Can someone please explain army morale and why my armies suck

[Comrade Maethor]

It has been a long struggle for me to be able to reliably fight wars in this game. When I play as big countries like France, the Ottomans, or England, I tend to do pretty good; which should be the case seeing as they are the easiest countries in the damn game. But whenever I play a slightly less advantaged country, like Austria for example, my armies go from being made up of soldiers to being made up of 2 year old children. What this means specifically is that I think my armies are really good, and when I face a foe that is equal to or just above my martial strength, I lost horribly. So I'm going to walk you through my typical army management scheme:

Whenever I know I am not going to go to war for a while I always drill my troops with my ruler at first then to a general about a year after game start so I can get standardized pikes ASAP.

I prioritize prestige, I treat it like it is more valuable than anything else in the game just because it gives me that morale boost. Therefore, I make sure that I always have a higher prestige than an enemy, as from what I have found, even if I have one less prestige, my armies will never win a battle against the opponent.

When I first get to upgrade my infantry, ORIGINALLY I would always go for Galloglaigh, ALTHOUGH now I have realized that the reason why I always lose when I'm a defender is probably because Galloglaigh infantry have no defensive morale. I plan to rectify this by using Longbows instead.

I'm always cautious when building to force limit right away as I tend to be very fiscally conservative at game start. I have a very very very very high reluctance to taking out loans, I do NOT like budget deficits at all and when I have them I instantly panic for about five seconds. This means I do not build to force limit often, as I want to maximize profit. When the opportunity arises I do hire mercenaries, but my armies get defeated so early on in wars I never actually get to use them.

This reluctance to run deficits and maintain a smaller army is also the prime reason why I always drill my troops no matter the circumstance.

When attacking, I do indeed pay attention to geography. I am aware when I am getting a crossing or mountain debuff and therefore I am aware of my disadvantage. Losing a battle against an inferior force on a mountain is much more understandable to me than when I lose on an open field.

[Exarch_Alpha]

Get the + morale or discipline advisor, go Offensive or Quality. If your plan is defending more and use scorched earth, then go defensive, else it´s not the best first idea.

[corisai]

In early game - morale is most important and morale damage rule (shock damage is next one). As generals don't buff morale damage this mean shock damage is most important one).

In early-mid game (TL12) - fire damage appear on your units and now matter. Still, most damage done in shock phase and artillery is worthless. But (!) fire phase is first so it's important to have infantry with fire pips and fire generals now a bit better then equal shock ones.

Late-mid game (TL19) - fire damage rule. Cannons became important and able to do REAL damage even earlier (at TL16 upgrade).

Morale buffs super important early as damage output is low and battles mostly won via morale, not via wiping enemy stack (except morale wipe ofk).

Discipline is strong even early (if you lack any morale bonuses then IMHO in early game morale advisor > discipline), but became more and more powerful later, as it's buff both your damage output and your defense.


Detailed info : http://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/135820/Zwirbaum%27s%20unit%20guide.pdf

Short guide: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ITH6oNHsIlVHo2LJnR92wP5LEKiON0k2rZJ82YbYaB0/edit#gid=0

P.S. You NEED notable advantage to win battles reliable as game include powerful random factor. Two same armies with same bonuses = isn't favorable position for battle.

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Morale is Morale whether it comes from high Prestige, high Army Tradition, high Power Projection, Ideas, Policies, Advisors, ...

If you have higher Prestige than your enemy he can still have a much higher Morale. Focusing only on Prestige is normally bad combat-wise.


The nations you mentioned have built-in advantages (France +Morale in Ideas, England +Combat Ability in Traditions, Ottomans +Discipline in Traditions).

[Swirler]

Also pay attention to the general in command of the army. They can give some seriously big bonuses to the army in a fight. And using the right one for different situations depending on their ability can be something you can min/max. Like good siege generals for sieges and high manoeuvre generals for marching armies large distances. River and strait crossing penalties can be negated if the attacking general has at least 1 more manoeuvre than the defending general.
Along with increasing reinforce speed and reducing attrition.
Fire/shock add a flat bonus to the dice rolls in those phases.
With siege pips adding to the dice roll in sieges making them faster.
And likewise if the enemy has a good general you'll want to be careful dealing with them.

And if you make your monarch a general you'll want to be careful with them unless you're okay with them dying in battle (ie if they have bad stats).

Forcing the enemy to fight in bad terrain you're defending is a big part of getting a better result.

Generally speaking.
Cavalry is stronger early game due to fire damage being quite weak early and most armies aren't fielding the maximum fighting width so their flanking ability comes into effect without them being at as much risk.
But you don't need more than 2-4 cavalry even in the larger armies you might field. With maybe a few extra if the nation you're using has some strong cavalry bonuses but it's safer not to field too many of them due to their cost being nearly as much as cannons.

Cannons are a little expensive for what they can do early game, but late game they're very important to getting that extra damage from the back row and sieging down those star forts.
But a single value cannon in the early game is usually considered reasonable, and building extra ones for faster sieges.

Infantry make up the bulk of any army, so improving their abilities is always useful and they are the cheapest unit.
Sometimes if the enemy is wielding some particularly large armies it's worthwhile to send a handful of single infantry units to siege down enemy provinces and skorching the earth of territory you don't want to keep.
Provided you have the manpower to spare for this. It's more suited to large unobstructed areas where there are no natural chokepoints.

There's a lot of nuance to it in all respects but the basics are
1. Make sure you end the war quickly. (Full maintenance on your armies is going to cost a fortune over time)
2. Don't spend manpower on battles you don't think you can afford to fight.
3. Plan ahead for the next war.
4. Ending the war early if it's not going your way is absolutely reasonable. There's no need to bleed yourself dry in every minor war.
5. Let your allies do some of the fighting for you if possible. If you're a smaller nation you can't really afford to lose a lot of manpower because it replenishes from 0 to the maximum amount after 10 years. For all nations as a base value. So larger nations can afford to lose troops smaller ones cannot.
6. Keeping good drill/discipline/morale/army tradition/prestige are all key things you need to juggle. The larger your army the less you can gain from those modifiers from a single battle, with smaller nations gaining massive amounts of them if they commit most of their forces. With drill going down with the more men you lose.
7. Knowing which modifiers affect how long different nations are willing to fight for is important for winning wars. You can pick up some basics from watching youtube playthroughs. In general holding the key territory the war is started over gives the largest benefit over time.
8. Separate peace out the minor enemy nations before the chief one helps you get more bang for your buck, but of course requires you to build up warscore against more enemies. So sometimes just focusing in on the war leader can bring a quick win if you don't have the resources for a longer war.
9. Pick and choose when to fight your enemies, look in the ledger for their army size/power and income/allies. Kicking them when they're down is the best time to do it or after they've fought in a long war against a powerful nation.
10. if you don't have the advantage in manpower/resources against an enemy then you're fighting the wrong war. Never fight a fair battle, always try to defeat their armies in detail on good defensive terrain if you can help it.
11. Make sure you can actually core/maintain the territory you desire from the war. No point taking huge swathes of territory if you're just going to be buried in rebels for the next 20 years.
12. You learn more from playing as smaller or weaker nations but they're also harder to dig out of bad situations with income/unrest.
13. Battles against rebels can drain your manpower just as much as a full scale war, so make sure you babysit the more unrest prone areas. You can't afford to lose lots of men to rebel stacks just before a big fight. So sometimes it's safer to just accept their demands if it's unavoidable or the potential spawn size is too large to handle.
14. Passing on or selling territory to vassals and allies is a legitimate thing to do, and well worth it if you're dealing with some fairly poor land.

[tonypa]

Ledger >> Country >> Score Comparison >> hover mouse over Military ratin and it will list several numbers about every country:

- Land Morale is shown as 50%, if it says +2 in ledger the actual Morale is 4
- Discipline is +0.3 for every 10% I think

The numbers itself are not that important, you simply want to compare your number with enemy number.

You can not check combat ability of Infantry/Cavalry/Artillery for enemies and need wiki for exact type of their units (combination of tech group and military tech level).


In general, for whatever country you are playing, you want to have some checkpoints to win land battles:
- size of armies (keep in mind combat width, no point going over it)
- your military tech level vs enemy military tech
- terrain
- generals
- early in the game morale
- middle/late in the game discipline and combat ability

As already mentioned, some countries are simply better at fighting (Prussia, Sweden, Poland) and if all the other modifiers are same, these countries will win. You will want to crush them before they grow too big.

[Amtep]

Speaking of the ledger, get cozy with the Army Quality page. Set it to "war enemies" during war and hover your mouse over the morale and discipline values. It will tell you exactly what modifiers are influencing you and your enemy. That will help with planning.

[tonypa]

Originally posted by Amtep:

Speaking of the ledger, get cozy with the Army Quality page. Set it to "war enemies" during war and hover your mouse over the morale and discipline values. It will tell you exactly what modifiers are influencing you and your enemy. That will help with planning.

That requires Cradle of Civilization DLC.

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Originally posted by Amtep:

Speaking of the ledger, get cozy with the Army Quality page. Set it to "war enemies" during war and hover your mouse over the morale and discipline values. It will tell you exactly what modifiers are influencing you and your enemy. That will help with planning.

It is a good first step but things like Combat Ability, +Fire/Shock Damage, -Fire/Shock Damage Received, bonuses from special units (Banners, Streltsy etc), ... are not listed. So don't completely rely on the ledger page (if you have it).

[bri]

Originally posted by Tulduil Iphukiir:

Originally posted by Amtep:

Speaking of the ledger, get cozy with the Army Quality page. Set it to "war enemies" during war and hover your mouse over the morale and discipline values. It will tell you exactly what modifiers are influencing you and your enemy. That will help with planning.

It is a good first step but things like Combat Ability, +Fire/Shock Damage, -Fire/Shock Damage Received, bonuses from special units (Banners, Streltsy etc), ... are not listed. So don't completely rely on the ledger page (if you have it).

Aye, the diplomacy screen, in particular the ideas section, gives you a fair bit of needed information as well.