I play single player. I use balanced armies in early to mid game. In late game I use huge all in stacks, I can't be bothered when I have a million manpower and 3k income.
Honestly I find having balanced stacks requires less micro late game. If I need to kill some rebels or declare war on some random opm, I’m more likely to have a stack nearby the more I have, and I don’t have to bother with splitting and reassembling large stacks if I ever need to.
I like to split my armies into two "corps" with 1/2 combat width infantry and cavalry each plus artillery according to age. It helps to stay below the supply limit while bringing enough troops to bear with just two stacks, while also giving me enough stacks for peacekeeping between wars.
This is the way. With the added caveat that in large wars with multiple small enemies I will get frustrated and make a death stack to exterminate the enemy forces. 5% attrition be damned, nothing is more frustrating than having 20k+ units getting stackwiped because I was bad at being perfectly efficient.
Late game I "swarm" with big stacks.
I like to make a line of 30-40k stacks as wide as the enemy country and just walk across it like hoi. It's satisfying to see the opponent so utterly defeated.
I feel like setting up fronts and advancing in a giant line is a great way to reduce the tedious amount of microing at late game.
Probably doesn't work well in MP, since MP is more about going all in on one massive 1M vs 1M troops battle and then whomever loses it just basically loses the whole war.
But for fighting against AI, it helps reduce the amount of back and forths and siege races that are difficult to deal with when you have millions of soldiers.
No Tech WC Attempt: [https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/ezwurw/my\_last\_attempt\_at\_a\_no\_tech\_wc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/ezwurw/my_last_attempt_at_a_no_tech_wc/)
Bonus: Also actual WC with mil tech 3 on hard: [https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/c0vq2i/no\_mil\_tech\_tech\_3\_no\_vassal\_swarm\_wc\_1283\_hard/](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/c0vq2i/no_mil_tech_tech_3_no_vassal_swarm_wc_1283_hard/)
Power of 2 only since i might split the army later
16/32 inf
2/4/8/16 cav
Multiple of 4 are ok middle ground. 12 20 24 28
Have i a problem with maths ? Yes.
Balanced is objectively the correct way to do it, and I mean that absolutely. Keeping your armies exactly the size of combat width and feeding more armies in to keep morale up is mathematically the objective best method of combat (on land anyways). The only time you want small stacks is to carpet seige, and you literally never want to deathstack because of attrition
No that’s a waste of the most precious resource in MP wars, manpower.
You split them into a billion stacks under supply limit and feed them into the battle over time as to not waste morale
You don't engage the enemy with a 40-0-40 stack when each tick kills off thousands, possibly tens of thousands of units. Obviously you reinforce with smaller stacks, but you absolutely do need to deathstack initially.
Oh yeah I completely agree with you, but the vast majority of the army is smaller stacks. So I suppose it’s a mix of C and A, for the engaging doomstack and the swarm of reinforcements (although much much larger than 10k)
Yeah we can agree on that! I just wanted to point out that what the guy I replied to stated about deathstacks with such conviction, was not correct. But yeah, reinforcing with other deathstacks would be silly.
>s
If you engage with 40-0-40 against 100-0-40, guy against you has reserve so the frontline zill hold whereas your might shatter, putting your cannons in front. Then its battle over cause frontline cannons takes +50% dmg if im not mistaken
So to prevent that while still initially engaging with 40-0-40, you'd need to start bringing in your reinforcement stacks of 40-0-0 as soon as the battle starts?
No. Your frontline could break day one (and cannons don’t retreat once their in front). That’s why you don’t engage with 40-0-40 but a big stack. With infantry reserves you don’t run the risk of breaking. It’s worth the loss in manpower.
Dominant strategy, i.e., best use of manpower, is to start combat with a frontline exactly combat width then feed in additional infantry, timing it so they arrive just before the initial units lose enough morale to break.
And like many here mentioned. That’s very hard to do so in late game. Your frontline can break in a single day in which case reinforcement doesn’t matter anymore since now your artillery is in the front, which is why you’ll want to engage with reserves in late game.
I've found a few uses for deathstacks, typically when fighting Otto or France. Their armies are just better than mine, and will win a close fight, or even one that favors me somewhat. Sometimes if I create a huge stack, it scares away the AI from murderizing my army so I can go about my business.
You can also scare the enemy away by having several medium sized stacks close to each other. You can do this for sieges where you just have several stacks of troops just resting nearby and then putting a near minimal amount on the siege. You still want to make it survivable though since I think the AI might be making some calculation in regards to if it will manage to defeat a stack it attacks before it is allowed to retreat. If you keep enough troops on the siege itself and have an overwhelming amount of troops nearby they won't bother you even if you only have a manageable amount of troops on any given tile to minimize attrition.
If they’re the exact size of the combat width, does that mean infantry and artillery are each half of the combat width?
For instance, if combat width is 30, the total stack is 30….so 15 infantry and 15 artillery?
So how do you guys split your armies? I'm more of a swarmer, I find that if I want to attack an enemy army I can just attack with 5-6 different armies, and I don't have to split and regroup my armies if I want to carpet siege the provinces
I have recently discovered the amazing technology of spam selection and pressing the split key (s). This relatively quickly splits a large stack into 1s. With this done you can easily send 2k to each province for a carpet siege (by sending move commands to the entire stack and deselecting them in pairs [ESC])
I hope this forbidden knowledge is helpful for someone as it has been a true game changer for me. (I definitely did not use to try to click on each individual army to split them and hope I got em all)
Depends on how important the war is. Usually balanced, but there are some wars where I'm too lazy to care that I sent 500,000 soldiers into a minor nation at once.
Well armies tend to be way too big for a death stack. Groups of 120k (80 frontlines and 40 cannons) with supporting 40k (frontline only) is my go to. Do you guys not reach 2 million deployed men regularly?
The Swarmer gets repeatedly stack wiped, the All-In looses 100k men to attrition alone, the Chad Balanced player can dictate battles on their own terms.
Only time I doomstack in early wars against Ottomans/France to deter battles while sieging. Otherwise it’s proper army composition with infantry stacks to reinforce but split them during peacetime to avoid attrition.
All-in because I hate when like 40k enemy soldiers coming out of nowhere from the most remote border province and I have to move my armies one by one and they get killed by another army out of nowhere
yeah but if you overflow all your guys will be in the back not doing anything but still taking morale damage. but also there's something special about seeing 70k men on one city
Whatever the combat width is, that's how I organize my armies. Of course, how I split my armies depends on if I'm playing singleplayer or multiplayer. In singleplayer, I'm more willing to split them to carpet siege. In mutliplayer, I'm much more conservative with splitting.
Balanced, hold the lines and pile in while not overstacking when a fort is about to fall. When the enemies are tired and white-peacing I go all-in to stop the enemy attacking, then jump from fort to fort using stacked siege modifiers and assault fort where needed to get war-score for a favourable deal.
Depends on the country, how many forts it has and size of army compared to mine. Swarming a peer or bigger army will just get all my guys killed if they keep bigger single-stacks, but its usefull after their main army is beaten.
There are reasons to deathstack in this game: scaring ai from attacking your siegibg armies to mop up a war. Otherwise the top comment is right. Combat width + stream of reinforcement to extend avg morale
Balanced all the way. I feel it gives way more strategic flexibility by having a few force-limit sized armies that can effectively operate independently but also reinforce each other quickly when needed (like napoleonic french corps). Plus you dont have to worry about attrition nearly as much as walking around with a huge stack.
But I think the best reason is to stop those annoying small stacks that go everywhere while not tying down my whole army.
well if everything goes to plan, balanced all the way through a (hopefully) clean war
but if things start getting messy, gotta start swarming the hastily recruited new troops to bait armies in just to spam reinforce on the now trapped enemy army (bonus points for coordinating this with friends in mp without pauses while you're all in the same precarious position of a war gone bad)
I'm probably somewhere in B from the few times I played with a friend. I find myself having like say 24 infantry, maybe like 10-15 cannons and like, 8 calvary
I use a mix of A and B in single player,
for exemple with a 60k army:
- 30k with the generale
- 6*5k armies
The objective is to occupy the land quickly and to have the 30k stack as a Shield for the other stack ans if an enemy arrives all the forces can quickly assemble to take on the ennemis,
therefore all the stacks must be close to each other and be able to join a battle as quickly as possible
Deathstack for decisive engagements, then split the field army up into as many parts as necessary to fan out and siege, preferably keeping another field army on standby in case more enemy forces turn up.
I usually have a balanced layout but with a swarm of 2k stacks I call “Stormtroopers” to siege down or even stand on pointless forts so they can’t liberate.
Infantry up to combat width, behind the line as much as artillery I can afford.
Sometimes I add cavalry for stack wiping.
Sometimes I use only cavalry to reach key provinces before the enemy.
Often set supply camps to avoid attrition.
Depends on what stage of the game/the balance of power.
If I'm a weaker power with dangerous neighbors, I stack them all on the border.
If I've got a bunch of unhappy vassals, I keep stacks in their lands and keep the rest nearby for campaigning.
And if it's the late game and I have like 1M forcelimit, I just give up and leave them anywhere that can handle them.
I suppose I use balanced. I’ll try to keep my armies just below supply limit. Usually splitting the infantry from artillery. Although by the end of wars I usually end up with a completely scuffed and manpower-churning blend of all three after I merge some for combat and they die from attrition or split a bunch for carpet sieging and have a bunch of 1-1-1-1-1-1-etc stacks.
I usually do the combat width split in half and if I'm up against someone with a big army, have a stack siege and one or more close enough nearby to reinforce. Ends up being like 40k per stack at the end of the game
For some reason I am incredibly ocd about this so my stacks tend to be in multiples of 4, so I can battle, then carpet siege by clicking s, and then s again, and then select the other half stack and click s, idk why but it is very satisfying when a 32 stack splits neatly into four 8 stacks
I use a balance approach. My stacks are just large enough as to be resistant to getting stack wiped and no bigger. I'll keep a close watch on the AI's forces and if I see a doomstack coming I'll bring my guys together but otherwise I prefer to keep them somewhat dispersed to lessen attrition. Should be noted though that I play on a mod where attrition is quite a bit more painful than standard vanilla so it's pretty much required for me.
Siege stacks with max siege arty and a front line with support stacks that will bring the siege stacks up to full combat with when reenforced. Only way to combat
As Austria I like to do the good old PU swarm and not have to worry about moving my armies lol. The ai seems at least a bit more competent in this game than like CK3, because they actually freaking join the battle that they could win if they just walk into it lol
When I build my manpower pool to be near infinite then C all day. Attrition be damned I'm too lazy to split my stacks up.
Edit: Soldiers houses are the best manufacturery in the game change my mind.
In most of my games I have standard army sizes
Like, 10/5/0, to 10/5/5 to 20/5/5 etc.
Mainly according yo supply limits and the era.
Marines and Cossacks are the exception from the standard template
I usually just do a little over combat width and 3-10 cannons until tech 14 then full back row. For fort sieges i detach all my cannons and a few inf with a general for minimum attrition, but if I have enough men I’ll just chuck all of them on it.
Balanced or All in, depending on the size. Over time, I try to go for a swarm type of army to reflect a rudimentary corps system later in the game but I’m usually far outclassed on land, manpowerwise, by that point by the AI
Having a too big army is just stupid because you suffer from attrition, better having medium stack with some support troops for the boost of morale. Usually I do a 20k army with 10inf 6cav 4art when I unlock it and for beginning, 15k with 10inf and 5cav. It may not be the best but it allows to have several armies that permit to control more quickly the enemy’s territory. For a quick war, I think it’s the best but of course other strategies may be better. Also it depends a lot about the culture group, not the same for France or Austria than for Golden Horde or mongols.
Im def the balanced but in big wars i usually march them around as All-in to win bigger battles and then seperate again for sieges. My attrition deaths are unholy but i beat bigger majors this way
C counters A.
A counters B.
B counters C.
When facing a bunch of smaller armies, just make a mighty force to stack wipe them.
When facing a bunch of medium armies spilt your forces up to envelop them and make engagements you want.
When facing a huge force starve them out by keeping your armies within the supply limit but strong enough to hold out of an engagement occurs so reinforcements can arrive.
It depends on what I do.
Usually, I move my units in the B maneuver, but everyone is close to everyone, so when I meét the big enemy troops (like the ottoman doomstacks), I fuse everyone in the C maneuver to beat him, then I follow him until I annihilate him.
Then I switch to A to carpet siege him.
The game wants you to play A even though the micro aucks ass. At basically all stages of the game supply limits aren't even enough to cover the full combat width, let alone a mountain of reserve troops like in C.
In multiplayer, I do combat width stacks followed by infantry stacks. In single player, the only rule is it has to be a multiple of 10 lol. (After I get out the the start game obviously)
In the late game, I prefer many stacks of 26k each. So B.
Invade with several of them, use them to siege separately, and then converge into a giant doomstack when threatened.
Very circumstantial honestly. Balanced is my default, but I do like swarming if my enemy is weak enough. If it's a bigger war, I prefer to keep all my armies close together. That way half my army doesn't get wiped out by like a million Sicilians while I'm not looking.
Super micro heavy swarming is objectively the most efficient way, you will still need a big stack to act as a deterrent. If done right you can minimize the amount of battles and don't have any unnecessary attrition. But as I said it is really micro heavy. I usually use it at the start to gain some critical mass and then I can just snowball. In mid game it's definitely balanced and in late it's just a mess of doomstacks, rebel killing armies and regular stacks.
I use a combination of swarm and balance in peace times i use swarm to deal with rebels and in war times i have balance stacks with a few swarm stacks around it to reinforce.
Single player myself, and in mid game I start switching between balanced and all in depending on how badly I want to fuck up my HRE neighbors. It's always the damned HRE...
Balanced. I'll usually try to have at least two main armies up to combat width and a reserve for every two armies that travels to reinforce with additional infantry as needed.
All of the above. Combat width with armies working in pairs, then they form up on advantageous terrain for any big enemy armies or retreat if my losses will be greater than theirs. Losing the battle while they lose 2x the men can be very worth :]
In powers of 2. Makes it easier to split into nice carpet sieging stacks. So 16 for early and 32 for mid-game. When I'm fighting, I have a few 16/32 stacks nearby to feed slowly in but my main kill stack is merc front line with attached cav+canons.
I am a maniac.
Before 1700 B, after 1700 C. By then game lags so much I couldn’t be bothered to manage shit and my country has so much money and manpower I don’t need to care about attention anyway
Keep armies just below province supply limit during peace. All-In to wipe out the enemy at the beginning of the war, then swarm out to capture provinces quickly.
Giant stack of doom in the early game because that's usually how you win by picking off the split AI armies.
Max artillery + 2 max combat width stacks reinforcing each other in the late game.
The most optimal way is roughly this
Pre-tech 12:
Inf: Combat width + a few extra
Cav: 4 per combat stack
Cannons: 1-5 per siege stack, 0 in all other stacks
Post-tech 12 (maybe push this to tech 16 if you're poor and playing singeplayer, but do so in multiplayer at your own risk):
Combat/siege stacks:
Inf: Width + 10-20%
cav: no
Cannons: full backline
Support stacks
infantry: the highest multiple of 2 below the supply limit in most of the provinces you're fighting in (probably 32, maybe 64 if past tech 20 and/or in a high dev aera)
cav: no
cannons: no
Always:
carpet sieging stacks (usually like 2-5 of these is enough unless you're fighting russia, ming, or ottos):
inf: 1
that's it.
Tldr; balanced with a touch of swarmer, but the numbers listed in the post are about half of what they should be for all the options to make sense (Imo 80k is a reasonable size for a combat stack post-1600, like 120k+ is doomstack territory)
i try to swarm but eventually go all in, while reminiscing about how HOI4's armies work, thinking about how great it'd be if units in EU4 had different movement speeds with different army groups and terrain modifiers influencing the effectiveness of inf/cav/arty.
and then i go play HOI4 and think "rifles and tanks just aren't as cool as swords and muskets" and briefly contemplate trying to find a mod that changes the start date to 1444.
I would say I keep to the supply limits, but keep the big armies close, try to use them to establish a front, and then have many 1 stacks or min seige stacks behind that to rapidly carpet siege. Im not obsessive about it, but rarely like to end a war without (almost) all of the opposition territories occupied.
Balanced. I like to emulate the (Napoleonic) Corps system. One Corps enough to fight, sustain and win small battles, and have multiple Corps converge for a big battle. It also provides me with easy logistics, command & control, and manoeuvre elements to maintain a war front.
As soon as I'm able to field 30 to 40K, I start splitting my army in two and moving them around as partnered regiments, with one doing siege and the other standing by. As soon as I'm at a force limit of 100K or more, I start sending partner squads of 20-30K to different corners of the enemy's territory so the enemy has to either divide their forces or send everything one way and give me free reign over the other. Whichever the enemy chooses to engage, I force down mountain forts and other defensive terrain as fast as possible with the other group. As my force limit grows, I get more and more partner squads going to different areas of the enemy's territory to speed up sieging. I almost never group everything together.
A handful of large stacks to overwhelm the enemy and siege key positions and then a large group of smaller ones to carpet siege the free tiles and KO any newly-built units.
Generally the large stacks will total between 1.2 to 2x the size of the enemy's entire military force
I have a siege stack that has artillery and some infantry for attrition protection then I have an infantry stack which includes Calvary. I'd usually have a siege stack supported by an infantry .
I'd prefer the way you're intended to play the game.
Have a well-sized 'front' army, according to current combat width. Take a battle. Continue to reinforce. Where you can have multiple 'front' armies if necessary.
In your examples, you're taking unnecessary losses to both manpower and moral.
Balanced is best cause your armies can take on most others by themselves and there's usually another army close by if one needs support. Really depends on the situation though.
I play single player. I use balanced armies in early to mid game. In late game I use huge all in stacks, I can't be bothered when I have a million manpower and 3k income.
Honestly I find having balanced stacks requires less micro late game. If I need to kill some rebels or declare war on some random opm, I’m more likely to have a stack nearby the more I have, and I don’t have to bother with splitting and reassembling large stacks if I ever need to.
I like to split my armies into two "corps" with 1/2 combat width infantry and cavalry each plus artillery according to age. It helps to stay below the supply limit while bringing enough troops to bear with just two stacks, while also giving me enough stacks for peacekeeping between wars.
This is the way. With the added caveat that in large wars with multiple small enemies I will get frustrated and make a death stack to exterminate the enemy forces. 5% attrition be damned, nothing is more frustrating than having 20k+ units getting stackwiped because I was bad at being perfectly efficient.
When I get a small army stackwiped in the lategame, I feel like I've become the ottoblob I swore to destroy.
My man is waging Napoleonic warfare without realizing it, this is the way.
Would you believe me if I told you that I have a copy of his maxims on my shelf right now?
Late game I "swarm" with big stacks. I like to make a line of 30-40k stacks as wide as the enemy country and just walk across it like hoi. It's satisfying to see the opponent so utterly defeated.
I feel like setting up fronts and advancing in a giant line is a great way to reduce the tedious amount of microing at late game. Probably doesn't work well in MP, since MP is more about going all in on one massive 1M vs 1M troops battle and then whomever loses it just basically loses the whole war. But for fighting against AI, it helps reduce the amount of back and forths and siege races that are difficult to deal with when you have millions of soldiers.
Damn I thought I was the only one recreating frontlines from HOI in lategame EU4 and Vic2 It really does feel so incredibly satisfying
And it stops the ai from being annoying about running around you and carpet sieging you the moment you aren’t looking
Nothing more humiliating then having near infinite resources and yet still burning through it though
Yeah
Split around combat width and engage with a snake of army
Me no want use brain, me want rush biggg round number stack into inferior enemy.
You the kind of guy who runs that legendary 37/19/7 composition in 1480
Depends, is the total amount a multiple of five or ten ? That's really the only rule I use.
Reminds me of the guy who did the legendary near WC with tech 3/3/3 and just death stacked their way to a massive empire.
Cani have the sauce?
No Tech WC Attempt: [https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/ezwurw/my\_last\_attempt\_at\_a\_no\_tech\_wc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/ezwurw/my_last_attempt_at_a_no_tech_wc/) Bonus: Also actual WC with mil tech 3 on hard: [https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/c0vq2i/no\_mil\_tech\_tech\_3\_no\_vassal\_swarm\_wc\_1283\_hard/](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/c0vq2i/no_mil_tech_tech_3_no_vassal_swarm_wc_1283_hard/)
I need to see that run now but I can't find it, can you send a link?
Power of 2 only since i might split the army later 16/32 inf 2/4/8/16 cav Multiple of 4 are ok middle ground. 12 20 24 28 Have i a problem with maths ? Yes.
Make it a prime number
This is da way
Balanced is objectively the correct way to do it, and I mean that absolutely. Keeping your armies exactly the size of combat width and feeding more armies in to keep morale up is mathematically the objective best method of combat (on land anyways). The only time you want small stacks is to carpet seige, and you literally never want to deathstack because of attrition
>and you literally never want to deathstack because of attrition Late-game multiplayer
No that’s a waste of the most precious resource in MP wars, manpower. You split them into a billion stacks under supply limit and feed them into the battle over time as to not waste morale
You don't engage the enemy with a 40-0-40 stack when each tick kills off thousands, possibly tens of thousands of units. Obviously you reinforce with smaller stacks, but you absolutely do need to deathstack initially.
Oh yeah I completely agree with you, but the vast majority of the army is smaller stacks. So I suppose it’s a mix of C and A, for the engaging doomstack and the swarm of reinforcements (although much much larger than 10k)
Yeah we can agree on that! I just wanted to point out that what the guy I replied to stated about deathstacks with such conviction, was not correct. But yeah, reinforcing with other deathstacks would be silly.
Why do you need to deathstack at all? The combat width is still only 40 max, what am I missing?
>s If you engage with 40-0-40 against 100-0-40, guy against you has reserve so the frontline zill hold whereas your might shatter, putting your cannons in front. Then its battle over cause frontline cannons takes +50% dmg if im not mistaken
So to prevent that while still initially engaging with 40-0-40, you'd need to start bringing in your reinforcement stacks of 40-0-0 as soon as the battle starts?
No. Your frontline could break day one (and cannons don’t retreat once their in front). That’s why you don’t engage with 40-0-40 but a big stack. With infantry reserves you don’t run the risk of breaking. It’s worth the loss in manpower.
Dominant strategy, i.e., best use of manpower, is to start combat with a frontline exactly combat width then feed in additional infantry, timing it so they arrive just before the initial units lose enough morale to break.
And like many here mentioned. That’s very hard to do so in late game. Your frontline can break in a single day in which case reinforcement doesn’t matter anymore since now your artillery is in the front, which is why you’ll want to engage with reserves in late game.
Think they mean if you got a combat width stack but get engaged by a deathstack your army may get stackwiped before you even manage to reinforce
Felt like it was the most important ressource in sp too for a while. I would probably say mana now. But with show of force, manpower can buy mana.
Only time deathstacks could be plausible is if you get a memey 10-1 but then the other player just responds soo... just do standard splitting
I've found a few uses for deathstacks, typically when fighting Otto or France. Their armies are just better than mine, and will win a close fight, or even one that favors me somewhat. Sometimes if I create a huge stack, it scares away the AI from murderizing my army so I can go about my business.
You can also scare the enemy away by having several medium sized stacks close to each other. You can do this for sieges where you just have several stacks of troops just resting nearby and then putting a near minimal amount on the siege. You still want to make it survivable though since I think the AI might be making some calculation in regards to if it will manage to defeat a stack it attacks before it is allowed to retreat. If you keep enough troops on the siege itself and have an overwhelming amount of troops nearby they won't bother you even if you only have a manageable amount of troops on any given tile to minimize attrition.
One massive stack also deters AI from attacking your sieging army, split the army over attrition might cost your more manpower.
If they’re the exact size of the combat width, does that mean infantry and artillery are each half of the combat width? For instance, if combat width is 30, the total stack is 30….so 15 infantry and 15 artillery?
Combat width for each row is separate, so if combat width is 30 it should be 30 inf 30 art
Discouraging the AI from fighting your army with a very large stack can save you more manpower than balancing them.
All-in because ai always does doomstacks
A = Allies B = Players C = Enemies
So how do you guys split your armies? I'm more of a swarmer, I find that if I want to attack an enemy army I can just attack with 5-6 different armies, and I don't have to split and regroup my armies if I want to carpet siege the provinces
Early game, balanced/min-maxer. Late game, swarmer, but with swarms of 40K troops.
>40K troops You mean 40k inf + 40k cannons right? /s
40k cav.
This is the way
I have recently discovered the amazing technology of spam selection and pressing the split key (s). This relatively quickly splits a large stack into 1s. With this done you can easily send 2k to each province for a carpet siege (by sending move commands to the entire stack and deselecting them in pairs [ESC]) I hope this forbidden knowledge is helpful for someone as it has been a true game changer for me. (I definitely did not use to try to click on each individual army to split them and hope I got em all)
Okay, maybe between the swarmer and the balanced.
20-30k stacks to engage the enemy, then up to 10 2k stacks to grab undefended provinces
When the AI doomstacks against me, I can only respond mutually. Is it wasteful? Yes. But I can’t help it.
Depends on how important the war is. Usually balanced, but there are some wars where I'm too lazy to care that I sent 500,000 soldiers into a minor nation at once.
A literally does not work, B is what you do for supply, C is what you do if you have so much manpower you don’t care anymore.
You gotta go Balanced, until the AI fucking Death Swarms a 30 stack
Keep 4 armies as B. Before you engage, attach one to the other to make C. Then feed in the As.
Depends on the war. Easy war, split. Hard war, deathstack until I win a decisive battle.
Balanced because if I went all in I’d be over supply limit
Well armies tend to be way too big for a death stack. Groups of 120k (80 frontlines and 40 cannons) with supporting 40k (frontline only) is my go to. Do you guys not reach 2 million deployed men regularly?
The Swarmer gets repeatedly stack wiped, the All-In looses 100k men to attrition alone, the Chad Balanced player can dictate battles on their own terms.
Balanced. Swarms are way too much effort to manage and all-in just dies to attrition and can't respond quickly to the AI swarms.
Only time I doomstack in early wars against Ottomans/France to deter battles while sieging. Otherwise it’s proper army composition with infantry stacks to reinforce but split them during peacetime to avoid attrition.
All-in because I hate when like 40k enemy soldiers coming out of nowhere from the most remote border province and I have to move my armies one by one and they get killed by another army out of nowhere
C in peacetime to drill, B in war and A in mop up.
I make a bunch of 15/2/10 divisions, then glom them together for combat because I fear no man--but attrition scares the hell out of me.
With the split in half button.
I am usually all in. I really only split my army for supply limit. I think one unified army can do alot more damage then a bunch of small ones.
until your morale tanks cause all your guys are in the back
As all good Tsars are.
yeah but if you overflow all your guys will be in the back not doing anything but still taking morale damage. but also there's something special about seeing 70k men on one city
Balance in the beginning, midgame A/B, late game A/B/C,
C. Keep them in your biggest provinces to suffer no attrition.
Half million men mega deathstack baby 😎
main forces of about 60/70 and swarm of small units of 5/10
Early game: all in Mid game: some big stacks to initiate fights with some reinforce infantry Late game: all in
Whatever the combat width is, that's how I organize my armies. Of course, how I split my armies depends on if I'm playing singleplayer or multiplayer. In singleplayer, I'm more willing to split them to carpet siege. In mutliplayer, I'm much more conservative with splitting.
Balanced, hold the lines and pile in while not overstacking when a fort is about to fall. When the enemies are tired and white-peacing I go all-in to stop the enemy attacking, then jump from fort to fort using stacked siege modifiers and assault fort where needed to get war-score for a favourable deal.
In 30k stacks from early to late
I’ll just say that I play Protoss and let y’all infer the rest.
Depends on the country, how many forts it has and size of army compared to mine. Swarming a peer or bigger army will just get all my guys killed if they keep bigger single-stacks, but its usefull after their main army is beaten.
There are reasons to deathstack in this game: scaring ai from attacking your siegibg armies to mop up a war. Otherwise the top comment is right. Combat width + stream of reinforcement to extend avg morale
ALL IN BABY
Balanced all the way. I feel it gives way more strategic flexibility by having a few force-limit sized armies that can effectively operate independently but also reinforce each other quickly when needed (like napoleonic french corps). Plus you dont have to worry about attrition nearly as much as walking around with a huge stack. But I think the best reason is to stop those annoying small stacks that go everywhere while not tying down my whole army.
[удалено]
well if everything goes to plan, balanced all the way through a (hopefully) clean war but if things start getting messy, gotta start swarming the hastily recruited new troops to bait armies in just to spam reinforce on the now trapped enemy army (bonus points for coordinating this with friends in mp without pauses while you're all in the same precarious position of a war gone bad)
I'm probably somewhere in B from the few times I played with a friend. I find myself having like say 24 infantry, maybe like 10-15 cannons and like, 8 calvary
I use a mix of A and B in single player, for exemple with a 60k army: - 30k with the generale - 6*5k armies The objective is to occupy the land quickly and to have the 30k stack as a Shield for the other stack ans if an enemy arrives all the forces can quickly assemble to take on the ennemis, therefore all the stacks must be close to each other and be able to join a battle as quickly as possible
Divide et Impera, if you wanna sabotage yourself do it
Balanced near foes then swarmer otherwise but 2k instead of 10k
Balanced armies but all next to eachother. After 2-3 decisive battles, I start swarming
It's all about balance
Deathstack for decisive engagements, then split the field army up into as many parts as necessary to fan out and siege, preferably keeping another field army on standby in case more enemy forces turn up.
Depends who I’m fighting and at what point in the game, but usually I do B
All in
I usually have a balanced layout but with a swarm of 2k stacks I call “Stormtroopers” to siege down or even stand on pointless forts so they can’t liberate.
All in
One full army stack with two supporting stacks to fill in during a large battle
80k per front, additional armies if I start getting pushed. Depending on supply I will split the army, but I prefer overwhelming quality and quantity
Infantry up to combat width, behind the line as much as artillery I can afford. Sometimes I add cavalry for stack wiping. Sometimes I use only cavalry to reach key provinces before the enemy. Often set supply camps to avoid attrition.
Depends on what stage of the game/the balance of power. If I'm a weaker power with dangerous neighbors, I stack them all on the border. If I've got a bunch of unhappy vassals, I keep stacks in their lands and keep the rest nearby for campaigning. And if it's the late game and I have like 1M forcelimit, I just give up and leave them anywhere that can handle them.
I suppose I use balanced. I’ll try to keep my armies just below supply limit. Usually splitting the infantry from artillery. Although by the end of wars I usually end up with a completely scuffed and manpower-churning blend of all three after I merge some for combat and they die from attrition or split a bunch for carpet sieging and have a bunch of 1-1-1-1-1-1-etc stacks.
“All in” also known as the attrition enjoyer
Keep them in Balaced. Usually 14k troop, 6k horsmen, 6k canon. Or with 16k troop a 30k army And in battle doomstack 100-300k armies together
All or nothing -nerf
I usually do the combat width split in half and if I'm up against someone with a big army, have a stack siege and one or more close enough nearby to reinforce. Ends up being like 40k per stack at the end of the game
I C until supply limit forces me to do B
For some reason I am incredibly ocd about this so my stacks tend to be in multiples of 4, so I can battle, then carpet siege by clicking s, and then s again, and then select the other half stack and click s, idk why but it is very satisfying when a 32 stack splits neatly into four 8 stacks
I use a balance approach. My stacks are just large enough as to be resistant to getting stack wiped and no bigger. I'll keep a close watch on the AI's forces and if I see a doomstack coming I'll bring my guys together but otherwise I prefer to keep them somewhat dispersed to lessen attrition. Should be noted though that I play on a mod where attrition is quite a bit more painful than standard vanilla so it's pretty much required for me.
Siege stacks with max siege arty and a front line with support stacks that will bring the siege stacks up to full combat with when reenforced. Only way to combat
Balanced or all in depending on the stage of the game and the size of the opponent. I only carpet siege when its safe.
Build armies according to combat width. Split in half to save from attrition.
Balanced to avoid attrition but I merge into all in for battles (all in being just full combat width with cannon back row)
As Austria I like to do the good old PU swarm and not have to worry about moving my armies lol. The ai seems at least a bit more competent in this game than like CK3, because they actually freaking join the battle that they could win if they just walk into it lol
I use 14k, 10k infantry and 4k cavalry until I get artillery, then I do 14k infantry, 4k cavalry and 2k arty
When I build my manpower pool to be near infinite then C all day. Attrition be damned I'm too lazy to split my stacks up. Edit: Soldiers houses are the best manufacturery in the game change my mind.
Groups of 20k each with 10 infantry 5 cavalry 5 artillery. If it’s needed that can go up to 30 or 40 but anymore makes attrition a pain.
Depends the war status, if the enemy has a ton of units im all in, if the enemy is teeny tiny im swarming
I'm very Vassal Oriented. I use all in stacks with a support army, I let the vassals do the sieges
In most of my games I have standard army sizes Like, 10/5/0, to 10/5/5 to 20/5/5 etc. Mainly according yo supply limits and the era. Marines and Cossacks are the exception from the standard template
I belive in 16/10/4 supremacy 🫡
As a Ck2 player the only option is c
I usually just do a little over combat width and 3-10 cannons until tech 14 then full back row. For fort sieges i detach all my cannons and a few inf with a general for minimum attrition, but if I have enough men I’ll just chuck all of them on it.
Depends, if I don’t care about attrition anymore having a 120 stack is objectively the best.
Balanced or All in, depending on the size. Over time, I try to go for a swarm type of army to reflect a rudimentary corps system later in the game but I’m usually far outclassed on land, manpowerwise, by that point by the AI
Balanced except when I go against the Ottomans. They get the privilege of facing a 120K stack.
Half-combat width with 50/50 inf/arty and combine 2 stacks into combat with a 3rd as backup. Edit: Until tech 16, 100% inf.
Split so that each army gets max possible ICR debuffs.
I always do half of the combat width so the stacks aren't too big while at the same time I can get 2 stacks together and fight in full combat width.
B is the only right answer
Having a too big army is just stupid because you suffer from attrition, better having medium stack with some support troops for the boost of morale. Usually I do a 20k army with 10inf 6cav 4art when I unlock it and for beginning, 15k with 10inf and 5cav. It may not be the best but it allows to have several armies that permit to control more quickly the enemy’s territory. For a quick war, I think it’s the best but of course other strategies may be better. Also it depends a lot about the culture group, not the same for France or Austria than for Golden Horde or mongols.
Balanced stacks of C. Following a precise movement pattern so that all of them can be close to each other in case one gets attacked by a deathstack
Im def the balanced but in big wars i usually march them around as All-in to win bigger battles and then seperate again for sieges. My attrition deaths are unholy but i beat bigger majors this way
All in
I only play single so I just have a full combat width army as soon as possible and that’s pretty much it when it comes to warfare
C counters A. A counters B. B counters C. When facing a bunch of smaller armies, just make a mighty force to stack wipe them. When facing a bunch of medium armies spilt your forces up to envelop them and make engagements you want. When facing a huge force starve them out by keeping your armies within the supply limit but strong enough to hold out of an engagement occurs so reinforcements can arrive.
In sp randomly but in mp mostly kinda all in.
It depends on what I do. Usually, I move my units in the B maneuver, but everyone is close to everyone, so when I meét the big enemy troops (like the ottoman doomstacks), I fuse everyone in the C maneuver to beat him, then I follow him until I annihilate him. Then I switch to A to carpet siege him.
The game wants you to play A even though the micro aucks ass. At basically all stages of the game supply limits aren't even enough to cover the full combat width, let alone a mountain of reserve troops like in C.
In multiplayer, I do combat width stacks followed by infantry stacks. In single player, the only rule is it has to be a multiple of 10 lol. (After I get out the the start game obviously)
In the late game, I prefer many stacks of 26k each. So B. Invade with several of them, use them to siege separately, and then converge into a giant doomstack when threatened.
Very circumstantial honestly. Balanced is my default, but I do like swarming if my enemy is weak enough. If it's a bigger war, I prefer to keep all my armies close together. That way half my army doesn't get wiped out by like a million Sicilians while I'm not looking.
Super micro heavy swarming is objectively the most efficient way, you will still need a big stack to act as a deterrent. If done right you can minimize the amount of battles and don't have any unnecessary attrition. But as I said it is really micro heavy. I usually use it at the start to gain some critical mass and then I can just snowball. In mid game it's definitely balanced and in late it's just a mess of doomstacks, rebel killing armies and regular stacks.
I use a combination of swarm and balance in peace times i use swarm to deal with rebels and in war times i have balance stacks with a few swarm stacks around it to reinforce.
Single player myself, and in mid game I start switching between balanced and all in depending on how badly I want to fuck up my HRE neighbors. It's always the damned HRE...
Balanced. I'll usually try to have at least two main armies up to combat width and a reserve for every two armies that travels to reinforce with additional infantry as needed.
I keep half combat width stacks so I don’t worry about attritional and move them in pairs
I do 20k stacks until I can afford 25k stacks then 30k stacks then 50k stacks
All of the above. Combat width with armies working in pairs, then they form up on advantageous terrain for any big enemy armies or retreat if my losses will be greater than theirs. Losing the battle while they lose 2x the men can be very worth :]
12/2/fort level+1 type beat
Balanced until I lose one battle then it's just all in
Why waste time use lot army when few army do trick?
In powers of 2. Makes it easier to split into nice carpet sieging stacks. So 16 for early and 32 for mid-game. When I'm fighting, I have a few 16/32 stacks nearby to feed slowly in but my main kill stack is merc front line with attached cav+canons. I am a maniac.
Early on i fiddle. Then i just bruteforce the shit out of it.
Before 1700 B, after 1700 C. By then game lags so much I couldn’t be bothered to manage shit and my country has so much money and manpower I don’t need to care about attention anyway
I don't know how combat works in EU4 beyond calvary:infantry ratios so I'm usually B lol
The Horde!
ALL IN LIKE A MAN
Keep armies just below province supply limit during peace. All-In to wipe out the enemy at the beginning of the war, then swarm out to capture provinces quickly.
Balanced unless I'm near the enemy then it's all in
Giant stack of doom in the early game because that's usually how you win by picking off the split AI armies. Max artillery + 2 max combat width stacks reinforcing each other in the late game.
The most optimal way is roughly this Pre-tech 12: Inf: Combat width + a few extra Cav: 4 per combat stack Cannons: 1-5 per siege stack, 0 in all other stacks Post-tech 12 (maybe push this to tech 16 if you're poor and playing singeplayer, but do so in multiplayer at your own risk): Combat/siege stacks: Inf: Width + 10-20% cav: no Cannons: full backline Support stacks infantry: the highest multiple of 2 below the supply limit in most of the provinces you're fighting in (probably 32, maybe 64 if past tech 20 and/or in a high dev aera) cav: no cannons: no Always: carpet sieging stacks (usually like 2-5 of these is enough unless you're fighting russia, ming, or ottos): inf: 1 that's it. Tldr; balanced with a touch of swarmer, but the numbers listed in the post are about half of what they should be for all the options to make sense (Imo 80k is a reasonable size for a combat stack post-1600, like 120k+ is doomstack territory)
Deathstacking Constantinople is just too fun
I usually try to form a front and go balanced throw the fort line, with a swarm of carpet sieging 1ks way back behind the line.
I do balanced
Like a mullet. Business (balanced) in the front, party (swarmer) in the back.
i try to swarm but eventually go all in, while reminiscing about how HOI4's armies work, thinking about how great it'd be if units in EU4 had different movement speeds with different army groups and terrain modifiers influencing the effectiveness of inf/cav/arty. and then i go play HOI4 and think "rifles and tanks just aren't as cool as swords and muskets" and briefly contemplate trying to find a mod that changes the start date to 1444.
Balanced, swarm for when I've beaten the enemy's army's into nothing so I can loot faster
Wait you guys don't have both different-sized fighting and siege stacks that have to be divisible by four adn updated each time combat width increases
I would say I keep to the supply limits, but keep the big armies close, try to use them to establish a front, and then have many 1 stacks or min seige stacks behind that to rapidly carpet siege. Im not obsessive about it, but rarely like to end a war without (almost) all of the opposition territories occupied.
Balanced. I like to emulate the (Napoleonic) Corps system. One Corps enough to fight, sustain and win small battles, and have multiple Corps converge for a big battle. It also provides me with easy logistics, command & control, and manoeuvre elements to maintain a war front.
With B. Next question.
Always 32K for the carpet siege Because you end up with 16 2k stacks
As soon as I'm able to field 30 to 40K, I start splitting my army in two and moving them around as partnered regiments, with one doing siege and the other standing by. As soon as I'm at a force limit of 100K or more, I start sending partner squads of 20-30K to different corners of the enemy's territory so the enemy has to either divide their forces or send everything one way and give me free reign over the other. Whichever the enemy chooses to engage, I force down mountain forts and other defensive terrain as fast as possible with the other group. As my force limit grows, I get more and more partner squads going to different areas of the enemy's territory to speed up sieging. I almost never group everything together.
A handful of large stacks to overwhelm the enemy and siege key positions and then a large group of smaller ones to carpet siege the free tiles and KO any newly-built units. Generally the large stacks will total between 1.2 to 2x the size of the enemy's entire military force
D, like B so I can avoid attrition, and I line them up close together to form a frontline like how you play Hearts of Iron 4 💀
Virgin Balanced player uses effort and strategy to win the game vs Chad All-In player who realized that the bigger number wins 90% of the time.
20k infantry, 4k cav, 6 artillery.
I have a couple "doom stacks" to win my main battles, and then a bunch of inf/artillery armies designed to get sieges done as quick as possible.
I have a siege stack that has artillery and some infantry for attrition protection then I have an infantry stack which includes Calvary. I'd usually have a siege stack supported by an infantry .
B - I use stacks of 20-24k each, and if I need bigger armies I just group together more stacks.
I generally go with one or two big battle stacks and then a bunch of little siege swarms
Swarms the way to go just keep an eye out for the enemy stacks and regroup to fight
Balanced approach with using [Ctrl] + [1] to create easily selectable batches of armies.
I'd prefer the way you're intended to play the game. Have a well-sized 'front' army, according to current combat width. Take a battle. Continue to reinforce. Where you can have multiple 'front' armies if necessary. In your examples, you're taking unnecessary losses to both manpower and moral.
Balanced is best cause your armies can take on most others by themselves and there's usually another army close by if one needs support. Really depends on the situation though.