Hello Everyone and Welcome to a Happy Wednesday, the day where we talk about what is happening to Europa Universalis V. Last week we dove into the economy changes coming in 1.2, and today we're continuing our journey through what this patch has in store. As a reminder, while @SaintDaveUK has been steering Fate of the Phoenix, I've been driving the development of the accompanying patch, covering economy, military, diplomacy, and a range of immersion improvements to both AI behaviour and how the world is set up.
So, what are we covering today? Well, this week we're turning our attention to Military Matters, and there's quite a bit to get into, so let's not waste any time.
Splitting Infantry and Cavalry
Those of you who have been following development will know that EU5 has had infantry and cavalry as two of its core land unit categories for a while now, and while we had some units with special tags as “light”, it had problems with upgrades and clarity to the player.
In this update, we're making that structure explicit, splitting each into two distinct categories with their own upgrade paths, giving you light infantry, heavy infantry, light cavalry, and heavy cavalry.
The split follows two consistent design axes. Within each arm, "light" means faster and more reactive, but fragile; both light infantry and light cavalry deal 10% less strength damage and take 10% more morale damage than their heavy counterparts. Across both arms, cavalry remains more expensive and attrition-prone than infantry but hits harder per unit, takes 25% less damage in engagements sized for infantry forces, and excels at flanking with ability ratings roughly double what infantry achieves.
What this means in practice:
Light infantry, archers through to sharpshooters, act at the highest initiative, move quickly, and skirmish well. It's the opening-punch unit, but it struggles in a prolonged grind. It can assault fortifications.
Heavy Infantry, footmen through to fusiliers, is slow, disciplined, and has no damage penalties. It's the only category that can garrison a fort, and its combat power scales dramatically over the ages as gunpowder warfare matures. By the Age of Revolutions, it has largely caught up to cavalry in raw effectiveness.
Light Cavalry, horsemen through to light dragoons, is the fastest unit on the campaign map, acts early in the combat round, and has the highest flanking ability in the game. It carries the glass-cannon penalty, so it's not something you want absorbing punishment in the main line.
Heavy Cavalry, armored horsemen through to cuirassiers, drops the fragility penalty and hits flanks nearly as hard as light cavalry. It's slower and acts later in the round, and it's designed to feel increasingly like a specialization rather than a default choice as the game progresses toward the gunpowder era.
Country identity runs through this split as well. National and cultural advances grant power bonuses to specific categories, which means your Swedish army of musketeers and your Crimean force of horse archers now feel genuinely different to build and command, not just cosmetically, but in how you want to use them.
If they have weapons of metal, would they make some good music?
Siege Raider Military Stance
The new Siege Raider subject military stance directs your vassal's armies to focus exclusively on tearing down the enemy's fortification network, rather than seeking pitched battles they might lose.
When set to Siege Raider, your subjects will prioritize besieging hostile locations at maximum effort, actively join any allied siege already in progress, and still hold their own territory if the enemy pushes back, but they will not chase enemy field armies deep into hostile lands.
Unlike the Aggressive stance, which combines high siege activity with high battle-seeking, Siege Raider keeps your subjects away from unnecessary engagements: their armies path around enemy forces on the way to their next siege target rather than stopping to fight.
If your subjects are caught in a battle they did not choose, they are quicker to retreat than in other stances, because bleeding out a subject army in a field fight is exactly what you told them to avoid.
This stance is especially powerful when combined with your own field army: you pin or destroy enemy forces while your subjects strip away forts in the background, accelerating war score without risking the armies you paid to levy.
Placeholder icon, soon to be replaced..
Food in Provinces
Provinces now share food with the market once their stockpile exceeds 75% of capacity, rather than waiting until completely full. This prevents well-stocked granary provinces from hoarding food while nearby market-dependent regions (such as arctic mining locations with no local production) silently starve.
Building granaries now also reduces food decay in addition to increasing storage capacity, via a new local_food_decay_modifier. Each level cuts decay by 5%.
Newly built granaries can no longer drain the entire market stockpile in a single month; each province's food draw from the market is now capped at three times its monthly natural deficit.
A bug where provinces were being charged large food expenses for market food passively topping them up (despite having positive food income and no actual deficit) has been fixed.
The threshold at which a province buys food from the market has been aligned with the threshold at which it sells, eliminating an oscillation where provinces would sell surplus food one month and buy it back the next.
Tribesmen no longer incorrectly contribute to food demand estimates. Previously, the game assumed all pops consumed food at the peasant rate; tribesmen (who consume none) were inflating food demand projections used by pop growth and AI stockpile calculations.
Food consumption modifiers such as global_peasants_food_consumption now correctly affect the population growth bonus granted by high food stockpiles; previously, they were ignored for that calculation.
Starvation alerts have been updated to display information on a per-market basis, so when something goes wrong with the food supply, you can immediately identify which market region is affected rather than hunting through the ledger.
Food consumption modifiers now correctly feed into the Food Storage pop growth bonus calculation; previously, those modifiers were being applied to one system but not the other, producing inconsistent behaviour between what the tooltip predicted and what the game simulated.
Even more of a reason to build then?
Logistics
Armies now consume ten times as much food as they did in 1.1. This was a deliberate rescaling to put military food usage on the same order of magnitude as civilian pop consumption, so that a large army in hostile territory is actually a meaningful strain on the local food supply.
Never trust the infantry to not eat the food way too quickly...
As a direct consequence of that rescaling, non-auxiliary units can only carry approximately half a month of food supplies in their internal stocks, meaning armies that march away from supply lines will feel the pressure within weeks rather than months.
Logistics distance has been reduced, with the base reach shrinking from 50 to 30, as armies in the early ages were operating with a reach that did not match the period's primitive supply infrastructure, and this correction makes keeping forces fed a genuine challenge in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Yeah, need some wagons or this march through Sahara will be deadly..
The impact that generals have on logistics range has been halved, so a brilliant quartermaster is still valuable but no longer single-handedly negates the constraints of medieval supply.
Food usage is now tracked and reported in daily increments rather than monthly, giving you a much more legible read on how quickly a campaign is depleting your stores before the situation becomes critical.
A bug was fixed where the AI Perform Navy Logistics objective was not activating for coastal armies that were already starving, so fleets now correctly prioritise resupply runs when the nearest army is running on empty.
Navy supply lines were previously computed one location behind where the fleet actually was, which meant fleets couldn't gather food from the tile they were standing on; this is now fixed.
A longstanding issue where armies would starve even when stationed at a location with a supply depot was resolved, and depots now correctly count as a supply source for stationary forces.
The logistics distance tooltip now lists the nearest supply sources by name and distance, so you can see at a glance whether your army is one province away from salvation or three weeks into the wilderness.
Attrition pathfinding now scales its penalty by the movement time cost of each tile, so armies routing through slow terrain, mountains, marshes, dense forests, pay a steeper attrition price that reflects the real difficulty of feeding troops on those routes.
Allied Troop Transports
You can now toggle a fleet to allow friendly countries to load their armies aboard your ships, enabling true allied naval coordination. The toggle appears in the unit action bar for any navy you own when enabled, war allies and countries within your hierarchy (such as subjects) can use your fleet as a transport. By default, fleets are set to not allow friendly boarding, so you remain in full control of who may use your ships. A war ally's army will only be able to board if the fleet owner has turned this permission on and the loading country is either a war-friend or part of the owner's subject hierarchy. The permission is per-fleet and can be changed at any time, just simply click the toggle again to revoke access and prevent further loading.
It's now useful to provide a fleet to your allies!
City Walls
City Walls are a unique building available to cities and megalopolises, representing the stone fortifications that defined medieval and early modern urban warfare. Unlike a regular fort, which stacks its level on top of whatever defenses already exist, City Walls work differently: they grant a minimum fort level of 1. This means a walled city that has no fort of its own will fight as if it has one, but if you later build an actual fort there, the walls don't simply add on top. Instead, the higher value takes effect, and the walls quietly step aside. A garrison behind ancient stone ramparts still benefits from them, but a proper fortress renders them redundant. This distinction matters for siege calculations, zone of control, and the fort limit cost on your treasury: city walls count at half the weight of a real fort, reflecting the reality that they are a defensive feature of the settlement itself rather than a dedicated military installation.
Beyond the gameplay mechanics, City Walls also have a visible presence on the map. Walled settlements display their fortifications as a physical ring around the city art. The tooltip on a walled location clearly communicates the distinction, rather than showing a plain fort level, it tells you the location has city walls and that the minimum fort level applies, so you always know whether you are looking at stone masonry or proper military works. The walls also block line of sight from both land and sea, slow army movement as attackers route around the perimeter, reduce local unrest, and shift a little estate power toward the burghers and away from the crown. They are expensive and take years to construct, but for a prosperous trading city with no fort of its own, they are often the difference between a swift capitulation and a costly siege.
Land Combat
Warscore
Winning a battle in a coalition war now awards the warscore you'd expect: the score is based solely on what fraction of the losing side's total army capacity you destroyed, rather than being diluted by every regiment on both sides of the entire war. Previously, the same decisive engagement in a six-nation coalition war was worth three times less than the same fight in a 1v1, that bug is gone.
Occupation warscore has been doubled, and you now only need to occupy 50% of a target country's territory to reach 99% warscore, sieging your way to peace is a more viable path than before.
AI Behaviour
The AI will no longer bleed its armies down to the last regiment in a losing battle: it now evaluates every combat it is involved in each day and orders a retreat when the dice are stacked against it, its morale is low, or both flanks are exposed with no reinforcements on the way.
When the AI is heavily outnumbered, it will now only accept battle in terrain where its unit mix performs well, it will no longer charge uphill into mountains just because the odds look acceptable on paper.
AI armies below 80% frontage fill are now automatically merged with nearby idle armies, so the AI stops squandering combat width by spreading thin regiments across multiple small stacks.
Combined Arms
Auxiliary units and transport vessels no longer count toward the combined arms calculation, so the bonus now accurately reflects your front-line combat composition rather than being dragged down by support elements that don't fight.
Food is good, but combined arms it is not..
Fort Assaults
When you order your army to assault a fort, the defending garrison now takes significantly more strength casualties and morale damage per assault phase. Previously, assaults were largely a desperation move or a breach-exploitation tool; the garrison's losses from a failed or partial assault were so low that the attacker bled far more than the defender even in favourable circumstances. The new values mean a garrison under sustained assault pressure will degrade meaningfully even before a breach opens, making assaults a genuine tactical option rather than a last resort. Breaching a wall first and then assaulting remains the optimal sequence, but even un-breached assaults now credibly threaten low-morale or under-strength garrisons. Attacker losses are unchanged; ordering your men over the walls is still costly, you are simply more likely to actually break the garrison before your own army is bled out.
Commanders in Combat
Generals and admirals now bring more than just their pips to the battlefield. We've added a commander combat bonus, a flat modifier to the combat dice roll that reflects a commander's personal fighting style and experience. Traits like Strategist grant +2 dice, while Triumphant, Tactical Genius, and Bold Fighter each add +1. On the flip side, a Craven general or one who is plainly unsuited for their command will subtract from that roll. The bonus is visible directly in the battle UI alongside terrain penalties, so you'll always know exactly how much your choice of commander is influencing the fight.
Yeah, the flavor text does not fit anymore..
Misc Land Combat related
Fort defense modifiers were being miscalculated immediately after a save/reload, forts would incorrectly lose their defensive bonus until the next monthly tick, making freshly loaded saves temporarily more vulnerable to siege. This is now fixed.
Armies reduced to zero strength in enemy territory no longer sit indefinitely as ghost stacks: they now attempt a shattered retreat each day, and if no valid retreat location exists, the army is automatically destroyed.
Armies stranded in winter-impassable terrain no longer drain morale while waiting for the season to change.
Naval Combat
Naval combat has long suffered from a frustrating skirmish loop: even a vastly outnumbered fleet could cycle indefinitely, taking a few hits, pulling back to the nearest sea zone, and re-engaging the moment your hunters arrived. We've made three changes to break this pattern.
First, naval battles now last a minimum of three days before either side can disengage, up from just one, giving broadsides enough time to do real damage before a fleet can slip away.
Second, we've raised the morale threshold that causes a retreating fleet to scatter back to a friendly port rather than simply bumping into an adjacent sea zone; a fleet that has taken a serious battering will now flee all the way home to repair rather than turning around a tile away.
Third, AI admirals previously had no logic to voluntarily withdraw from a losing fight, they would simply absorb punishment until the last ship sank, and they now evaluate the strength imbalance during battle and issue a retreat order when clearly outmatched.
Together, these changes mean that hunting down an enemy fleet should feel decisive: a cornered navy fights for days, takes real losses, and when it finally breaks, it runs far enough that you have time to regroup before the next engagement.
Naval vessels no longer suffer attrition while in port during winter, ending the frustrating pattern of losing sailors to cold while safely harboured.
Copper and tin are no longer required to construct naval supply buildings, as those requirements were a bottleneck that made early navies unreasonably dependent on specific trade routes, and cloth has been added as the new input material to preserve meaningful upkeep without the bottleneck.
The AI was fixed in several ways: transport fleets now wait until armies are fully loaded before sailing away, fleets no longer position themselves too far from the armies they are supplying, and the logistics objective system no longer tries to collect food from provinces with nothing to collect.
Misc Minor Changes
Powerful nobles now give levy combat efficiency instead of counterespionage
Previously, a powerful Noble estate rewarded the ruler with better counterespionage capabilities, a subtle, almost invisible benefit that most players never noticed. We changed this so that powerful nobles instead make levies fight more effectively, scaling up to +30% levy combat efficiency at full satisfaction. The intent is to make the relationship between noble power and military power more tangible and readable: a strong nobility that feels respected and well-governed will inspire and lead your peasant soldiers to fight harder. This also fits better thematically, nobles are your military class, and their loyalty should show on the battlefield, not in the shadows.
Power to the nobles! Guillotines can wait until we get regular armies !
Recruitment methods giving less strength also use less manpower
When choosing how to recruit units, players can opt for rushed training, which previously penalized the unit's starting strength but consumed the same amount of manpower as a normally trained regiment. This created an odd situation where you could drain your manpower pools just as quickly while producing weaker troops. We've now tied manpower cost directly to the strength penalty: if a recruitment method produces a unit at 25% of normal strength, it also costs 25% of the normal manpower. This makes rushed recruitment a genuine trade-off, you can field more units at lower quality when manpower is plentiful, rather than it being a purely inferior option.
Maintenance now uses efficiency modifiers
All army, navy, and mercenary maintenance modifiers have been converted from cost reduction values to efficiency values. The practical difference is both mechanical and presentational: the old army_maintenance_cost = -0.10 convention was confusing because you had to remember that negative meant good, and multiple sources stacked linearly in ways that could make maintenance trivially cheap. The new army_maintenance_efficiency = 0.20 convention uses a reciprocal formula, dividing the base cost by (1 + efficiency), which gives natural diminishing returns at high values and uses a consistent positive-meaning-good sign. This required updating over 70 script files across advances, laws, estate privileges, government reforms, and buildings, with equivalent values recalculated to preserve the original gameplay impact.
This tooltip has other benefits as well…
Mercenaries 25% more expensive to hire and bribe
Mercenaries were proving too accessible as a military solution, particularly for countries looking to bypass the manpower and recruitment costs of a standing army. We've increased all hire premiums and bribe costs by roughly 20–25%: the leader hire fee, the per-unit hire premium, and the bribe-to-dismiss cost have all gone up. This makes mercenaries a meaningful financial commitment rather than an easy substitute, and reinforces that maintaining a professional standing army, or cultivating good diplomatic relations so you don't need to bribe foreign troops, should be rewarded.
Improved Interfaces
Save to Template
Managing armies just got more convenient. You can now save any existing army directly as a template with a single button press in the unit view. The template editor opens pre-filled with the army's current regiment composition, levies, and mercenaries are excluded, since those aren't the kind of standing force you'd want to blueprint for future use. Beyond that, templates are now smarter when you recruit from them: rather than insisting on the exact unit types that were recorded when you saved, the game will automatically substitute the best available unit of the same category at the recruit location. Your template stays useful as your military technology advances, without you having to go back and update it every time you unlock a new unit tier.
Could be useful?
Unit Upgrade Path
When you open the detail panel for a unit type, whether in the unit lateral view or hovering over a unit in a tooltip, you will now see a visual strip showing the full upgrade chain that the unit belongs to.
Predecessors appear to the left, the current unit is highlighted in the centre, and successors continue to the right, each separated by an arrow and annotated with age icons. The layout mirrors the building upgrade path display that already existed for construction, giving military units the same at-a-glance legibility. You no longer need to mentally track which old units can eventually become Knights or Tercio infantry; the lineage is right there on the card.
Of course the Swedish Heavy Infantry is the best..
New military ledger pages
The ledger has received a significant expansion on the military side. Alongside the existing country overview, there are now dedicated pages for regiments & ships. The regiments page lets you compare stats across different unit types so you can see at a glance how your forces stack up in terms of strength, morale, and discipline. The ships page works similarly for your navy, using crew size as the primary measure of fighting capacity. The wars page surfaces active conflicts with sortable columns for war score, participants, and duration.
Also a UI that is good to spot overpowered units in and nerf them..
Relevant Bugfixes for Military
This update also brings a round of military fixes and balance work. On the naval side, levies are now raised correctly and display accurate power figures, and the force-transport order (Ctrl+right-click) and embarked army inland movement have both been corrected. The battle UI received several fixes: the prediction widget now correctly shows terrain and river-crossing bonuses for the defending side, general traits that carry army modifiers are once again visible in the battle overview panel, and the siege progress widget properly appears even when a defender army is present in the location. The Raise All Levies dialog no longer breaks when switching between the Army and Navy tabs, and the deserters event tooltip no longer displays a confusingly negative strength loss value.
On the gameplay side, using "Recruit to Army" no longer accidentally assigns a "Join to Unit" objective to unrelated armies. The Stubborn trait's stability decay power has been corrected, it was applying at ten times the intended strength. Societal drift no longer fires when a regent is commanding military units rather than ruling the realm. Manpower losses in slave-employing army buildings now correctly apply to slave pops as intended. Finally, conquistador starting army sizes have been reduced, and unit stats have been rebalanced across several unit types.
Now, let's give the keys over to Dave, so he can talk about one of his new features that Fate of the Phoenix will build upon.
Movements
We have also developed a new system to represent cultural and religious change from the grassroots rather than top-down.
Movements are fully scriptable occurrences that start in a single pop and then spread outwards through the locations and into the world, slowly converting any pops that meet the requirements. Based on the Disease spread framework, they represent radical ideas spreading through a population with human contact, so, for example, via trade routes, through marching armies, or simple adjacencies.
The speed at which eligible pops can convert is determined on a per-movement basis. Some are preferred by high-satisfaction Burghers, some prefer low satisfaction, peasants. Perhaps something resonates more strongly with French speakers, and less strongly in areas with low control.
Some movements may have Spreaders, essentially evangelist characters who increase the spread in whatever location they may be in.
For Fate of the Phoenix, we have reworked the Hellenism religion to spread very slowly through Christians if the player has chosen to trigger it. We have also added a Latinitas movement, which occurs when Byzantium holds a lot of highly satisfied Italian cities, and represents the consolidation of highly satisfied Romance speakers who are happy to rejoin the Roman Empire as Romans.
In the future, we will use this system for the spread of the Protestant Reformation (replacing the old Protestant Preachers building system), colonial cultures like American, or even political shifts like the formation of distinct Dutch or Austrian cultures.
Stay tuned, as next week we’ll talk about the changes to diplomacy and internal politics, with maybe a bit of personality..
) the game might actually get some difficulty instead of just playing as an incestuous murderhobo with no consequences. Having Christianity be united in 867 with the potential for a split or potentially keeping Christianity united is also good, it's more historically accurate compared to before and at least gives the start date something going for it outside of meme Haesteinn playthroughs.
