Military tradition and Professionalism are two values that provide multiple bonuses to your army and navy. When accumulated and kept at high values, they can noticeably improve your nation’s fighting capabilities.
Army tradition represents your nation’s understanding of current warfare tactics. It goes up during war, provided that you keep your armies active in the battlefield. On the other hand, it slowly decays during periods of military inactivity.
Navy tradition works in a similar manner, but also provides trade bonuses on top. It is also easier to maintain during peacetime by having navies on active missions.
Professionalism is essentially your army’s current level of modernization. It accumulates far more slowly during the game’s period and doesn’t passively decay.
You can quickly grab professionalism by hiring generals.
Army Professionalism Details
Army professionalism provides some very strong modifiers for your army that scale very well into the late game. More specifically, scaling UP from 0 to 100% army professionalism you get:
- +10% land fire damage
- +10% shock damage
- +20% siege ability
- -50% regiment drill loss
Additionally, scaling DOWN from 0 to 50 professionalism you get:
- -15% mercenary cost
- +15% mercenary manpower
Army professionalism is admittedly very hard to come by. Most nations begin at 0 professionalism, with very few exceptions. However, unlike military tradition, it doesn’t decay.
Increase Army Professionalism
Your army professionalism can be modified by:
- Hiring generals (+1% per general)
- Drilling armies (+1% per year maximum, scaling with the percentage of your force limit being drilled)
- Recruiting mercenaries (-5% per mercenary company)
- Slackening recruitment standards (-5% and gives two years’ worth of manpower)
- Various events and missions
Hiring generals essentially trades military power for army professionalism.
The “Slacken recruitment standards” button is found in the military tab and is a very good option to quickly grab manpower when needed, despite the steep drop in professionalism.
Army Drilling
All non-mercenary regiments in your army have an individual drill level (from 0 to 100%). The higher a regiment’s drill level, the better it will perform in combat.
Specifically, the bonuses scaling up to 100% are:
- +10% land fire damage
- +10% shock damage
- -25% fire damage received
- -25% shock damage received
Additionally, an army’s average drill value gives it bonus movement speed, up to 20% when it is fully drilled.
All these bonuses are huge, especially later in the game when land fire damage becomes more and more important.
Any army in owned or subject territory can be drilled, provided it has a leader. All you need to do is press the target dummy button at the bottom of the army interface.
Additionally, the general in command of the drilling army has a chance to raise his skills. This depends on the percentage of your force limit the general is in command of. It is roughly 10% every year when commanding an army equal to your force limit.
Regiments will very slowly lose their drill value when NOT drilling (by roughly 1% per year). They will also lose it massively when the regiment suffers losses and must be reinforced.
The rate at which your regiments gain and lose drill value can be directly modified in a manner of ways. Most notably, there are decisions available to all nations that increase drill gain at the cost of raising army maintenance.
Army Tradition Details
First of all, army tradition is responsible for how good a recruited general’s stats will be. Generals are very important and can make or break an engagement.
The only consistent way to ensure you have good generals is having high army tradition.
On top of that, army tradition provides the following bonuses, scaling from 0 to 100:
- +10% recovery army morale speed
- +25% army morale
- +10% manpower recovery speed
- +5% siege ability
- Helps ensure the loyalty of the military related estate or faction, depending on the government
While not as strong late game as the bonuses from army professionalism, the extra army morale can be game-winning in the early game.
Increase Army Tradition & Reduce Decay
Passively gaining and maintaining army tradition depends on two factors. “Yearly army tradition” and “Army tradition decay”.
“Yearly army tradition” can be gained by:
- Various National ideas, traditions, and ambitions (+0.5, except a Russian idea giving +0.25)
- Quality idea 2 (+0.5)
- Maintaining active forts (Scales with the number and level of your forts relative your development. 1 up-to-date fort per 50 development yields the maximum of +1)
- Assigning certain estate privileges
- Various government reforms
- Trade company investment “Township” (+0.025 per Township)
- Joining the League War (+0.5 for 100 years only)
- Tower of London (+0.5 at tier 3)
Base decay is 5%.
“Army tradition decay” modifiers can be gained by:
- Innovativeness (-1%, scaling from 0 to 100 innovativeness)
- Various National ideas, traditions, and ambitions (-1%)
- Espionage-Quality policy (-0.5%)
- “Extend officer commissions” parliament issue (-1%)
- Hussite faith aspect “Orphan Atamans” (-1%)
- Various government reforms
- Assigning certain estate privileges
Note: The decay is percentage based, so at 100 army tradition the base decay will reduce it by -5 after a year. When tradition is at 40, the same decay will impact it only by -2 after a year.
Reducing the decay is far more impactful the higher your tradition already is. It is imperative you secure some of these modifiers if you wish to maintain your tradition high during long periods of peace.
Furthermore, army tradition can be gained actively by:
- Sieging forts (up to+2 per fort, depending on its level relative to the current technology)
- Various events (most ranging from -20 to +20)
- Fighting battles (the amount depends on losses relative to your force limit, while the loser typically gets more tradition)
Navy Tradition Details
Navy tradition works like its army counterpart.
It is responsible for how good the admirals you roll are.
On top of that, it provides bonuses for your navy and enhances your trade capabilities. More specifically, scaling from 0 to 100:
- +10% recover navy morale speed
- +25% morale of navies
- +100% trade steering
- +25% privateer efficiency
- +100% blockade efficiency
- +20% sailor recovery speed
- Helps ensure the loyalty of the trade related estate or faction, depending on the government
Increase Navy Tradition & Reduce Decay
Passively gaining and maintaining navy tradition depends on two factors. “Yearly navy tradition” and “Navy tradition decay”.
“Yearly navy tradition” can be gained by:
- Light ships protecting trade or privateering (up to +2, scaling with the percentage of ships relative to your force limit)
- Various national ideas, traditions, and ambitions (usually +1)
- Administrative-Maritime policy (+1)
- Murud-Janjira fort in the province of Chaul (+1 at tier 3)
- Nan Madoll in the province of Micronesia (+1 at tier 3)
The base decay is 5%.
“Navy tradition decay” modifiers can be gained by:
- Innovativeness (-1%, scaling from 0 to 100 innovativeness)
- Various National ideas, traditions, and ambitions (-1%)
- Aristocratic-Maritime policy (-1%)
- Level 3 coastal Centers of Trade (-0.2% each)
Of course, there are also ways to actively gain navy tradition. These include:
- Blockading ports
- Discovering terra incognita sea-zones through naval exploration (+1 each)
- Various events (most ranging from -20 to +20)
- Fighting naval battles (the amount depends on casualties inflicted on the enemy and the relative strength of the nations involved)
In general, navy tradition is far easier to maintain than army tradition. There are more generic modifiers readily available.
You will also organically acquire navy tradition by protecting trade and upgrading coastal Centers of Trade to level 3.
Grabbing maritime ideas also doubles your navy tradition from protecting trade. This means you can get up to +4 when using a trade fleet equal to your force limit. That alone can keep you at more than 80 navy tradition during peacetime.
