New use for Peasants

[SicilianVespers]

Unlike most of you out there, I really don't mind the peasants (re-named Coloni in my installs). I use them, as the Romans, to garrison the quiet interior, not as combat units, but so my cities don't rebel. To me this represents the areas that needed no garrison, away from the frontiers. The Comistatenses is for fighting once the frontier is breached.

I basically use them to manage population. Recruit them in a city that is over populated, and settle them in a tiny village....etc

With all this in mind, would it be possible, for some talented scripter, to write a script that creates peasants you when you enslave a settlement? Thus giving you the ability to re-settle them in under populated areas? I guess it would be something similar to a horde.

Just picture a Hunnic army ransacking the balkans, and hawling masses of slaves back to the steppe?

Perhaps we could do away with peasants, and create Coloni for the Romans, and Slaves for the barbs?

Any thoughts?

[Turbo]

Well, using peasants as garrison units strikes many people as an exploit and makes WRE much easier to play. Resettling peasants is similarly considered an exploit by some. Another consideration is that AI overuses peasants and eliminates them forces the AI to field better armies.

[Corrupt-Pigeon]

hmmmmmm

[Shaun]

well its hardly a new use for peasants that has been newly discovered, people have done that for ages!

[SicilianVespers]

well its hardly a new use for peasants that has been newly discovered, people have done that for ages!

By new use, I meant the spawning of "slaves" once a city is enslaved via a script.

I kind of like the idea of the Barbarians raiding across the frontier, and dragging their captives back across the Danube. This would actually benefit the non-Roman factions, as it would allow hordes to really expand. I doubt the AI would use them to build up their cities, so maybe it would be best to use them to build up the hordes as they migrate.

I should have mentioned that my Roman Peasants have been renamed to Coloni, and cost the same as Limitanei . I don't think it's realistic to garrison the rear areas like Hispania with Legions, and peasants were the closest thing to civilians.

[LiciniusII]

well its hardly a new use for peasants that has been newly discovered, people have done that for ages!

I didnt know about this until he posted... gee thanks for sharing the wealth... x 10000

[Biges]

Good idea, I changed the name of Peasants to Militia.
The formation to square.
Removed "is_peasant" tag, now they have normal effectivity in making people not to steal everything they see
Raised their cost to 100 and unkeep to 50.

As for inflation, that's quite difficult concept and the only game I ever saw which was to some extent able to simulate that effect was Europa Universalis. Otherwise it's too complicated. You would have to incorporate debts and ability to take loans and to mint money etc. So just think all transactions in RTW are in stable prices.

[Kscott]

lol, I did this in MTW. Put one unit of peasants in every city and never had to worry about civil war... Then massed armies along my borders. MTW was great, thanks for reminding me

[SicilianVespers]

But we didn't have hordes in MTW...

In my last campaign, a Frankish horde spawned in central Gaul, and all I had on site was a few peasants. The more loyal cities were even un-garrisoned. I had the Gallic Field Army in Italy fighting along side the Palatinae against Hun and Goth hordes. I was caught flat footed. I just managed to break the Huns & Goths when the Vandals sent the Franks into flight.....right in the middle of Gaul!

If I don't have to worry about a breach of the frontier, because my cities are garrisoned with their own private field armies....that strikes me as a-historical, and more of an exploit. But I have to qualify this with the fact that I raised the cost of Roman peasants.

It's just personal tastes....

I guess I am trying to simulate the Roman Nobles, with their Coloni (ie Serfs) and Buccellarii retainers, defending their villas.

[Es Arkajae]

Bah!, I don't know why in the hell we don't have Town Guard units anymore in any case. I'd gladly pay 50 gold upkeep or so for a unit of guardsmen but I'll be damned if I'm paying 170 for a stinking unit of limitanii.

I never build limitanii, too expensive for garrison duty and fairly worthless in combat to boot.

I'd just change the upkeep cost of limitanii to 50 gold unfortunately I'd then have to redo their stats to make my cities easier to take for the enemy and I'd then have to worry about the enemy fielding heaps of them and so being easier to defeat and blah!, its a right pain in the arse it is.

[Final Frontier]

Limitanii can throw pilum, and that's good enough for me. Defensive + Fire at will is good for them, and they are cheaper than other units.

[SicilianVespers]

The Limitanei seem to work well for me also, at least in Atilla Reloaded's mod. I have never played without it.

After crushing the The Hun, Goth, Frank, and Vandal hordes, I came to a new conclusion regarding the script.

It would be better to create a Horde Run Away Slave unit, and spawn a stack (or two) of them when ever a horde plunders a city.

Roman Deserters would probably be a good canditate for this as well.

I know very little about scripting, but would it be possible to use the has been plundered dialog box as a trigger for this?

[Sétanta]

hmm nice idea. bring in a whole new aspect as well

[Es Arkajae]

Limitanii can throw pilum, and that's good enough for me. Defensive + Fire at will is good for them, and they are cheaper than other units.

They're half the price or so of a Comitatenses unit, better I think to just have one of the latter.

At the risk of being seen to be suggesting unlikely things really think there should be more city improvements to improve public order or something perhaps like the 'Yearly,Monthly,Daily' Games option for non-Roman cultures where one can turn up how much money one spends on policing and maintaining order within a city in addition to the taxes option.

Having to fill up over half a city's garrison box with military units just to keep it from rioting is a wee bit silly, especially as I don't even get the pleasure of personally killing the rioters on a battlemap

I dare anyone here to say that they wouldn't find a Nika Riots like battle fought within a city fun occasionally

[Kaidonni]

Well, if anyone wants, some people and I (by some people, volunteers from twcenter.net, etc) could do some modding of BI, changing things to do with public order, etc. For example, make sure a basic unit for public order control is available (rather than peasants), and then have that particular unit be useful for battles and be cheap enough. I mean, otherwise you spend lots on just keeping settlements from rebelling and you waste units. Perfectly good units. There needs to be a town watch unit in BI. Perhaps 50 denarii upkeep per turn, and 100 denarii to build. You know, something that can have shields and throw spears and fight hand-to-hand. But nothing too good. Perhaps a souped-up version of Town Watch?

[sera]

Peasants as a standing, professional army is counter intuitive, nonsensical and poor game design. It's a gamey cheat unit any selfrespecting player and mod should alter significantly. Peasants should not have been made available for recruitment as standard standing armies (no long standing army unit would remain so poorly trained), but rather as 'mercenaries' available at great quantities everywhere. As such, they should be affordable to procure, but have an upkeep that make them much less cost effective for garrison duties. Also, they should be automatically disbanded after a random period of time after initial recruitment.

I loathe peasants!

[Dark_SCHNEIDER]

I like use peasants to caught missile from Roman units.

[Es Arkajae]

Well, if anyone wants, some people and I (by some people, volunteers from twcenter.net, etc) could do some modding of BI, changing things to do with public order, etc. For example, make sure a basic unit for public order control is available (rather than peasants), and then have that particular unit be useful for battles and be cheap enough. I mean, otherwise you spend lots on just keeping settlements from rebelling and you waste units. Perfectly good units. There needs to be a town watch unit in BI. Perhaps 50 denarii upkeep per turn, and 100 denarii to build. You know, something that can have shields and throw spears and fight hand-to-hand. But nothing too good. Perhaps a souped-up version of Town Watch?

Well I don't know about the throwing spear thing, the garrison unit shouldn't really be much more effective than a peasant, afterall its just a garrison unit.


And Sera I agree peasants shouldn't exist, instead of peasants each faction should instead have a basic 'Militia' unit with which to keep order in cities. They should be complete crap on a battlefield, barely capable of actually holding a wall and have rotten morale but they should be cheap.

[antaeus]

peasants are fine in certain respects...

forcing people to resettle somewhere else isnt unherd of, and in fact quite common in the time we are looking at.

having towns garrisoned by peasants also isn't unherd of. many times during the period of BI, cities had to look after themselves and peasant militias were actually common as law and order broke down. perhaps they would be more acceptable if they were actually called a 'peasant militia' rather than just 'peasants'.

what i cant deal with though, is peasants with gold chevrons. they still occur and it fecks me off. i still come up against armies of peasants who seem to be able to resist charges from cataphracts. its not as bad as it used to be in RTW, but it still happens.

[SicilianVespers]

peasants are fine in certain respects...

forcing people to resettle somewhere else isnt unherd of, and in fact quite common in the time we are looking at.

having towns garrisoned by peasants also isn't unherd of. many times during the period of BI, cities had to look after themselves and peasant militias were actually common as law and order broke down. perhaps they would be more acceptable if they were actually called a 'peasant militia' rather than just 'peasants'.

what i cant deal with though, is peasants with gold chevrons. they still occur and it fecks me off. i still come up against armies of peasants who seem to be able to resist charges from cataphracts. its not as bad as it used to be in RTW, but it still happens.

Barbarian Peasants could actually stay in the game, as Peasant Warriors. Only do away with the stipid pitch forks (they really bother me), and arm them with spears. They should be the lowest order, in a society were all males were warriors.