To send your armies where you need them, first click on them with your mouse, then right-click on another province to send them on their way. This is quite straightforward, but selecting a unit does much more than simply ready them for the battlefield. This will also open the Army Interface where you can see the composition of your forces and issue them a series of orders
Some useful data on your military force is displayed along the top, including their composition, their current province, and, if they are on the move, their destination. The arrow appears green if the force is located on friendly territory, and red if they are on the way to enemy lands. You can also see current attrition levels and the name of any leader commanding the force.
From here you can quickly split the army into two equal portions, detach enough troops to adequately lay siege to a province, which allows you to send the main army off on another mission. You can even attach the force to a group of transport ships in a port, allowing them to quickly move overseas as needed.
The bottom portion of the window shows your forces in greater detail, including the number of regiments as well as the number of men, and gives you a report on each individual regiment in your army. If you click the little skull here, you will disband this force and send the troops home.
From here you can also give some other specialized orders. You can split your army in a more careful manner, choosing which regiments will make up the new force. If there are Mercenaries present, you can split them off into their own army, which is a great way to find and fire them all after a war is concluded. Sometimes you may order one of your armies to work alongside an allied army, and from here you can attach them to that force so that they will follow their allies wherever they may lead. You can also consolidate regiments, disbanded certain units and transfer them to other regiments, which enables you to field full-strength forces.
There are also a few more military options. If you have the right Ideas, you can order a Forced March, which allows your armies to move at a much faster pace – at the cost of some Military Power. If your forces find themselves on unclaimed or colonial lands, you can also order they attack any pesky natives. You can burn some other country’s colonies to the ground, or thrash your own provinces in a Scorched Earth plan to deny your enemies the spoils of war. You can also directly seize another country’s lands, which is surely the most direct way to avoid all the trouble of a peace process… so long as they are pagans. All in all, this is a very useful interface.
You select more than one army by holding the left mouse button down and dragging the selection box around multiple forces. In this case, the top portion of the Army Interface will open in a neat stack of all selected armies. Right clicking on a province will send all of your selected forces to this destination – which is a great way to consolidate armies or converge on a target. If they all begin in the same province, you also have the option to merge them into a single invading force.
Choosing Select opens the main Army Interface for just that army.
