New Recruitment System

Finally had a chance to play with the new EE updates. First let me say, not sure if you changed any of the battle mechanics, but the battles seemed to have slowed down some and are harder than I remember which is good!

Not sure I fully understand the new recruitment system though. Started a campaign with Bactria and only had one recruitment slot even though I controlled 2 provinces. Meanwhile when starting a campaign with next store neighbor Dahae, I could recruit 3 units inspite of only having one territory. I read the change log but still doesnt seem very consistent. Also not sure how I feel about the AI not having these limitations. I appreciate giving the AI bonus to help them with the game, but seems like its a bit too unbalanced in the early campaign.

You need to build military buildings to increase your recruitment slots

The ai also has restrictions but they arent as severe as the players.

The higher the difficulty level the more the players restriction and lower the AI's.

Some factions/cultures also get a bonus to recruitment slots. They are mostly vanilla or all factions playable traits and will probably be overhauled at some point in the future.

Ah guess I will just have to sit back and brace for the onslaught! Good thing you tripled the garrisons as well!!

But seriously, though I some times disagree with this mods commitment to historical accuracy at the sake of unit variety, you guys have put together what is easily one of the most challenging and immersive mods. Keep it up!

On unit variety - Hellenistic armies tended to have more unit variety that they had in the Classical era, but there was also a large increase in reliance on mercenaries. Since our first focus is on overhauling the faction rosters, you will indeed be faced with a lack of unit variety in the short term, but once all the units are done and the merc and AOR overhaul is complete unit variety should not be an issue anymore (though building a balanced army will still be a challenge). Glad you're having fun :)

I do indeed look forward to that day! It doesn't bother me so much in the early campaign, but it is disappointing to be lacking in elite units later in the game as it feels like there is little to work up to other than expanding your empire with essentially the same armies. Carthage for example (and I know that they especially relied on mercenaries), but there is almost no stat difference between the units you start the game with and the ones that replace them via tech tree. And on the note of Carthage, there seem to be units missing from the campaign. Can never recruit regional units nor have I ever seen chariots available.

Unrelated, but was there a big morale hit added on very hard in the last update? My army routed after making contact with the enemy, but the same units in the enemies army still had full morale. First time I've had to reduce the difficulty in a Total War game. Love the other changes to campaign though, especially the politics overhaul! Makes that aspect of the game worth paying attention too!

i'd ideally like to see factions able to recruit any unit which would of been historically available to it at the start of the campaign. Changes to AI recruitment means we can limit the AI from recruiting armies of nothing but elites etc

I can see why you might want that from a realism standpoint, but I think that would take half the fun out of the campaign map. Part the RTS experience is making building decisions between military and economy. If you no longer need better military buildings to get stronger units, all you are doing is leveling up economic buildings while throwing in a couple temples here and there for public order.

The recruitment system varies depending on faction/culture and the units that they used.

In aiming for realism, accuracy and also balanced AI armies, making the majority of early units easily available from early buildings is important and something we aim to do.

The RTS experience aspect addressed by trying to have reforms of sorts for as many factions as is possible historically. The reforms may unlock units that require more advanced structures to recruit (eg Praetorians or Elephants) though not all factions will have these types of units. The other bonus to investing in he higher military infrastructure is the increase to base xp for recruited units. With our xp system, it takes much longer for units to level up so having that initial xp can be very helpful.

In saying all that, we dont try to implement 1 recruitment system for all factions/cultures. Instead we attempt to reflect the recruitment style of each faction. Eg Carthage was a trade nation and many of its noble units can only be recruited from port towns or province capitol regions, the Romans and Greeks recruit locally from their main settlement structures for the most part.

Thanks for that answer Magnar. All that actually sounds pretty cool and I look forward to seeing it in action full scale as the mod gets closer to "completion." It is a great work in progress, however, and thanks for bringing it to those of us who have no modding capabilities ourselves!