I just don't understand combat

[tjharwood]

I was playing as Duke of Flanders, and the Countess of Artois tried to name a different successor. She was seiging one of my castles with 900 troops, and I had 3600 mercenaries plus my dregs from previous battles, so ~ 4000 troops or so. I attacked the seigers, not across a river, on plains, and they whooped me. Again and again. I lost my Duchy and have to carry on (or not) as Count of Eu with nothing. It all fell apart.

I just find combat so frustrating in this game. I never can tell what's happening, and it all happens so fast, and I just don't see how I didn't win with an army 4.5x the size of my enemy and them with no defensive bonuses. Granted, her martial score is twice what mine is, but does that make THIS big of a difference?

Any help would be appreciated. The wiki is somewhat helpful, but combat is just so frustrating all the same.

[XKXKXKXKXK]

It probably wouldn't make that big of a difference but it depends on the commander specific skills as well. Martial score is not all that matters and certain commanders can be either better at attacking or defending than others, better with certain troops etc. (Browse over the sword icon next to their level to reveal their stats). One of the very good defensive traits would be "Narrow flank" where even if you have a numbers advantage you wont be able to field that full advantage on battle if you are on a flank against a defender using this. Start fighting your battles at 1 speed, pause every hour, look at what's happening in the battle. There will be white boxes with numbers on yours and the enemies flank, it will show the amount of soldiers participating in combat. Second there will be 3 boxes with red numbers and a negative sign, this is the amount of soldiers you lose each day. If your soldiers have full morale before battle (the bar to the right of the army on the map is fully green) then they will start the battle with full morale (unless reinforcing a morale damaged army). The Morale for each flank is displayed above and below the armies, once morale is low enough units will start to retreat, you can notice it's change by browsing over it. Also each flank will do a specific attacking or defending action, poor commanders pick worse actions then good commanders and every action has a counter action. You cannot decide what your commander will do, sometimes you get shafted, sometimes you don't, use good commanders.

I have to really stab at the dark why you're losing here without any picture of the battle but 1 of 2 things in my mind will get you stomped that hard. Check your army composition, group the army together then click the arrow which points right (in the top right hand corner of your selected armies tab). You can move units now onto certain flanks, make your flanks even for now ensure if you have 4k soldiers that you have them set up pretty evenly. If you fight an enemy with only 1 flank, or vice versa what happens is 1 of their flanks fights you head on, and the other 2 absolutely plow you from the sides while taking minimal casualties. It is possible to set up armies to purposefully collapse one of the enemies flanks (a weaker one if you know) to give yourself this advantage <- advanced.

Second what units are you using, light infantry and archers will work well in the initial stage of battle (skirmish stage) but once the battle moves to melee they will get absolutely massacred. Normally with the numerical advantage you have this shouldn't be a problem. However, it will depend on what units she's using, if she had an army of 900 heavy cav and you brought a bunch of light infantry (extreme example) you'd probably get whooped.

Oh forgot about this one, some religions like the Soumenesko for example get a massive bonus when defending their territory (religious) against an agressor (doesn't sound like your problem but something to keep in mind).

If you can bait her to attack you onto defensive terrain, this is risky and requires some practice. Normally it will require you to leave a similar or lower amount of troops then the other person (I mean AI, AI always falls for this ♥♥♥♥) in a defensive province. The AI will normally then try to attack you (despite your modifiers XD), if you try to reinforce before the AI attack lands they normally stop marching and carry on doing what they did before, the key is to reinforce after. If you can place about 1k of your soldiers for starters in an adjacent territory, and the rest of your army the shortest possible distance away then reinforced when the battle starts you will be able to bring your whole army to bare defensively. If the reinforcing army is too late though... you lose your units then attack them on defensive terrain.

Get us a picture of the battle screen and someone will surely be able to help you out. I'd also recommend Arumba's CK2 lets plays on youtube, they are highly informative. There are too many ways to lose a battle in CK2... The combat is very fleshed out, and can be logically tackled once you understand all it's workings. But at the end of the day it is also random to some extent, not too much so to control in most cases.

[tjharwood]

Thanks! This is all very helpful. Sadly, I can't go back and get a picture of the battle (unless there's some way I don't know to access them after they've finished), playing on Ironman. But.

It is certainly possible that I picked mercenaries that were mostly light troops. I can't remember. I also played it at speed 3. It was all pretty careless of me. I'll try to be a little more careful. But knowing all of these things is certainly helpful! I feel like the combat system is the one thing holding me back from really being able to tackle this game not starting as Ireland, haha...

[XKXKXKXKXK]

Ahhh :), no turning around on Iron Man. Light infantry/archers can be very powerful if used properly. My general rule when fighting with my light vs a heavier armies was to outnumber them atleast 2:1. What can happen is that you can force them to retreat atleast one flank (or all) in the skirmish stage alone. This is very powerful before cavalry starts to have a bigger part to play (depending on what year you start at). Take a look at the CK2 wiki combat article where it shows the troop types and it will give you a good idea at the base stats of each soldier type. This will all get a bit more interesting for you once you start developing personal retinues and choosing the unit compositions yourself.

Combat used to frustrate the heck out of me, but there is a damn lot of number crunching going on in the background. I've taught one of my friends to play HOI3 and CK2, the one thing I was always shouting at him "BROWSE OVER X" Paradox is good in this way and if you are ever confused why something is happening, browse over it, normally you'll get a pop up. This is true for morale in battles and also the icons which will pop up describing your commander action for the flanks (it will look like an arrow with a bow,sword,or horse) it will show you what decision your general has made and what effects it has on your troops. Lets say your army is 100% light infantry and you're attacking, and your general has just given you a negative damage modifier applying to light infantry it can extremely effect you. If the enemy general then countered that move with a positive defensive modifier his advantage will continue to increase etc. Have a look at how some of these things progress next time and you might be able to find a weakness. Also your army composition and the enemies will be shown on the battle screen, you can also see it on the map albeit in abbreviated form (by browsing ;) over the enemy army).

[EmotionallyBroken]

forceback is OP as ♥♥♥♥ =)

http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Combat_tactics
http://www.ckiiwiki.com/Combat

Reading these two pages will help explain a lot of things.

[drake_hound]

4000 against 900 loses isn´t common especially in ireland. the mercenaries while sometimes having crap commanders.

Still the ods are like 4 against 1. those ods early game where people do not have holy orders retinue and other overpowered stuff.

So definetly wish you had more information why you lost it those battle. unless all the commanders have craven. (that penalty is huge)
still 4 against 1 ods loses is way too high.

So check what commanders are in your setup, anything below 8 martial remove there commander status. and just assign somebody else or leave them blank.
Also check traits. craven isn´t really wanted in a commander. cause they might just retreat or break too soon.

[Langkard]

If you had more than 60% total archers or more in a flank, then it is very bad if the enemy has cavalry. It causes Charge on Undefended to fire 100% of the time, which immediately switches the combat from skirmish where the archers rule to melee where they suck mightly and get torn apart.

Archers got a huge nerf with the Horse Lords DLC. They went from being one of the best units to one of the worst. Light infantry also got nerfed, although not as much. An army composed of mostly archers and light infantry is going to get destroyed by armies composed of heavy infantry, pikes and cavalry units.

Always check your army commanders when using mercenary units. The game doesn't always put the best martial skill commander in the mercenary flanks. Make sure, as drake_hound said, that they have martial skill of 8+ and no really bad traits. See the Bad Tactics section of the Combat Tactics wiki page linked to above. Each unit type has a particularly bad one or two traits which cause very bad things to happen to your army if a flank commander has them. Some of them are otherwise good military traits, like Organizer and Agressive Leader. Wroth can be bad for a cavalry-heavy flank and since Wroth is one of the traits which increases martial skill, you'll find it a lot among your generals.

[Zeetarb]

Do mercenaries still spawn with 0 morale? If you hired them then immediately sent them into battle it's likely that they were still very low morale and were easier for the 900 troops to break when they arrived.

[tjharwood]

Thank you, everyone! Lots to consider.

[The Dairy Devil]

Nobody considered that part of his army might just not have been organised/supplied? (forget what it's called in this game)

Basically whilst a part of his force may have a full green bar he might have just raised the rest and added them putting them in the red, seeing as he stated he's been suffering succesive losses this seems a highly likely reason.

Went into battle with a red stack >lost half his men> army routes>still outnumbering but losing again in a red stack>lose half his men>50/50 now>gets blown out of the water.

[Safehold]

Yea make sure your morale is 100% because 5000 can lose to 500 if the morale is 30% vs 100% during the skirmish phase.

During the melee phases, the one with the most pikemen and heavy infantry will annihilate the ones with just archers and light infantry. It's like the Romans vs barbarians there.

Also flank support is important. You have to distribute your unit ratios carefully, as well as have good commanders for that flank and composition. If your center is weak and just collapses first, your other fronts will start taking ridiculous amounts of damage especially if the enemy flank leader has huge martial bonus in offense. Generally you want your left or right flank to overwhelm the enemy, so you over stack one flank with a breakthrough damage element, while the other two flanks must hold so they are more defensive in nature. And after that, it's random tactics vs random tactics, modified by martial. As martial determines how often bad tactics hit vs good tactics.

[Crocodylus Pontifex]

Since this thread is all about battle tactics:

Any ideas why this battle was a complete defeat on the first try while only a few dozens of enemies survived after I had reloaded ?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=519469346

I assumed that it had to be a pretty severe case of bad luck, but maybe there is some factor i did not take into account at the time.

[tjharwood]

Originally posted by Crocodylus Pontifex:

Since this thread is all about battle tactics:

Any ideas why this battle was a complete defeat on the first try while only a few dozens of enemies survived after I had reloaded ?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=519469346

I assumed that it had to be a pretty severe case of bad luck, but maybe there is some factor i did not take into account at the time.

I'm not an advanced player, but is it maybe because he had enough horse archers to hold out during the skirmish phase, and then enough heavy cavalry to roll in the melee? No idea.

[Cryten]

Perhaps reloading reset his commanders because having no commanders for 2 flanks and a commander with martial 4 especially with a specilised military setup like concentrated light cav that the defenders have is asking for it to be wiped out.

Theoretically if he got Harass in skirmish into a quick charge and then rolled raid alot the dedicated horse army could use its 300% damage bonuses to overpower and cause the larger attackers to flee. Still with bad commanders this is unlikely.

[Langkard]

I agree with Cyten. It looks like the army was reset. The game resets my commanders at times, so it must happen to the AI as well. I don't know for sure if it happens on reload, because I only reload when I start each session on ironman.

As Cyten said, the tactics which fired are important too. It appears that your commanders are two Turkish, i.e. Iranian group, and one Altaic group. Your opponent is or was likely entirely Uyghur, thus Altaic group. Both Iranian and Altaic group get the same cultural bonus for horse archer units and you both have roughly the same percentage of horse archers (you have 7% and he has 8%), so that isn't really a factor. His army is entirely mounted, though, while yours is heavily infantry.

One other tactic which can fire for your foe in this case, is Retreat and Ambush. This tactic applies to Altaic commanders, which would be all 3 flanks of his army but only 1 of your flanks. This tactic gives an additional bonus to horse archers and then resets the battle to the skirmish phase. In skirmish phase, your infantry is useless, while his entire army is still effective. If Retreat and Ambush fired often enough, it would effectively keep most of your army out of the fight. Then when the game reset the commanders this advantage was neutralized because he only had one commander.

[Crocodylus Pontifex]

Originally posted by Langkard:

I agree with Cyten. It looks like the army was reset. The game resets my commanders at times, so it must happen to the AI as well. I don't know for sure if it happens on reload, because I only reload when I start each session on ironman.

As Cyten said, the tactics which fired are important too. It appears that your commanders are two Turkish, i.e. Iranian group, and one Altaic group. Your opponent is or was likely entirely Uyghur, thus Altaic group. Both Iranian and Altaic group get the same cultural bonus for horse archer units and you both have roughly the same percentage of horse archers (you have 7% and he has 8%), so that isn't really a factor. His army is entirely mounted, though, while yours is heavily infantry.

One other tactic which can fire for your foe in this case, is Retreat and Ambush. This tactic applies to Altaic commanders, which would be all 3 flanks of his army but only 1 of your flanks. This tactic gives an additional bonus to horse archers and then resets the battle to the skirmish phase. In skirmish phase, your infantry is useless, while his entire army is still effective. If Retreat and Ambush fired often enough, it would effectively keep most of your army out of the fight. Then when the game reset the commanders this advantage was neutralized because he only had one commander.

The commander reset can't have happened as this screenshot is from the first try, i anticipated that something bad might happen so i saved and made the screenshot. Other than that your explanation makes a lot of sense, thank you. Especially the skirmish reset sounds like something that might have happened, i wil take this possiblity into account from now on.