Suggestion: Armed Citizenrys in every town?

One of the annoying (but quite smart sometimes) habits of the AI is to make their defeated armies or a single battered unit to raid, burn, massacre, rape, and pillage our defenseless towns, mines, and farms recklessly before being wiped out by the horrible autoresolve which allow them to inflict more casualities and damage. The AI's raiding habit has risen many complaints and many mods have reduce they AI's desires to raid but it's actually not a fault of the AI to raid because their units are useless in any way.
I think the only way to deal with these silly three-men artillery or 25-men Cossacks raiders is to add auto-spawned Armed Citizenrys to defend the weak settlements against raiding. Who want three guys to destroy their town anyway?
Proposal: CA, please allow us to have armed citizenrys against raiding armies to save the people!

Although I must admit that I too have gotten into the habit of sending masses of single-militia armies to raid enemy regions: very good idea.
The AIs 3-men raiding armies have been sooo annoying since the start of ETW.

EDIT:
I'm thinking 1 unit of Armed Citizenry for each building level, but not if it's damaged.

If your towns are defenseless, it is not a game problem. It is a player problem. If your regions are anywhere near the front, and you're not actively taking precautions against raiding, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.

It helps if you have a small anti-raider cavalry corps.

I think the raiding parties is a good idea. Sure, it can be annoying at times, but it makes you have to defend more of your territory. I personally don't mind the smaller battles though.

Attacking infrastructure, like supply depots, simulates some sort of logistics. If the AI doesn't have the force to defend their own cities with full stacks at the same time all is mute though.

Dont auto resolve.

Originally Posted by yousuckhardtime

Dont auto resolve.

Yeah, because fighting 3 man battered units with your full stack is totally worth the loading time.

Originally Posted by emperor77

Yeah, because fighting 3 man battered units with your full stack is totally worth the loading time.

30 seconds to load. 5 seconds to make sure your artillery is unlimbered. 5 seconds to make sure that they have a clear shot. 10 seconds for the first barrage to rout the enemy. 10 seconds to click through the end battle sequence. 30 seconds to load the game. The young folk, these days, have such a warped (overvalued) sense of the importance of their time...

Or, you could suck up the losses and autoresolve. It's all a matter of priorities, and what's important to you...

Originally Posted by JAMiAM

If your towns are defenseless, it is not a game problem. It is a player problem. If your regions are anywhere near the front, and you're not actively taking precautions against raiding, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.

You seem to not have played the game.

Playing devils advocate: I actually think its ok game play wise. It just ensures that the player keeps some cavalry handy. It also means that light cavalry and dragoons more useful. You can always detach some from your main army as they have MP spare as long as you haven't spent too many of them to mop up.

On the other hand I think you should be able to recruit armed citizens at your towns for a small recruitment cost, but they bugger back home again after a turn.

But I do agree that some autoresolves are stupid (2 units of dragoons and 2 line infantry vs 25 cossacks = 90 casualties - but then again, maybe they set up a really cool ambush?). Toning down the minimum casulties in the campaign_variables_tables may help you.

Originally Posted by daniu

You seem to not have played the game.

Not all is as it seems...

1189 hours logged on Empire, and 317 on Napoleon. All of Empire is strictly campaign time - no multiplayer battles. About 90% of Napoleon is campaign time.

Originally Posted by emperor77

Yeah, because fighting 3 man battered units with your full stack is totally worth the loading time.

Hi there.
If you get yousuckhardtime's point, you would say "smart, why did'nt I figure that out". Since those 3 men raiding armies are BORN FROM AUTORESOLVING. So hence "DO NOT AUTORESOLVE".
Y.S.
M. Jessen
P.S. yousuckhardtime should be carefull with that Pedobear avatar.

Originally Posted by MortenJessen

Since those 3 men raiding armies are BORN FROM AUTORESOLVING. So hence "DO NOT AUTORESOLVE".

No, even battles that were played out often result in leftover stray armies; so while it does make things better, it's hardly a "why didn't I think of it myself".
For me, I play campaign mostly to get to drop-in battles and don't feel the need to play the BAI; so I autoresolve most battles that are not drop-in-enabled.
I'm okay with taking higher casualties doing that, but the leftover armies just delay me from getting where I want.

Originally Posted by JAMiAM

I can agree with these suggestions, and would add another. The amount of damage dealt each turn is proportional to some normalized value with various unit types being more, or less, destructive based on their historical capabilities and the fraction of their men left in the unit.

I think that's already the case; a full stack does more damage to buildings than a small one.
But as it is, that's only relevant to the money you have to pay for repair, since the bonus of the building itself is gone no matter how small the damage.

Originally Posted by JAMiAM

As before, the decision of whether to autoresolve, or fight, is based on the player's perception of what is more important - minimizing friendly losses, or the amount of play time necessary to 'fight' the battle.

Exactly, that's what I was getting at before.
I do know how to get rid of them, it's just that the hassle isn't worth it.
Because: it's really not only playtime vs minimized losses, but playtime vs minimized losses and being rid of the near-empty constantly raiding armies, so it's really not a balanced decision: the GC map management takes the playtime I want to save with the autoresolve in the first place.

I do understand that you like to take your time with your turns, and I enjoy that kind of playing too from time to time; the point is that it's near impossible to play differently due to the raiding. And that's in addition to the tools which are not really useful to manage an empire beyond a certain size, so quick turns are difficult to do anyway.

Station militia in your regions' towns.

Originally Posted by ♔EmperorBatman999♔

Station militia in your regions' towns.

I used to do that (and still do for important towns), but the upkeep cost of a militia unit negates the economic boost you receive by building an economical building, so you're better off not building one in the first place.
Not exactly consistent.
Plus, it's not cost-efficient against the highly depleted leftovers from battles (we were talking about) which keep straying across your lands for ages and evade every engagement.

I totally see the point in raiding; but if one needs three battles for an enemy army to finally destroy it for good while it keeps doing heavy damage to your economy, it's just annoying.
Of course, you'll spent 1000+ hours before you finish your first campaign if you play out every 2 militia vs 3 men cannon crew battle. It probably makes you feel good about having won that battle too.

This issue has been discussed forever...
My favorite behavior for raiding would be that
a) the impact is relative to the building's damage (so you don't loose all income because of a 3-gold-to-repair damage)
b) the raiding army has to end its round in a settlement to damage it, but then deals damage every turn it does (i.e., if it stays in the town).

Originally Posted by daniu

This issue has been discussed forever...
My favorite behavior for raiding would be that
a) the impact is relative to the building's damage (so you don't loose all income because of a 3-gold-to-repair damage)
b) the raiding army has to end its round in a settlement to damage it, but then deals damage every turn it does (i.e., if it stays in the town).

I can agree with these suggestions, and would add another. The amount of damage dealt each turn is proportional to some normalized value with various unit types being more, or less, destructive based on their historical capabilities and the fraction of their men left in the unit.

Originally Posted by daniu

No, even battles that were played out often result in leftover stray armies; so while it does make things better, it's hardly a "why didn't I think of it myself".
For me, I play campaign mostly to get to drop-in battles and don't feel the need to play the BAI; so I autoresolve most battles that are not drop-in-enabled.
I'm okay with taking higher casualties doing that, but the leftover armies just delay me from getting where I want.

Leftover armies are easy enough to deal with. Defeated armies have no movement points left and cannot retreat again, so all you have to do is have a secondary force of your own to chase down the leftovers. A cavalry force is ideal for this. As before, the decision of whether to autoresolve, or fight, is based on the player's perception of what is more important - minimizing friendly losses, or the amount of play time necessary to 'fight' the battle.

Actually I'm not complaining about raiding, I found that small battles against one or two enemy units with three or four of yours can be quite interesting and can practice the skills of outflanking and encirclinig weaker enemy armies. Instead, I advocate for a realistic gameplay which allows undefended towns to raise Armed Citizenrys to defend against intruders, come on, why London can spawn a full stack of Armed Citizenrys while Birmingham can be raped by three artillery guys? Which helps both the AI and the player.

Agreed with the OP. It's for balance and it's historically accurate. 1 Citizentry Brigade would be enough.

I agree with the OP. Sometimes you just dont have the resources to stop those last three soldiers and it's logical that a town would be able to raise some sort of militia to defend itself.