Separated Arms Tactics?

[unmerged(372)]

Who here uses separated arms tactics, that is, your armies are usually of one type or another?

Do you use one type (infantry, say) exclusively? Do you have two different types of armies (cav armies, inf armies, arty armies) that do separate things and do not often fight in the same battle?

Do you find that separated armies or combined armies (inf+cav+arty in same army) work better?

 

[UnionBuster]

I have different balances of things, but never completely seperate.

Always heavy on the infantry. Depending on the terrain (don't even know if terrain is part of the game), my cavalry forces will be about half to a quarter the size of the infantry.

As for guns, everyone gets some, but I do concentrate some armies more heavily. The really large ones that I'll use for sieges.

An addendum, for colonial armies, due to the usual lack of strong enemy, I use very little cavalry. A few thousand infantry and a few guns for the extra punch.

 

[Carolus Rex]

Use of cavarly and infantry depends on which type of army you are fighting.

 

[unmerged(1648)]

Amassed cavalry is almost impossible to defeat. This usally lead to tactics of large vanguard cavalry, followed by a seige train consist of cannons and infantry. As long as you have a cavalry 2/3 size of the enemy(combined)army, you will always rout the enemy with little casualty. I find the computer usually have 1:1 ratio of infantry and cavalry. Always make sure you have cavalry superiority, then you can't lose.

 

[unmerged(199)]

I always fight with two types of armies: Battle Armies and Assault Armies.

Battle Armies:
Consist of up to 60% Cavalry with the rest being infantry only. I try to always keep them at at least 25% cavalry, which is usually not hard. Typical size are between 15,000 - 25,000 men; very rarely larger than this, as the army would then suffer too much from attrition.

I use these armies to attack enemy armies that have just assaulted any of my cities (i.e., meaning they are weak), to put down rebellions, and to defend my Assault Armies, if necesarry. Occasionally they are used on raids to try and kill of enemy cannons. An important point is that I NEVER use these armies for sieges if I can avoid it, and I ALWAYS withdraw them to home territory whenever possible (which is most of the time since these armies are usually only busy early in the war). Cavalry is far too expensive to waste on attrition.

Assault Armies:
Varies depending on the period. In the start, I usually go for armies of 8,000-12,000 infantry with a number of cannons depending on the fortress period; minimal = 40 cannon, small = 60 cannon, medium = 80 cannon, etc. I have found these sizes quite efficient at sieges and as long as they are kept around the size 15 mark, attrition is usually very low (or nonexistent) except during winter.

I usually tend to have 3 assault armies for each battle army in my forces - the idea of warfare is to win (i.e., take the other guys provinces) - not waste men and horses fighting his armies.

IMO, this is the best configuration for warfare. In a 1 on 1 fight, I can smash any AI nation in 8-16 months using such a configuration of armies (a typical strategy if all 4 armies are at full strength - besiege 2 provinces you want and their capital; when those 3 provinces fall - as they will relatively quickly - you then have 6 stars and can ask for those 2 provinces + 250d in the peace).

Pure Artillery Armies: Never create them. Never even recruit artillery alone. You always need infantry to take the attrition losses.

Pure Cavalry Armies: The same. Cavalry die far too readily in battle if there is no infantry with them, so pure cavalry armies are pure folly. Only place they make sense is if you need to send some fast reinforcements to a beleaguered army.

Pure Infantry Armies: Never use them for anything important on their own (except island garrisons), but I usually have hordes of 2000-5000 man regiments running around - reinforcements for all the siege armies in enemy territory.

Those are my 250d...

 

[BiB]

I tend to use the same strategy as, well, euhm, strategy and that works quite well. Soem country specific issues sometimes play, for example if ur Russia u might as well stack up on infantry and storm some fortresses but basically, that's it.

 

[unmerged(1813)]

One of the things that attracts me to any historically-based game is when historical tactics and techniques work in the game. As a rank beginner at the game but a pretty experienced tactician (20+ years historical miniatures, military historian and retired US Army) I discovered in my first game pretty much what was described above: field armies with 33 to 50% cavalry and very little artillery, seige armies with a heavy artillery train and lots of infantry. Playing Russia I keep a steady stream of 'fresh' 3000 - 10,000 man infantry forces building at home and marching to the seiges to keep up with attrition.
I will be very interested to see if the game reflects the actual changes in historical army composition for optimal efect of the late 17th century to mid-18th century. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1714) the usual army in western Europe was about 2 mounted squadrons to one infantry battalion, or about 1/3 cavalry to 2/3 infantry manpower. After linear tactics and close-order drill were perfected, in the Seven Year's War in mid-18th century it was no more than 10-20% cavalry, much heavier field artillery parks, and about 70 - 80% infantry.
Historically, cavalry melted away from attrition in colonial settings in the Americas and so was rarely used. If I ever get to a real Colonial situation (Russians in California by 1650, my Personal Mission in my current GC game) I'm going to stick to infantry armies with a gun or two at most for punch, and keep them small because, historically, the attrition should be pretty bad outside of Europe...

 

[unmerged(548)]

BB

For troops type relative strenght over time, open up Land.csv in your DB directory and take a look. I don't think you will be dissapointed =)

 

[unmerged(1548)]

I took a look at the 'Land.csv' file. And I was surprised to find that:

From level 13 (Musketeers) to level 28, infantry only improved 30% in fire and shock, but that artillery improved 400% in firepower and 300% in shock, wow!

I guess, you better make sure you're dragging your artillery with you in the later stages of the tech levels, its the one that improves dramatically after level 13.