Army professionalism (2024)

I've been reading a bunch of posts in this forum about army professionalism and they pretty much all say it's really easy to increase and they quickly get to 100. That's news to me. I always find myself in the late game with maybe 20 to 25 professionalism. I rarely drill troops because of the morale hit that gives making them basically unable to deal with rebels, and failing that, I frankly rarely remember to drill them. Frankly the micromanagement aspect of drilling annoys me, IMHO it should just be automatic.

How do you guys increase professionalism and how do you a) manage drilling with rebels about and b) actually remember to drill units when there are so many other things to concentrate on?

I don't generally drill. Only in the beginning with a small force limit I drill to get most out of that I have. I normal circmustances, drilling does not pay off though. if there is peace, you can save tons of ducats with reduced upkeep, and if there is war, there is job to do for those armies instead of drilling.

I don't have trouble reaching professionalism though. You get it from recruiting generals. You don't really have much else to do with military points anyway. In the early game, it is useless, anyway, because recruiting mercs will trash your professionalism, but now, later with mercenary ideas you no longer have that problem either. Without mercenary ideas you should stop recruiting new mercenary companies (do not disband companies even when their manpower is down, it is still recovering, giving a decent manpower boost. compared to none, if you want to get that professionalism...)

Same as above, I pretty much always drill in peacetime, and I rarely hire mercs outside the early game Free company, when you have no professionalism anyways. I also drill during wars if I don't need to send my whole FL to win, especially if I have allies/vassals to do some lifting for me, and I don't especially care about participation, or gradually recall troops from the front when most of the enemies have been defeated and it's only sieges I'm waiting for.

And yes, I also tend to be at my leader limit, or even exceed it with 1-2 extra generals if I need more to lead my stacks, and pretty much instantly replace them when they die, even if I am filling out a MIL idea group or slightly behind on tech. You only need to be on the latest tech if you are at war, you can easily lag behind a bit during peace, if you've reached a size/have an alliance block as such that the AI would never dream to declare on you.

jez9999 said:

You get it just from recruiting generals? You must have a policy of always keeping them at your max leader limit, I guess. I recruit a fair few throughout the game and it doesn't get me anywhere near 100. Also, nothing else to do with mil mana? How about military tech? Especially for a non-European nation.

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You also often get of bad stat generals. those should be kicked and replaced. I am rarely over leaderlimit though, because that costs military power, which means i can recruit less generals, which means I have worse generals. If you don't lose it on mercs, you should have it by age of revolutions even without trying.

Of course, all this means you are getting those military points. If you can't affort a decent military advisor, and have poor ruler after another, yeah, then you of course are stripped.

Military tech is always priority, of course. You should be ahead of time too to gain advantage, if possible. This means you must have institutions, and for that, you need to spend points in the early / mid games to pump it on some province of yours. (one with low dev cost, close to high dev provinces it can spread to is a must).

bokorthedust said:

my whole FL to win,

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Im curious, what's this abbreviation, FL ?

nuurori said:

Im curious, what's this abbreviation, FL ?

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Force Limit.

You can get cheaper generals through estates, government reform. Together that's 20% cheaper leaders (also Japan monument). So you can hire a lot more generals.

I do generally use excess mil points to increase professionalism, but only when not behind in tech. I find it smooth to just hire to General limit (even if you have fewer armies). This way the cost of the generals is more spread out through the game.

iClipse said:

You can get cheaper generals through estates, government reform. Together that's 20% cheaper leaders (also Japan monument). So you can hire a lot more generals.

I do generally use excess mil points to increase professionalism, but only when not behind in tech. I find it smooth to just hire to General limit (even if you have fewer armies). This way the cost of the generals is more spread out through the game.

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How do you use them to increase it? Is there a button that does it directly?

Also doesn't professionalism decay down over time?

jez9999 said:

How do you use them to increase it? Is there a button that does it directly?

Also doesn't professionalism decay down over time?

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You use military points to increase professionalism by hiring generals (and probably firing your worst ones if you're over your leader limit)

Army professionalism doesn't decy over time, it only gets lowered by slackening recruitment standards, hiring mercenaries, or events.

jez9999 said:

How do you use them to increase it? Is there a button that does it directly?

Also doesn't professionalism decay down over time?

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oh, that explains why you had problems maxing professionalism. You forgot to turn off slackening recruitment standards, correct?

I don't think it's very optimal to try to follow some imperative of getting to max professionalism.
It's nice to have it, but most of the time it's just not worth it. The bonuses are relatively minor, and costs of getting there can be pretty high.
Money you spend on drilling is usually better spent elsewhere. Hiring generals is a nice way of getting your professionalism up but it's best not to overdo it.

Just pick the event options that give you professionalism if you can, and make sure to hire generals when you hit good AT timings and you'll be fine.
We're no longer in 1.30, back when slackening was the go-to way of boosting your military.

jez9999 said:

What are AT timings?

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AT decays at 5% base. Higher AT, better the generals, going from 1-7 pip generals at 0 AT to 7-12 pip generals at 100 AT. So, when your AT is high, its best chance to hire better generals.

Opanashc said:

AT decays at 5% base. Higher AT, better the generals, going from 1-7 pip generals at 0 AT to 7-12 pip generals at 100 AT. So, when your AT is high, its best chance to hire better generals.

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It's more than that. Army Tradition gives more pips, but it's not completely linear, there are thresholds at 10, 20, 30 Army Tradition and so on. So you should keep an eye on it and make sure, for instance, that you hire a general before the decay takes you under one of those thresholds. That's what I'm assuming @Jarvin meant by that.

Maxxie42 said:

It's more than that. Army Tradition gives more pips, but it's not completely linear, there are thresholds at 10, 20, 30 Army Tradition and so on. So you should keep an eye on it and make sure, for instance, that you hire a general before the decay takes you under one of those thresholds. That's what I'm assuming @Jarvin meant by that.

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Yup, precisely
After each big battle you take, or a big stackwipe you are dealt (for some reason) it's good to check if you just got at or above 20/40/60/80/100 AT.
At each higher bracket, the impact of the boni increases too. AT has an insane impact on generals, which in turn have insane impact on your combat capacity, and that's a sure way to make you get good generals.

I once half jokingly came up with a "strat" for all-out early game wars in multiplayer, where you'd pick defensive 1st(which currently isn't very meta). Then, the moment you get into a war, you'd burn all of your manpower into making regiments, then disable your troops maintenance and run your troops into an enemy's stack until all of your troops are gone.
After that you hire generals, and switch to using mercs, which you would usually anyways

It might sound crazy... and it probably is, but all I'm trying to say is that AT is a force that shouldn't be underestimated

And regarding the Rebels, I mean you can always drill unless the rebels are at 80 %, and even then you can drill in a safe province and wait for the rebels to spawn and then only turn of drilling to fight them (also depends a bit if you have forts to block any negative effects from the rebels). You can even drill in provinces with unrest to reduce the unrest there but make sure that the rebels are not about to spawn while your army is still drilling. I normally switch to rebel supression only when I can bring down unrest or to reduce the size of rebels when they are already at 90 %.

I drill when I need the boost to the military more than the excess money (taking into account the boosts to the army, not only the professionalism increase). The richer and smaller the more interesting it is (currently playing as Venice and drilling a lot).