Is replenishing a viable military strategy?

[waidizss]

When it comes down to the grand scale of recruiting armies and sustaining conquest, it seems there are 2 alternative methods. First would be to merge and recruit locally, second, let ranks replenish. Now the first method seems to me to be superior due to lower costs (than waiting until you replenish, which is insanely lengthy process), allows you to recruit faster, you use local levies in your army which brings flavor, and retains experience of troops instead of those smelly 0 experience replenished replacements. And you can't even start replenish turn 1 in a new region because it is of foreign population. So is there any way anyone has made this strategy viable?

[Gyan avspar]

I think its works ok, you can't reqruit an army and conquer the hole map. You have to replenish or/and use some locals. I realy wonder why would anyone do what you said above (if I am understanding it your way). Do you enjoy commanding levies? Also i hightly doubt if any levy army could take a major city. It is just not enought. If you want an historical expirience you have to be patient.

[corsair831]

i attack with 2 armies; well supplied army to conquer, army 6 or so of tribal levies or whatever the local population is to hold the province from rebels etc.

as soon as your main army's conquered their job's done, retreat to friendly territory and replenish

[Diocle]

Just from a historical perspective, Romans rarely replenished the ranks of their legions, frequently the units were left understrength for years.

[Aexodus]

@Diocle was that not more due to an inability to replenish? i.e. in frontier regions. I always believed it was historical to often replenish units, roman units would have had a good mix of veterans and greens, no?

In other words, would they not have replenished old units as much as they could? Or did they rely more on auxiliaries once they needed new troops in a conquered territory, if I wanted to play historically

[waidizss]

I run armies full of rorarii and other garbage tier units all the time. I found that they best way to lose is to come unprepared, that makes for a better campaign. Running full legionary armies i just a bit too OP if you ask me.

So you're saying it is not, you bring 2 armies to conquer a region therefore are conquering only 1 region, whereas you could bring 1 army each in to two regions and conquer two regions. So again, takes times longer time to conquer.

From a historical perspective, the often kept over strengthened legions too! That's just based on how you want to to proceed, having more legions that are under strength gives you more tactical room because you are moving say 5 pieces instead of 4 pieces. But in game it doesn't work like that because you still pay full upkeep cost for half strength unit.

[Fest]

It depends on how many casualties you take after a battle, in the early game, I find I take more casualties so merge and recruit works better but later on, it's pretty much wait for replenishment and then move on (although I find this is mostly determined by your faction's roster more than anything else).

[The Guy With No Imagination]

Military conscriptor general skill solves this problem. Easily.

[Garbad]

i attack with 2 armies; well supplied army to conquer, army 6 or so of tribal levies or whatever the local population is to hold the province from rebels etc.

as soon as your main army's conquered their job's done, retreat to friendly territory and replenish

This is what I do as well.

[Ichon]

Expand carefully- get a good small province and build up your population there before expanding. I find in my DeI campaigns I can rarely afford to expand in every direction and having a local client/friend who you can either fight the enemies of or get revenge for their defeat occupying their former lands while colonizing them etc.

If you have 3 armies per front- 2 armies advancing 1 lagging behind patroling and squashing rebellions or small hidden armies not noticed first and a 4th army always replenishing you can keep going for a long time. Most of the campaign I only have 2-8 armies so it works pretty well.

Ultimately if you don't care about historical armies then just getting all foreigners units is by far the easiest answer.

[Furgon]

There is no historical evidence that any damn village in the middle of desert\forest could have a capacity to spam armies for indefinite amount of time, so being unable to replenish wasn't too much of an issue after you had successfully dismantled enemy's main armed forces. And apart from battle losses you have to consider that armies were further drained of soldiers by the need to install garrisons every now and then.
As for gameplay perspective, I too was big fan of replenishment and tried to boost it as much as possible, but somehow it feels just too boring and defeats the purpose of many other features connected to recruitment, like your military centers, recruitment discount effects, recruit stat bonuses etc. Not to mention that replenishment itself was naturally reduced in its overpowering attractiveness since population system kicked in.

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

Not to mention that replenishment itself was naturally reduced in its overpowering attractiveness since population system kicked in.

But replenishing also draws from the population pools. If you don't have sufficient numers in a given population group you wouldn't be able to replenish.

Whether one chooses to rely on replenishing, or not, depends solely on one's playing style and the potential selection of submods. If you, for example, use the Alternative Economy then replenishing becomes really important as you can't afford to recruit new units all the time. Then it also makes much more sense to develop replnishing bonuses for your general(s).

[Furgon]

But replenishing also draws from the population pools. If you don't have sufficient numers in a given population group you wouldn't be able to replenish.

I was mostly referring to the fact that you can't replenish your decimated army in 1-2 turns right in the middle of enemy kingdom anymore. I don't dislike replenishment as a feature, but I really appreciate it was moved from THE only option to just one of the few.