General wartime hints | The Army EU IV Guide

Acquaint yourself with the enemy numbers carefully

Here's a handful of general hints that it is good to keep in mind during military actions:

• It is easier to defend yourself that to attack. To the extent it is possible, force the enemy to attack in a spot convenient for you, with good defense, by luring him with a small, bled-out unit, which you will then support with your main forces when the battle begins. You can find the Forced March useful here, which speeds armies up by 150%. At the same time do not involve too many soldiers to avoid enemy's retreat. If the armies are of comparable strengths, the enemy will remain and fight, but you will be receiving defense bonuses.
• Replace the tired units. Keep several armies close to each other and, when the morale of one of them drops, take it away from the battlefield and introduce a fresh one, which will buy the first one the time it needs to regenerate.
• Wear and Manpower may have the decisive value. Take care of your units and of where they are stationed. You also should control the weather and do not let yourself fight climate, instead of the enemy army. At the same time, try and burn out the enemy's manpower if war of attrition. You should be creative here e.g. Turkey has a modifier for threefold recovery speed of manpower while fighting infidels. Even if the other country has bigger armies and higher manpower, you will emerge successful in the long run anyways, when he is out of resources to replenish losses.
• Chase the retreating armies to destroy them absolutely, as long as their morale is low. Do not get too far and do not let yourself be lured into a trap though.
• Always use a general during battle. Even a weak one is better than no general at all. You do not really need to buy one for each army. Simply, swap leaders between armies and transfer them to where there is a fight.
• With appropriate ideas, use mercenaries. When your gold reserves are high, drag the enemy into war. They will believe that you only have small units at your disposal and thet they will win quickly so, sending an insult should provoke them to attack. Then, within a month, you should be able to deploy a formidable army of mercenaries against the unsuspecting enemy.
• As a rule of the thumb, your enemy will usually have one strong army and a group of smaller ones for besieging. If your forces allow you to crush the main army, you should launch a strike straight ahead and destroy it rapidly. Even if you lose some areas in the meantime, you will quickly regain them anyways. On the other hand, if your forces are too small for you to destroy the main army, you should keep escaping from it, chase the siege units and do not let them take over the province. Play cat and mouse with them. Remember that dragging the siege army into battle will reset siege meter, which will postpone the fort's fall considerably. Furthermore, computer will divide its armies to create new siege armies, which will allow you to launch an attack.
• If you are fighting a defensive battle, try to drag some of the enemy armies away, by sending one quick army into the enemy's country. He will have to send some of the units away to try to catch the troublemakers. You can even reach the enemy capital this way. Once the capital is threatened, the enemy will try to transfer bigger forces there for defense. This will allow your units to catch some breath.
• If you are retreating, you should take advantage of the tactic of scorched land, in combination with extra wear for a defensive idea, this will be an incredibly effective way of defense.. Try to drag the enemy armies into the provinces consumed by fire and allow wear do its job.