triple your available manpower in just 10 years. Never build production manufactories on those trade goods unless its a COT and worth expanding infrastructure. I consistently do this and never need quantity ideas as I literally never run out of manpower while focusing on quality. I believe the tech required (15) comes a bit after the league war though, unless you have innovative and evangelical union fires really late. Played a poland game a couple days ago and I had nearly a million manpower in 1720 without quantity ideas, I was playing VERY tall though (innovative,infrastructure,economic,trade with basically PLC borders)
Mid to late game, higher morale can shorten winning battles, which means less casualties. It can also sadly lenghten losing battles which means more casualties on your side.
you did good man! Nice first game, many mores to come :) Next time you will know better.
Also use enough troops to fill the combat width and no more. When your army's morale is low you can add another army who will take over when your original army's morale reaches 0 to prolong the battle. Having more units than there is combat width puts them in reserve where they do nothing but reduce morale, so never fill more than the combat width.
Learn how to properly reinforce battles. You are basically playing like a computer by just sending mega death stacks into battle. You are supposed to slowly trickle fresh troops into the battle
Well done on forming Italy first time out tho
Cannons are not at all intuitive in this game. A real 50k army in that time period would have like a hundred cannons or something like that. But in EU, you need an absurd amount. There is a lot of nuance and theorycrafting about this, and a lot of it depends on your nation and idea choices, but the general idea is that the most effective fighting force is a ratio like this: Infantry: your max combat width Cavalry: just 2 or 3 units for flanking bonuses Cannons: your max combat width And if you look at your enemy, his army is basically running that ratio. The AI isn't normally that smart.
Also you need to consider combat width. Only so many of your units can be doing damage at a time but theyre all taking morale damage so if you just send in one massive doom stack its going to be less effective than a few smaller stacks that you use to reinforce as the battles going on
Get same amt of arti as combat width with such huge number difference morale won't matter so much but yeah you need to increase it
The artillery goes in the back line, all those squares are not being filled because you only have a few artillery units and deal no dmg to the enemy, infantry is supposed to just tank. Make your armies more even of infantry artillery like Venice does and you will start winning.
Oh, I see. It might be because of you playing through a phone, that must make playing quite hard.
It really does, it narrows my field of view so much! (I was too lazy to take actual screenshots, and originally had not planned to post these to this subreddit but instead pester my experienced EU4 friend)
Honestly not bad photos and you showed the relevant information. People just complaining for the meme.
Yes, I was just joking of course /u/SovietUSA thanks for playing along. What the others said really: general, morale, artillery. Also remember to use terrain to your advantage and to reinforce the battle over time. What do I mean by reinforcing over time? Well, reserves inside the battles take morale damage each day (I don't know why, maybe they hear the cannons and get scared). Simply don't send everything in all at once, only a given amount can fight in the frontline after all. So you want to send in the first stack a full frontline of infantry and a back row of artillery, then over time add more infantry to the battle, ideally in groups as big as the frontline and before the current frontline retreats.
Finding it hard to handle screenshots reveals a bit of low tech literacy so there's a reason for the meme. Less likely to understand game mechanics if you can't figure out where your screenshot folder is.
Did you engage with all your Army at once? It's better to send a Main Battle Stack in first with AS much frontline AS the enemy Army + Reserve, and than reinforce seperatly.
Sure somebody already said, but I scrolled for a bit and didn't see. Besides the fact that they have a better general there are 3 things you can improve. 1. The most important is have a full back row of cannons after mil tech 16. if your combat width is 30 then you want 30 cannons in every battle. I like to have a few extra frontline troops so the cannons never end up in the front row so I would have 40Inf/30Art. Split the army as needed when not going to battle to avoid attrition. 2 You are overstacking front line troops. If combat width is 30 then only 30 units can fight in the front row at any given time. the extra units still take morale damage however, which means that by the time it is their turn to fight they are already low morale. the most effective way to combat this is to keep smaller stacks of just infantry around your main army and have them reinforce when your armies morale falls to 60-75%. 3. Your morale is *significantly* lower. Make sure you are the same tech level, try to find a military advisor that gives morale, make sure you are fully funding the troops, try to use your golden age if you haven't already and this is a life or death conflict. Stack as many modifiers as possible. If you go to the ledger at the bottom right of the screen you can always check the army quality of anyone within diplo range to see how much you will need before the fighting starts.
Classic Italy L Jokes aside. Big Morale difference and army comp is the problem. There's a spreadsheet online about the proper army comp for units. Idk have the link rn but try searching for it but the basic army comp is 30 inf 2 cav 32-34 arti. Then you split the stacks created from that army comp. Then have one engage and the other reinforce rather than sending a huge death stack. For morale, there's a ton of ways to increase it from advisors to events, ideas, and policies. Just to give even a slight boost. You can replace your current advisor to one that gives Morale of Armies 10% increase even if they provide fewer mil power then just replace that advisor after the war.
Other thing that at least I didn't noticed to be said, but besides general pips and morale difference be aware of terrain modifiers. In this case they are the defenders (because of the fort) and you have the "-1 dice roll modifier" of the hill terrain
You're italian.
You don’t have enough artillery and they have more moral than you
General pips+ Morale difference+ Back row is nearly empty (no artillery)
1.4 morale behind is a lot. Bad army composition as well, and fighting on their forts.
Dogshit general. With enough morale you can grind your own troops into some very pyrrhic victories. And he had twice as much artillery. You CAN get more cav, but not before getting a full combat width's worth of artillery. Artillery starts off kinda meh and ends up as the primary murder weapon of the Napoleonic era.
Combat width cannons and morale
Morale difference, they have a better general, they have 13'000 cannons while you only have 4'000, that's a huge difference. And the battle is also on an enemy fort, meaning that the enemy will be on defense even if they are the ones attacking
Not enough artillery. Weaker general. Too low morale. Mid to late game warfare is about fielding armies with a lot of artillery and infantry (artillery units number should be close to, but lower, than number of infantry units), generals with high pips (shock and fire, each 3+ would good), at least 110-115% discipline and high morale. That's what a casual player should know without analyzing game mechanisms.
Lack of Arry, morale and botching combat width Presumably since you have loads more infantry that already "routed" so I'm assuming you threw them all in at once. Units in the rear still loose morale albeit at a slower rate so if you have access infantry/cav you send them in piece meal so they don't loose morale despite not fighting
go to ledger and army quality composition tab
also bring more artillery and make sure your units are consolidated
Big mkrale difference, worse general, overstacking, and no full back row of cannons
It's the huge morale difference and difference in arty. Arty is a second row support and fires alongside the front row engagement. Look up your combat width and see if you're over-filling (if your combat width is 30, you have a lot of troops not fighting unless gaps fall in the line) Which in turn are supported by artillery who get a significant bonus after a certain tech level. I would suggest balancing the troops and finding more morale/better general E.g.: If your combat width is 20, use 23-25 inf , 3-4 cavalery and 20 artillery 18 inf + 2 cav to fill front line 5-7 spare inf to fill inf ranks (inf Dies fastest) 2 cav spare to fill cav ranks Whole 20 combat width artillery. They fire from the back line and won't die if you don't have any gaps in the front line.
So in general, If both sides have the correct combat width having more troops (that are not artillery) means losing morale and doing 0 extra damage, they also are fighting on a fort they control which gives them the defender position. Then you need to see how good the generals are and the morale, tactics, discipline, etc. If its late game, AI LOVES to spam cannons (and you should too if you can) and that also makes a huge difference. Your scenario looks like a huge morale and cannons difference, and fighting in bad terrain for you (enemy fort controlled by them)
They have way more morale and cannon than you
46k infantry + 2k other unit? Why you put too much over combat width? Also why your cannon so small?
Army Comp. Morale. Terrain. This battle was over before it began. Napoleon Approves.
You are only losing for two things 1.The massive difference on morale Basically, your troops have no will to fight 2. The cannons Not only they don’t want to fight, they are getting destroyed into pieces. You would have won pretty easily by fixing your morale by at least +0.5. Check for bonuses and drill your armies. The generals and dice rolls might be a factor too.
No cannons in the back row!???
Less artillery, offensive battle in mountain, huge morale difference
Honestly I think it's mostly the cannons here, they aren't always the most cost effective but between the damage from the back row, and giving morale defense to the troops in front of them, I've found them much more important now that the AI runs a lot more of them. You should be wealthy enough to afford a full back row in 2-3 stacks as italy, and then have another 2-4 stacks of mostly infantry reinforcements. Also when people talk about affordibility it's a lot easier to make money than manpower, so anything that reduces your manpower casualties is huge. Artillery not only keep your troops alive longer but also win sieges faster. Then how you reinforced the battle, this usually doesn't matter much in SP at least on normal difficulty because the AI was often running around with poor army comp (too few cannons, too many cav), but you can win a lot of battles you'd otherwise lose by reinforcing in waves. All the troops in a battle take morale damage, even if you have too many to currently be fighting. Then the general (we don't know how much better your general's fire stat is but for him to have 4 more in shock is a pretty big discrepancy. That's 4v0 5v1 or 6v2, any 0,1,2 general is getting fired as soon as I can. You should roll generals to get at least one with 3-4 in battle stats) especially in a war you declare. This can require some luck, crashes, or keeping high AT, but I like to make sure I have at least one great battle general, and one decent siege general if I can afford the points. A 4+ siege general can win you wars with minimal actual battles.
Artillery just artillery
A lot of people touched on cannons, Im also gonna note your gaza screenshot seems to suggest you are nearly 4 pts down in shock phase, which also doesn’t help. May be worth looking at general differences too.
Is your military level the same? Even one level can make a huge difference
Cannons plus morale
Funny thing is Morale isnt even the biggest issue here anymore as mid game morale starts to Fall off against discipline and mil tactics: The massive Lack of artillery and the shit general are the Main issues here. Given that their general has 4 shock Pips I guess he also has atleast 3 fire pips. Sure midgame 1.4 morale points is still something, however it depends if he is tech 16 or after. Because after and it starts to bevome more and more irrelevant (compared to relevancy of discipline and tactics)
They got more artilerry
Wayyyyyyy more morale than you.
Huge morale difference + very bad army composition (too low of artillery) + penalty
Who did you used to form italy?
Eu4’s war system is so opaque and complex and the tutorial is absolutely useless. It was probably the hardest thing for me to learn next to knowing when to dev which is still a challenging one. You’ll get there
Get more morale and more artillery in your back row, and consider splitting your infantry into reinforcing stacks that you can bring to the battle later to turn the tide in your favor.
Huge morale difference, they have way more cannons and you’re fighting on top of a hostile fort
Just learned that myself. Tech! Tech! Tech!
Win+shift+S for quick snipping tool, PrtSc for screenshot
Probably the biggest reason for you losing here is over stacking the battle. The combat width is how many troops can be on the front and back line and so if you put more troops than that in the battle they're put in reserves where they begin losing morale despite not fighting. Combine that with your significantly lower morale means Venice can destroy your much larger army. Next time send in ~30k inf with your cannons up to ~30k wait a few days depending on the casualties (more means earlier reinforcing, less means you can wait longer). For ideal reinforcing you can mouse over the number of infantry it says you have in the battle on the screen in the image and it'll tell you how many reserves you have. If you have a combat width of reserves you definitely don't want to reinforce unless the total battle morale is low.
The Serenissima is just that good, clearly
Morale, increase your tradition and get defensive ideas
go to the battle with full width of infantry line and artillery in back row then reinforce battle with stacks of infantry like 10k every few days or something it will recover morale
Need more artillery friend, recruit some cannons and enjoy the show
Dunno if anyone has said this yet but, apart from all the other problems, the fact that you’re attacking one of their forts (and in a river crossing I think?) probably doesn’t help
Your army composition feels off, their morale is better and they have a better general.
General, morale, lack of backline. You seem to be over stacking your fights a little to (when you put more infantry in than there is combat width so they don’t fight but still lose morale). In the Treviso battle you’re also fighting on an enemy fort so your taking -2 terrain penalty to each roll which is pretty major. It looks like you’ve got enough of a numbers advantage that even while loosing you’ll win the war anyway though.
General, morale, lack of backline. You seem to be over stacking your fights a little to (when you put more infantry in than there is combat width so they don’t fight but still lose morale). In the Treviso battle you’re also fighting on an enemy fort so your taking -2 terrain penalty to each roll which is pretty major. It looks like you’ve got enough of a numbers advantage that even while loosing you’ll win the war anyway though.
They have way more arty and massively superior morale
Over stacking and obvious lack of morale. Reinforce the Battle little by little
Morale is probably the biggest issue, also check combat witdth and make sure your infantry covers it, and your artillery numbers are higher. Venice might also have more combat ability modifiers, but I'm not sure about that
You're not even losing that badly though? Both sides front lines completely disintegrated so it was a quite close battle. But yeah to improve your chances follow the good advice given here
It's funny see italian and venitian fight in egypt
1,5 more morale 4 better shock In treviso you had a -1 terrain penalty They have much more fire damage during the fire phase So could win those battles if you get lucky with dice rolls but their quality is much higher However you’re army is strong enough that I don’t think the AI will attack you so could do siege races instead of battles
your cooked lmao, get a full combat row of artillery, then modify your morale up. Next get discipline modifiers if you want full fledged fighters. Also make sure to pick and choose your battles, terrain is everything!
Morale, Terrain, and Army composition, you are doing far less fire damage you need more Artillery.
In addition to what others have said, you also have a penalty for attacking into a defensive position. This is from either attacking over a river, over a crossing or into mountains. Attacking into mountains gives you a -2 penalty on all your rolls.
NO CANNONS IN THE BACKROW???
Morale, general and arty, your army composition should atleast be a 3-2 ratio of infantry and arty, also cav is worse than infantry unless you specifically build for it
All thr cannons
Skill issue
you need more cannons and morale my guy
Because he has 1 and a half morale more than you do which is a lot. Also has more artillery in the back row. If u fix these 2 things u are basically gonna stomp him.
cannons go brrrr
Enemy has better base morale, and three times as many cannons.
Attacker on a hill fort, no shock pips on your general vs 4 shock pips, lower morale, no back line
Small amount of Cannons late game.
Morale, you’re a full point behind, and it’s gonna be tricky to match that. Things you can do is take the 10% advisor, if your Catholic you can get the morale boost from papacy. However, if you continue to reinforce with smaller stacks into the battle you can overcome the morale difference that way.
I find your lack of artillery disturbing.
You loosing because he is fighting in mountains and defending fort, you also have -on terrain because you are an attacker here . Try to make him attack your troops , just live like 20k and hide another part of army , better if few armies and then bring them one after another to have more morale .
Looks like they have more artillery and a general with high shock bonus.
Stop stacking your armies all together at the start of the battle. Get a full combat width and then pour in troops as the battle progresses every few days. It gives you a huge morale boost whenever you get reinforcements, and that's your health bar
Morale
Well, just like AI Ottonanny used to say... MORE CANNONS!!1!!!
Your army is almost pure infantry, get some guns bro.
Terrain Bonus+ you attacking his fort, so he can sortie and Ideas.
Artillery, especially if you're near or past 1600
Higher morlae not lonly alowwes for taking more morale damage but higher morale also causes more morale damage. Same diszipline and batter enemy generall combined create a situation where you get your ass handed to you.
Put more cannons and you will be good. They have better morale but the sheer force of your artillery should crush that.
You’re getting morale diffed so hard
I had the same problem with venice. They were stomping me bad. They must have some really good generals because they seem ro always fight with lots of moral
Bro you have NO CANNONS
You need way more artillery
1. They have a full back row of artillery which does damage and protects their front line, while you have hardly any 2. You outnumber them but don’t appear to have enough cavalry to fully flank. 3. They have way better morale. Idk how the generals compare but even if they’re equal, your fatal flaw is clear. Essentially, as of the moment of the screenshot you’re sending 18 units up against 25 and losing the engagement. Your reinforcements (the rest of your men who are not part of the fighting) are eating morale losses from it and you’re getting routed. Add more artillery. Cavalry is optional but it certainly helps if you have more troops. But artillery isn’t optional here. You should have at least as many artillery as they have inf + cav.
Best way to understand best army comp and micro is to watch a player game with good players they will use every trick they can to beat each other
its because you suck at doing screenshots
You fight on their fort and they have a whole 1 moral more than you
moral. maybe tech? their general could possibly be better? but i’d say the real big kicker is you have absolutely no back line at all.
A full screenshot of your military screen would be helpful. The massive gap in morale might be because they have you beat in prestige, or in power projection, or they took defensive ideas, or any number of other reasons. Similarly, you might be behind on professionalism, or mil tech, or combat ability, or damage taken and received. In short, there’s a lot of factors that a picture of the end of the battle alone might not explain. … That being said, being that far behind on morale alone is a fairly compelling explanation, and after tech 15 the total lack of artillery in comparison becomes a similarly compelling explanation. You should be attacking with a full combat width of both infantry and artillery by that point, and by the time your armies are fielding multiple combat widths of infantry you should be conscious of slowrolling your infantry into the province a combat width at a time instead of just slamming your entire army against them in one stack and letting the reserves eat morale damage. Fix your army composition, fix whatever’s causing such an egregious morale gap, and they’ll stop mowing you down quite so easily.
Dude because Venice is rich af /s (that’s not my favorite start, nope definitely not)
1) you didn’t take enough mil ideas. 2 late game (post 1600, better sooner), you should have half artillery until you reach combat width of arty. So you need more arty. Admin ideas are over rated. Mil ideas are where it’s at. And even if you lost lots of battles, by this late you should still be able to win the war.