Area of Recruitment System

**Augustus Lucifer** · February 22, 2009, 11:06 AM

This thread is for AOR Discussion. Moved some of the posts from the Graphics area here. For the starter info see lower in this post.

**Yelü Dashi** · February 22, 2009, 11:53 AM

Chris, I think you will be waiting a while for a response on those questions. I think we should forge ahead anyways so how about trying to create Song building trees, starting with the military ones ?

This website has a great summary of important civil and military buildings at the time.

I am happy to find some pictures for you, and I am sure Danova would be able to create some icons once we get things together. It would be great to preview this alongside all the new units.

And also base it on RollingWave's roster below:

Originally Posted by RollingWave

My original suggestion was this, the Song's military structure was centered around a imperial army that was mostly located in the Capital (first KeiFeng in the North and Lin An during the southern period) and a few key strategic locations , it had made a point of weakening the local army in just about every aspect to the point where they were little use other than some basic security work. the capital army was called Jin Juin (imperial army) and the locals were Xian Juin (廂軍) , they relied a lot on militas during crisis as well.

They're real defense against the Jin was their Navy +　the Yangtsi and Huai Rivers. they had clearly one of the best navies in the world at that time.

So a general suggestion, the Song army should consist of

A. Militas : cheap to put together but relatively expensive to keep around for too long, this is to reflect the obvious economic problems of having a lot of your civilians in the army in a thriving economy for a long time. they're armor is generally poor as well as their training, moral is decent (for militas) and they should use some pretty interesting weapons.

B. Local army aka Xian Juin: they're considerablly worse than the normal middle teir units for most factions, they're fairly affordable and have decent armors and weapons. but training and moral and skills are all on the low end. but they should consist of most of the normal stationing troops in your realm.

C. Imperial army: these shouldn't be too common, only Castles and capitals can recruit these, they're very well armored and armed in general. but spawn rate (espically outside of the Capital) should be low.

With this in mind, my basic setup would be something along the lines of.

Cities (non-capital)

Teir 1: Spear milita, Xian Spearman
Teir 2: Xian Repeating crossbowman (almost no armor piercing and low range /dmg but high rate of fire, would be effective against low /non armored foes or if someone stand there and let them shoot long enough like in a seige), Xian crossbowmans
Tier 3: Xian infantry (below average Saber and shield types) Milita crossbowmans (song crossbows should generally be better than most)
Tier 4: Milita firelancers , milita grenadier, Xian bowmans (decent armor / melee for a archer but not much else)

I'm guessing that some of the gunpowder stuff like firelance and grenades need other buildings as well.

Castle and capitals

Barrack:

Teir 1: Imperial Spearmans,
Teir 2: Imperial Infantry (good heavy infantry type) Imperial Firelancers.
Teir 3: Imperial Halberdiers/ Ji infantry, Thunderbombers (Zheng Tian Lie, in chinese is Heaven shaking thunders, the Jin were more reknown for it versus the Mongels but Song been know to use something like that, soe maybe it's Jin+Song unit)
Teir 4: ZhangMaDao Infantries . BeiWei Infantry

(BeiWei 背嵬 , was the elite guards of YueFei and Han Shi Zhong, the early S Song generals that came pretty close to reclaiming the North before the politics ruined their work, the term remained a term for elite guardsman, Han's consisted more of the infantry variety while YueFei's BeiWei were almost entirely cavalries.)

Archery Range:

Tier 1: Imperial Crossbowmans
Teir 2: Imperial archers
Teir 3: Ever Victorious Crossbowmans
Teir 4: Rocketeer(?) : (sort of like the ole MTW2's rocket cart effect? or maybe a very long range but not particularly fast projectile weapon? this is more of a interesting concept then a must though)

Cavalries: (Song cavalries are all very very expensive with low spawn rate, this includes their light cavs so while they CAN have some lighter cavs it's almost impossible to put together enough of them to be useful instead of just very wasteful, they get heavy cavs fairly early in the tech tree but it's high cost / low respawn means it won't be much of an advantage.)

Tier 1: Imperial Scouts (light cav)
Tier 2: Imperial Heavy cavalries (heavy cavs, lancers)
Tier 3: Imperial Heavy Cavalry archers (fairly good, except that it's nearly impossible to get enough of them to play HA tactics, doubles well as heavy cavs.)
Teir 3: BeiWei Cavalries (背嵬, the elite regiment of the Song Cavs)

Seige (this is the easiest to put together and almost 100% historical)

teir 1: XuangFeng (Whirlwind) catapults
teir 2: Lian Nu (multishot ballistas)
teir 3: ChuangZhi Nu (Bed Crossbows, aka Acruballistas) ShiJiao Pao (four legged traction Trebuchet)
teir 4: (maybe) HuiHui Pao (Muslim Trebuchet, aka the normal trebs in the game. historically the Song didn't use them... at least if they did it was in the very last and chaotic stages of their crumbling empire)

The Song used field artiliery a lot to try and compenstate for the lack of cavalries, only the ShiJiao Pao was mostly for seige duty (which it wasn't really that effective, relative to the counterweight version anyway) Xuang Feng has low range but was light weight and could actually turn and aim. so it should act more like a longer range javlin unit? Multi Shot ballistas is pretty self descript, it usually shot off multiple bolts in one salvo. Bed ballistas had REALLY long range.. probably the longest of any weapons at this period and was fairly unique to the Song (though maybe the Jin have it too.)

Some other ideas to play around with was that the Song dynasty have been recorded to use gunpowder on their normal arrows, in that it's light just before they release it, and would ignit midair, resulting in a scary and wild salvo that have immense penetration and scary if simply due to the wild nature. I'm not sure if this is possiblly scriptable though that we change the firearrow option to something like this.

**Augustus Lucifer** · February 22, 2009, 12:00 PM

Okay, I'll take a look at that stuff when I get a chance. I think you can probably help answer one of the questions posed in the other thread, which is:

- A more comprehensive look at the Song Unit Roster. Talking about how we want the system to work(Vanilla-based where it just goes straight levels and you have mercs; AOR elements where you can recruit standard units and some regional ones; Fully AOR where no unit can be recruited generally and everything has a region or requisite; etc. etc.), how this ties into buildings they're recruited from(I can figure this out mainly with the previous, but comments insure it is finely tuned), and things like that. If we want to look into making the AOR city by city(using plug-ins) instead of region by region(using hidden resources), I'll look into that as well.

EDIT: And this is for all factions not just Song, don't want to switch systems faction to faction that'd just be confusing for me and the players.

**Yelü Dashi** · February 22, 2009, 02:06 PM

Thinking out loud and on first look I would say we want a fully AOR system 'where no unit can be recruited generally and everything has a region or requisite'. Can you elaborate on what is meant by 'requisite' - do you mean another buildings and things like religious demographics etc ?

If you look the Mongols and Song, we have proposed two very different methods to recruit units. The Song rely on a a two tier regional system, whereas the Mongols will diversify their roster by conquering certain steppe provinces and unlocking that settlement's (read:clan) native units. So please correct me if I am wrong but I don't think the other systems could accomodate both of these ?

**Augustus Lucifer** · February 22, 2009, 04:49 PM

Originally Posted by Yelü Dashi

Thinking out loud and on first look I would say we want a fully AOR system 'where no unit can be recruited generally and everything has a region or requisite'. Can you elaborate on what is meant by 'requisite' - do you mean another buildings and things like religious demographics etc ?

If you look the Mongols and Song, we have proposed two very different methods to recruit units. The Song rely on a a two tier regional system, whereas the Mongols will diversify their roster by conquering certain steppe provinces and unlocking that settlement's (read:clan) native units. So please correct me if I am wrong but I don't think the other systems could accomodate both of these ?

Fully AOR would be a system where no unit can be built unless it is either A) In the Region(or city) it originates in, or, B) A 'localization' type building was created to build certain 'home' units in outlying provinces. So if the Mongols conquered China, in a fully AOR system we would have to decide, for the mongols, which units they can recruit from China(or force them to 'localize'). A half-AOR system uses some units that can be recruited from every city in the game, no requirements except whatever building in the tree they come from.

To put it simply, half-AOR is in some cases logical, in others an exercise in laziness. I will think up a few examples of ways I think it could work with a full/half AOR system and post them later.

**RollingWave** · February 23, 2009, 08:04 PM

it seems that both system does the same thing if you tinker enough with the list no? it has more to do with how the building tree is setup? I would guess that a full ZOR makes a little more sense. so that we won't be spawning a boatload of Song milita in the middle of the Mongolian stepps or spawnning a ton of nomadic tribesman in southern China.

Though in such cases. the mercenary list must also be pretty fair, otherwise if your say.. a Japanese faction, you probably have a really really hard time going anywhere past conquering a few coastal cities if simply due to the logistical nightmare of farrying trrops from Japan to China / Korea.

**Augustus Lucifer** · February 26, 2009, 01:03 AM

Apologies for not posting the rundown, haven't had a chance to crack at the files, was working on a document for the CB going public and ES articles, and got caught up in the ETW Demo scripting business. Bored of that now, so will get cracking posthaste.

**Augustus Lucifer** · February 27, 2009, 04:57 PM

I didn't actually play the Demo. According to my steam profile, 0.6 hrs in past 2 weeks.

The ES articles just took longer to compile than I originally thought. Anyways, I've determined how I'm going to let the game know which region is which, since plugins wouldn't really work, and am implementing it now. This might be a similar system to what EB did, but I don't presume to know.

Essentially all we need is 21 hidden resources, and then using combinations of the two we can make regions individual with 2-resource indicators. If this number was upped higher the resources required would be less (3-string and up) and the regions covered more, but we have plenty of hidden resources and I don't want it to be overly confusing. Will post the list once I've done all of it, as well as the rest of that jazz. And god damn my hands are throbbing now

EDIT: Here's the region IDs for the EDB

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

The second - can be ignored, it's just there so the find-replace didn't replace letters in the names, since I changed them from letters to numbers. So if a unit can be recruited in Jiamusi, we say it can be recruited in 11-14

**Augustus Lucifer** · February 27, 2009, 08:21 PM

Here is the code that governs it:

EDB

Code:

            capability
            {
				recruit_pool "Daikyu Bushi"  5	 0.5   8  0  requires factions { song, } and hidden_resource i1 and hidden_resource i3
            }

Regions

Code:

Lin-an_Province
	Lin-an
	song
	Chinese_Rebels
	222 216 255
	i1, i3
	5
	1
	religions { daoxue 0 mahayana 0 theravada 0 tengriism 0 vajrayana 0 islam 100 catholic 0 

heretic 0 }

Shaoxing_Province
	Shaoxing
	song
	Chinese_Rebels
	73 113 46
	i1, i4
	5
	1
	religions { daoxue 0 mahayana 0 theravada 0 tengriism 0 vajrayana 0 islam 100 catholic 0 

heretic 0 }

These images illustrate the city-based AOR system in action. And here are the resulting images for the Barracks in either province. Sorry for the BMP, to lazy to change format and such.

Shaoxing

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Lin'an

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

That should adequately illustrate the usage and result of tagging each region. This makes it easy for us to have units recruited on a region by region basis, as opposed to trying to come up with AORs of multiple cities and call it japan or whatever. We can still do that on top of this if we want to simplify it for some units, but we don't need to.

As for the overarching recruitment system, that is something that I'm still mulling over. The systems I have in mind might be to complex for their own good, and way to much work for me unless I can get python macros to automate it.

**S-te-Fan** · February 28, 2009, 01:23 AM

Ok.... were is this all about? AOR...?

**Augustus Lucifer** · February 28, 2009, 01:56 AM

Originally Posted by stefaneke

Ok.... were is this all about? AOR...?

AOR = Area of Recruitment

**S-te-Fan** · February 28, 2009, 04:29 AM

I mean: "Is it about AOR?" But you already answered that question. Weapons are coming up very quickly before ETW comes out I hope otherwise this whole mod is doomed.

**Yelü Dashi** · February 28, 2009, 11:09 AM

Originally Posted by stefaneke

Weapons are coming up very quickly before ETW comes out I hope otherwise this whole mod is doomed.

what the

does that mean ?

Chris,
This looks much simpler than I expected (in a good way), tho I guess it took a far bit of monotonous typing at your end. Tis much appreciated, we have now have a basis to move forward on. Can you transfer all this to a separate thread perhaps ?

**Augustus Lucifer** · March 05, 2009, 11:01 PM

Okay, here's how it's going to work. Five building sets will govern the recruitment of units: Military Complex, Military Base, Military Academy, Shipyard, and Other.

Military Complexes

Military Complexes are the basic form of military maintenance and recruitment. These facilities at their height comprise a barracks where the soldiers live and work, a stable or pasture for the housing and care of horses, an armory for the storage of weapons and armor, recreation and dining areas for the soldiery, a military intelligence office, and practice fields for all manner of troop.

They can recruit:

- Regional Units
- Militia Units
- Spies/Assassins

Level 1 - Training Lot

Requires: Village

Level 2 - Drill Square

Requires: Town

Level 3 - Barracks

Requires: Large Town

Level 4 - Military Facility

Requires: City

Level 5 - Military Complex

Requires: City

Level 6 - Large Military Complex

Requires: Large City

Level 7 - Grand Military Complex

Requires: Huge City

Level 8a - Grand Military Complex (w/ MRI-D)

Requires: Huge City

Level 8b - Grand Military Complex (w/ MRI-A)

Requires: Huge City

Military Base

A Military Base is an outpost of the central command in a settlement. Officers and commandants charged with the re-supply of provisions and troops from the home provinces are housed and conduct their business here. This facility allows for the recruitment of some home troops in outlying provinces and the publishing of engagement manuals to help integration with regional units.

They can recruit:

Faction Units (non-militia)

Level 1 - Military Outpost

Requires: City

Level 2 - Military Base

Requires: Large City

Level 3 - Satellite Headquarters

Requires: Huge City

Military Academy

The Military Academy trains prospective officers in battlefield tactics, logistics, maneuvers, and operations. The Academy every so often will produce a youth of remarkable talent who is ready to command as a general in the field. Generals can come to the Academy to improve their knowledge of warfare and teach classes.

They can recruit:

- Generals (School = 1 every 10 years; Academy = 1 every 7 years; University = 1 every 3 years)

Level 1 - Military School

Requires: City

Level 2 - Military Academy

Requires: Large City

Level 3 - Military University

Requires: Huge City

Shipyard

Shipyards produce the fleets which serve a nation in wartime capacity, unlike the Docks which serve as trade centers. High-level dockyards also have facilities for housing the crewmen which improve efficiency across the board.

They can recruit:

- War Ships

Level 1 - Naval Docks

Requires: Large Town

Level 2 - Shipyard

Requires: City

Level 3 - Large Shipyard

Requires: Large City

Level 4 - Sprawling Shipyard

Requires: Huge City

Level 5 - Naval Hub

Requires: Huge City

Other

Depending on the faction or the region, some other buildings may produce units as well. For example, warrior monks are recruited from the monasteries.

They can recruit:

- Mercenaries
- Special Units

(I will expand all these sections more later, and provide threads and classifications of the unit types mentioned herein)

**Augustus Lucifer** · June 24, 2009, 11:49 PM

Some more thoughts after a deeper analysis:

- Simplified AOR regions based on faction starting regions, possible sub-divisions depending on our approach. Current method would mean literally over 1,000 recruit pools for each unit, which isn't practical.

- Base only recruits faction units for that faction, so each faction has a section where they have their units and all the related pools, no other variables necessary, variables where a base can be built will be defined elsewhere.

- Complex only recruits regional units for that AOR region, if region and faction match up then it's counted as home provinces and only those pools should receive a differing treatment.

- 3 buildings to define home provinces, border provinces, and outlying provinces which do the job of determining where certain buildings can be built. Need to determine how to make this work without restricting the AI build paths. Possibly use the -or- operator and a building that always builds in AI controlled settlements to unrestrict their growth.

- Maximum 2 technologies or otherwise allowed to act on any unit, in groups or individually, in addition to the impacts of military policy, lest the counterfest get out of hand.

- Unit Classifications: Militia, Standard(Regional/Factional), Elite, Special, Mercenary

- Elire units unavailable except to home faction.

- Separate buildings for AI recruitment with different recruitment pools not contingent on event counters, and with higher replenish rates and experience. Experiment with events like SettlementCaptured coupled with SettlementTurnEnd to insure the building is always present for the AI and never present for the player. Hopefully do this with an "and not" statement for the player buildings if possible. Also need to try and make it work for hotseat where there's multiple 'local' factions.

- Base levels of replenish, max stock, initial stock, for each unit classification within a given range. Militia 0.31-0.5, Standard 0.13-0.28, Elite 0.02-0.04, just rough approximates for a replenish rate value system.

- Military policy always acts on top of all other contributing factors. So if base is 0.04 and have military policy which doubles then it's 0.08. If have another tech that adds a certain amount say 0.05 then would be 0.04 + 0.05 = Modified base, modified base is then doubled if military policy is in place to 0.18. Between 2x-4x should be the quantification of military policy effect depending on unit and faction, though it's better if it's an algorithm. Bonuses that add more than the initial base should be avoided, as seen above the value changed from once every 20 turns to once every 6 turns just by adding 0.05 and doubling it.

**Augustus Lucifer** · March 30, 2009, 09:01 PM

This post was copied from the Goryeo - Unit Research thread, as it included some important notes about the system.

Looks good tokimitsu. That is an old roster format by the way, we no long are using Barracks, Stables, and Ranges to represent military facilities. This is how Vanilla does it, but it isn't really proper to say that different aspects of an army developed in isolation of each other.

Archers did not only require an archery range, they also would have needed a fletcher and other staff for the production of arrows, a bowyer for the production of the bows, a barracks in which to spend their nights(or a manner of reimbursing soldiers for having to upkeep themselves at home), a stockpile of food and those who can make it edible, a tactical division for determining the training regime of the unit and commanding it in battle, as well as other things.

The same can be said of infantry and cavalry. Since it is unlikely the facilities used by missile, infantry, and cavalry would have developed entirely separate of one another, it doesn't make sense to build them separate. Rather, since things like barracks which serve as lodging, watchtowers for security, production facilities of armor and weapons, and the general staff of the officers all were shared by the three denominations of military, it only makes sense that they'd develop around a central focus. So what we have instead is this system:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Military Complexes

Military Complexes are the basic form of military maintenance and recruitment. These facilities at their height comprise a barracks where the soldiers live and work, a stable or pasture for the housing and care of horses, an armory for the storage of weapons and armor, recreation and dining areas for the soldiery, a military intelligence office, and practice fields for all manner of troop.

They can recruit:

- Regional Units
- Militia Units
- Spies/Assassins

Level 1 - Training Lot

Requires: Village

Level 2 - Drill Square

Requires: Town

Level 3 - Barracks

Requires: Large Town

Level 4 - Military Facility

Requires: City

Level 5 - Military Complex

Requires: City

Level 6 - Large Military Complex

Requires: Large City

Level 7 - Grand Military Complex

Requires: Huge City

Level 8a - Grand Military Complex (w/ MRI-D)

Requires: Huge City

Level 8b - Grand Military Complex (w/ MRI-A)

Requires: Huge City

Military Base

A Military Base is an outpost of the central command in a settlement. Officers and commandants charged with the re-supply of provisions and troops from the home provinces are housed and conduct their business here. This facility allows for the recruitment of some home troops in outlying provinces and the publishing of engagement manuals to help integration with regional units.

They can recruit:

Faction Units (non-militia)

Level 1 - Military Outpost

Requires: City

Level 2 - Military Base

Requires: Large City

Level 3 - Satellite Headquarters

Requires: Huge City

Military Academy

The Military Academy trains prospective officers in battlefield tactics, logistics, maneuvers, and operations. The Academy every so often will produce a youth of remarkable talent who is ready to command as a general in the field. Generals can come to the Academy to improve their knowledge of warfare and teach classes.

They can recruit:

- Generals (School = 1 every 10 years; Academy = 1 every 7 years; University = 1 every 3 years)

Level 1 - Military School

Requires: City

Level 2 - Military Academy

Requires: Large City

Level 3 - Military University

Requires: Huge City

Shipyard

Shipyards produce the fleets which serve a nation in wartime capacity, unlike the Docks which serve as trade centers. High-level dockyards also have facilities for housing the crewmen which improve efficiency across the board.

They can recruit:

- War Ships

Level 1 - Naval Docks

Requires: Large Town

Level 2 - Shipyard

Requires: City

Level 3 - Large Shipyard

Requires: Large City

Level 4 - Sprawling Shipyard

Requires: Huge City

Level 5 - Naval Hub

Requires: Huge City

Other

Depending on the faction or the region, some other buildings may produce units as well. For example, warrior monks are recruited from the monasteries.

They can recruit:

- Mercenaries
- Special Units

Our recruitment system combines what I call 'regional' units with 'faction' units(divided into Militia and Non-Militia). Every unit is a regional unit, and most are factional units(some exceptions like Tendai Monks, River Bandits, etc.). What makes a unit 'regional' is the definition of an area of the map in which any faction with a high enough level of military facility can recruit it due to the units familiarity in the region. A 'faction' unit means this unit is also tied to one or more factions, which have the ability to recruit them outside the home region if they have a high enough Military Base in the outlying city. This military base represents the immigration or transportation of viable soldiers to the new settlement, and presence enough in the region with knowledge of the populace to train locals into homeland troops.

Let's take a Goryeo soldier as an example:

Gae-Ma Cavalry
Faction: Goryeo
Region: Kaegyong, Sogyong, Namgyong, Dongyong, Kyoju, Cholla, Tonggye, Sohae
Tier: 4

So what this means, is that in the regions listed, any faction with a Grand Military Complex there can recruit the Gae-Ma from local Koreans, using Korean displaced officers to do the training until factional officers understand the process. The reason for the facility level follows this chart:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Since it is a faction unit, the faction Goryeo can also recruit the unit outside of the home regions, if they have a Satellite Headquarters in the settlement. That progression follows this chart:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

You'll notice Tier 1 units aren't listed there. That is because Tier 1 units are considered "Militia", which means they are basic enough to be made as normally along with regional units in the main facilities.

Something else not listed there is the rate of replenishment and experience of the recruited units. Each level of barracks means a unit that was previously known will start with more experience. Additionally, units that are in their home region and being recruited by their home faction get an automatic experience boost. Rate of replenishment governs how often units can be recruited. Militia in a home province recruited by a owner faction have the highest rate of replenishment, roughly 200-300% the normal. On the other side, Tier 4 units recruited outside their home region have the lowest rate of replenishment, as low as 25-30% of the normal. Additionally, the Military Policy function of the Administrative Policy script works on top of this, by lowering the experience and rate of replenishment if it is not the policy selected.

So if you were trying to recruit Gae-Ma as Goryeo in China using a satellite headquarters, and you had an economic policy, you'd only be able to recruit them roughly once every 20 turns due to the variety of factors. This system does a number of things. First, it stresses reinforcing from the home provinces to utilize the faster recruitment times and higher experience, creating a chain of reinforcement similar to one a real army would experience. Second, it adds focus to local units, making frontier armies of locals advantageous for holding ground until a professional army from the homeland can be called up. Lastly, it stresses the rarity of 'elite' units and makes you use them wisely so they can't be spammed in huge numbers.

Now, moving on.

We need the roster paired with concept artwork so our artists know what it is they're making.

I want it to look like this:

Gae-Ma Cavalry
(recruitment/equipment info etc etc etc)
Concept Art:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Disclaimer: That is not accurate. This is an example, only an example, and is only intended to show tokimitsu and co. what we need from them and other historians on unit rosters.

If we can get an entry like that for every unit that is on the roster, then stefaneke and Yelu can decide how many models need to be made, what areas can be shared between units and changed in textures, etc. And also be sure that they aren't making a unit which is not on the roster and thus wasting their time.

Cheers