User Guide

49
Domestic Military
The fourth tab on the Domestic Interface pro-
vides a summary of your country’s overall cur-
rent military strength; allows you to change
your preferred military unit types; and is most
commonly used to adjust the level of funding
you devote to maintaining your armies and na-
vies. Since this page relates directly to your mil-
itary forces, we will discuss them only briefly
in this section and then cover these concepts
and their implications in detail in the separate
chapter on “The Military”.
Unit Categories and Types
Europa Universalis III includes a very large
number of different unit types that are based
upon both regional and technological differ-
ences around the world during the eras covered
by the game. In mid-15
th
century Europe, an
army was usually seasonal and was made up
of heavily armoured knights accompanied by
scores of poorly-armed peasants levied for a
specific campaign. The weapons in use were
primarily swords, spears and various types of
bows; siege equipment was almost unchanged
from the ponderous machinery in use several
hundred years earlier.
Within a hundred years,
the transition towards
professional armies and
gunpowder-based weap-
onry had begun; by the
game’s end, it would be
muskets and artillery that
dominated the battlefields
of Europe. Technologi-
cal progress occurred at
various rates throughout
the world and the types
of weaponry and tactics
varied considerably from
place to place.
As we saw in the pre-
vious section, budget in-
vestments in land and
naval technology will
gradually reflect these advancements by un-
locking new and more powerful types of mil-
itary units. Each unit type belongs to one of
seven categories: land-based units all fall under
the classification of infantry, cavalry, or artil-
lery, while naval units will either be transport
vessels or one of three distinct sizes of combat
vessel. Each unit has a set of combat character-
istics that we’ll talk about in detail later; how-
ever, one of these is called “morale” which we
should introduce here.
Morale reflects your military units’ willing-
ness to fight. When units are engaged in com-
bat, they will gradually take losses in the form
casualties, but they will also slowly lose morale.
When a unit’s morale drops too low, it will
“break,” disengage from battle, and attempt
to retreat towards safety. Few battles will last
long enough to achieve the complete annihila-
tion of an enemy, so a side’s morale is usually
one of the most important factors that deter-
mines who will emerge as the victor. Units that
are not engaged directly in battle will regain
morale slowly over time, although this process
can take months if it has become thoroughly
demoralized. We will return to the subject of
morale shortly, when we
talk about land and naval
maintenance.
Preferred Unit
Type
The upper half of the Do-
mestic Military screen has
a dual function: it allows
you to review your total
military strength, and
enables you to change the
“preferred unit type” for
each of the three catego-
ries of land combat regi-
ment. A preferred unit
type is the type of regi-
ment that your country
has chosen as its official
military unit.