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[Azkanan]

I let Ottomans and Muscovy grow up so I had a challenge, haha. The Oirat are my allies and we had a brilliant sandwich party with Muscovy a few decades ago.

Oirat were previously engaged  in an expensive war with Mongolia, and the rich nation of the Commonwealth sent them a couple of thousand to get them out of debt. They soon won that war, and with no debts and recovered war exhaustion, we put a collar on Muscovy.

Crimea was my earliest enemy, large, technological and powerful. When I finally expanded to this size, they had a strong alliance with the Ottomans. However, the Ottomans then attacked my vassal of Kandahar - this led to a war where Hungary, Siberia and Wallachia led the western assault. I held back, placed a few 5,000 men on the isolated three territories of the Crimean peninsula, and waited for the main army of the Ottoman Empire - larger still than the latest picture - to rear its head. 80,000 ottomans and a few 10,000 pieces appeared in Constantinople and headed for my vassals' armies capturing the Balkans. They engaged, all my vassals disengaged and set the balance to about 2:1 (in the Ottoman favour), then my glorious army chipped in when the War Exhaustion was low enough.

From there, it was wonderful. I think the French and British were involved in this too - didn't see too much activity on that front. The french held a northern coast territory that I stapled down early on, the British waged war in the Americas with the French, and all in all, the Brits handled 'em pretty well on their own. I rewarded the Brits with a giant slice of Florida/Louisiana, took that french territory, the Crimean Peninsula and some of the Ottoman Balkans for good measure (and a Mission Accomplished pat on the back).

Might record my next playthrough with screenshots and a thread.

Edit; Gonna load up and grab that world map photo. AFAIK, the Far East is in tiny pieces, everywhere. Oirat will gobble that shit up easily.

Spoiler: World Map (click to show/hide)

Edit; In hindsight, I'm terrible with American States. Red blob west of the Spanish Peninsula in America.

[Dakorma]

That's East Texas friend and mayhaps a small bit of Louisiana, it really is that large. At least if I am reading the map right. Florida is the donger shaped bit on the eastern edge of the US.

[Azkanan]

Bah. It's all North America to me.

Also, followed through with the Let's Play (click here). Playing as Ming. After the initial couple of posts, I've taken up a historical writer perspective of events.

[FritzPL]

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Oirat's gonna fuck you up. Like, I know they're your besties, but that happened to me with France and Great Britain multiple times. They will fuck you in the bumhole when you're bending over, looking for any available scraps of admin power to fix your stability from -3, an army to fight those 200k rebels and available diplomats to ease tensions with Western Europe.
Happened to me once.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Hordes are paper tigers. They look big and threatening and often blob all across Asia but that's only because they have nothing to keep them in check, Oirat especially due to them starting with godtier leader/generals and a decent tax base.

Once Russia comes knocking or they start to completely get outpaced by the Asian tech they collapse pretty easily. Often it only takes a brutal succession crisis and they'll collapse on their own. I haven't seen many AI hordes that have managed to reform outside of Crimea and the other hordes that border Europe in 1444.

Poland is stuck between most of the rising powers and have much bigger things to worry about then some toothless old wolf in the steppes.

[Micro102]

After an endless war with Hindustan as Ethiopia, am I more convinced then ever that the AI gets advantages in battle. Roughly equal army sizes, but I was being attacked on mountains so the battle width should negate that at least at the start. They had a -2 modifier for attacking on mountains and a +2 fire bonus from their general. They were tech level 16, while I was 19. We had the same moral. I had more tactics. My composition was awesome, didn't bother to check theirs. I had a discipline adviser and our discipline was the same. And yet even though I had higher tactics, terrain advantage, and better tech they just did hundreds more damage and lost morale more slowly. What is there left to check? This is why people keep saying the AI get's dice roll advantages.

[LordSlowpoke]

you might have been equal but the rng might've fucked you over

if you're this salty you may wanna just go and wreck the dice in the config files m8

[Micro102]

you might have been equal but the rng might've fucked you over

if you're this salty you may wanna just go and wreck the dice in the config files m8

It wasn't equal, I had a clear advantage, and I'd be willing to blame it on the RNG if I don't constantly see situations where higher dice rolls for me does not result in higher damage for me. If I roll an 8 and they roll a 4 with a -2, we shouldn't both be doing 300-400 damage. And it should not be the case where if the situation is reversed, they end up doing hundreds more damage to me. I have found no room for confirmation bias or random chance.

I'm stuck. No idea why they are doing more damage and no idea where to look.... Do bonuses from ideas translate into numbers on the battle screen, or are they hidden? Are Indian units just automatically better than African units and the modifiers are hidden? Do your armies get a negative modifier if they are taking attrition while being attacked?

[Descan]

They did *some* normalization of units so that equal tech level should result in equal combat ability, though it isn't perfect, western units are still pretty much the best, last I saw. Not sure how that translates when it's African versus Indian at disparate tech levels... And what ARE their ideas?

[LordSlowpoke]

hindustan keeps the ideas of its forming nation

combat ability bonuses may be a thing here

[WealthyRadish]

African tech 19, assuming you're using East African Musketeers (they look the best, using 1.8 numbers since 1.9 patchnotes don't show any change):
Inf: 2OF,2DF,2OS,2DS,2OM,3DM
Cav: 0OF,1DF,4OS,3DS,3OM,2DM
Art: 2OF,2DF,1OS,1DS,2OM,2DM

Indian tech 16:
Inf: 2OF,1DF,2OS,1DS,3OM,2DM
Cav: 2OF,0DF,2OS,3DS,3OM,2DM
Art: 2OF,2DF,0OS,1DS,2OM,1DM

You'll also get +1 Cav shock from mil tech 17, as well as some tactics and maneuver.

So the base African pip advantage is
Inf: 0,+1,0,+1,-1,+1
Cav: -2,+1,+3,+1,0,0
Art: 0,0,+1,0,0,+1

Most important things to note are that your cavalry are quite a bit better (offensive shock), your infantry are only slightly better, and the artillery advantage is probably negligible unless you're both filling the combat width with them.

On the whole your units are obviously better, but it wouldn't take much of a difference in idea bonuses to swing it in an Indian army's favor, especially since Ethiopia doesn't get any national idea bonuses whatsoever (Indian national idea groups tend to get them up the booty). If you aren't using the East African Musketeers, your outlook is probably worse (though the Central African Musketeers are also ok). This is all without taking into account full army composition, leader differences (the +2 fire advantage is still pretty useless at this point, especially with cavalry that have no offensive fire pips), and the arcane stuff with how maneuver affects battles in real time.

[Micro102]

They were 4 into defensive ideas and that was their only military idea group. I had full quantity ideas.

Now. Let's assume they had more cavalry than me. How would this effect composition and how battles are fought? Is it best to not only flank with calvary, but have it consist of a good chunk of the front line?

[Sheb]

It depends on pip, generally cavalry are better in shock phase and not as good in ranged phase. Overall, I'd say cavalry tends to be a tad better, since it means your flanking maneuver would be more effective but a) You get a malus if you have too much cavalry and b) cavalry is twice as expensive.

[chaoticag]

For whatever reason, it seems cavalry is more durable than infantry in my experience. Also, those Indian stats seem more focused on fire. That fire bonus from their general would do a number on your troops before the shock phase begins. Those two and their higher reliance on cavalry, which dies off slower than infantry, might be why you're losing despite equal number of troops.

[WealthyRadish]

I think there's a ledger page that'll show all of the exact shock/fire/morale values for your units. My understanding is that early on cavalry are basically better in every way than infantry, but over time infantry gain enough technology bonuses to be effective in their own right. The idea is that infantry have pitiful shock values compared to cavalry, which later gets made up as technology gives fire bonuses, but I think infantry at any period have more or comparable morale than cavalry.

The basic composition strategy for manpower/gold efficiency is to have more than a combat width worth of infantry, some cavalry to flank, and a full width of artillery. That's not to say a large cavalry army won't absolutely trash enemies early on, though, even with the support problems.

Also, typically cavalry suffer fewer casualties because they're never on defense if you're winning the battle (and even more so if you have more infantry). After they kill the troops on the edge (with their high offensive shock) they just flank increasingly inward (which has something to do with the maneuver stat). In close fights where you're outnumbered, cavalry will suffer a lot more casualties, and they're usually more defensively fragile than infantry.