Development and putting armies in the field

[talon54]

How many armies are people building on average?I am having a problem with keeping up with development and putting armies in the field?This is playing as britain.And how low do you keep yor military readiness during down times?

[marirosa]

Depends on country or playing style. With SWE i keep 2 armies and 5 corps; with SPA i can maintain 4 national armies with 8 corps and 1 army with 3 corps full of protectorate levies. With AUS, FRA or RUS i can have 6 armies with 3 corps each.

Readiness always at 100%

[Naomi]

ORIGINAL: talon54

How many armies are people building on average?I am having a problem with keeping up with development and putting armies in the field?This is playing as britain.And how low do you keep yor military readiness during down times?

I suggest 2 armies and 4 corps for the first 5 years (assuming no land conquests). Britain's home provinces are not gifted with a large population base, for which creating lots of corps/army counters makes little sense. I tend to wait for the arrival of its spring levies (or release militia divisions from garrision) to fill the existing counters, and make the first two corps counters as soon as possible.

[Naomi]

ORIGINAL: talon54

How many armies are people building on average?I am having a problem with keeping up with development and putting armies in the field?This is playing as britain.And how low do you keep yor military readiness during down times?

I like to scale a little back military readiness (90%), while not expecting or planning for any confrontation, land or naval. However, I suspected the militia divisions would turn into infantry ones faster if military readiness was set back further, as new recruits with usually higher morale (5.2 in my case) would come out of training to reinforce the divisions once military readiness was restored to full.

[ahauschild]

I ussuly have 3 Armys, each one corps. One stays at home, the other two ussualy making a beeline toward enemy capitols.

[mogami]

Hi, In the first year I only add around 30k to my starting force. However after 3 years I should have about doubled it. After 5 years I have the largest Army (against AI)

[EUBanana]

5 corps? christ.

How much textile production do you manage to get? I've never had more than 2 corps, as I never have any textiles...

How much do you guys develop your provinces? Maybe I'm doing that too much.

[marirosa]

I develop mostly roads, barracks and banks and put 40% of production into labor/developement. I build a corp every year and one army when i have 3 spare corps.

As play a bit agresive, i must keep always one army in home recruiting and another outside figthing. With nations with high feudal you need one extra army to reunite all the levies you colect year after year.

[EUBanana]

Maybe thats my problem, I'm developing factories, farms and banks usually. Factories are expensive. But then I always seem to be short of labour, even as Britain, which has some very high level factories already. [&:].

I've imploded my own economy more than once trying to extract lots of iron and textiles out of it as Britain. I find it hard to guess the economy as the readouts on resource income in the province development screen seem to be at best only the vaguest of guidelines as to how you are doing, so it's hard to judge how much you can allocate to war materiel without starving half the population...

...and then you have it on that fine knife edge of perfection and 10 militia show up and wreck it all...

[mogami]

Hi, I only play the 1792 scenario. If I am at peace I develop and import material so I can use my population to speed up building. Then I cut the imports and take over production.
If you cut 3 or 4 months off every development then after 2 years of the scenario you have 3 years worth of developments.
It is easy.
1. In every province at start build 1 best item.
2. In every province grow food up to where you get 1 wine. If you can't get 1 wine no matter how much you grow then just grow the population level
3. Make 1 spice and 1 lux
Now you have excess labor
1. If you have a development put all the excess labor on it
2. If you don't have a development put all the labor on the labor function. (Labor is never wasted and once you make it it saves till you use it)

Now I develop everything to level 5 (where applicable)
Banks before barracks but only banks or barracks till both level 5 (going back and forth keeping them equal in level)
Now in provinces where non farming item is best build factory first
Then farm then Art then Court
You will be importing Wine and maybe lux/spice/textiles but you can export food/horse/iron/wood try to keep what you export paying for what you import but as long as you are making more money then spending your all right.

Important when you break the import trade don't do it all at once because it cost -30 morale (I survived breaking a slew of them the same turn I lowered my feudal level but it got scary)

If you are in a war then of course you have to spend your resources building and maintaining the Army at the expense of full scale developments. But you should only need around 3 years before your Army is twice the size you began with.

[EUBanana]

You sure, Mogami? Which nation are you playing?

I think thats not a good plan with Britain. Britain has hardly any horses or wine (in fact I think it has zero horses) so you can't trade those away, and the only provinces rich in iron are Scotland, which has a very low population and so isn't very productive - artillery uses a lot of iron, so that needs to be hoarded carefully.
In addition it seems that Britain only barely has enough food to feed its population, so there are always massive food imports.

What I have do is have England itself to be on half luxuries and half labour, the northern England province on half textiles and half agriculture, and the rest split between either timber and iron and agriculture (timber in Ireland, iron in Scotland). First order of the day for developments is roads in Scotland and Wales, followed by farms (or you seem to starve) followed by banks. Theres a big barracks in England and a huge docks in Kent so I never really bother with either of those.

I don't think this is optimal mind, what I get out of the country seems to be far less than others judging by AARs. So what are the flaws in the above? [&:]

[Reiryc]

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

You sure, Mogami? Which nation are you playing?

I think thats not a good plan with Britain. Britain has hardly any horses or wine (in fact I think it has zero horses) so you can't trade those away, and the only provinces rich in iron are Scotland, which has a very low population and so isn't very productive - artillery uses a lot of iron, so that needs to be hoarded carefully.
In addition it seems that Britain only barely has enough food to feed its population, so there are always massive food imports.

What I have do is have England itself to be on half luxuries and half labour, the northern England province on half textiles and half agriculture, and the rest split between either timber and iron and agriculture (timber in Ireland, iron in Scotland). First order of the day for developments is roads in Scotland and Wales, followed by farms (or you seem to starve) followed by banks. Theres a big barracks in England and a huge docks in Kent so I never really bother with either of those.

I don't think this is optimal mind, what I get out of the country seems to be far less than others judging by AARs. So what are the flaws in the above? [&:]

Put less in wood and iron.... I usually put quite a bit into agriculture and labor, then I try to meet my needs for wine/spices etc and then I work on iron. Wood is usually my lowest since I rarely spend any of it. I usually only have 1 province on wood development.

Also, if you're running low on mojo (money) then make sure you have your economy somewhat sound before you send your troops into enemy territory as upkeep goes up considerably.

[mogami]

Hi, OK I will look at Britain and see if the plan works there. However right away I can see your not understanding the basic priciple.
I don't try to get max output at start. I am after fast build time for developments.
I import alot and I pay for it. Why worry about iron for guns 2 years before you build any guns? Hide behind your fleet and stay at home. Put the Army into garrison (it costs half the upkeep) Banks generate income and barracks allow for improved units, more types and faster build times.
Roads only increase population. Something you don't want to do before you've increased food production. So you reduce what you require (go into garrison) import a lot of what you require (to have labor for development) And raise your income. Britain has 50 colony at start? (thats 50 income everyturn before anything else)(and they have 4 merchant fleets)

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, OK I will look at Britain and see if the plan works there. However right away I can see your not understanding the basic priciple.
I don't try to get max output at start. I am after fast build time for developments.
I import alot and I pay for it. Why worry about iron for guns 2 years before you build any guns? Hide behind your fleet and stay at home. Put the Army into garrison (it costs half the upkeep) Banks generate income and barracks allow for improved units, more types and faster build times.
Roads only increase population. Something you don't want to do before you've increased food production. So you reduce what you require (go into garrison) import a lot of what you require (to have labor for development) And raise your income. Britain has 50 colony at start? (thats 50 income everyturn before anything else)(and they have 4 merchant fleets)

70 colonies, I think. Thats one thing Britain does have in abundance.
The merchants don't really pay all that much, as you a) don't get cash from your own ports, and Britain has the best ports, b) you are in competition with others, which means c) they require constant movement and attention to the map and even then often make only small amounts of cash. (I find Turkey is a good spot for undisturbed merchant trade.)


Well, I'm going for rapid development too. I think factories are just not the way to go. I've not seen anybody here suggesting they build factories so that must be where I'm going wrong. They cost iron and textiles to build, so I'm either building factories or building troops - but not both.

Didn't think of the garrison thing though, silly me.

[talon54]

In the 1805 scenario,Britain cannot sit on her assets[:)],or lack there of.If you do and things go well for France you will be drowning in French Glory before you can say, jolly good!And this is the medium difficulty.
Building only 1 of best province production won't work in that situation,as well as exporting all your iron and wood later?Where do you get the material to build your army?Unless your sticking with infantry only,the others take a few turns to develop in the first place.
The small British army you start out with has to do something right away or risk losing the whole enchilada.There is no time to build your army in the first goal of stopping Bony on his crusade.

[talon54]

Factories also give you more labor but I am not sure how much.

[mogami]

Hi, If your selecting the 1805 scenario your not interested in building. The war is already in full bloom. Too late to start worrying about production expansion programs. Time to get down to fighting. In all my tests I've said the results only apply to 1792 scenario.
In my opinion unless you are playing balanced scenarios the 1805 ones are strictly France against the world and these games should end when time expires, France surrenders or France defeats all the other players.

[Mynok]

I can confirm it works with some tweaking for Turkey (at least against the AI). Turkey has some unique issues as well, the primary one being developing banks is well nigh useless as the money levels generated in their provinces are so low it does not pay off after 1-2 levels except in a couple areas.

Turkey, OTOH, is blessed with numbers of highly productive provinces that generate high-demand items such as textiles, cotton and luxuries. The only thing Turkey is short of is wine, and all that's good for is increasing happiness. Turkey must build a balanced number of every item, plus a large quantity of extra in cotton, textiles and luxuries (which is easily done). Then she must trade *for* money rather than *with* money. At least with the AI, cotton and textiles can be easily turned into cash, and oftentimes the AI will trade lots of cash for food, too.

Granted, Turkey has a lot of waste due to feudalism, but most can be turned into money. I still think that the special textile waste calculations should be called the "Turkey rule", because without it, I could easily accumulate 70-80 textiles points per turn.

So with Turkey, I generally follow Mogami/Ralegh's process of making only the primary specialty of the province, plus food sometimes, and the rest go into development or labor (generally development for Turkey because labor returns suck until factories are built, and Turkey is way, way behind in getting barracks built). I also don't bother with the 1 spice and 1 luxury thing with Turkey, because they have several specialty provinces that generate oodles of these.

Turkey's draft is setup 21-40 size 10 with 20 months of training. I build a regular cavalry every turn I can initially, as the IrrCav are just Cossack chasers. I also let all the units forage (in decent areas) and then every quarter I put out a depot that will supply and reinforce all units. The draft replaces with 4.7 morale regulars, rapidly increasing my troops to regular units. All feudal levies will be 4.7 morale or better too, making battles against Austria and Russia much easier to survive and win. Turkey also needs artillery badly, so I try to build some of those early on too. The hinderance there is the barracks levels.

[EUBanana]

I think its good that the nations have their own idiosyncrasies. When I play Prussia I seem to be buried under iron and textiles, I wish I had that with Britain.

I think given the way an economy is quite fragile and can implode if you make bad decisions it means you got a fair bit to learn there about using each country to best effect.

Excellent. just what I've come to expect from Matrix. [:D]

[mogami]

Hi, Just went through Britain 1792. I see no reason it would not work there. The British have an advantage. They don't need much food.