What is the ideal army composition? (2024)

I assume you also have a combat width of infantry plus 4-6 cavalry?

Combat is complex and ideal unit composition is not necessarily enough to ensure victory. Sometimes you just get unlucky rolls.

At 40 combat width, undisputed optimal army composition is 32-8-40. This is making some assumptions about having a reinforcement stack nearby if you happen to engage an equal size stack.

Less than 40 combat width, which means lower miltech and therefore lower supply limits is more disputed. I personally think that combat width beats additional artillery. Meaning at 30 combat width, 26-4-0 will beat something like 11-4-15 because of flanking. I think that the first thing to consider is pure army size based upon local supply limits of both your own territory and your enemies. After that fill up Inf/Cav/Art buckets according to combat width. Go 4 cav early, 8 cav late, then fill up infantry to combat width, lastly fill final "bucket" with artillery until army size cap is met. Always have 20/4/0 reinforcement stacks nearby.

Having equivalent Artillery as the rest is a bad idea, except in mountains, and here is why:

There are three ranks in battle, primary, secondary, tertiary.

Cavalry and infantry can only fight from primary, whilst artillery fire from secondary and give a bonus to units infront of them.

The problem arises when you realize what you're doing - fighting battles.

In battles, men generally tend to die, and the primary rank gets depleted. When they are exhausted, the artillery moves in to primary where they recieve 200% damage and get annihilated.

Keep some infantry in reserve to replace the primary rank.

Why mountains you ask? Small combat width, easy to keep up primary and secondary rows.

Tertiary? All the men waiting to be thrown into the meat grinder.

(someone more experienced please correct me if i'm badly mistaken)

Stategem161803 said:

At 40 combat width, undisputed optimal army composition is 32-8-40. This is making some assumptions about having a reinforcement stack nearby if you happen to engage an equal size stack.

Less than 40 combat width, which means lower miltech and therefore lower supply limits is more disputed. I personally think that combat width beats additional artillery. Meaning at 30 combat width, 26-4-0 will beat something like 11-4-15 because of flanking. I think that the first thing to consider is pure army size based upon local supply limits of both your own territory and your enemies. After that fill up Inf/Cav/Art buckets according to combat width. Go 4 cav early, 8 cav late, then fill up infantry to combat width, lastly fill final "bucket" with artillery until army size cap is met. Always have 20/4/0 reinforcement stacks nearby.

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If 26-4-0 will beat 11-4-15, then 26-0-0 will also beat them or 20-0-0 or 15-5-0 for that matter, because you can only "flank" as far as the maneuver score of units will allow. So additional units add nothing to the battle and cavalry automatically goes to the sides, meaning all those infantry just prevent the cavalry from engaging at all. The real advantage of a larger stack with zero artillery is that those extras will move in and replace the regiments that get totally destroyed/routed, whereas if you have artillery they will mindless fill the front rank and get destroyed.

As a bonus to the inanities of the combat system, all regiments in the battle take a small amount of morale damage each day whether they are fighting or not.

It's the absolute formula:

before artillery
inf + 4 cav

pre-1750
inf + flank-able cavalries = artillery

post-1750
inf = artillery. don't use cavalry.

End of story. Really.

aitaituo said:

If 26-4-0 will beat 11-4-15, then 26-0-0 will also beat them or 20-0-0 or 15-5-0 for that matter, because you can only "flank" as far as the maneuver score of units will allow. So additional units add nothing to the battle and cavalry automatically goes to the sides, meaning all those infantry just prevent the cavalry from engaging at all.

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Cavalry is positioned next to the enemy's line if you have more infantry than the enemy's infantry + cavalry. Look at the battle screen and you'll see that this holds.

So having more infantry than the enemy + 4-6 cavalry is indeed useful: it assures your cavalry will not be attacked while attacking the enemy, plus you have some infantry in reserve.

Strategem is overall right, but I don't use 32-8-40 armies, as those are too big. At least I would advise splitting it into two and combine them when necessary. In most cases, enemy armies aren't that big and by spreading your armies you can siege better and suffer less attrition.

knul said:

Cavalry is positioned next to the enemy's line if you have more infantry than the enemy's infantry + cavalry. Look at the battle screen and you'll see that this holds.

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This has not been true for me, but I will continue to check to see if it does happen sometimes.

Noob's guide to winning battles: Use more infantry, and make sure your infantry either reinforces or is combined to close to full strength before getting into another battle, as regiment size is heavily favored in damage calculations. It's a good idea to have an infantry reserves stack that moves into a battle that's in progress, then swaps out for the depleted regiments from the main force.

I do agree it's only worth using large amounts of artillery if you're playing a superpower and are fielding massive armies capable of filling the front rank with room to spare, or fighting in mountains. If you can't field huge armies, I find that enough artillery to get the siege bonus is enough.