The Ultimate Guide To Army Composition And Land Warfare In EU4

This is guide for everything land warfare.
Discord: / discord
Timestamps:
00:00 The basics
01:29 Generals
02:46 Wargoals
03:13 How do battles work
05:17 Stackwipes
05:43 Sieges
07:21 Generals and terrain in battles
09:14 Picking battles and consolidating
10:27 Early game army composition
11:34 Testing cavalry
12:34 Artillery
14:01 Late game army composition
16:04 Exceptions for cavalry
16:17 Modifiers
17:59 General tips
20:08 Conclusion

[@user-vv9jx6zi4h]

"You can't build whole arty army" Bosnians disagree with that statement

[@user-vv2kt7fy7l]

Artillerijjaa bosanac sam bekrijaaaa

[@hodajucidjedtv]

Aritiljeria!

[@piss57]

Stack wipes can happen more in the age of revolutions. A streamer found out that in a battle, if your army rolls a 9 in the last tick, it's a guaranteed stackwipe.

[@joshuasims5421]

Recently I fought a tough war to PU France, and finally learned the morale value of reinforcements. Send in only enough to fill your front lines at first, then quarter stacks after that at intervals, only when your morale is low. Troops in battle take morale damage, fresh troops bring a huge morale boost. I’d seen it on KZbin in multiplayer but only now understand the value for winning at a disadvantage. (If I’ve gotten anything wrong, let me know!)

[@CoolBonobo]

Yup, always better reinforcing than doomstacking. That's why it's best to build multiple stacks to combat width (so you can reinforce), and not one that exceeds it.

[@lukaswilhelm9290]

​@@CoolBonobo yup but most of the times i missed couple of days earlier and got stack wipe instead. If you lazy or your fingers are incompetent it's better to doomstacking.

[@hititmanify]

@@lukaswilhelm9290 cries in british when 150 k angry bengalos ate my 20 k stacks when i was high checking my us colony

[@biver1878]

I learned so much new stuff today and I‘m 1500 hours into the game. Thankyou sir… this video was amazing

[@napoleonbuonaparte8975]

2:26 High maneuver also decreases the attrition you receive in provinces with low supplies. Defensive ideas give you both attrition decrease and general maneuver so it's a good choice for countries near to China an Russia.

[@benjaminupchurch8551]

Hey man thank you so much for explaining this, I just got into trying to understand eu4 and this vid was SOOO much help thank you so much for your Indepth explanation and rock on brother.

[@mrlegend1161]

thank you sir ! that tutorial is very helpful and easy to understand

[@keoph4583]

4k hours in, it's time to watch some guides

[@Gamerpower]

Liked & Subbed very good guide learned a lot! Thanks

[@muzzammilshaikh4128]

STRAIGHT AND RIGHT TO THE POINT

[@pascholatti]

Thanks for the video, pretty helpful!

[@ArtemisShanks]

Love this guide. I’d love to see a video where you break down revolutionary mechanics :)

[@CoolBonobo]

They're quite simple actually, I think wiki explains it well enough.

[@tzardnickolasthelitromanov]

"You can't build a whole army out of artillery" *Angry Smolensk noises, in the background*

[@MrShaleur]

Best army comp guide out there

[@KKsKrissvs121]

Armies lead by Conquistadors can't use the automatic siege option as it is mutually exclusive with the exploring the new world option. The button for auto siege is still there but your conquistador army will just sit in the same province if you click it.

[@napoleonbuonaparte8975]

Also conquistadors just gain pips from army tradition up to 80 or so, so they will always be weaker than a good normal general.

[@ThePartyzanin]

​@@napoleonbuonaparte8975 also also conquistadors can't supress rebels

[@napoleonbuonaparte8975]

@@ThePartyzanin Yeah, true.

[@Diplomat9495]

Very very helpful thank you!

[@amilavxilmen5632]

Thanks, this seems helpful

[@MinedMaker]

I have an embarrassing amount of hours in this game and I still din't understand how combat worked until I watched this video. Thank you sir!

[@imperator9343]

I'm pretty sure the movement lock cancelling trick only works if you have a transport ship. The Ctrl+click mechanic tells your units to travel by transport ships (if available) to where you clicked on, which can be useful to save some micro when you want to transfer armies around regions that they would be able to walk through. Without any transport ships, you won't get the popup.

[@CoolBonobo]

True, thank you for the additional information. I think good reason to build at least one transport once you get a port. This trick is too good to miss.

[@harku123]

Nice you did it! I saw someone comment on an older video that you should do this, Idk if that's why you did it but nice to see you did

[@matthewhannigan1916]

1000 hours and I didn't know about control drag to select navy. I've been clicking on a random boat and shift+click+draging for almost 1000 hours...

[@carltonleboss]

Vey informative video

[@arminhergl5388]

Nice vid, best summary I have seen so far. One question, wasn't there previously a button to detach unnecessary units in a siege in order to save manpower, so to automatically match fort size and stack size?

[@CoolBonobo]

There is actually, it's d on the keyboard. The problem with it is that it detaches the minimum necessary amount of troops, so if some of them die because of attrition - the siege stops. You can use it, though it's good idea to put at least 1k troops more

[@arminhergl5388]

@@CoolBonobo thanks for making that clear 👍

[@Random-World-Eater]

Its also good to make a ruler a general if you have a better heir

[@o_O29866]

Bro...do this kind of tutorials for all the aspects of the game! Great job! Thank you!

[@CoolBonobo]

Thanks!

[@dasmeltorp4705]

What I heard " You need one thousand manpower and some buckets " xD

[@dsx7517]

Well, with some buckets they won't have to dig latrines. 🤣

[@Krom5072]

Supply limit is annoying late game. AI walks around in 200k doomstacks so you are incentivized to do the same if you want to force a decisive battle. This forces you to suffer attrition casualties and lose manpower for no good reason. They need to rework supply based on something closer to HOI4 system but obviously not that complex. But generally France should not have any problems whatsoever if it wants to park 500k troops outside of Paris. While sending a 50k contingent to somewhere in Central Asia should be problematic for them no matter the local supply limit.

[@yunusemremetin5123]

6:25 I thought artillery bonuses for sieges were like 1art=1 bonus, 4=2, 6=3, 8=4 and lastly 10artillery=5 bonus max. Ive never heard of multiply fort level with 5 to get maximum bonus, did i hear that right? is it really how siege bonus is calculated? if so.. damn... ive been doing 10 artillery max for every siege

[@CoolBonobo]

You can read about it on wiki, but if I understand it correctly: yes, it works like in the video. Your math works for level 2 forts (2*5=10), but not for more advanced ones.

[@ricardohoyos4418]

Since the battles changed in 1.35 if I have the exact combat width of cannons, and I put in reinforcements at a rate that prevents the cannons from going ahead... they end up leaving of the battle at some point, which is pretty bad. Because it happens? It can be avoided? Is it worth having cannons in reserve? I'm talking about great battles in multiplayer. Thanks in advance!

[@CoolBonobo]

No troops should leave the battle for no reason, at least on the paper. You can try putting in more infantry than cannons, maybe that will work (maybe some cannons get in the front row and get slaughtered).

[@mehdiaridhi203]

what if i stack cav cost reduction like say -45% is it worth it to have more cav ?

[@CoolBonobo]

Yes, the main drawback of cavalry is its cost. If it's relatively cheap, only the cavalry to infatry ratio is your limit.

[@Saberu_o_oppai_de_momu]

what you think bout vassalizing an anatolian minor and building troops in their land to get the anatolian best tech troops in the early game

[@CoolBonobo]

It's good, if you're willing to micro that much. Also you can vassalize horde (Crimea for example) as anatolian nation for nomad cavalry.

[@Saberu_o_oppai_de_momu]

@@CoolBonobo but crimea has nomad units anatolian tech could really level the advantage Ottobros have against everyone

[@CoolBonobo]

Nomad cavalry is the best in the early game (for a first few mil techs), so paired with anatolian infantry it should be good.

[@funnyspoon5120]

IS that how that works? If you build troops in a vassal they have that vassals military tech group, regardless of your own?

[@Saberu_o_oppai_de_momu]

@@funnyspoon5120 ye

[@ionian600]

I don't wanna make you upset but I would say I did not understand some parts of the video because of your harsh accent nevertheless video is good and helpful

[@1992zorro]

Very good video but it's hard to keep up with what you're saying as you speak so quickly and jump over words in your phrases. Thank you nevertheless very informative and I learned a lot

[@mohamedelhoudaigui4436]

bro this game is goddamn hard i just want to know why i lost the fight vs austria and i am here learning physics and history jesus christ ... i think its a good idea to figure out thinks on your own in eu4 , at least for me

[@CoolBonobo]

Basically have good military technology, fight defensively, and try to get good generals. In most cases it should be enough to win anything

[@user-vu8ck7tq4v]

Get mil tech disciple and moral have better general and unit pips if you are desperate ignore cav unless you get cav combat ability or artillery is unavailable even then don't get to much every time before battle shift consolidate if you are desperate try using terrain and ramparts and calling fort garrison to conserve manpower if you want to stackwipe stack quality modifiers and especially morale + morale damage and morale damage pips on units fir good trading in mp mostly stack discipline and manpower dev manpower take quantity quality offensive and something to get you an economy

[@dakota6050]

Have higher morale and discipline, higher troop count, dont fight on mountains, have a better general (fire and shock are the values you would want to win a battle), have same or better military tech, make sure youre upgrading your troops when it asks you to after unlocking a mil tech

[@MostlyEvilKittens]

"You can't build whole arty army" Smolensk Also disagree's with that statement.

[@johnnotrealname8168]

I have had this game for closing up to two years and because of Pride I have refused to watch a tutorial on War. I failed as you can tell.

[@JohhnyBasedDepartmentDab]

hoi4 is a much better game i am having such a hard time on eu4