Upkeep Costs and Early Campaign Choices

[Viking Prince]

Starting a campaign, money is always tight. If you are France, for instance, what units do you recruit for the rebel region campaign?

Two mounted sergeants equal a mailed knight and a peasant archer for upkeep. For early purposes, are these two equal in utility?

The starting formations seem to lean towards 2 spear, 2 archers, a cav or a general to take on Rennes, Metz, Dijon, and Bordeaux rebel settlements. Since the castles can produce mounted sergeants, would you keep one as a garrison so that all infantry can participate in the initial campaign? What about a force to take Bruges and Bern? I would not want to wait a seige out for 8 turns, so I suppose the force needs to win on second turn of the seige by assault.

[Robo1992]

I just take what ever units I can from my settlements and train as many as I can in the fist turn and attack the closest settlements. If you fight the battles on the battle map even when you have an inferior army you should win (unless you are really bad).

[Metzgershund]

As HRE I started out by blitzkrieging Hamburg as soon as the game loaded. and within the next turn had troops sieging Magdeburg, Prague, and Metz. From Prague I would send my men north (as there are alwas more men at prague than Magdeburg) to Stettin, consolidate my armies in the South and prepare for war with Milan.

I tend to use a lot of mercs because I love money and I tend to focus on my economy more right off the bat after I blitz the needed settlements to assertain more easily defended borders.

[xxxMoRaVexxx]

What I did when I played as France is to bolster the 2 armies on the field(the one near Dijon, the one near Bordeaux). With this armies I easily conquered Dijon and Bordeaux with the help of some mercs. After conquering the 2 rebel settlements(I sacked the 2 settlements to have money for producing another army), I joined the excess troops in the my recent rebel conquering armies to attack Rennes with some cavalry, after sacking Rennes and producing some economic buildings in my first settlements I began to create a cavalry army made up of lots of mounted sergeants and some knights with about 4 units of infantry(I think its that hard to conquer Bruges). I conquered the whole modern france with some help of some mercs. Then proceeded to war with Milan. But I immediately disbanded some of my units to save money and to raise another cavalry army(Milan only have militia units in early game).

[clandestino]

I have mastered the France campaigne and I think that in begining you actualy don't need to recruit any units at all! I just take all my peasant archers and sergeant spearmen from various settlements and combine them with those 2 units of mailed knights that you get from the start. Add a general and you have army capable for taking any rebel settlement. Actualy you can make two armies of these units so you can take Bordeux and Dijon simultaniously. Later you will receive various units for completing missions and that will help to. Take all castle trained units out from cities and replace them with free upkeep militia units, that will lower your costs down.

[NobleNick]

Moved to Battle Planning.