How Cultures Fight

[HenszVance]

Just a quick review of how I believe Culturals / Government types fight

Europe/Feudal: Emphasis on Knights and Levies, with supplimentary MAA - especially Culture-specific MAA
Byzantine/Administrative: Emphasis on MAA, with supplimentary Knights. Levies are inherently less numerous than the size of kingdom would suggest. Knights are intentionally less numerous.
Middle Eastern/Clan: A mix of all types of units, with no "one" type standing out. Has decent levies, has good MAA, and no malus to Knight amount. Nothing stands out. however.
Northern Germanic/Tribal: Emphasis on Knights and MAA, but has little "padding" due to poor levy generation.

How I'm hoping the upcoming cultures/governments turn out:

Steppe/Nomadic: Emphasis on powerful levies and MAA. Knights are few, but pack a punch.
Chinese/Arch-Emperor: Emphasis on huge levy numbers and unique MAA - including some early gunpower units. Knights were not China's "thing" and ought to be rare.
Southeastern Asia/God Kings: Like Middle East, nothing in particular "stands out" but everything is strong: numbers, MAA, and Knights leave little to be desired; but nothing is focused upon.
Japanese/Admin-Feudal hybrid: Emphasis on Knights moreso than any other Culture or Government type. Levies are thin, but cheap and effective MAA helps provide "padding" against large numbers.

 

[GhostDanny]

My personal playstyle is a heavy, HEAVY focus on cultural specific MaA.
Where I will hybridise with strong cultures for more of those.
Knights are focused into accolades that boost the MaA, but otherwise mostly ignored so long they have a minimum of 12-16 prowess.

I actively avoid getting many levies, even as far as getting fewer levies.
Levies are just useless in the current state of the game.

 

[Muezzahan]

My personal playstyle is a heavy, HEAVY focus on cultural specific MaA.
Where I will hybridise with strong cultures for more of those.
Knights are focused into accolades that boost the MaA, but otherwise mostly ignored so long they have a minimum of 12-16 prowess.

I actively avoid getting many levies, even as far as getting fewer levies.
Levies are just useless in the current state of the game.

They can be used for sieging down castles while your MaA busy killing enemy armies.

 

[GhostDanny]

They can be used for sieging down castles while your MaA busy killing enemy armies.

The very small of levies I do have can do that too.
But I tend to just raise my MaA.
I like splitting up my MaA into two identical sets, each with a siege train.
E.g. in my Matilda games: 2x Picchieri (Best Spearmen), 2x Crossbows, 2x Varangians (by hybridising with the Norse in Iceland) and 2x Horse archers (by hybridising with Cuman in Crimea).
And ofcourse 2x best available siege.

Comes down to 10 units, the max number of MaA you can get these days.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

Title: how cultures fight.
OP: how governments fight.

I want CK3 to do away with MAA and add an "Army" government. That would be a very good counterbalance to large realms ... well, once opinion stacking is fixed, whenever that happens. Once done, however:

• Player attempts to hold realm together, relying on vassals. Options to increase vassal opinion are limited, money and energy for expansion consumed by struggles between vassals and struggles between vassal and liege;
• Player attempts to hold realm together, relying on professional armies (as represented by holders of Army government titles). They are expensive, might rebel against you, and good luck to your hand-picked 40 martial but Cruel and Greedy army commander b/c he gonna get hit by the mutiny train. Money and energy for expansion consumed by soldiers mutiny-ing against their commanders and commanders secure enough in their positions gunning for independence or worse.