Developer Blog #2 - Unit Recruitment

[Darkstar]

Developer Blog # 2 - Unit Recruitment

Our goal in developing the recruitment system for Westeros: Total War was to create a system that is fun and interesting to play while remaining loyal to the books. This system will reward players who protect their starting settlements as they will provide the bulk of your faction's recruitment with faster replenishment times and larger recruitment pool sizes. It is also extremely important to protect your starting armies because it will be difficult to field new armies and commit them to battle in a timely manner.

Unit Categories

There are eight categories of units in Westeros: Total War, each category with different replenishment time associated with it. The table below lists these types along with the number of turns it takes to replenish the unit at each tech level of the building tree.

Unit Category	Building Level 1	Building Level 2	Building Level 3	Building Level 4	Building Level 5
LEVY (Peasants, Spear)	2	2	1	1	1
LEVY 2 (Scouts, Archers)	6	4	2	1	1
MILITIA (Halberd, Crossbowmen)	8	6	4	2	2
PROFESSIONAL (MAA, Spearmen, Pikemen)	10	8	6	4	N/A
PROFESSIONAL 2 (Longbowmen, Lancers)	12	10	8	6	N/A
PROFESSIONAL 3 (Armoured Non-Knight Units)	14	12	10	8	N/A
ELITE (Knights and Nobles)	20	16	12	10	N/A
GUARDS (Household Guards)	N/A	20	16	12	N/A

Unit Recruitment

Levies, Militia and Knights/Nobles are units that provide their own equipment but also require additional infrastructure to supply and train them in larger numbers. Their recruitment is enabled by the core buildings and can be recruited in castles and cities. The core buildings control the replenishment time (larger settlements = faster replenishment as indicated in the table above). The recruitment pool size provided by the core buildings is 1, regardless of the settlement size. By building barracks/stable/bowyer buildings you can increase the size of the recruitment pool and recruit units with better starting experience. Units recruited in castles will generally have higher experience than units recruited in cities.

Professional soldiers require additional time and resources to effectively equip and train in comparison to levy and militia units. Their recruitment is enabled by barracks/stables/bowyer buildings and can only be recruited in castles. The barracks/stables/bowyer buildings control the replenishment time, recruitment pool size and starting experience. The recruitment pools are generally smaller than levy/militia pools.

Household Guards are elite units that will be time consuming and expensive to replace due to the difficulty in finding highly experienced and trusted soldiers that would make up the bulk of each faction's Household Guard. Their recruitment is enabled by barracks and they can only be recruited in capital cities.

Area of Recruitment

There are four distinct areas of recruitment in Westeros: Total War: Dorne, the Iron Islands, the North and the Southron lands. Each unit starts with a specific area of recruitment and can only be recruited in that area.

• Generic units such as Spearmen, Lancers, etc can be recruited in most of the Southron lands.
• Martell, Stark and Greyjoy rosters are 100% unique so their units can only be recruited in their respective regions.
• Faction specific units such as Crownland Crossbowmen or Knights of the Vale can only be recruited in the respective faction's starting regions.
• Settlement specific units such as Dreadfort Infantry or Yronwood Cavalry can only be recruited in that specific settlement.

The result of this is that when you conquer new settlements you will be forced to recruit new units from the local manpower rather than recruiting from your faction's original unit roster. However, a faction will find it more difficult to field a large army from conquered lands as the replenishment times are longer and the recruitment pool sizes are smaller.

Notes

• While we looked at many different mods in developing this recruitment system, a special thanks is owed to Broken Crescent. Their work was the inspiration for many of these ideas.
• These features, especially the replenishment times and recruit pool sizes, have not undergone rigorous play testing so will likely be tweaked before v1.0 is released. The specific numbers mentioned above may change but the general spirit of how the system is designed will remain.

[Heart of Madness]

Nice, this seems to make sense. I'll go with it. Good Luck!

[Evilstein]

Yep, thx for explaining the mechanism. Seems very good !!

[Thomaso]

This looks awesome - very exciting! Well done!

[Fingon NL]

Looks very nice!
But why does it say N/A for all professional/elite units in build lvl 5?

[Darkstar]

Looks very nice!
But why does it say N/A for all professional/elite units in build lvl 5?

Barracks, Stables and Bowyer only have 4 levels.

[ShadowKiller2000]

Nice update! How much experience is gained by the higher level buildings?

Dreadfort infantry.......what are those?

So the northern spear and levies will only be recruitable in the north? Same for the Greyjoys and Dorne?

That sounds amazing!!!

[Darkstar]

Nice update! How much experience is gained by the higher level buildings?

Dreadfort infantry.......what are those?

So the northern spear and levies will only be recruitable in the north? Same for the Greyjoys and Dorne?

That sounds amazing!!!

Right now the maximum experience gained in a higher level building is 4. This is something that will most likely get tweaked in testing though.

Dreadfort Infantry is one of the unique Stark units created by lordinquisitor. I'll leave it up to him on whether to give you a sneak peak or not.

You are correct about the northern spear and levies only being able to be recruited in the north, etc. While some of the units are similar Stark, Greyjoy and Martell don't share any units with the other factions.

[ShadowKiller2000]

Right now the maximum experience gained in a higher level building is 4. This is something that will most likely get tweaked in testing though.

Dreadfort Infantry is one of the unique Stark units created by lordinquisitor. I'll leave it up to him on whether to give you a sneak peak or not.

You are correct about the northern spear and levies only being able to be recruited in the north, etc. While some of the units are similar Stark, Greyjoy and Martell don't share any units with the other factions.

Awesome!!! Not only does it make the game challenging, but also comes almost 100% in re-creating the feel of the books. Ie. the northern, Ironborn, and Dornish cultures being very seperate from the other kingdoms. I can't wait to play this!! But I won't die at least as Stainless Steel 6.3 was just released. I will play with that while waiting for Version 1.0 of Westeros.

Are the unit stats very different between different regions. I figure the Northern units will have snow bonuses, Dorne will have bonuses for desert etc. But will the spear milita damage values be the same across the board, or will they differ alot?

Keep up the great work!!

[Darkstar]

Awesome!!! Not only does it make the game challenging, but also comes almost 100% in re-creating the feel of the books. Ie. the northern, Ironborn, and Dornish cultures being very seperate from the other kingdoms. I can't wait to play this!! But I won't die at least as Stainless Steel 6.3 was just released. I will play with that while waiting for Version 1.0 of Westeros.

Are the unit stats very different between different regions. I figure the Northern units will have snow bonuses, Dorne will have bonuses for desert etc. But will the spear milita damage values be the same across the board, or will they differ alot?

Keep up the great work!!

Thanks for the kind words. I'm looking forward to playing this as well.

Similar units such as Spear Militia and Northern Spear Militia will have similar stats.

Other more unique units will vary more and you'll notice that each faction has some strengths and weaknesses. All units will be re-balanced using Real Combat and then probably tweaked to make sure the differences between factions isn't too great.

[Lordinquisitor]

Dreadfort Infantry is one of the unique Stark units created by lordinquisitor. I'll leave it up to him on whether to give you a sneak peak or not.

I would, but we still have to assign the right attachement sets (helms and weapons) to those.

[ShadowKiller2000]

What type of weapons will they have? They sound pretty cool!

[WinsingtonIII]

Looks great! Keep up the great work!

If the Starks cannot recruit the generic spear militia, shouldn't their Northern version be a bit different in terms of stats?

It seemed to me in the books that the Northern militia in particular were more eager to fight than the Southron militias. Perhaps make them impetuous but with higher morale? This way they will in general have better morale but they will also be reckless and prone to losing morale quickly when the battle is not going their way. Southron militia would have lower morale but they would have normal discipline, so they lose morale slower and won't disobey orders as much. I don't know, it always seemed to me like Northern militias actually wanted to fight for the North, while the Southern ones were just pressed into service. Also, there should definitely be a combat bonus in woods and snow for Northern militia (if not ALL Stark infantry) whereas Southron militias might not have either bonus or perhaps just the woods bonus. This would also add a bit more variety to the game.

[Lordinquisitor]

Giving them a higher moral, because they "were eager to fight for the north" is impossible since those units will also be recruitable by the enemies of the north if they capture a northern settlement.

They will be different, however. As far as i know they will have a bonus when fighting in snow- Thus they will perform better when defending their homeland.. Or in winter.

As far as i know such terrain boni will be the main difference between the various levies.

/Dreadfort infantry

As far as i know they will be armed with spears.

[WinsingtonIII]

Giving them a higher moral, because they "were eager to fight for the north" is impossible since those units will also be recruitable by the enemies of the north if they capture a northern settlement.

They will be different, however. As far as i know they will have a bonus when fighting in snow- Thus they will perform better when defending their homeland.

As far as i know such terrain boni will be the main difference between the levies.

Oh, I see, I didn't realize they would be available to other factions as well, I thought the Starks had their own special version of the Northern militia. Perhaps there could be a special version for the Starks, as in the books there really did seem to be a difference in "eagerness" between the Northern and Southern levy/militia forces. As far as I know, they wouldn't require a different model or anything, they could just have slightly different stats and a different name. But, obviously, it's up to you guys.

[ShadowKiller2000]

Giving them a higher moral, because they "were eager to fight for the north" is impossible since those units will also be recruitable by the enemies of the north if they capture a northern settlement.

They will be different, however. As far as i know they will have a bonus when fighting in snow- Thus they will perform better when defending their homeland.. Or in winter.

As far as i know such terrain boni will be the main difference between the various levies.

/Dreadfort infantry

As far as i know they will be armed with spears.

Hmmmm, spears would be cool. Do the Starks get any 2 handers? Some greatswords or 2 handed axes would be awesome.....especially since the last release their cavalry wasn't as good as the southern kingdoms. Would be nice to have some shock troops/cavalry killers in the north.

Gilitines Chosen anyone? Varangian Guard, Gotland Footmen, all cool models which have that northern feel to them....even some of the Novgorad units.

Just some thoughts.

[Lordinquisitor]

Well, this can be simulated with character traits.

[WinsingtonIII]

Well, this can be simulated with character traits.

Ahh, good point, +rep.

Edit: or not, as apparently I have repped you too recently.

[Lordinquisitor]

Well, we certainly have plans for some awesome stark "eye catchers". Though, i won`t be responsible for them since i have no access to certain programs we need for those.

Also, the starks will have decent, if rare, cavalry. While knights in the north were rare, since they mostly follow the old gods, there were soldiers who were just as good equipped and skilled.

[ShadowKiller2000]

Sounds cool. Any hints as to what "eye catchers" entail?

I now spend waaaay to much time at work on these forums..........

Any hints at all.............