Military
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Overview
The Domestic Military interface screen is found on the fourth tab of the Domestic Management interface. This screen shows the player's preferred unit types and the number of regiments the player has. At the bottom of the window is an overview of land and naval force size, force limits, and morale. The sliders at the bottom can be used to set maintenance.
Preferred Units
The military system is based on a model of "preferred units" for land units. Core provinces will produce preferred units. All the units already built will be automatically changed to the new preferred one, except for mercenary units . When the preferred unit type is changed, all units of that type have their morale set to zero. Technology determines what units are available to choose from. Units of similar technology levels have different strengths and weaknesses: some favor offensive or defensives, others favor shock or fire damage. The game has three basic unit types:
Regiments
The regiment is the basic land military unit that consists of 1,000 soldiers. Each regiment is classified as either infantry, cavalry or artillery. There are two classifications of regiments which can be recruited through the course of the game, mercenaries and levies.
Levies
Levies are troops which are purchased (e.g. trained over a period of time) and then join your armed forces. Infantry tend to take half as long to recruit as either cavalry or artillery. Each regiment recruited depletes the manpower pool by 1000 for a price adjusted by inflation and events.
Mercenaries
Mercenaries may be bought from the recruit management interface. If mercenaries are available they will be displayed at the bottom portion of the window. Mercenary availability will differ with each geographic area and each area has a pool of available mercenaries that may be purchased by any country. If no mercenaries are available in the province selected, other nations beat you to buy the mercenaries available from that pool and you will need to wait for it slowly replenish before you can purchase your own. While a mercenary unit will immediately appear in the province it is purchased in, it will still start with a low morale rating and will need time to increase it before it can function at full capability.
Mercenary units have some distinct disadvantages in comparison to regularly trained units. Mercanries will contribute only 1/3 of the amount of military tradition that a regular unit would after a battle, will not upgrade when you change your preferred unit type, are twice as much to maintain and will immediately disband should you go bankrupt. Mercenaries are distinguished from regular troops by their naming scheme. Levies are named after the nation's provinces (Picardie's 1st, Cadiz's 3rd) while mercenaries are named after their captain.
Maintenance
Any nation with a standing army or navy will pay maintenance upkeep, a cost deducted monthly from annual income. Maintenance can be set anywhere from 100% down to 50%. If maintenance is set to 50%, no reinforcements will be sent. Maintenance set at 100% provides a morale boost, while unit morale will be significantly reduced when maintenance is set at 50%. Any nation that exceeds its force limit is penalized with a higher maintenance cost.
Reinforcements
When regiments suffer casualties and their number falls below 1000, they will have to be reinforced. This is done automatically by draining men from the national manpower pool. However, the amount of reinforcements received is controlled by the maintenance slider, which at maximum gives regiments up to 50 new soldiers every month, and at minimum gives you none.
Force Limit
The force limit of a country reflects how many regiments they can field without a penalty of increased maintenance. This might also be referred to as the national support limit. Modifiers in EU3 & NA are the grand navy and grand army national ideas, Feudal Monarchy govt., and the land/naval policy slider. In In Nomine there are also advisors that modify forcelimits. The Holy Roman Emperor gets an additional bonus of 2x(number of countries in the HRE). Note that %modifiers to tax do not affect force limits and even base tax of colonies is included.
forcelimit = 0.25 * (sum of base tax + additions such as workshops and CoTs) * %modifiers + (HRE bonus)
In the In Nomine expansion the naval forcelimit calculation has changed significantly:
naval forcelimit = 0.5 * (sum of base tax + additions such as workshops and CoTs) * %modifiers
Other factors:
- Only non-colony (pop 1000+) coastal provinces are counted.
- Contribution of provinces of a different culture group (even if accepted) or non-state religion is halved.
- Contribution of provinces with no land connection to the capital (even on the same continent) is halved.
- Contribution of provinces on a different continent from the capital (even with a land connection) is divided by 20.
There seem to be additional modifiers to naval forcelimit in patch 3.1 that have not yet been identified.
Supply Limit
The supply limit of a province determines how many men can be supported without suffering from Attrition. The minimum supply limit in the game is 1.
Supply Base Formula
Supply Base = 1 + (0.2 * Base Tax) + Land Fort Bonus
Land Fort bonuses:
- Fort 1: 0.5
- Fort 2: 1.0
- Fort 3: 1.5
- Fort 4: 2.0
- Fort 5: 3.0
- Fort 6: 4.0
Supply Limit Formula
Supply Limit = (Supply Base x Province Status)
| Province Status | Base Multiplier |
|---|---|
| Owned | 5 |
| Allied or MA | 4 |
| Controlled | 3 |
| Beseiged | 2 |
| Enemy / Unowned | 1 |
Weather Modifiers: Weather modifiers are not included in the Supply Limit displayed for a province. Instead, they are indicated by the Max Attrition being greater than 5 (except for maneuver), in which case you can hover the cursor over Max Attrition to see what additional modifiers apply. For practical purposes, these modifers should be subtracted from the Supply Limit to see the "true" limit. Note that weather changes immediately before monthly attrition is applied and therefore you may not be able to tell in advance what weather penalties will apply in a province.
- -2 for mild winter, -5 for normal winter, -10 for severe winter
- -5 for tropical
- -5 for desert summer
Attrition
Attrition occurs when the number of troops in a province is too large for the current Supply limit.
If attrition is applied it is calculated on the basis of the number of troops in a province, not the number of regiments. Every 1000 troops require 1 supply limit. So 1 regiment of 250 and 1 regiment of 750 require only 1 supply limit. In tropical provinces 5 is added to the required supply. For example: 1000 troops in a tropical province would require a supply limit of 6 to avoid attrition. The tropical penalty is not applied if your country's capital is in a tropical province. The level of attrition applied is a percentage value applied to the whole force calulated as 1% per 1,000 men over the support limit. Fractions of 1,000 men create attrition of a fraction of 1%. The attrition rate is capped by the maximum attrition rate in the province.
Attrition is evaluated whenever a force arrives in a province and on the 1st of each month. Arrival attrition does not occur for troops that arrived by naval movemennt in a port (but can occur for troops boarding ships). Attrition does not occur for troops that are in combat including troops arriving in a province and immediately entering battle. Note that battles with natives also have this effect so fighting natives can be used to avoid attrition. Attrition occurs prior to receiving reinforcements and therefore if your reinforcement rate is adequate your regiments will remain at full strength.
Naval Transport
Naval transport has slightly different rules to other supply limits. A transport fleet has a support capacity of 6,000 men and no other modifiers except leader manoeuvre rating have any effect. Attrition is based upon the total land forces present in transports in a sea province.
Combat
Combat consists of a series of combat resolutions. A single combat resolution lasts for a 5-day period, beginning with a 5-day shock combat resolution, followed by a 5-day fire combat resolution. This alternating process completes until one army runs out of morale. This system means that shock combat resolutions are slightly more common, and that combat against defeated or retreating forces will be resolved entirely in the shock combat resolution.
Combat Formula
Actual combat is resolved using the following formulae. The process is the same for shock combat resolutions as it is for fire, simply using fire attack/defense rating instead of shock attack/defense ratings. On each day of combat the game evaluates how many casualties each side inflicts on the other by the following formula:
Causalities = (Attack + Dice) - (Defense + Terrain) + (Leader x 2)
- Attack: the attack rating (shock or fire rating depending on the combat resolution).
- Dice: A random number (in the range 0-9) representing luck for the combat resolution
- Terrain: Terrain modifiers are applied to both the attack and defending sides, thus a -1 forest modifier, for example, has a net effect of being -2:
- Forest/Marsh/Hills: -1 for the attacker, +1 for the defender
- Mountains: -2 for the attacker, +2 for the defender
- River Crossing: -1 for the attacker, +1 for the defender
- Defense: the defense rating (shock or fire rating depending on the combat resolution).
- Leader: The difference in capability between the opposing leaders, multiplied by two because the difference applies to both the attacker and defender.
Strategy section to be moved
Newbies should note that armies can be hurt just as badly by attrition, as they can by combat. Fighting on your own soil can bring great harm to an enemy by attrition alone; the same is true when the situation is reversed.
Sometimes you will find that you get 1% attrition in a province, when your army is actually right at its displayed supply limit. This is because the province window's Supply Limit display rounds up from n.5, but the attrition code rounds down (it drops the .5). Because Owned provinces have a modifier of 5 times the base supply limit, an easy rule of thumb is that if the base supply limit has an odd-numbered decimal (e.g., 1.3 x 5 = 6.5, but it will display "7"), you will have the 1% problem. If you don't Own the province, just multiply the decimal by the corresponding status modifier, and only look at the resulting decimal. That's all that matters.
In some tropical lands (e.g., sub-saharan Africa), indigent nations do not get the tropical modifier - but you do. The effective supply limit for such provinces will drop when you take them, versus when you MA'd or Controlled them! Needless to say, you can suffer horrific attrition losses when fighting in such provinces, if they're still enemy owned. But then, their armies are usually easy to kill, and you get Controlled status (without the tropical penalty - they're still the owner) instantly when you defeat them, if they don't have forts.
Natives only subtract from an unowned province's Supply Limit when they are fighting. Try to avoid fighting them at the end of the month.
