Talk:Land warfare

A - This article is considered an A-class article on the wiki quality scale

Assessment

This page could easily become FA-class with a few improvements. Namely, deal with the "expand" tag in the terrain section, and any "needs verification" and similar elsewhere in the article. One should also make sure everything is correct for 1.3.

Once all that is done, the page will be upgraded to FA-class. ~ Meneth (talk) 14:12, 30 October 2013 (CET)

Mercs

The page needs a section about mercenaries. ~ Meneth (talk) 16:13, 4 August 2013 (CEST)

Artillery Defending front row

This was added today, and I know it was true of EU3, but have we confrimed it for EU4?

Yes //dev that wrote combat part

Full artillery numbers will be deployed

I just checked and in a battle with combat width 9, I deployed 9 artillery, 5 infantry and 4 cavallery out of my much larger army. Damarow (talk) 12:35, 18 August 2013 (CEST)

Optimal Amount of Cavalry

So that is still unclear. I have opened a thread on the forums for that http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?712442-What-determines-how-many-cavallery-will-be-used-in-battle&p=15981871#post15981871 Damarow (talk) 15:44, 18 August 2013 (CEST)

So I have closely observed a lot of battles, and so far I can support the thesis, that cavallery is not needed in high numbers.I usually go with 16/4/10 stacks of I/C/A, or 8/2/5, and this worked very well so far. When I try to use higher numbers of cavallery, I have to reduce the amount of infantry deliberately, because otherwise only 4-5 cavallery will be used. But that will leave me with much to less infantry, and since they die fast, I get the insufficient support penality. So it seems either only cavallery for flank support, or armies with mainly cavallery. But cavallery is not that great overall, even with their shock modifier. Damarow (talk) 19:12, 25 August 2013 (CEST)

Yeah, it seems that 4 is optimal until Maneuver is high enough that 6 works. The only exception being when you're outnumbered, or if you're in a tech group that can support huge numbers of cavalry (since then cav is outright better than inf).

Or, I'm not sure maneuver actually affects the number of flankers you can have. But having at least 4 cav is always a good idea. ~ Meneth (talk) 19:26, 25 August 2013 (CEST)

Is the Insufficient support number calculated percentage of combined infantry and cavalry or simply percentage number of infantry? Meaning does the Horde nation 100% mean you can run around with full cavalry armies or does it mean you still need one infantry per unit of cavalry?

How are units deployed?

So this is still unclear. It is partially discussed under Optimal Amount of Cavallery . Questions:

• How is the number of cavallery deployed calculted, if the army could fill the first row completely with infantry? Damarow (talk) 16:31, 18 August 2013 (CEST)
• If there is not enough units to fill the front row, will artillery deployed in first line? Damarow (talk) 16:42, 18 August 2013 (CEST)
• How do mid-battle reinforcements work? Both from the original stack, and from reinforcing stacks. I try to have a decent number of artillery for the back row, but they always somehow manage to work their way up to the front row.

Combat mechanics

Does combat work like it did in EU3? The current text is not very clear. --Evil4Zerggin (talk) 21:46, 18 August 2013 (CEST)

Well, how did it work in EU3? Damarow (talk) 18:47, 24 August 2013 (CEST)

[1], e.g. the damage determination. --Evil4Zerggin (talk) 19:55, 25 August 2013 (CEST)

Does anybody know how flanking works? Does it not give a bonus to damage dealt? Is there anything else that makes cavalry superior to infantry after the starting tech?--Nimrond (talk) 20:15, 12 September 2013 (CEST)

Split article?

This article is getting kind of long---perhaps split units/mercs into another article? --Evil4Zerggin (talk) 22:15, 26 August 2013 (CEST)

It is only barely in the top 10 longest pages, so it isn't quite at the point where it needs to be split yet. Though it will probably need to be split in the future, so the real question is just what should eventually be split off. Splitting off the units might be a decent idea once it is a bit bigger, yeah. ~ Meneth (talk) 22:20, 26 August 2013 (CEST)

Well, 8 of the top 10 longest pages are almost entirely lists, generated via me via script :p (9 of the top 10 if you consider Buildings primarily a list as well.) I would say this page has the heaviest analysis material of any on the wiki. I think the natural split is one page for forcelimits, maintenance, mercenaries, and units, i.e. how you build an army; and one page for the combat mechanics, i.e. how you destroy an army, hopefully not your own. --Evil4Zerggin (talk) 06:17, 27 August 2013 (CEST)

I'd agree with Evil; the page is bloated as-is, and I get the feeling a wiki like this will be mainly used for looking up specific information during a game, rather than for long, studious reading of a wall of text and tables... there's a (poorly written) manual for that! :P General Baker (talk) 06:39, 27 August 2013 (CEST)

Feel free to split off the units bit to a land units page, then. For further splitting, consult this talk page first :) ~ Meneth (talk) 09:06, 27 August 2013 (CEST)

How about creating a page for all units (land and naval)? KaTiON (talk) 13:28, 27 August 2013 (CEST)

That'd take away most of the content from the naval warfare page though. I think that page should have some more content before anything is split off from it.

I'm not opposed to a proper units page for both types, but I don't think it is a good idea until the naval warfare page is larger. ~ Meneth (talk) 14:06, 27 August 2013 (CEST)

I think that Army and Navy are both large enough to warrant the creation of Land units and Naval units by now. --• General Baker (Talk | Contribs) • 13:16, 20 September 2013 (CEST)

The navy page would be pretty short with ships split off. If a few paragraphs more were written that wouldn't be split off I think it'd do. ~ Meneth (talk) 13:19, 20 September 2013 (CEST)

Army composition -> Army

Moving Land warfare#Army composition to Army would make sense to me. It talks more about long-term army structure than the tactics and strategy of warfare.--• General Baker (Talk | Contribs) • 13:17, 20 September 2013 (CEST)

Feel free. ~ Meneth (talk) 13:19, 20 September 2013 (CEST)

Terrain & climate

Somehow that section of the article just looks a bit unorganised now. Great job for adding the info, but should we move it off to another (or separate) article, or make it it's own section or something?--• General Baker (Talk | Contribs) • 11:38, 3 October 2013 (CEST)

Yeah, terrain needs some work. For one, supply limit is displayed in uncolonized provinces but I'm not sure whether it's actually having an effect. It doesn't seem to in colonized provinces at least. --Evil4Zerggin (talk) 09:02, 30 October 2013 (CET)

Speaking of Terrain, I noticed that plains gives a whopping +50% combat width in my game. I know because a blob got to field all its troops in the front row despite being only military tech 19, crushing my tightly created for my combat width army. Could anyone check and confirm?

I have looked at this page in 1.8. I would love to move this section to map instead of here since the modifiers in the files cover significantly more than combat effects. The combat width is already covered elsewhere on this well-written page and the effects on die result could easily be fitted to the appropriate section, making this section superfluous.--Radiatoren (talk) 05:41, 2 November 2014 (CET)

aggressive strategies

or the lack thereof in this article also missing any mentioning of the right timing when attacking,baiting,multiprovince defense strat by 1 army etc if this is regarded as FA its lacking... imo

Discipline Reducing Damage.

In the game it states that discipline reduces damage taken in combat in addition to an increase in damage dealt, but the formula on the page doesn't compute discipline into reducing casualties, the die result, or morale. Does discipline reduce damage or does it only modify on a ratio to the defending army's military tactics?

AFAIK, discipline has no effect on damage taken. ~ Meneth (talk) 08:29, 19 November 2013 (CET)

Discipline has no effect on damage taken. The in-game tooltip (and some dev statements!) are wrong. See forum:731981 for tests. --Evil4Zerggin (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2013 (CET)

Wealth of Nations Dev Diary #9 suggested discipline now counts defensively, for clarification, I PM'd multiple devs, lilheathen got back to me saying "I have just checked the code and discipline directly multiplies the military tactics level which in turn is used to reduce casualties and morale." So I updated both this page and the discipline page. An interesting side note, is that at first, when they did this, they reduced the discipline advisor to 2.5 discipline, which makes sense, since discipline is counted 4x, if you want the advisor to be 10% benefit, then 2.5 is the right number... But then community complained, so they put it back to 5%... the result being that the discipline advisor now gives a 20% boost to fighting.. Making him by far the best advisor.

it is still not in the article's formula though :/ 00:54, 3 February 2015 (CET)

Die roll - Casualties curve

I used MATLAB to analyse the Die roll - Casualties data, and found it follows the Logistic Curve. This is a famous curve. The S-curve Model of population growth is just the Logistic function.
We can get some useful conclusions according to properties of Logistic function. For example, we should use offensive unit when in technology disadvantage while use defensive unit when in technology advantage. Another conclusion is that benefits from improving the net roll are always decreasing as the roll increases.
--Qijiang (talk) 17:05, 22 November 2013 (CET)

This is excellent information. If you could spare a moment, adding this analysis + conclusions to Army#Composition would be very helpful.--• General Baker (Talk) • 21:37, 22 November 2013 (CET)

Strategy and tactics can improve

I feel that section of the article can be improved in other fields than those which already deals with (like guerrilla tactics, pincer movement strategies, defence in depth, etc.). --The Sebastokrator (talk) 06:42, 23 November 2013 (CET)

Fair enough. I'll take a crack at expanding the tactical aspect of the section over the next few days. --• General Baker (Talk) • 20:52, 23 November 2013 (CET)

P.S. is something like this something you'd imagine, or the more nitty-gritty of individual army maneuvering etc? Open question: does that content warrant inclusion in any of the warfare articles? --• General Baker (Talk) • 20:55, 23 November 2013 (CET)

Seige Phase length

There should be information added about what affects the siege phase length. The article only contains the default phase length, but there is no information about the modifiers for this length. The multipliers that make the siege length longer are fairly obvious, unfortunately there are several things that make the siege length shorted and I don't believe they are mentioned anywhere else on this wiki. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Largedarryl (Talk) 22:31, 4 February 2014 (CET)

Luck=+10%

True Defender of the failth=+25%

Local Fortification=+25%

Mountains=+25%

Hills or Highlands=+10% Kraal (talk) 09:43, 30 July 2015 (CEST)

Version

Does anyone know what info, if any, on this page is outdated? And if so, how outdated? I'm relatively sure there's no info on here that only applies to vanilla, but I can't be certain. ~ Meneth (talk) 14:23, 15 June 2014 (CEST)

looting

does looting increase local unrest? i mean logically it should. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.143.240.176 (Talk) 07:12, 24 November 2014 (CET)

I don't think it does, tried it out in a few test games and the unrest wasn't changed. All it does (as far as I know without looking into the code) is give a negative modifier to the province and give the attacker gold (not per month, just immediately) based on base tax of the orovince.-Galguibra

Is there a way to show looting/timeout in a message or pop up? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.143.240.176 (Talk) 03:16, 7 December 2014 (CET)

number of besieging units

does the number of units of cavalry+infantry, above the minimum needed for whatever garrison+fort level, matter? there's an old forum post on this topic but it's old therefore irrelevant — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.143.240.176 (Talk) 09:02, 27 November 2014 (CET)

Not in EU it doesn't, in other games like CKII I know it does, but so long as you have the minimum number for the fort level of a province, the siege speed won't change without modifiers (siege leader, artillery, etc). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Galguibra (Talk) 09:16, 27 November 2014 (CET)

defender&attacker bonus for nomads in plains

(also works on desert tiles) there's a red arrow down on the territory art (when attacking or green when defending) the tooltip says: "Defender receives +25% shock damage increase for nomads on plains in home territory." (green arrow would says "Attacker receives +25%..") it's weird that there's no info about this huge bonus on the wiki, except a non-informative mention that there's some sort of bonus on governments page. (from what i've seen in battle, it actually works). January 2015

siege ability

add info about what is it, what it affects and how much. (it can be increased with an offensive idea, policy, military tradition and it affects days required for 1 siege phase, maybe something else.. idk). 13:04, 25 January 2015 (CET)

Because it's really confusing how it says: "siege ability +%", in a tooltip of the circle with the number of days per phase, in the same list it has defender's defensive bonuses shown as additive, tactics difference is shown as subtractive. Shouldn't siege ability be subtractive there too? - ‎Gendalf (talk) 09:44, 29 January 2015 (CET)

Siege progress resetting

“

Progress in a siege will never decrease as long as attackers are continuously present; however, if all attackers leave, it will be instantly reset. — Quote author

”

But I haven't actually observed this to be the case. I have lifted sieges for a few days, then cancelled movement, and siege progress was intact. That is, the progress of a siege cycle will always be reset, but the phase progress modifier won't always be lost. Thrawcheld (talk) 04:27, 30 January 2015 (CET)

Siege progress is reset when province is left alone. Progress drops partly depending on the days the sieging army is moving. If not enough units are left for the siege the daily progress (timer) is reset while the siege progress stops. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.6.168.18 (Talk) 15:35, 29 July 2015 (CEST)

controllable retreat

Add info about the lowest % of max morale, when controllable retreat is still possible.19:00, 21 April 2015 (CEST)

Also the info on the time before retreat happens may no longer be 2 phases, but 12 days? 00:11, 8 May 2015 (CEST)

format of formulas

IMO it was much easier to follow previous longer formulas with "base casualties * attacking unit strength" format compared to newer ones Gendalf (talk) 10:43, 4 May 2015 (CEST)

Unit deployment diagrams

There seems to be a mismatch between the first diagram under "unit deployment" and the list of steps. Step 3 says "Deploy all artillery in the second row," but then the diagram shows the artillery in the first row. 73.167.80.17 23:06, 3 June 2015 (CEST)

Garrison size and minimum number of troops required to progress a siege

A Fortress building (the last one) with +25% garrison size bonus from quantity idea will require at least 30 troops to be able to progress a siege, which makes sense 8*3*1,25=30. However a castle in a capital of the same country will still require 9 troops instead of 3*3*1,25=11,25 or 11 full regiments. Is it a bug? Gendalf (talk) 03:44, 25 August 2015 (CEST)

Rounding

3*1.25= 3.75; round down to 3; 3*3=9; So 9 full regiments are needed.

take a Star fort also as example (not 6*3*1.25=22.5): 6*1.25= 7.5; round down to 7; 7*3=21 – Lillebror (talk) 08:46, 25 August 2015 (CEST)

Forced march

I added a section on forced march.219.88.161.215 01:07, 18 January 2016 (CET)

Clarification on retreat/stackwipe

In the text, it says: "Retreat cannot happen until both a fire and a shock phase have completed, so an army that has its morale reduced to 0 before that point will be destroyed. This destruction is known as a stackwipe."

Is that correct? I was under the impression that 12 days, aka 2 phases, must pass (not 6 days), before retreat is possible. So a stackwipe on day 11 is still possible. Can anybody clarify? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lateralus (Talk) 16:11, 7 March 2016‎ (CET)

Does the casualty formula contained a wrongly duplicate term?

This formula in section 4.4,

$C = C_{base}\cdot Us_{Atk} \cdot Um_{Atk} \cdot (1+ CA_{Atk})\cdot \frac{Ud_{Atk}}{Ut_{Def}} UP_{Atk}$

• Attacking unit strength ($Us_{Atk}$): If the attacking unit has below its maximum of 1000 men, damage will be reduced proportionally.
• ...
• Attacking unit Manpower Percentage ($UP_{Atk}$): The percentage of men alive in the regiment, e.g. if only 800 men are alive in the regiment, the casualties are scaled by 0.8

Are the two terms duplicate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.230.217.237 (Talk) 21:23, 5 September 2016‎ (CEST)

I think you are right. Someone added the factor this summer to the formula. I reverted the changes and removed your hints. – Lillebror (talk) 08:37, 6 September 2016 (CEST)

Thank you for the clarification.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.84.17.168 (Talk) 23:21, 6 September 2016‎ (CEST)

Age of revolution bonus +8 against fort artillery

Hi,

I would do it myself but since I haven't the game in English, besides being a new reader of this wiki and thus not sure of doing it rightly, I'm typing it in this page:

during age of revolution, one can upgrade the artillery bonus on forts to +8 max by adding cannons.

The formula seems to be in [bonus to get] x factor.

Factor being 1 for capital only, 2 for fort level 1 (castel), 3 for fort level 2 (dungeon?), 4 for fort level 3 (starshaped fort) and 5 for fort level 4 (citadel).

EG: for bonus 8 on a citadel capital, it's 5*8 = 40 cannons required. --AngelRay (talk) 08:40, 13 May 2017 (CEST)

I've expanded the table till +8 bonus. – Lillebror (talk) 16:01, 13 May 2017 (CEST)

Who is the attacker when opposing armies arrive on the same day?

Is there any way of predicting which of two opposing armies which arrive in the same province on the same day will be considered the attacker? I don't see this information included on this page, and couldn't find it during a five-minute search on the Paradox forums. If we need to investigate this practically (e.g. with multiplayer games where you make sure, repeatedly, that opposing player armies arrive on the same day), I speculate that either leader maneuver might be involved, or it could be entirely random. Either way, it would be useful to know. - AlphaMikeOmega (talk) 02:01, 14 September 2017 (CEST)

I recall somebody saying somewhere (probably forums) that they arrive in alphabetical order of country name. --Malkanto (talk) 10:07, 14 September 2017 (CEST)

Whilst there seems to be no online consensus, it looks like it goes by alphabetical order of tags, according to at least two Reddit pages. However, I am reluctant to add this to the main page until it is better verified. – AlphaMikeOmega (talk) 18:02, 14 September 2017 (CEST)

Splitting into multiple pages

In my opinion, this page mixes different concepts on different levels of abstraction. It has become too long and unstructured as a result, attempting to cover every single aspect of "land warfare" on a single run-on page. It should be shortened and point to more specific pages (Battles vs. Sieges, concrete combat vs abstract tips etc.). --Lateralus (talk) 13:57, 23 November 2017 (CET) Addendum (can be removed later): Am I supposed to put this issue under the relevant section ("Split article?"), or should it be on the bottom to preserve chronological order so current issues can easily be navigated to on the Talk pages?

This is the correct location. I removed the strategy guide during this update so have removed the split. If you think of better delimination of the page the please add it back in and give a detailed description. Thanks, Dauth (talk) 18:13, 16 December 2017 (CET)

Exile via ZoC rules

I have noticed that occasionally you can move an army into a province where you don't have military access, whereupon it gets exiled. I suspect this is because that province is the return province per the zone of control rules. ISTR it becomes un-exiled on the other side even if you don't control that land, but it needs checking to be sure. Hairy Dude (talk) 02:12, 3 July 2018 (CEST)

Fort's Garrison Size - Rigan Traditions.

The Table currently claims that Rigan Traditions give +25% Garrison Size but they should instead be in the table for +25% Garrison Growth Speed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.110.1.73 (talk) 17:13, 14 August 2019‎ CEST

Thanks for your report. – Lillebror (talk) 09:51, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Siege Ability modifiers table does not include all modifiers currently available.

I'm not too familiar with the mechanics of how this table is generated, but the table seems to be out of date. A few policies and ideas have since been added to the game which include siege modifiers.

• Espionage 2 - 10%
• Divine/Espionage - 20%
• Horde/Diplomatic - 10%

These can all be seen in game as of 1.33, and the idea groups and policies pages list these modifiers as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:c2:c300:2510::5f9e (talk) 17:47, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

the tables used to be manually generated, but I wrote a tool now to generate them automatically and updated them. --Grotaclas (talk) 22:48, 10 August 2022 (UTC)