Is the marine infantry worth it?

[Carlux]

Is it worth using the level 5 reform to activate the marine infantry? Or is another reform better?

Just in case it's relevant, I'm playing a fairly large and militaristic colonial empire.

 

[Dunner]

As usual, the answer is: “it depends”.

Marines are great if you’re constantly shuttling armies across the ocean where the attrition destroys regular troops. Outside of that, marines are situational, unless you’re playing a tag with buffs to marines, they’re generally inferior to standard infantry in combat. However, if you’re a country that’s often short on manpower with big reserves of sailors they can help plug holes in your army.

 

[Blust]

na, I've tried it and they're worse on many aspects : smaller manpower pool & worse fighting capabilities notably

 

[Carlux]

As usual, the answer is: “it depends”.

Marines are great if you’re constantly shuttling armies across the ocean where the attrition destroys regular troops. Outside of that, marines are situational, unless you’re playing a tag with buffs to marines, they’re generally inferior to standard infantry in combat. However, if you’re a country that’s often short on manpower with big reserves of sailors they can help plug holes in your army.

And what reform is the best at that level?

 

[st360]

If you want a straight answer; marines are just worse infantry that you get a a consolation prize for taking useless naval idea groups and reforms.

EU 4 is 97% about whose army can park itself on the enemy capital, not about ships and naval landings.

 

[honkajoki]

Having some marines in an army negates some of the malus from crossing rivers and amphibious landings. So if you end up having them, it may well be worth it to put one in each army.

 

[Dunner]

Having some marines in an army negates some of the malus from crossing rivers and amphibious landings. So if you end up having them, it may well be worth it to put one in each army.

Damn. 10+ years and still learning things. Great tip!

 

[cuendillar]

Marines are weak in combat, but marines on ships can travel in weeks what would take several months for a regular army. They are excellent at distracting AI armies by sieging down something unfortified, get back on the fleet and repeat to get their larger stacks to just waste time - and they are also a solid way to pick off enemy reinforcements in coastal tiles since they can often catch and wipe single regiments by landing before they have time to get away. Basically, they can be useful but are rather micro-intensive.

Their other use is to secure invasion footholds on islands. Land marines, siege down, sail into port with enough regulars to hold the position.

 

[KRBLACK]

The reform is rather bad imo. I use sustained discipline 99% of the time. It makes keeping high drill on your troops much more feasible and saves a decent number of manpower.

Marines are situationally very good tho.
The +10% shock received is bad, but not very much so
The main upside of marines is that they unlock an entire extra manpower pool.

And sailors number are easier to buff than manpower.
I did a Netherlands run using Maritime ideas. It unlocks the admiralty regime (-25% core cost in coast and +10% marines & sailors)
Maritime itself gives +75% (!!) sailors and dutch ideas give another +50%

After completing your first idea group this gives +110% national sailors modifier. After your 2nd group this goes up to +135%
Now just have a look at some coastal provinces. Usually the base amount of sailors is ~66-100% of the base manpower of a province.

If you just keep conquering only coastal provinces (which is cheaper with admiralty government), you will gather an insane sailor AND manpower pool.
And since all your forts will be coastal, this gives you a good advantage in siege racing as the -2 siege progress from blockade really helps delay your enemy.

Another 'hidden' effect of maritime is that it unlocks the 'enlist privateers' decision, which grants +75% embargo efficiency. This modifier is quite powerful if stacked. It can make your embargoes so strong that it reduces enemy trade power by 100%, effectively allowing you to capture the entire trade node.
But this only works in nodes with 1 or 2 strong nations (otherwise you need to implement dozens of embargoes tanking your trade efficiency)
I see the 75% embargo efficiency as the finisher for Maritime, that remains if I later drop the ideagroup.

Later on you will have access to naval hegemony (the weakest of the three perhaps, but the easiest to acquire)
The extra +200% sailors is just... good. Roughly 4x Quantity ideas (without the forcelimit and cost advantages ofc)

So yeah! Give Maritime a shot. At the very least it shakes things up a bit from the usual meta stuff.

 

[Kryndude]

They're great if you're playing pirate republic. Not so much if you're getting them from regular tier 5 reform.

 

[Dakka]

Depends on your target. I've found them invaluable on getting a foothold in India as a European nation and capturing Ceylon before the Indians can cross over to defend it.
Also very good for invading Ireland/Britain as they can often unload and siege a province before an enemy army can arrive to defend it. Then you can land normal troops from there.

Basically anything you need a foothold quickly to cut off a nation from a strait, Marines will do the job.

IIRC Britain and Netherlands both get reforms/missions that can nullify the penalty from being Marines, making them either on par or even better than normal troops and allowing you to tap into sailors as a second source of manpower.

 

[Blizzrd33]

If you plan on launching amphibious assaults on a late game Portugal or Spain whose empire is large and has many island provinces, they are going to save you manpower loss to attrition while sailing around the oceans.

OIherwise not worth it to spend too much time getting bonuses that apply to them.

 

[hayseed]

The I love marines because I don’t care about world conquest but try to build powerful trade empires and become and hold #1. To do that naval dominance is the key. Naval dominance means destroying enemy fleets (read A T Mahan). Small raider groups of Marines (2 regiments 2 transports 3 frigates). Can force enemy fleets out of unfortified provinces. If you lose two marines, so what. build 2 more.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you want a straight answer; marines are just worse infantry that you get a a consolation prize for taking useless naval idea groups and reforms.

EU 4 is 97% about whose army can park itself on the enemy capital, not about ships and naval landings.

It is fun to fast-unload troops, barrage the fort via ships w/o mil cost, and assault it down. It's not good enough to take a group just for that...too much action is inland.

If you have sailors and marine cap from NIs or w/e, you might as well use them for extra manpower, but it's hard to justify investing to get these in normal runs.

 

[Nostalgium]

It is fun to fast-unload troops, barrage the fort via ships w/o mil cost, and assault it down. It's not good enough to take a group just for that...too much action is inland.

This is basically my MO in Indonesia campaigns. Crack open forts with Marines, then use those as a fortified landing zone for my regular army who can now disembark via docking and get a defensive jungle modifier against whatever the enemy has sent to take it back. It's a fun and different way to play - but then again, Indonesia is one of the few locations in the game which feels significantly different in the way you approach early-game conquests overall.

 

[KlinkerFyren]

Well they can be. Ofc Netherlands, Britain, Spain and Portugal has already been mentioned, however I would also add Norway and Venice as nations very suited to Marines.

Norway into Scandinavia gets massive buffs to sailors and marines through their missions and awarded estate privileges to the point you can replace regular infantry entirely when combined with Naval and Maritime ideas. They also get the a buff cancelling the shock damage debuff on Marines and a privilege giving +5% discipline of ALL marines which ideally should be all your infantry.

Venice also gets a permanent +5% discipline buff to marines which is ideal since you'll you a lot of island shenanigans as you go east for that sweet spice.

 

[Cavalry]

Is it worth using the level 5 reform to activate the marine infantry? Or is another reform better?

Just in case it's relevant, I'm playing a fairly large and militaristic colonial empire.

As I recall, this will not give Marine Infantry, just expand the numbers of them, and you will need to active marine elsewhere. Marine infantry is very good just from manpower alone. I play South East Asisa coastal and the sailors is about 50% of land manpower. When you develop coastal province, the DIP magna give both money and sailors.

The standard army reforms choice is the 1st one that reduce reinforce cost , boost reinforce speed and supply...

The Drilling reform is probably for small country. I played poor country on rapid expansion and don't have time for drilling. If my troops rest then they do rebel suppression. And I don't have gold to recruit more troops.

By the way, in starting map manpower is the most lackluster so the preferred magna to develop province is MIL for manpower, not DIP for goods. Concentrated manpower can be boost +50% by cheap barrack while other resource is hard to boost. If we have already high manpower then this will save investment on soldier house or manpower Ideas.