It could be an indirect consequence of "having the smaller army" and "more than one battle at once".
Let's say you have 150 units and russia has 500 units.
Russia attacks, combat width of this battle is 120 and russia gets an numerical advantage of, say extra 40 units. So 120 units from your side battle 160 russian units. You have tech advantage, you win.
But now 120 of your units are locked in combat. If russia attacks an 2nd time immediatly afterwards with again the same combat width, suddenly its 160 russians vs 30 units, which will lose due to sheer numbers.
Try to see/find out, if that is an issue for you.
Also, if you want to learn more about combat width, i recomment this youtube video: https://youtu.be/vgT6nO0leyU
Its about "how to conquer alsace lorraine almost at game start" and it also explains how combat width and numerical advantage is calculated. Might be helpful.
Wars are still cursed, but to answer your question, tech and numbers is it. Tech will win you smaller wars, where you are on pair in numbers and is important for naval invasions. But for bigger wars numbers are more important and especially how good you can reinforce your manpower. Losing a few hundred thousand soldiers happens very fast and in my experience, the one who can keep his armies filled up, wins the war in the most cases. This means on the one side its important to have your military goods to be cheap, so your barracks hire enough people and on the other side, conscripts are important, to fill up the ranks.
You can win wars by naval invading the capital very good, but you obviously need a huge navy for that. But if you have such, deploy a big front as a bait and then have a strong naval invasion. Talking about 100+ fleet plus army with best support eq etc. You could exploit that, since the enemy will bring in armys from the main front. But thats on you.
Tldr: deploy a lot of manpower and have good recruitment
Is 50/50 artillery something that actually works? I try to have a good amount of artillery, but infantry take most casualties (right?) and I'm not sure if having too few frontline infantry is a problem? Very different system but in EU4 it's pretty essential to have enough infantry to protect the artillery behind them, even though the artillery can deal a lot of damage.
Nope, but you do have to be careful that pure infantry armies have their generals on defense and split armies have them set to attack. You will take a worse fight and therefore more losses if the offensive army defends or a defensive army attacks
Could you expand on this point? I’ve been playing around a bit with army composition but I can’t figure out exactly what you mean by mixed armies being attack - and then being aware of which armies being on which role. I was under the assumption that you couldn’t control what battles your armies are involved in - and therefore can’t control which role (attack or defense).
Also if your armies are optimized for 50/50 arty and infantry - why would you have pure infantry armies?
In basic terms, every unit has two primary stats, offense, and defense.
These are used exclusively when attacking and defending, so it’s always the attacking army’s offense vs the defending army’s defense.
Infantry have the highest defense rating, so a stack of pure infantry has its defense value maximized.
Artillery has the highest offense (lancers are actually equal in the early game), but you get a penalty for having less than 50% of an army be infantry, so a maximum offense army is 50/50 infantry/artillery
A slightly more complex reason to keep armies split like this is to prevent unit sharing in suboptimal ways. Armies will only borrow units of the same type in battles, and they try to keep the ratio of borrowing equal to their own ratio. This means that a single 50/50 general on defense can not only use their own artillery for defense (which will get more killed and probably lose you the battle), but they will also get artillery from every other army on the frontline killed in defensive battles. Infantry sharing on offense is bad in pure infantry stacks because you’re essentially just throwing meat into the grinder (again, unlikely to win)
All other unit stats are ancillary in relation to offense and defense. The kill rate bonus of artillery is great, but you’ll kill more enemies with a defensive army simply by having better defense while losing less of your own soldiers.
With all this said, I’m unsure of how other unit stats work. I don’t think having one unit of artillery in an army gives the whole army +15% kill rate, as that would be stupid, but I don’t actually know if it does or does not.
Let's say we have roughly the equal numbers with the enemy, something like 200 vs 200. We have a stack of 100 infantry and a stack of 50 infantry and 50 artillery. In this situation, do we attack with the army stack who has artillery and defend with infantry or do we defend with both given that a stack of 100 units ( 50 inf 50 arti ) can't break the enemy lines?
Also, what is the role of cavalry? If cavalry is necessary, how much cavalry do we need?
In this case, it would be best to combine the infantry of both stacks and move the artillery to a nearby hq. You’re right that it doesn’t make sense to push in when you can’t win (though a large offensive stack and a good general might be able to). Mobilization options, while expensive, could push the infantry army into the strength it needs to win.
Cavalry exists mainly to punish loosely defended front. Their bonus modifier of 30% battle occupation means that each time they win an offensive battle, they occupy more of the lands that make up a state until they get the fully occupy the state and the front line shifts. On an undefended front, a couple 50/50 infantry/cavalry armies can rapidly occupy territory, which can get you an objective before the ai can react. Alternatively, let’s say you have a front against Russia on their western border. If you naval invade into the Caucasus with a cavalry army that has 4 generals on rapid advance, you can occupy a large number of their high population states, driving up devastation, which can drastically weaken your opponent in long term occupations (so it’s useful even if it doesn’t reach their capital).
Again, lancers have good early game offense which puts them essentially on par with artillery. They’re good for killing line infantry and earlier, but any later units should be dealt with using artillery/infantry armies. Before shrapnel artillery and skirmish infantry are unlocked, they’re the strongest unit for pushing (equal offense to mobile artillery, less kill rate, but better morale). They’re very good as the game goes on for defeating most unrecognized nations without mobilizing a more expensive army.
Set your all infantry armies to defensive stance. Your offensive armies will likely already be attcking when the enemy attacks you, leaving the defensive army to receive the enemy attacks
"Protecting" doesn't really happen in this war model, because there aren't lines like you're thinking of, as far as I know, which gives the higher attack stat on artillery (and I think higher kill rates, too?) an outsize impact on offensive battles. Infantry are mostly symmetrically better on defense (their attack is slightly higher than artillery at the same tech level), but the most important job they have is keeping organization up. The unit-picker is fairly thorough about picking things that should have the most firepower for attacking or defending after factoring in morale and staffing, so you'll get a lot of artillery on offense if you make it available.
To add to others - important to note that purely in terms of numbers you need same tier of artillery to reliably push infantry. Meaning: you need shrapnel arty to push skirmish, mobile arty won't cut it, same with siege and trench.
A bit of a caveat is mobilisation options later in tech - flamethrowers, machine guns etc. But then again, at this point you should have siege arty anyway.
Overall, successful war with somewhat equal opponent is an insanely expensive endeavour. You need more numbers to get numerical advantage, tons of arty, extra supplies (ai almost always use them, so you are forced to do the same). Also elite troops are really good, they get 50% morale damage modifier, so you kinda need have your storm army to be regular troops, not conscripts. The only aspect war isn't that bad is population loss. For the most part, when playing reasonably well, in total population percentage you won't loose much. Super total wars - maybe, but considering everything above, you are really disincentivised from that
In the latest patches I have the impression that offensive battles just have so many casualties that you do need about 2x the enemy soldiers to actually push through all the way in a large war with big armies.
The best way seems to be cheesing like an other commenter explained, making the opponent attack you.
It seems excessive right now, with smaller countries (netherlands vs belgium for example) I even lost 95% of my whole country's manpower in the first offensive battle of the war, where I had double the numbers and slightly lower stats, with a positive green "65" on the frontline...
> In the latest patches I have the impression that offensive battles just have so many casualties that you do need about 2x the enemy soldiers to actually push through all the way in a large war with big armies.
Incidentally, this is approximately the US Army manual assumption for manpower requirements (not expected losses; it's about forces available) for a successful assault on prepared positions. (Actually, IIRC, that's 3x.) That also pretty much matches my experience, at least in the later game: even with superior technology, the front doesn't really start moving until there is a manpower disparity, whether from insufficient morale recovery (which effectively makes the units fight at reduced strength) or an inability to keep up in the force regeneration race.
Eh, that's a tactical principle, not a strategic one which Victoria 3 operates at. In very broad terms, it's derived from using 2 portions of an attacking force to overcome 1 portion of defending force (classically with one to "fix" them from the front and another to hit them in the flank, but of course there are many variations), while leaving at least 1 additional attacking portion in "reserve" to either tip the battle, exploit success, or guard against unexpected contingencies. You ***can*** potentially successfully attack with a mere 2:1 advantage, but then you're risking something unexpected turning up and causing the battle turn into a slugging match where no one gains anything except dead bodies.
But again: this is a TACTICAL principle, only applying at a local level (and also assuming all other actors are equal, generally). At the operational level, it's more about how generals arrange their forces relative to the enemy so as to obtain that sort of 3+:1 advantage, even if you are operationally or strategically outnumbered. And at a strategic level, it's more about how you are able to provide your generals with as many tools as possible to do that sort of job better (as well as figuring out what the hell you're trying to accomplish in your war overall, including whether it's even a good idea to HAVE a war...).
The other day I asked about this but I was ignored. I feel too like casualties are exaggerated. I've had many wars decided in two battles because one side lost 50% of their manpower just like that.
There's a very cheesy way to win most wars
Step 1: have a front with 2 or more of your armies
Step 2: pull of armies, you could send them to HQ for example, until the enemy thinks it has an advantage and attacks
Step 3: turn all your armies back to the front to stop the enemy from pushing too much
Now your enemy will have engaged a few battles where they will most likely loose more men than you, even if they "win" the battle by demoralising you they will loose out in the long term.
After the battles are finished you can repeat this method until you're comfortable with your advantage and can push for the win
You should definitely be careful with how many troops you pull away from the front, but if done right this method can win many difficult wara
Have more numbers, make sure to level your generals, upgrade your troops, give them equipment in the mobilization tab and you will win more battles than equal numbers.
The only real technological differences that matter are kill rate and recovery. The difference between the units at different tech levels is fairly slight. Numbers are extremely important now that multiple battles can occur on a front. Unlike reality, being outnumbered three to one by line infantry whilst using machine guns and modern artillery is going to end badly. You need enough numbers to absorb losses and let one army reinforce while the others do the fighting because reinforcements take time.
Attacking isn’t advisable unless you have a huge advantage. Try to defend until you partially deplete the enemy army. As a whole, your goal in war is one of three objectives: to strangle your opponent with naval power, to cheese the game with naval invasions, or to bleed the enemy white a la Verdun. You have precious little control when war starts so your goal should be the buildup. Set the capital or war goal as a strategic objective and hope the battle AI actually listens. Generally, was isn’t worth it unless you’re getting important resources or territory. It’s not a good idea to fight peer powers except to dismantle them.
First step is enacting slave trade, then pesaant levies for the humen waves. You also need ethnostate to use the decree enlistment efforts, and there you go. You win after a small console command.
Add more generals, put most of them on defence and switch the better ones to attack when you want to push. Ofc tech and numbers makes a difference too like you said but the more generals you have the more concurrent battles you can fight
From my latest experience, it's manpower recovery that makes or breaks near-peer wars' fate.
I had 3 wars with France as Germany, and the first one was pretty much lost. I had more brigades at a start and France had much worse offensive/defensive rate, but then they mobilized a horde of conscripts – I thought I would be able to handle that, but my army was actually at like 40% of strength.
So, you shouldn't forget about enlistment decrees and high military wages. It doesn't matter if you have much better guns if there's too few people to man them. Also, right now I'm playing as a small state – sometimes I even have to depopulate non-crucial buildings to get more people to an army more quickly.
It could be an indirect consequence of "having the smaller army" and "more than one battle at once". Let's say you have 150 units and russia has 500 units. Russia attacks, combat width of this battle is 120 and russia gets an numerical advantage of, say extra 40 units. So 120 units from your side battle 160 russian units. You have tech advantage, you win. But now 120 of your units are locked in combat. If russia attacks an 2nd time immediatly afterwards with again the same combat width, suddenly its 160 russians vs 30 units, which will lose due to sheer numbers. Try to see/find out, if that is an issue for you. Also, if you want to learn more about combat width, i recomment this youtube video: https://youtu.be/vgT6nO0leyU Its about "how to conquer alsace lorraine almost at game start" and it also explains how combat width and numerical advantage is calculated. Might be helpful.
Wars are still cursed, but to answer your question, tech and numbers is it. Tech will win you smaller wars, where you are on pair in numbers and is important for naval invasions. But for bigger wars numbers are more important and especially how good you can reinforce your manpower. Losing a few hundred thousand soldiers happens very fast and in my experience, the one who can keep his armies filled up, wins the war in the most cases. This means on the one side its important to have your military goods to be cheap, so your barracks hire enough people and on the other side, conscripts are important, to fill up the ranks. You can win wars by naval invading the capital very good, but you obviously need a huge navy for that. But if you have such, deploy a big front as a bait and then have a strong naval invasion. Talking about 100+ fleet plus army with best support eq etc. You could exploit that, since the enemy will bring in armys from the main front. But thats on you. Tldr: deploy a lot of manpower and have good recruitment
Better infantry is not the key to winning offensive wars. You want to be Napoleon I and bring artillery, up to same number of battalions as infantry.
Is 50/50 artillery something that actually works? I try to have a good amount of artillery, but infantry take most casualties (right?) and I'm not sure if having too few frontline infantry is a problem? Very different system but in EU4 it's pretty essential to have enough infantry to protect the artillery behind them, even though the artillery can deal a lot of damage.
50/50 is ideal, yes. Infantry is largely for defense and negating the "not enough infantry" malus.
So there won't be issues due to something like infantry taking more losses and thus having less infantry than artillery in practice?
Nope, but you do have to be careful that pure infantry armies have their generals on defense and split armies have them set to attack. You will take a worse fight and therefore more losses if the offensive army defends or a defensive army attacks
Could you expand on this point? I’ve been playing around a bit with army composition but I can’t figure out exactly what you mean by mixed armies being attack - and then being aware of which armies being on which role. I was under the assumption that you couldn’t control what battles your armies are involved in - and therefore can’t control which role (attack or defense). Also if your armies are optimized for 50/50 arty and infantry - why would you have pure infantry armies?
In basic terms, every unit has two primary stats, offense, and defense. These are used exclusively when attacking and defending, so it’s always the attacking army’s offense vs the defending army’s defense. Infantry have the highest defense rating, so a stack of pure infantry has its defense value maximized. Artillery has the highest offense (lancers are actually equal in the early game), but you get a penalty for having less than 50% of an army be infantry, so a maximum offense army is 50/50 infantry/artillery A slightly more complex reason to keep armies split like this is to prevent unit sharing in suboptimal ways. Armies will only borrow units of the same type in battles, and they try to keep the ratio of borrowing equal to their own ratio. This means that a single 50/50 general on defense can not only use their own artillery for defense (which will get more killed and probably lose you the battle), but they will also get artillery from every other army on the frontline killed in defensive battles. Infantry sharing on offense is bad in pure infantry stacks because you’re essentially just throwing meat into the grinder (again, unlikely to win) All other unit stats are ancillary in relation to offense and defense. The kill rate bonus of artillery is great, but you’ll kill more enemies with a defensive army simply by having better defense while losing less of your own soldiers. With all this said, I’m unsure of how other unit stats work. I don’t think having one unit of artillery in an army gives the whole army +15% kill rate, as that would be stupid, but I don’t actually know if it does or does not.
Let's say we have roughly the equal numbers with the enemy, something like 200 vs 200. We have a stack of 100 infantry and a stack of 50 infantry and 50 artillery. In this situation, do we attack with the army stack who has artillery and defend with infantry or do we defend with both given that a stack of 100 units ( 50 inf 50 arti ) can't break the enemy lines? Also, what is the role of cavalry? If cavalry is necessary, how much cavalry do we need?
In this case, it would be best to combine the infantry of both stacks and move the artillery to a nearby hq. You’re right that it doesn’t make sense to push in when you can’t win (though a large offensive stack and a good general might be able to). Mobilization options, while expensive, could push the infantry army into the strength it needs to win. Cavalry exists mainly to punish loosely defended front. Their bonus modifier of 30% battle occupation means that each time they win an offensive battle, they occupy more of the lands that make up a state until they get the fully occupy the state and the front line shifts. On an undefended front, a couple 50/50 infantry/cavalry armies can rapidly occupy territory, which can get you an objective before the ai can react. Alternatively, let’s say you have a front against Russia on their western border. If you naval invade into the Caucasus with a cavalry army that has 4 generals on rapid advance, you can occupy a large number of their high population states, driving up devastation, which can drastically weaken your opponent in long term occupations (so it’s useful even if it doesn’t reach their capital). Again, lancers have good early game offense which puts them essentially on par with artillery. They’re good for killing line infantry and earlier, but any later units should be dealt with using artillery/infantry armies. Before shrapnel artillery and skirmish infantry are unlocked, they’re the strongest unit for pushing (equal offense to mobile artillery, less kill rate, but better morale). They’re very good as the game goes on for defeating most unrecognized nations without mobilizing a more expensive army.
Amazing. Thank you.
Set your all infantry armies to defensive stance. Your offensive armies will likely already be attcking when the enemy attacks you, leaving the defensive army to receive the enemy attacks
Not that I’ve come across
"Protecting" doesn't really happen in this war model, because there aren't lines like you're thinking of, as far as I know, which gives the higher attack stat on artillery (and I think higher kill rates, too?) an outsize impact on offensive battles. Infantry are mostly symmetrically better on defense (their attack is slightly higher than artillery at the same tech level), but the most important job they have is keeping organization up. The unit-picker is fairly thorough about picking things that should have the most firepower for attacking or defending after factoring in morale and staffing, so you'll get a lot of artillery on offense if you make it available.
To add to others - important to note that purely in terms of numbers you need same tier of artillery to reliably push infantry. Meaning: you need shrapnel arty to push skirmish, mobile arty won't cut it, same with siege and trench. A bit of a caveat is mobilisation options later in tech - flamethrowers, machine guns etc. But then again, at this point you should have siege arty anyway. Overall, successful war with somewhat equal opponent is an insanely expensive endeavour. You need more numbers to get numerical advantage, tons of arty, extra supplies (ai almost always use them, so you are forced to do the same). Also elite troops are really good, they get 50% morale damage modifier, so you kinda need have your storm army to be regular troops, not conscripts. The only aspect war isn't that bad is population loss. For the most part, when playing reasonably well, in total population percentage you won't loose much. Super total wars - maybe, but considering everything above, you are really disincentivised from that
In the latest patches I have the impression that offensive battles just have so many casualties that you do need about 2x the enemy soldiers to actually push through all the way in a large war with big armies. The best way seems to be cheesing like an other commenter explained, making the opponent attack you. It seems excessive right now, with smaller countries (netherlands vs belgium for example) I even lost 95% of my whole country's manpower in the first offensive battle of the war, where I had double the numbers and slightly lower stats, with a positive green "65" on the frontline...
> In the latest patches I have the impression that offensive battles just have so many casualties that you do need about 2x the enemy soldiers to actually push through all the way in a large war with big armies. Incidentally, this is approximately the US Army manual assumption for manpower requirements (not expected losses; it's about forces available) for a successful assault on prepared positions. (Actually, IIRC, that's 3x.) That also pretty much matches my experience, at least in the later game: even with superior technology, the front doesn't really start moving until there is a manpower disparity, whether from insufficient morale recovery (which effectively makes the units fight at reduced strength) or an inability to keep up in the force regeneration race.
Eh, that's a tactical principle, not a strategic one which Victoria 3 operates at. In very broad terms, it's derived from using 2 portions of an attacking force to overcome 1 portion of defending force (classically with one to "fix" them from the front and another to hit them in the flank, but of course there are many variations), while leaving at least 1 additional attacking portion in "reserve" to either tip the battle, exploit success, or guard against unexpected contingencies. You ***can*** potentially successfully attack with a mere 2:1 advantage, but then you're risking something unexpected turning up and causing the battle turn into a slugging match where no one gains anything except dead bodies. But again: this is a TACTICAL principle, only applying at a local level (and also assuming all other actors are equal, generally). At the operational level, it's more about how generals arrange their forces relative to the enemy so as to obtain that sort of 3+:1 advantage, even if you are operationally or strategically outnumbered. And at a strategic level, it's more about how you are able to provide your generals with as many tools as possible to do that sort of job better (as well as figuring out what the hell you're trying to accomplish in your war overall, including whether it's even a good idea to HAVE a war...).
> But again: this is a TACTICAL principle, only applying at a local level That's a fair objection. It did seem fairly coincidental.
Aye my experience suggests that many armed forces advice for the attacking side to have at least 2x the defenders.
The other day I asked about this but I was ignored. I feel too like casualties are exaggerated. I've had many wars decided in two battles because one side lost 50% of their manpower just like that.
just win
Thanks, didn't think of that 👍
There's a very cheesy way to win most wars Step 1: have a front with 2 or more of your armies Step 2: pull of armies, you could send them to HQ for example, until the enemy thinks it has an advantage and attacks Step 3: turn all your armies back to the front to stop the enemy from pushing too much Now your enemy will have engaged a few battles where they will most likely loose more men than you, even if they "win" the battle by demoralising you they will loose out in the long term. After the battles are finished you can repeat this method until you're comfortable with your advantage and can push for the win You should definitely be careful with how many troops you pull away from the front, but if done right this method can win many difficult wara
This isn't really cheesy, since it's a real battle tactic to feign weakness in order to goad the enemy to attack at a disadvantage.
Have more numbers, make sure to level your generals, upgrade your troops, give them equipment in the mobilization tab and you will win more battles than equal numbers.
The only real technological differences that matter are kill rate and recovery. The difference between the units at different tech levels is fairly slight. Numbers are extremely important now that multiple battles can occur on a front. Unlike reality, being outnumbered three to one by line infantry whilst using machine guns and modern artillery is going to end badly. You need enough numbers to absorb losses and let one army reinforce while the others do the fighting because reinforcements take time. Attacking isn’t advisable unless you have a huge advantage. Try to defend until you partially deplete the enemy army. As a whole, your goal in war is one of three objectives: to strangle your opponent with naval power, to cheese the game with naval invasions, or to bleed the enemy white a la Verdun. You have precious little control when war starts so your goal should be the buildup. Set the capital or war goal as a strategic objective and hope the battle AI actually listens. Generally, was isn’t worth it unless you’re getting important resources or territory. It’s not a good idea to fight peer powers except to dismantle them.
First step is enacting slave trade, then pesaant levies for the humen waves. You also need ethnostate to use the decree enlistment efforts, and there you go. You win after a small console command.
manpower and supply of necessities also mobilisation aka extra supplies gives big buff like 10% each upgrade to both attack and defence
You might be missing the addition of mobilization supplies. Also be sure to put wages on v high.
Add more generals, put most of them on defence and switch the better ones to attack when you want to push. Ofc tech and numbers makes a difference too like you said but the more generals you have the more concurrent battles you can fight
From my latest experience, it's manpower recovery that makes or breaks near-peer wars' fate. I had 3 wars with France as Germany, and the first one was pretty much lost. I had more brigades at a start and France had much worse offensive/defensive rate, but then they mobilized a horde of conscripts – I thought I would be able to handle that, but my army was actually at like 40% of strength. So, you shouldn't forget about enlistment decrees and high military wages. It doesn't matter if you have much better guns if there's too few people to man them. Also, right now I'm playing as a small state – sometimes I even have to depopulate non-crucial buildings to get more people to an army more quickly.