Drilling- does it actually improve the game?

[basiltheslayer]

Just got back into EU IV after a few years hiatus. I just dont see the point in drilling. I drilled my forces but it didn't make battles any easier to win. It just seems to be another way to use up your resources and get less from the game.

[tonypa]

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Army#Army_professionalism_and_drilling
Personally, I almost never bother to drill armies, I have them fighting or moving instead.


Once your whole army has been drilled to 100%, the bonuses are:

+10% Shock damage
+10% Land fire damage
−10% Fire damage received
−10% Shock damage received
+20% Movement speed

These are not obviously high enough to totally revert every battle no matter which troops are involved. They are only useful if the battle is fairly even and could swing either way, and then if one side has full Drilling and other side has none, it may become important.

But Drilling has several downsides:
- it decreases pretty fast over time
- it decreases even faster if your troops are involved in battle and lose men
- both combined means high drill is usually only achieved at the start of the war for first battle
- the best case is to catch enemy armies near the border drilling at 0 maintenance
- well, your troops will be at 0 maintenance too while drilling, and can be easily wiped
- drilling requires to pay full cost with general while the army can not move, this in real life makes it nearly unusable during war. Combine it with the fast drop while not being drilled, and if you are nation that does many wars and moves armies and conquers many lands, keeping the drill modifier high enough becomes really difficult

To recap, drilling requires to
- not be at war for long time
- have enough money to pay for full cost and general
- not using mercs


Now, beside drilling specific troops, having army drilling will slowly increase also your Army Professionalism, which affects all your units. Once 100% professionalism is reached, your troops will have:
+10% Shock damage dealt
+10% Fire damage dealt
+20% Siege ability

Plus it also unlocks some other modifiers, like −50% Reduced morale damage taken by reserve and −50% General cost.

[Ransom_Romanus]

Drilling has a benefit where you can convert 5% of the drilling into manpower. This is useful after a long or hard war where you either need to reacquire armies or manpower.

note: I'm not certain whether this is a perk that comes with the base game or a DLC.

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

The bonuses for a fully drilled regiment are +10% damage and -10% damage received. A fully drilled army also gets +20% movement speed.

The increased movement speed can be good to catch an enemy army with low Morale or to reach a just unmothballed fort before the next monthly tick increases its garrison.
Additional damage dealt and less damage received is always nice to have.

However, drilling decays very fast (too fast in my opinion) and costs money because of full maintenance costs. Also it does not affect mercenaries.


Army Professionalism gives (apart from the special abilities) up to another +10% damage and a massive +20% siege ability at the cost of more expensive and less mercenaries.
For the abilities:
- Supply Depot: Useful on occasion, especially when combined with drilling: For maximal Professionalism gain you want all of your troops to drill at the same time. At a bigger forcelimit and a small leader cap it can be worth to increase supply limit in a state to drill as many regiments as possible without attrition with as few generals as possible.
- Refill Garrison: I think I have used this only once. It may be more useful in Multiplayer (which I don't play)
- Regain manpower when disbanding: If you have money: disband one army, build a new one on the other side of the world, e.g. when rebels are about to spawn.
- Reduced Morale damage for reserves: Saves micromanagement in battles. If you don't micromanage this is a passive boost, if you micromanage this can be useless or helpful, depending on your style.
- General cost, Drill gain: Reduced general cost is nice: Recruit two generals and keep the better one. Drill gain is nice if you rely on Drill bonuses even after maxing Professionalism. If you have enough money you can combine it with the Drill Gain decisions and get very fast drilling troops (which somewhat offsets the fast Drill decay).

Slacken Recruitment Standards can be great in long wars.

Edit: The two above me typed faster ...

frozen_ghost lähetti viestin:

note: I'm not certain whether this is a perk that comes with the base game or a DLC.

Drilling and Army Professionalism (including all bonuses and abilities) are part of Cradle of Civilization).

[leefnmajors]

Drill units if you have to take a break from warring; otherwise, ignore it. The bonus won't decide most battles since things like tech level, ideas, and army tradition already exist to create significant differences in armies. Hiring more generals will slowly raise it, anyways (1% a general). It's sometimes nice, though, when you are conducting a campaign in one part of the world (say, India or China) and have units stationed in another theater the enemy can't access (such as Europe or Africa).

Important to note that mercs cannot be drilled, so the more you use the less useful it is. Hiring mercs also lowers your professionalism, but again if you're to keep the mercs around who cares. They're easier to use for manpower efficiency than drilling 5% professionalism out and hitting the recruiting standards button.

[Omniconda]

didnt see it mentioned
drilling has a chance for drilling general to gain extra stats

[AN]

Drilling is incredible for getting you the extra manpower to keep early conquests rolling. Later on it's just a nice buff.

[Amtep]

Let's take care to distinguish between drilling and professionalism, though. There are lots of events that increase professionalism. Drilling is actually very slow at increasing it. You need to drill 100% of your forcelimit for a year to get 1%, which is the same as you get from recruiting one general.

Drilling for a year in early game means not expanding, while paying full price for maintenance and risking getting stackwiped if anything goes wrong. I think it's a bad deal and I never drill, even though I rely on professionalism. They are 2 different mechanics.

The main thing drilling adds to my game is that it makes it easier to catch small AI countries by surprise and wipe their armies. I wouldn't miss it if it were removed entirely from the game.

[Pozz]

I mainly use it to help my professionalism growth to turn ducats into manpower.

Is it worth doing, yes. Is it a function I'd greatly miss was it removed, no.