Best army late game

[Ringus]

What's the best army for 40k stacks and up. For western nation

[Waxen]

Regardless of what tech group you have, in a battle you'll want as much artillery as combat width will allow, and enough cavalry and infantry to cover said artillery. In other words, for a 40-stack, you'll want 19-20 artillery regiments, 16-18 infantry regiments and 2-4 cavalry regiments

[Gonio]

You need more units for the front row in above example, because if 1 regiment is destroyed they reach your cannons. So have enough inf for some reserves aswell. But what he says is correct.

[Ringus]

Ok great so when it gets crazy and battles of over 100k every one is chucking in their armies. What is the best way to this? Do multiple leaders make any difference?

[Fellini_Fiend]

I feel like a good ratio late game is 24 infantry-4 cavalry-20 artillery. Something around that. Maybe even 6 cavalry. I don't know the exact numbers for combat width but this seems okay.

[AllGrainGamer]

For around 40 stack size western tech group I like to do 20 inf - 8 cav - 20 cannon. It is kind of overkill on the cav, but in the late game I am fighting to bleed manpower more than chase down armies due to big forts and want to do high damage in Fire AND Shock phase. In the late-late game though, this still ends up being too thin, especially in grassland and such regions. At that point you might as well consider merging 2 stacks.

[SPAMbuca]

That little cavalry? Then again I never checked the most efficient way. So far I went with for each 10 infantry I get 4 cavalry and 4 cannons. Or does that suffice mid game?

[zacharyb]

Originally posted by SPAMbuca:

That little cavalry? Then again I never checked the most efficient way. So far I went with for each 10 infantry I get 4 cavalry and 4 cannons. Or does that suffice mid game?

That's extremely inefficient, you want to optimally have enough infantry and cavalry to fill up your combat width(with extra infantry to reinforce), and then have a full combat width of cannons to do maximum damage. My mid game armies usually compromise 24/6/20 or 20/10/20, and even then that's more cavalry than I need.

[Cortez]

Wow, it seems I have been doing all wrong until now. I always tried to have same cavalry and infantry and cannons be little over infantry.
For example : 15infantry/15cavalry/20cannons.

[Mol]

Originally posted by zacharyb:

Originally posted by SPAMbuca:

That little cavalry? Then again I never checked the most efficient way. So far I went with for each 10 infantry I get 4 cavalry and 4 cannons. Or does that suffice mid game?

That's extremely inefficient, you want to optimally have enough infantry and cavalry to fill up your combat width(with extra infantry to reinforce), and then have a full combat width of cannons to do maximum damage. My mid game armies usually compromise 24/6/20 or 20/10/20, and even then that's more cavalry than I need.

Yeah

[Konsum]

I usually use (2/1/2)*x depending on my army size, but it also depends on national ideas. For example if you play as Poland you might want to use more cavalry because of the +33% combat ability.

[ZeratulR]

Everybody says that cavalry is bad but nobody explains how they arrived at this conclusion and for which nations/tech groups it applies. For example, with Commonwealth at 20th level (which sounds like a "mid game" to me) of military technology my infantry has +20%/1,6/1,15 (combat ability/fire/shock) and cavalry has +63%/0,5/3. And it will take some serious math to convince me that I'll be better off with cavalry to infantry ratio significantly lower then what insufficient support penalty allows (of course that ratio must include some safety buffer to accomodate higher infantry lossess). Poland is unique in this regard with it's +33% cavalry combat ability national idea, but I think the same is more or less true for most nations with bonuses in cavalry combat ability.

Originally posted by zacharyb:

That's extremely inefficient, you want to optimally have enough infantry and cavalry to fill up your combat width(with extra infantry to reinforce), and then have a full combat width of cannons to do maximum damage. My mid game armies usually compromise 24/6/20 or 20/10/20, and even then that's more cavalry than I need.

I think that's way too little cavalry if you want to do a maximum damage. Of course the situation may change when you take into account the additional costs of maintaining and reinforcing cavalry but if money is not a factor and the maximum combat efficiency is the goal, cavalry is the way to go in the mid-game. Unless you are Prussia or Sweden of course.

[Fellini_Fiend]

Originally posted by ZeratulR:

Everybody says that cavalry is bad but nobody explains how they arrived at this conclusion and for which nations/tech groups it applies. For example, with Commonwealth at 20th level (which sounds like a "mid game" to me) of military technology my infantry has +20%/1,6/1,15 (combat ability/fire/shock) and cavalry has +63%/0,5/3. And it will take some serious math to convince me that I'll be better off with cavalry to infantry ratio significantly lower then what insufficient support penalty allows (of course that ratio must include some safety buffer to accomodate higher infantry lossess). Poland is unique in this regard with it's +33% cavalry combat ability national idea, but I think the same is more or less true for most nations with bonuses in cavalry combat ability.

Originally posted by zacharyb:

That's extremely inefficient, you want to optimally have enough infantry and cavalry to fill up your combat width(with extra infantry to reinforce), and then have a full combat width of cannons to do maximum damage. My mid game armies usually compromise 24/6/20 or 20/10/20, and even then that's more cavalry than I need.

I think that's way too little cavalry if you want to do a maximum damage. Of course the situation may change when you take into account the additional costs of maintaining and reinforcing cavalry but if money is not a factor and the maximum combat efficiency is the goal, cavalry is the way to go in the mid-game. Unless you are Prussia or Sweden of course.

I don't think anybody is saying cavalry are bad. They're great but when you get to 1750 you can actually go around not having ANY cavalry and have nothing but infantry and artillery and you will absolutely wreck armies. At this time artillery do incredible amounts of damage in the fire phase. This is why they are so much more important. But as someone else stated, if you're playing Muslim tech or eastern tech late in the game you should still have quite a bit of cavalry.

[Fellini_Fiend]

Typically this is the ratio I have throughout each timeframe of the game as far as having 20 stacks (make adjustments as your force limit grows)....

Early game (around tech 7 when you get artillery): 10-5-5

Mid game: 10-4-6

Late game: 10-2-10 (or my personal preference with a stack of 22: 12-2-10)

So if you were able to afford having two armies of these ratios or have an one army that was doubled it would look like the following....

Early game
20-10-10

Mid game
20-8-12

Late game
24-4-20

If you managed to have a force limit of 200 and had four armies of 24 infantry, 4 cavalry, and 20 artillery each that would be deadly. This is my actual format when it comes late game. I just like having more infantry than artillery as a rule because I don't want my cannons to be taking damage ever.

[Gonio]

Originally posted by Mr. Cookie Man:

Wow, it seems I have been doing all wrong until now. I always tried to have same cavalry and infantry and cannons be little over infantry.
For example : 15infantry/15cavalry/20cannons.

Suggest you would trade some cavalry for inf. Also you get insufficient support with 15/15, since I think artillery gets ignored for this modifier, so you need to swap a bit anyway ( if incorrect some one will rectify, can't check it myself now). Depending on combat width ofcourse, but it is kind of a waste of manpower and thus cost if so many cavalry can take dmg, since it is most likely @ this size that much of the cavalry takes dmg aswell. But if manpower and money is no issue it is no biggy.

Originally posted by ZeratulR:

Everybody says that cavalry is bad but nobody explains how they arrived at this conclusion and for which nations/tech groups it applies.

Of course the situation may change when you take into account the additional costs of maintaining and reinforcing cavalry but if money is not a factor and the maximum combat efficiency is the goal, cavalry is the way to go in the mid-game. Unless you are Prussia or Sweden of course.

For this, what you say is correct, but cavalry gets less usefull the further you get in time, and will try to explain. Some of the reasons have been mentioned by yourself ofcourse why people go less on cavalry later on. But let's say money and manpower is indeed no issue there ar still 2 main reasons.

1: When cannons get added you start leaning more on units that have fire pips vs shock overall, but with an higher ratio you could compensate that for a while. However combine this with the fact that fire dmg modifiers get stronger then shock during tech, makes the cavalry less usefull.

2: Army composition: cannons again. We can agree that cannons are needed, so you overall have as much of them as you can. They have same flanking as cavalry, but because they are from the 2nd line they stay full 100% flanking trough the battle unless your first line gets broken (what should obviously not happen). Cavalry will lose flanking efficiency when dmged. Cannons do 50% dmg, but they also bestow half of their defensive pips to the front row, increasing their dmg. Also you need cannon for siege. Combine this with the things from point 1 makes it understandable why cavalry loses his value during time, while not even considering the other reasons like costs.

So all that can be said is that a higher ratio for the techs that have it, increase the efficient usability for cavalry for an longer time period. But it will fall behind once you pass the breaking point.
But I wouldn't go entirly without cavalry aswell. Cavalry has good shock still. Can't avoid shock fases, and the general will have some shock pips aswell. Would be a waste to not use it when talking about maximum efficiency. Nice bonus: they loot more aswell.

Hope you understand why cavalry gets less usefull over time.