The Ultimate CK3 Guide To Warfare

Today, I want to set you up to win every single war in CK3 by letting you know about the Interface parts that allow you to read the situation correctly and everything else about tactics and army composition!

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00:00 Introduction
00:31 The Basics: Interface, Casus Belli, Misc.
03:03 Army Composition - The Inner Works Of Warfare
08:30 An Example: Before & During A War
15:56 Conclusions

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#CK3Tutorial
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[OneProudBavarian]

I hope you enjoyed this guide and learned something!
Any questions? Go ahead!

[jxslayz]

Real talk, you NEED to capitalize on guide videos. You make ZERO speech errors, get to the point quickly, and even mention the secondary points to the main point that people tend to miss in their guides. You're informative, witty, and sharp. I'd binge watch guide videos from you any day. Just a suggestion. God bless you.

[markomajdandzic]

Just got 100% achievements thanks to your video about Saga in Stone! Big thanks :)

[fossar_]

A little deeper on the impact of pursuit vs normal damage. Tl;dr:
Damage wins you battles, damage+pursuit wins you wars (in most non-cheese scenarios). Also this is a great vid just follow it you'll be fine.

Pursuit damage is nearly 6x more effective than main phase (normal) damage (deals 0.17 vs 0.03, troops have their toughness as health). Plus each troop killed during the pursuit phase is a guaranteed fatal casualty, compared to 20-30% chance of fatal in main phase I think (the rest are simply routed).
This means unless you're fighting small armies you significantly outnumber/outclass, to finish battles in the early battle phase where they can't retreat, pursuit is incredibly valuable. It allows you to reduce a threat of large enemy stacks quickly, rather than chasing them around for ages or ignoring and letting them go segue your territory.

The drawback is the pursuit phase only lasts several days compared to weeks or even months of the main phases, giving limited time to exploit those advantages. Your army needs to hold and rout all opponents troops before the retreat phase begins.
Further, each point of screen the routing army has blocks 0.33 damage (in the pursuit phase only), meaning pursuit damage can be countered by the right troops in large enough quantity.

Final point, in reality you won't need to worry about most of this. War and combat in CK3 is easy enough if you follow the video guidelines but it's fun to dive into mechanics more sometimes.

[tungstengold]

I really like the war system in ck3, but I wish they would add an option to help your liege in a defensive war if said war results in you losing at least one title. I mean it just makes sense that if you stand to lose something you should be able to help stop someone taking it.

[adb]

General: the brain
Knights: the heart
Men at Arms: abdominal organs
Levies: rusty backbone

[rotciv]

Another feature I trully love about this game's warfare system is the rol immersive realism.
On the beginnings, on high Middle Ages, when population and development is scarce and you're(depending on which faction you begin with) little and poor, the wars are mostly right-claiming raids with some hundred men.

You march and fight with your men tight together and always want to do your business and end these wars quick, because keeping your levies active takes a very serious toll on your scarce gold income and also leaves you exposed to the myriad of petty lords that could backstab you while your lands are undefended.

But when the years and generations pass and the scale of everything gets bigger, you find yourself leading or participating in much longer wars with tens of thousands of men involved. And then you can't simply just pack your army together and advance like that. Or I mean, you can, but the supplies will eventually run low since each barony can only support a certain number of men.

So the game forces you to actively divide the army to keep them well supplied.

This comes with a lot of advantages, like covering more terrain allowing you to gain more vision, sieging more than 1 castle at the same time, protecting a neighboring sieging army with some terrain advantage and some other multitasking options.
But, at the same time, it also weakens your army by dividing your numbers and resources, leaving them more exposed to flanks and surprise attacks far from the rest of the forces.

And it is awesome. Because it gives a lot of room for defeat in detail, and prevents every big war to be decided by the frontal clash of two big armies; but instead there's a lot of back and forth, constant maneuvering between the contendants and constant striving to gain terrain advantage and hit lagged armies far away from their main host.

[kingjamestres]

Me: Oh look I have 100 more men than them surely I will crush them on the battlefield.

[antimaster]

yeah, terrain is extremely important. i managed to crush 35k strong byzantine empire army with a mere 9k mostly elite troops since the terrain was plain, i had mostly heavy cav and was defending a river crossing. didn't think i could win that war but that battle sealed it.

[bignoneoftow]

I will just say this right now, every time you upload i get a smile on my face

[eexkbzvwpfc]

One tip is you can bait the AI into attacking by removing your commander and then reinstating after their movement is locked in "grey arrow". This means you can take a fight in the hills where they normally wouldn't. Can feel a bit cheesy but I just consider it like spreading a rumor that the commander has died.

[secret]

So I've got almost 300 hours in CK3. And I still learned some little things: 
-What combat width means
-What advantage actually does
-That Knights have Attack and Defense like other Soldiers 
-That you're always the defender on a friendly barony with a fort
Thanks a lot for making this great video!

[Galaick]

i have over 200 hours of ck3 and i still watched it to the end

[TungstenArm]

you can’t take Thessalonika with an army 25% smaller than ours with only one kind of men-at-arms!”
Emperor Haesteinn with 4200 Varangian Veterans: “Hehe Heavy Infantry go

[lilcruz]

As someone who's invested (lost) days upon days in this game, my best advice is to pick your wars and that commander ability is always more important than commander traits, except for flexible leaer when you are on the offensive on an enemy fort, it can be one of the best perks if used correctly, in my opinion

[Jaynaa]

Just want to say how much I love the chill, cool vibes One Proud Bavarian gives off in his videos. Just positive vibes all round.

[RJayBond]

Well this will explain to my neighbour why @ 2am there was a thunderous smash of a fist on the desk. Caused by my army melting into an enemies last ditch merc stack. My army was starving, disembarking and probably pissed they'd been non-stop fighting for 18 months. Gratitude from Canada OPB!

[RagnellAvalon]

Dude this is really good. I've been doing a CK3 tutorial series and I'm just straight-up going to tell people to watch this since it explains the whole warfare mechanic way better than I an in a play-along format.

[LevCallahan]

I'll point out something that may not have to do with winning battles, but'll help in pursuit.

I've seen quite a few seasoned CK3 players on YouTube play through wars and constantly experience "army-chasing", where they're literally spending months of game time just chasing down armies that're running all around the map away from them, wasting valuable time. Here's what to do to typically avoid this:

Watch the color of their movement arrow. The color is important to note, more specifically when it turns gray. If the arrow an enemy army has pointed to its destination is gray, that means it cannot change course to evade you-- its movement is locked. If close to the enemy, DO NOT have the game speed on high. Have it on low, and frequently pause to hover over the enemy army tab to check the amount of days it has to get to the next land section. This works wonders and you'll consistently catch armies within weeks rather than months when pursuing close-by armies, thereby lowering wartime (which is especially helpful if you have vassals who gain negative opinion of you the longer you're in an offensive war).

[redgokudera]

Amazing content. You make CK3 look simple.

Paradox should support and promote your channel.