Which men at arms to raise?

[Alterum]

Start at William the Bastard, about to invade. Presumably should raise men at arms. How to decide? Look at opposing army, select counters? Is that all the is to it?

[CrUsHeR]

Pick them by the best military building you can build in each of your counties.

Usually the most powerful thing is Heavy Infantry + Barracks. HI is expensive but you should be able to make up the difference if the other 3 slots in your holdings produce gold.

If you got the option of hunting grounds as well (instead of e.g. pastures), i'd suggest adding 1 unit of Light Cavalry. They provide Pursuit to actually kill routed enemies, and Screen to cover your own retreat.
Without Pursuit, most of the enemy army will stay alive after losing a battle, so they keep coming back to retake counties etc which tends to make wars much longer than necessary.

[snuggleform]

For a beginner I'd only consider hiring one of 3 types - light cavalry, heavy infantry, heavy cavalry. Choose one, mass them. The way the counter system works is based on the number of the counter present, so if you stack all on one type you will never be countered properly because the AI doesn't try to concentrate all its MAA on one counter type, it buys a variety.

Which of the 3 types you pick comes mostly down to preference or cost. I really like cavalry because the pursuit stat shortens wars considerably assuming you can in straight up confrontations. But they are not very good in straight up combat which is why heavy infantry is probably the most well rounded overall having no terrain penalties and are quite beefy in attack and defense. Heavy cavalry is the cream of the crop but also the most expensive, so bear that in mind.

[glythe]

I have a guide that can help you.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2767851158

Here is the short version:

Heavy Infantry have the best stats overall - so if your units dont "counter" the enemy units then all things being equal heavy infantry win. In short if you counter an enemy unit then you can reduce its damage by up to 90% so effectively it was irrelevant.

As a Viking type faction you want at least one Huscarl. Why? Because it counters two unit types (Archers/Pikemen). Make sure you bring at least one unit that counters the unit that counters Huscarls. Since Huscarls are heavy infantry this means you want something that counters Skirmishers.

The absolute best choice to do this is : Elephants because they also counter two types of units (but it is rather difficult to get to India to get them).

How would you counter an army that had 2x Huscarls and 2x Elephants?

Huscarls will counter 1 archer and 1 pikeman each.
Elephants will counter 2 skirmishers and 2 heavy infantry each.

This means with 4 Men at Arms units (MAA) you are countering potentially 12 units.


How do you counter the Elephants? You need 4 Pikemen since you are countering 2 Pikemen with the Huscarls. No AI faction ever has more than 2 Pikemen.

How do you counter the Huscarls? You need 6 Skirmishers since you are countering 4 with the Elephants.

[glythe]

Unit stats are : Damage/Toughness/Pursuit/Screen. As mentioned before pursuit and screen are "after battle" effects.

See : https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Army

While I have never used them I suggest you try unlocking a decision to unlock : Jomsviking Pirates.

They are a skirmisher unit with these stats: 30/30/40/40
By comparison the normal skirmisher has : 10/16/10/16

Huscarls have : 40/26/0/24

Make 3 Huscarls and 2x Jomsviking Pirates.


Here is the page you can read about how to unlock the pirates as a unit :

https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Decisions

"Forge the Jomsvikings"

Originally posted by snuggleform:

For a beginner I'd only consider hiring one of 3 types - light cavalry, heavy infantry, heavy cavalry. Choose one, mass them. The way the counter system works is based on the number of the counter present, so if you stack all on one type you will never be countered properly because the AI doesn't try to concentrate all its MAA on one counter type, it buys a variety.

Which of the 3 types you pick comes mostly down to preference or cost.

I really like cavalry because the pursuit stat shortens wars considerably assuming you can in straight up confrontations. But they are not very good in straight up combat which is why heavy infantry is probably the most well rounded overall having no terrain penalties and are quite beefy in attack and defense. Heavy cavalry is the cream of the crop but also the most expensive, so bear that in mind.

Cavalry is nice for the pursuit stat (getting extra kills when enemy runs) as well as the screen value (protection for you while running way) but it is important to note where it is bad at fighting: Hills, Mountains, wetlands and harsh winters.

Why does terrain matter? Units in bad terrain massive penalties (without looking I think it's 50%).

Cavalry becomes very important later when people start unlocking Crossbows. As a unit Crossbows counter 3 units : Heavy Infantry, Cavalry and 50% counter horse archers.

So my "super army" of elephants and Mubarizun and Huscarls also has 1 cataphract and one light horsemen to prevent Crossbows from really hurting.

"Which of the 3 types you pick comes mostly down to preference or cost. "

This is a dangerous idea to follow that is just not true. You want to tailor your MAA so that either you can fight really well in a certain climate - such as most of Europe, the Steppes of Russia, Mountains of Tibet, or you want to focus on a MAA scheme that will flatten everything (See my guide).

[Twelvefield]

I agree with matching your MAA's to terrain. I also favour a MAA that belongs to my own culture, since that normally gets an extra bonus.

[PostalGibbon]

Only time where i actually watch what MAA counters what is when playing with Haesteinn and doing something dirty like attack Abbasid, Iberia, or Germania....
I usually go with 1* archer, 1* siege, 1* skirmishers, 1* pike, 1*light cav 1*heavy inv, 1*heavy cav, 1*Xbow in this order (all are updated 1700 stacks in the end) If i stay king thats it if going for emperor then i add second heavy cav stack to get nice even 1700 or second bombard stack.