Army maintenance

[Marcus]

Just a newbie question!

Whilst at peace I read somewhere to increase your montly income you should turn down your army maintenance! How much do you turn it down and will that not interfere with new units being re-inforced or your manpower increasing?

[Ser Pounce]

Habitually, I turn off about 66%. Unless you're absolutely certain you don't have any rebels, it's too risky.

I don't see any impact about the manpower or the reinforcement though, unlike EU3.

[fuser]

I have it at minimum in single player whilst in multiplayer I would like to have it around 66% so that in month it can come up to full strength and morale.

[Shai-Hulud]

"An army needs a certain amount of money every month as maintenance. These cost can be influenced by the army maintenance slider of the economy interface. Reducing the maintenance slider can (multiplicatively) reduce maintenance cost by up to half, but also reduces reinforcement rates and morale. At 0% funding, regiments will not reinforce, and maximum morale will be reduced by 100% (additive with other percentage modifiers) to a minimum of 0.51 (the minimum required for an army to move)"

From the wiki. I often completely lower maintenance when there is no unrest or impending conflicts. Doesn't impact manpower, but reinforcement/morale heavily. Sometimes you can strategically (carefully) reduce maintenance to conserve manpower (through slower reinforcement).

[Marcus]

Thanks

[runequester]

Around 70% seems a good balance for me, but if I am feeling very safe, I might turn it down further.

[Mr. Frank]

is it wrong to turn it completely down when you have no wars on the horizon due to your alliances and no rebels? by completely i do mean all the way down

[Shai-Hulud]

Originally posted by Mr. Frank:

is it wrong to turn it completely down when you have no wars on the horizon due to your alliances and no rebels? by completely i do mean all the way down

Nothing "wrong" with it. It will take longer to reinforce your army morale once you do raise the maintenance though. And if you get surprised with an attack (rebel or otherwise) and your army isn't in a safe location, it will probably get stackwiped. I BELIEVE it does impact your military score, as well as the AI weighing relative strength of alliances (not sure about this last part, maybe someone else could verify if that is true). It definitely can be risky. Personally, I am either on full maintenance or no maintenance. I almost never hover inbetween.

[northernwater]

Early to mid game I turn mine down to about 20% unless I need reenforcements.

If any rebel stack reaches 80% I then look at the percent chance of an increase if it is below 5% I leave it turned down. If is above 5% to about 20% I crank it up to about 50%. If the percent chance is above 20% percent I go full maintenance.

Late game when money is less of a problem I keep it at about 80% unless I have back to back wars planned then I keep it at 100%.

[DeBunkeD]

As long as you dont position your forces on the border with someone that may potentially attack you, you might as well pull them all the way down. There is no reason to keep them at above the minimum value during peacetime, as one or two more months of recovering morale will not cost you anything, but might save a lot of money in the long run.

As others have noted the obvious exception is when a rebellion is about to happen, you will probably want to keep your forces fully maintained until you've beaten them down.

[Ficelle]

The real downside of low maintenance, apart from poor combat ability, is that it affects how strong you look like to the AI.

If you are dominating, it is no problem.

But if you have on par nations around, they could think you are weak and attack you.
A non wanted war costs time and money.
Also, some may think you are too weak to be worth allying.

I usually play at 80-100% maintenance at all time and it is incredibly rare that an AI declares war on me.

[DeBunkeD]

Originally posted by Ficelle:

The real downside of low maintenance, apart from poor combat ability, is that it affects how strong you look like to the AI.

If you are dominating, it is no problem.

But if you have on par nations around, they could think you are weak and attack you.
A non wanted war costs time and money.
Also, some may think you are too weak to be worth allying.

I usually play at 80-100% maintenance at all time and it is incredibly rare that an AI declares war on me.

Fairly sure this is either false or contributes too little to have a remotely signifcant effect. I think you will find that in general the AI will never ever attack you at all unless you are significantly weaker (way fewer troops fielded, much lower mil tech, much much weaker alliance etc). In my experience having reduced maintenance does not increase the likelyhood of getting attacked.

Edit: thread in the forum which discusses the modifier and what affects it. Turns out the maintenance slider has no effect on relative strength (at least not on the visible modifier, which makes it highly unlikely to affect war declarations):

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/can-someone-explain-relative-military-power-to-me.744517/

[Ficelle]

Well, for me, it is pretty much this way...

Full maintenance for years, noone ever declare on me unless they are way stronger,, even 'weak' coalitions.
As soon as i lower maintenance to nil, bam declared.
Sure, wont happen if im the superpower in the area.
Could be coincidence, but...

I play on hard / very hard too, so AI armies are quite bigger than in normal.

Yes, ive read some of these posts saying no effect, i dont know, but i tend to favor my own experiences over what someone else says.