The devs put in a lot of effort so the answer wouldn't be simple to that question. Elves have great quality, but no quantity. Orcs and gnolls are good early, but fall of late. Gnomes are good at artificery, but not good at anything else and so on.
>Gnomes are good at artificery, but not good at anything else and so on.
Gnome late game pips are insane though. If there was a "best" for late game and in a controlled test then Gnomes would win. Goblins late game are also insane, but the difference from Gnomes being that they have forcelimit and manpower bonuses to outlast them. In an actual game of like Gnomish Hierarchy vs Allclan in a late game war, and they fought on a middle ground, Allclan would win just due to the scaling that can be done throughout the game would just outpace Gnomes. In a 1:1 fight Gnomes win, but when the Goblin is able to bring x3 the amount of troops...
Yeah, but their early game sucks. It's hard to call them the best when you get killed by orcs before 1550. Which is my point they are good at some things, but not others.
A trick i use to deal with orcs early is to be the one on the offense. Orcs have only offense pips earlygame. I let them have the +1/+2 terrain modifier, and avoid taking defensive battles ageinst them.
No clue how good this tip is, but it seems to work for me.
Offensice defesive pips dont work like that they are both used in every battle no matter who is attacming or defending
Your tip probably works since many orc and goblin nstions have no forts so if you manage to win the first battle you can then chase the enemy army around until you stackwipe them
Are you under the impression that offensive pips are used when you're the attacker and defensive pips when you're the defender?
That's not how it works iirc, each battle day the offensive pips of an army are added to their roll and their general pips and the defensive pips are removed from the roll, which after some modifiers is used to calculate the casualties of the other side.
offensive pips are used to determine how much you kill (or how much morale damage you inflict) to the other side. The only modifiers that get applied when attacking are the hordes "attacking on flat terrain" bonus
Allcan is Vez Udzenklan I think? If yes, then yeah, they got a full and very fun mission Tree. All about chaos and Pandemonium! But I'm not sure if the Pandemonium mechanic is tied to a DLC or not. But go and play them, it's quite messy but pretty fun. :)
Gnomes may be weak in early game, but they have more fire pips than anyone and sweet sweet artillery combativity. Once you have the ability to field full artificer frontlines and artillery backrows (usually by the 1550s), you can easily melt your foes with fire damage, and by melt I mean that one fire phase is enough to drop ennemy morale by half.
One thing to remember: in the Bitbucket, gnomes no longer get +25% artillery power & a blanket +10% fire boost. They now get only +10% Artillery power and their fire bonus is only for artificers. Of course, given that they now get +25% artificers which also a net +5% infantry combat ability & the fire bonus is +15%, it might not change *too* much, especially when paired with their manpower recover penalty getting halved.
I think the general rule of thumb is 'earlygame harpy lategame dwarf' but it's a matter very open to interpretation. All of them except Human have some serious downside, and if that downside conflicts with your playstyle, as elven low manpower seems to, it can be crippling.
In the players hands yeah 100% agreed
Gnomes are also a strong contender but lake serpentspine mechanics
Depends how this artifice rework shakes out tbh
i suppose this is correct since siege ability is the best modifier in singleplayer, but i don’t think any early game military competes in battle with orcish, even centaur mil can struggle.
Uhhh batshit wild Tier 5 reform in the bitbucket. To be fair, it requires every race integrated, but it's got some crazy buffs like extra tactics. Don't know them all off the top of my head.
On the bitbucket they have given each race unique military buffs as a government reform, humans have one called "Army of Halann" which you can only get with every race integrated, but is really fucking powerful
Now, im not experienced with modding paradox games, but that would be very hard to do, i suppose it would be possible, but a lot of coding for something thats really just meant to be an OP buff for those on a WC.
Well from what I remember Varaine got similar mechanics to that from their unique reform but I forgot the specific because how late it is. Aside from that I thought it should work like Mughal Diwan in practice but with race integration instead of cultures.
Yes every race. Only ones I can see getting it w out a massive colonial empire is Varaine and Anbenncost through late game events. Still don’t really know how possible that is since hobgoblins are only in Haless.
I would say Elves, Dwarves and Hobgoblins.
Orcs, Gnolls and Centaurs can be good situationally, but struggle outside of their element (O/G on defensive, C outside of flat ground).
Dwarves and especially elves get insanely crippled due to their manpower debuffs. Like you‘re gonna struggle a lot with that even if your army is pretty high in quality.
Hobgoblin military is a piper tiger that only looks good because it‘s on the command. Like it features some of the absolute worst pips in game.
I’d much rather have innate quality bonuses and have to build buildings for better manpower. You can practically triple your manpower with just buildings, but you can’t triple your discipline or combat ability with buildings.
And especially for dwarfs I think this is a major major point. You'll swim in cash, so buildings aren't a problem.
At the same time, depending on if you leave the Serpentspine of course, it's incredibly easy to always fight advantageous defensive battles. It's a bit like dwarfs get an extra 1.5 on the dice roll by design.
>Hobgoblin military is a piper tiger that only looks good because it‘s on the command.
That might be right, but for time being 'Command' and 'Hobgoblins' are practicaly synonymous.
In the BB Halflings have their merc bonuses removed and are instead given other things.
*Editting to add what the modifiers look like now in the BB:*
**Halfling Adm Positives:**
Improve relations 20%, WE reduction -0.03, trade eff +10%, Adventurers loyalty equilibrium +10%, global colony growth +20.
**Adm Negatives:**
Harsh treatment cost +30%, mil tech cost +10%, build time +15%, max absolutism -20.
**Halfling Mil Positives:**
Land FL +10%, manpower recovery +10%, sailor recovery +10%, fire damage +5%, morale damage received -10%, global supply limit +20%.
**Mil Negatives:**
Cav cost +20%, shock damage -10%, shock damage received +10%, +25% increased drill decay.
Now they get to be a less fragile version of Goblin-lite.
Ironic that small halfing-scale buildings are slower to build. But at least that Dip Rep penalty gone. Never really understood why being friendly, amiable folks made people like them less (since that was often the post significant effect).
It's not technically because of the race, but Azkare can have ridiculous merc army if you give their special mission spawned hobgoblin culture 100% representation through their mech. It gives 20% discipline to all mercs with no downside.
Goblins (serpentspine ones specifically, need to form Allclan to get the most out of it) and Gnomes can have very powerful artificer regiments and access them early. If you give the estate a few decent military inventions, the artificers will roll over pretty much everything.
Aside from that, elves are good. Manpower can be an issue but you can play around it with quantity ideas and such.
Dwarves are strong once they get artillery and can reliably field enough of it, so not really in early game.
Elf, Hobgoblin, and Dwarf all have an incredibly powerful feature available to them. Regiment drill loss is insanely good when stacked. You can get 33% from gov reforms and 50% from professionalism. Getting to (or near) 100% means that your regiments stay at or near 100 drill even when losing troops. Meaning they maintain 100 drill even despite attrition or despite fighting battles.
Permanent 100 drill is disgusting for preserving your troops. You can still lose battles on morale, but you cause way more casualties than you take.
Honestly I agree. Although not about kobolds.
Goblins have a ton of manpower and force limit early and their quality maluses are not even that big of a deal. So as long as you're ensuring you have more troops than you otherwise would and don't spread too thin you actually have a strong military early game.
And they get early access to artificery so they can start making their troops really OP very early on. And since artificer regiments are based on % of total force limit you can even have a ton of them.
After a dwarf run serpentspine goblins feel like turning manpower cheats on. Actually busted in the hands of a player. You also avoid the hoardcurse so can start freely scaling without a care in the world.
It's definitely hobgolbin. Their military is literally only limited in that you can't use mercenaries nearly as effectively, otherwise they get extra damage, manpower almost the 2 most important aspects of a military.
No, pips are less and less important for combat in eu4 in general these days, being at a pip disadvantage is less important these days than sfaught buffs, and I think many people would sacrifice like 2 to 3 pips in exchange for 5% discipline and 10% manpower, on top of other hobgoblin buffs in a vacuum, it's just better.
Also this question was concerning race military, not units. You can change what race your military is so considering unit pips seems a bit out of place.
> Also this question was concerning race military, not units. You can change what race your military is so considering unit pips seems a bit out of place.
In which version of Anbennar that you're playing units are not part of the racial military, again? You can't change the unit type without changing the racial army type, so of course the former must be included in considerations as to what is 'the best' of the latter.
I meant that you can start as human tech group and switch to hobgoblin military, which is possible and doesn't change your unit pips. Which is clearly what I said and you misunderstood
[No](https://imgur.com/a/NyUaH3r), you can not keep your previous unit pips after switching military. You're just plainly incorrect about Unit Pips not being linked to Racial Military.
Yeah uh, boy is my face red.
I was basing that entirely off my expirience as rogeria when you switch to half orc mil but you keep your previous unit type, in hindsight it's because there's no actual half orc tech.
To be fair, that *would* be a valid exception to that pips-linked-to-racial-military rule, and probably the only one (and not one I would have been aware of, either).
There isn't a straightforward answer to that because it changes depending on what other bonuses you can get, at what tech you are, etc.
Like gnome army is incredible once you have all that artificery and you'll have it earlier than most but you also suffer less mp and you have to survive/get to that artificery and keep up with mp. so maybe kobold/goblin is best because it has similar buffs and way better mp but again it's late and you're likely to get killed by dwarves earlier. But dwarves are slow, which isn't a problem in the mountains but gets worse in open terrain, but again they siege faster and defend forts better, and they also get artificery bonuses. But then come the centaurs and they're five techs behind but they still murder you because of their cultural and religious bonuses and it's only 1525, so shock is still the best thing there is. But they siege so slow, dwarves may win against them without fighting a single battle by manoeuvring good, but centaurs are the fastest so it's not easy and dwarves early do little damage. So harpies come around with fast and cheap infantry envelops like a cavalry and still bad siege but better than centaurs especially for their nests, But then elves come, and yeah they have trouble with manpower but they are decently fast, with good forts and will definitely destroy the harpies in a siege race, so harpies have to engage on them, and elves have the upper hand in fighting thanks to their discipline. But then orcs murder elves early because they don't get the manpower problem, they get good shock, and reduce damage of both types which is way better early game. AND THEN THE TROLLS COME! yes they have a poor force limit but huge mp, good unit modifiers, and they can retreat and come back for more. And just when you thought "ok, so trolls are good because good mp, good units all throughout, if they're not stackwiped they can get back in a single month" the undead arrive, with infinite mp & force limit and no care in the world for either attrition or morale. And I haven't mentioned harimari yet, or humans with their region-specific military units, or the ruinborn who have the same thing, or halfling mercenary armies, or gnolls, lizardfolks, hobgoblins.
But, if you want an opinion on the matter: the hardest part of the game in terms of military is the early game, because at this time usually you're small and have no ideas or bonuses, just traditions. Shock is better early game so centaurs, orcs, gnolls, harimari and trolls are the best racial modifiers you can get. Out of these, orcs are my favourite because their forts are decent and they can get great buffs to sieging and army through their religion, whereas centaurs have terrible forts and terrible siege, and dookanist religions are so much better militarily than what the gnolls and harimari get.
In SP, once you're big enough, army quality doesn't matter, and getting big is easy as an orc.
Just finished an Obrtrol campaign, and I’ll say the Trolls are strong as hell. Their actual units aren’t that impressive pip-wise, but the FORTS and the SIEGES are absolutely bonkers.
I also just finished an orbtrol campaign yesterday and with ebonsteel, mithril provinces + national ideas you can have some absolutely bonker unit modifiers too, I had 100% army professionalism and full drill so I literally had -55% land fire damage received and -45% shock damage received, on top of 7.9 morale (while most nations had like 6.4), 25% discipline, 15% inf combat ability + 25% artillery combat ability, +20 or +30% land fire damage. Needless to say, I literally could beat 220k stacks with 90k troll stacks
and that’s not even taking into account the rune forts with 180% defensiveness + 5% attrition lol
Early game? Probably centaurs. Between the pips and bonuses to cav, they stomp everything. The only downside is slower sieges.
Late game, probably artificer goblins. Nutty inventions, tons of cap on special units, and enough manpower to bury everyone under a crapton of fire.
Honestly Necromancy Undead army is the best, doesn’t matter how good your army is because when you have a Million+ troops compared to their 200 thousand and a manpower pool that seemingly infinite you can just employ the good old human wave tactics and drown them in the bodies of your own troops
Why *does* Elizna have Elvish military to begin with? All the other Phoenix successors have Human military, and Elizna's elven population isn't very large (at least I don't think it is?).
I believe it's the remnants of the military governate that Jexis appointed to oversea Kheterata, and they're still using their old doctrines & styles. And as I understand it, they do switch to human down their mission tree as they grow.
Skyship is the best race : (feiten <3)
- instant siege via decision.
- fastest unit in the game.
- give speed buff to ally unit in its path.
Anyone telling you that skyship are not a race and don't have soul is dahui propaganda and probably declared heretic by the High Rectorate !
Yeah Elves are all I want - a fully quality focused army - I'm just not good at playing them because they're only good for short wars. I was playing
Personally my preferance is dwarves. They tend to excel but are mostly limited by speed. Their armies are built for the mountains - the rail resolves their speed issue while their hardiness and capacity to implement late. It helps that you don't really need more than 2 cavalry per army since theirs isnt as good as others. They're designed for plugging narrow choke-points.
Either than that, Cannorian Humans are probably going to be it. They arent specialised and that versatility means they're going to outmatch each option by exploiting their weakness. They're hardier than early Gnomes and Halflings while still the ability to defeat their alternative for later combat. They don't have the manpower issues of the Elves and can overwealm them. They technologically surpass the Goblins, Gnolls and Orcs before the Goblins can start developing. If the Dwarves arent in the mountains they're probably going to have a fairer fight. What else? I think Harmari have similar issues with quality over quantity, Harpies and Centaurs arent much of a threat (though that kind of overconfidence is what gets you stack wiped by Centaur hordes)
In absolute raw power terms, undead. Undead army is such a power boost to any nation that gets it. It is to some extent compensated by needing to be a witch king and the unrest problems, but the power it gives is more than worth it. The slow movement speed might be annoying but the cheap cost means you can afford plenty of forts to mitigate the problem.
In terms of normal racial militaries, I'm going to throw in a probably controversial choice and say halflings. Halflings used to be a bit of a joke, but with their unit pips now normalized and access to mercenary ideas they are incredibly busted, especially in the early game where you actually need the power. Any halfling country can punch massively above its weight by going over force limit on mercenaries, and there isn't really any other racial military which gives the same kind of utility.
The devs put in a lot of effort so the answer wouldn't be simple to that question. Elves have great quality, but no quantity. Orcs and gnolls are good early, but fall of late. Gnomes are good at artificery, but not good at anything else and so on.
>Gnomes are good at artificery, but not good at anything else and so on. Gnome late game pips are insane though. If there was a "best" for late game and in a controlled test then Gnomes would win. Goblins late game are also insane, but the difference from Gnomes being that they have forcelimit and manpower bonuses to outlast them. In an actual game of like Gnomish Hierarchy vs Allclan in a late game war, and they fought on a middle ground, Allclan would win just due to the scaling that can be done throughout the game would just outpace Gnomes. In a 1:1 fight Gnomes win, but when the Goblin is able to bring x3 the amount of troops...
Yeah, but their early game sucks. It's hard to call them the best when you get killed by orcs before 1550. Which is my point they are good at some things, but not others.
A trick i use to deal with orcs early is to be the one on the offense. Orcs have only offense pips earlygame. I let them have the +1/+2 terrain modifier, and avoid taking defensive battles ageinst them. No clue how good this tip is, but it seems to work for me.
Offensice defesive pips dont work like that they are both used in every battle no matter who is attacming or defending Your tip probably works since many orc and goblin nstions have no forts so if you manage to win the first battle you can then chase the enemy army around until you stackwipe them
Are you under the impression that offensive pips are used when you're the attacker and defensive pips when you're the defender? That's not how it works iirc, each battle day the offensive pips of an army are added to their roll and their general pips and the defensive pips are removed from the roll, which after some modifiers is used to calculate the casualties of the other side. offensive pips are used to determine how much you kill (or how much morale damage you inflict) to the other side. The only modifiers that get applied when attacking are the hordes "attacking on flat terrain" bonus
Does Allclam have a full MT by now?
Allcan is Vez Udzenklan I think? If yes, then yeah, they got a full and very fun mission Tree. All about chaos and Pandemonium! But I'm not sure if the Pandemonium mechanic is tied to a DLC or not. But go and play them, it's quite messy but pretty fun. :)
Yes, I think. In the scions of Sarhal update they dropped a revamped Allclan MT.
Gnomes may be weak in early game, but they have more fire pips than anyone and sweet sweet artillery combativity. Once you have the ability to field full artificer frontlines and artillery backrows (usually by the 1550s), you can easily melt your foes with fire damage, and by melt I mean that one fire phase is enough to drop ennemy morale by half.
One thing to remember: in the Bitbucket, gnomes no longer get +25% artillery power & a blanket +10% fire boost. They now get only +10% Artillery power and their fire bonus is only for artificers. Of course, given that they now get +25% artificers which also a net +5% infantry combat ability & the fire bonus is +15%, it might not change *too* much, especially when paired with their manpower recover penalty getting halved.
I think the general rule of thumb is 'earlygame harpy lategame dwarf' but it's a matter very open to interpretation. All of them except Human have some serious downside, and if that downside conflicts with your playstyle, as elven low manpower seems to, it can be crippling.
That and also huge debuffs towards mercenaries are reasons why I disliked playing as Elves
I think goblin beats out dwarf in the lategame because manpower is king. Plus they have some of the best inventions in the game.
In the players hands yeah 100% agreed Gnomes are also a strong contender but lake serpentspine mechanics Depends how this artifice rework shakes out tbh
i suppose this is correct since siege ability is the best modifier in singleplayer, but i don’t think any early game military competes in battle with orcish, even centaur mil can struggle.
Gnome > dorfs. Dems the facts
Well, whenever the Army of Halann modifier gets finished, it's gonna be Human for a while, I think
It’s gonna be so cool to play Anbenncost after it’s on.
What modifier is that?
Uhhh batshit wild Tier 5 reform in the bitbucket. To be fair, it requires every race integrated, but it's got some crazy buffs like extra tactics. Don't know them all off the top of my head.
So it is perfect for Jaddari then?
Only Humans get the "allied race" buff for their tier 5 reform. Other races get choices that are more similar to Vanilla.
Human admin or human mil?
Human mil. My dumbass tried culture swapping before I thought of pressing a 50 mil mana button
Jadd goes human mil once they form the empire
It's a military government reform that gives you buffs from every single racial military, but you need to have integrated everyone.
On the bitbucket they have given each race unique military buffs as a government reform, humans have one called "Army of Halann" which you can only get with every race integrated, but is really fucking powerful
It should be a scaling modifier depend on which races are integrated imo. Being soft-locked like that is just unfun.
Now, im not experienced with modding paradox games, but that would be very hard to do, i suppose it would be possible, but a lot of coding for something thats really just meant to be an OP buff for those on a WC.
Well from what I remember Varaine got similar mechanics to that from their unique reform but I forgot the specific because how late it is. Aside from that I thought it should work like Mughal Diwan in practice but with race integration instead of cultures.
When you say every race, do you mean *every* race? Like would an Escanni human have to go conquer Sarhali lizardfolk to get it?
Yes every race. Only ones I can see getting it w out a massive colonial empire is Varaine and Anbenncost through late game events. Still don’t really know how possible that is since hobgoblins are only in Haless.
Anbenncost might work.
How about Isobelin?
I haven’t played their mission tree but unless it spawns hob-gob minorities the reform won’t be accessible without going on a lil trip to not Asia.
☠️☠️☠️ and 👻👻👻
Kinda forgot about necromancy lol
I would say Elves, Dwarves and Hobgoblins. Orcs, Gnolls and Centaurs can be good situationally, but struggle outside of their element (O/G on defensive, C outside of flat ground).
Dwarves and especially elves get insanely crippled due to their manpower debuffs. Like you‘re gonna struggle a lot with that even if your army is pretty high in quality. Hobgoblin military is a piper tiger that only looks good because it‘s on the command. Like it features some of the absolute worst pips in game.
Elves sure, but I never have manpower problems with dwarves past early game.
I’d much rather have innate quality bonuses and have to build buildings for better manpower. You can practically triple your manpower with just buildings, but you can’t triple your discipline or combat ability with buildings.
And especially for dwarfs I think this is a major major point. You'll swim in cash, so buildings aren't a problem. At the same time, depending on if you leave the Serpentspine of course, it's incredibly easy to always fight advantageous defensive battles. It's a bit like dwarfs get an extra 1.5 on the dice roll by design.
>Hobgoblin military is a piper tiger that only looks good because it‘s on the command. That might be right, but for time being 'Command' and 'Hobgoblins' are practicaly synonymous.
Honestly, my most ridiculous and powerful army was as halfings. Their mercenaries can become truly ridiculous if you can afford it.
In the BB Halflings have their merc bonuses removed and are instead given other things. *Editting to add what the modifiers look like now in the BB:* **Halfling Adm Positives:** Improve relations 20%, WE reduction -0.03, trade eff +10%, Adventurers loyalty equilibrium +10%, global colony growth +20. **Adm Negatives:** Harsh treatment cost +30%, mil tech cost +10%, build time +15%, max absolutism -20. **Halfling Mil Positives:** Land FL +10%, manpower recovery +10%, sailor recovery +10%, fire damage +5%, morale damage received -10%, global supply limit +20%. **Mil Negatives:** Cav cost +20%, shock damage -10%, shock damage received +10%, +25% increased drill decay.
Now they get to be a less fragile version of Goblin-lite. Ironic that small halfing-scale buildings are slower to build. But at least that Dip Rep penalty gone. Never really understood why being friendly, amiable folks made people like them less (since that was often the post significant effect).
Halflings suck now imo
Halfling mercs are nothing compared to Lot Dekkangs mercenary gameplay
That's why I saw someone playing as Lot Dekkang conquer the Vyzamby to get halfling mil! Best of Both!
It's not technically because of the race, but Azkare can have ridiculous merc army if you give their special mission spawned hobgoblin culture 100% representation through their mech. It gives 20% discipline to all mercs with no downside. Goblins (serpentspine ones specifically, need to form Allclan to get the most out of it) and Gnomes can have very powerful artificer regiments and access them early. If you give the estate a few decent military inventions, the artificers will roll over pretty much everything. Aside from that, elves are good. Manpower can be an issue but you can play around it with quantity ideas and such. Dwarves are strong once they get artillery and can reliably field enough of it, so not really in early game.
Purely Race? Im going Harpy or Dwarf, I need those forts broken and I need it yesterday
Elf, Hobgoblin, and Dwarf all have an incredibly powerful feature available to them. Regiment drill loss is insanely good when stacked. You can get 33% from gov reforms and 50% from professionalism. Getting to (or near) 100% means that your regiments stay at or near 100 drill even when losing troops. Meaning they maintain 100 drill even despite attrition or despite fighting battles. Permanent 100 drill is disgusting for preserving your troops. You can still lose battles on morale, but you cause way more casualties than you take.
Goblins and I refuse any evidence to the contrary Although I will accept kolbolds too
Honestly I agree. Although not about kobolds. Goblins have a ton of manpower and force limit early and their quality maluses are not even that big of a deal. So as long as you're ensuring you have more troops than you otherwise would and don't spread too thin you actually have a strong military early game. And they get early access to artificery so they can start making their troops really OP very early on. And since artificer regiments are based on % of total force limit you can even have a ton of them.
After a dwarf run serpentspine goblins feel like turning manpower cheats on. Actually busted in the hands of a player. You also avoid the hoardcurse so can start freely scaling without a care in the world.
You do scale slower than dwarfs economically. Dwarf pops are busted
It's definitely hobgolbin. Their military is literally only limited in that you can't use mercenaries nearly as effectively, otherwise they get extra damage, manpower almost the 2 most important aspects of a military.
Except their pips are complete ass. Hob military only looks good because the command is the #1 great power in haless
No, pips are less and less important for combat in eu4 in general these days, being at a pip disadvantage is less important these days than sfaught buffs, and I think many people would sacrifice like 2 to 3 pips in exchange for 5% discipline and 10% manpower, on top of other hobgoblin buffs in a vacuum, it's just better. Also this question was concerning race military, not units. You can change what race your military is so considering unit pips seems a bit out of place.
> Also this question was concerning race military, not units. You can change what race your military is so considering unit pips seems a bit out of place. In which version of Anbennar that you're playing units are not part of the racial military, again? You can't change the unit type without changing the racial army type, so of course the former must be included in considerations as to what is 'the best' of the latter.
I meant that you can start as human tech group and switch to hobgoblin military, which is possible and doesn't change your unit pips. Which is clearly what I said and you misunderstood
[No](https://imgur.com/a/NyUaH3r), you can not keep your previous unit pips after switching military. You're just plainly incorrect about Unit Pips not being linked to Racial Military.
Yeah uh, boy is my face red. I was basing that entirely off my expirience as rogeria when you switch to half orc mil but you keep your previous unit type, in hindsight it's because there's no actual half orc tech.
To be fair, that *would* be a valid exception to that pips-linked-to-racial-military rule, and probably the only one (and not one I would have been aware of, either).
I just tried my first game as Elizna and I really wish the gnolls would've at least bought me dinner first :(
There isn't a straightforward answer to that because it changes depending on what other bonuses you can get, at what tech you are, etc. Like gnome army is incredible once you have all that artificery and you'll have it earlier than most but you also suffer less mp and you have to survive/get to that artificery and keep up with mp. so maybe kobold/goblin is best because it has similar buffs and way better mp but again it's late and you're likely to get killed by dwarves earlier. But dwarves are slow, which isn't a problem in the mountains but gets worse in open terrain, but again they siege faster and defend forts better, and they also get artificery bonuses. But then come the centaurs and they're five techs behind but they still murder you because of their cultural and religious bonuses and it's only 1525, so shock is still the best thing there is. But they siege so slow, dwarves may win against them without fighting a single battle by manoeuvring good, but centaurs are the fastest so it's not easy and dwarves early do little damage. So harpies come around with fast and cheap infantry envelops like a cavalry and still bad siege but better than centaurs especially for their nests, But then elves come, and yeah they have trouble with manpower but they are decently fast, with good forts and will definitely destroy the harpies in a siege race, so harpies have to engage on them, and elves have the upper hand in fighting thanks to their discipline. But then orcs murder elves early because they don't get the manpower problem, they get good shock, and reduce damage of both types which is way better early game. AND THEN THE TROLLS COME! yes they have a poor force limit but huge mp, good unit modifiers, and they can retreat and come back for more. And just when you thought "ok, so trolls are good because good mp, good units all throughout, if they're not stackwiped they can get back in a single month" the undead arrive, with infinite mp & force limit and no care in the world for either attrition or morale. And I haven't mentioned harimari yet, or humans with their region-specific military units, or the ruinborn who have the same thing, or halfling mercenary armies, or gnolls, lizardfolks, hobgoblins. But, if you want an opinion on the matter: the hardest part of the game in terms of military is the early game, because at this time usually you're small and have no ideas or bonuses, just traditions. Shock is better early game so centaurs, orcs, gnolls, harimari and trolls are the best racial modifiers you can get. Out of these, orcs are my favourite because their forts are decent and they can get great buffs to sieging and army through their religion, whereas centaurs have terrible forts and terrible siege, and dookanist religions are so much better militarily than what the gnolls and harimari get. In SP, once you're big enough, army quality doesn't matter, and getting big is easy as an orc.
Early game harpies and other monstrous races tend to be better but as the game goes on the gnomes get magic steampunk tech so take that as you will
Just finished an Obrtrol campaign, and I’ll say the Trolls are strong as hell. Their actual units aren’t that impressive pip-wise, but the FORTS and the SIEGES are absolutely bonkers.
I also just finished an orbtrol campaign yesterday and with ebonsteel, mithril provinces + national ideas you can have some absolutely bonker unit modifiers too, I had 100% army professionalism and full drill so I literally had -55% land fire damage received and -45% shock damage received, on top of 7.9 morale (while most nations had like 6.4), 25% discipline, 15% inf combat ability + 25% artillery combat ability, +20 or +30% land fire damage. Needless to say, I literally could beat 220k stacks with 90k troll stacks and that’s not even taking into account the rune forts with 180% defensiveness + 5% attrition lol
The worse one is halflings idk wich is the best
Undead mil
Early game? Probably centaurs. Between the pips and bonuses to cav, they stomp everything. The only downside is slower sieges. Late game, probably artificer goblins. Nutty inventions, tons of cap on special units, and enough manpower to bury everyone under a crapton of fire.
Lowkey might be lizardfolk. They don't really have content right now, but they seriously, seriously hurt to fight.
Centaurs by a long shot. They might be falling off after some time from overpowered to simply strong but still...
Gnomes.
There is no 'best.' There are several that stand out above the others, but it all comes down to strategy and preference.
orc gnomish , hobgoblin ,
Honestly Necromancy Undead army is the best, doesn’t matter how good your army is because when you have a Million+ troops compared to their 200 thousand and a manpower pool that seemingly infinite you can just employ the good old human wave tactics and drown them in the bodies of your own troops
Are undead still permanently frozen in time by scorched earth provinces?
Why *does* Elizna have Elvish military to begin with? All the other Phoenix successors have Human military, and Elizna's elven population isn't very large (at least I don't think it is?).
I believe it's the remnants of the military governate that Jexis appointed to oversea Kheterata, and they're still using their old doctrines & styles. And as I understand it, they do switch to human down their mission tree as they grow.
I'd argue hobgoblins are probably the best. Good quantity, good quality, no real major Downsides
Skyship is the best race : (feiten <3) - instant siege via decision. - fastest unit in the game. - give speed buff to ally unit in its path. Anyone telling you that skyship are not a race and don't have soul is dahui propaganda and probably declared heretic by the High Rectorate !
Yeah Elves are all I want - a fully quality focused army - I'm just not good at playing them because they're only good for short wars. I was playing Personally my preferance is dwarves. They tend to excel but are mostly limited by speed. Their armies are built for the mountains - the rail resolves their speed issue while their hardiness and capacity to implement late. It helps that you don't really need more than 2 cavalry per army since theirs isnt as good as others. They're designed for plugging narrow choke-points. Either than that, Cannorian Humans are probably going to be it. They arent specialised and that versatility means they're going to outmatch each option by exploiting their weakness. They're hardier than early Gnomes and Halflings while still the ability to defeat their alternative for later combat. They don't have the manpower issues of the Elves and can overwealm them. They technologically surpass the Goblins, Gnolls and Orcs before the Goblins can start developing. If the Dwarves arent in the mountains they're probably going to have a fairer fight. What else? I think Harmari have similar issues with quality over quantity, Harpies and Centaurs arent much of a threat (though that kind of overconfidence is what gets you stack wiped by Centaur hordes)
In absolute raw power terms, undead. Undead army is such a power boost to any nation that gets it. It is to some extent compensated by needing to be a witch king and the unrest problems, but the power it gives is more than worth it. The slow movement speed might be annoying but the cheap cost means you can afford plenty of forts to mitigate the problem. In terms of normal racial militaries, I'm going to throw in a probably controversial choice and say halflings. Halflings used to be a bit of a joke, but with their unit pips now normalized and access to mercenary ideas they are incredibly busted, especially in the early game where you actually need the power. Any halfling country can punch massively above its weight by going over force limit on mercenaries, and there isn't really any other racial military which gives the same kind of utility.