Most Castle Dependent vs. Most City Dependent factions

[Maklodes]

What do you think are the factions most dependent on castles for their military, and which factions do you think are most capable of operating without castles? Which factions are in-between?

Milan is famous for just not needing castles for much of anything. A Milan that goes all-city will be pretty much as capable militarily as one that has a few castles. (The only real area they're missing is light cavalry (fast pony riders) and missile cavalry, although all they'd get in that respect from castles is mounted crossbowmen.)

Other Italian factions are also good with cities, if not to Milan's extent.

Turks are also largely able to dispense with castles. Their heavy cavalry will be somewhat lacking -- they won't do better than sipahis recruited from their race tracks -- and they'll have to wait for a long time to get any missile infantry (until they can recruit Janissary archers from their army barracks). Still, it's somewhat viable. You'll get really sick of saracen militia, though, I'd bet.

The Iberians -- Portugal, Spain, and the Moors -- all seem capable without castles. Their sword militias are good infantry, and they can train cavalry from bullfighting rings (Spain and Portugal) or race tracks (Moors). Spain is probably the best for this, gaining tercio pikemen and gendarmes as well. Musketeers, tercio pikemen, gendarmes, jinetes, and swordsmen militia leave little to be desired.

What about the most castle-dependent factions?

Scotland can produce a few good units from cities, but they're all redundant: they're all some variety of spear/pike unit: town militia, spear militia, scots pike militia, heavy pike militia, and noble pikemen. They won't have any missile units, any basic non-spear infantry, or any cavalry unless graced with Templars or Hospitallers, or a merchant's guild. Lack of gunpowder doesn't help either.

Poland seems pretty bad, although Hussars do help: EE town militia (weaker than standard town militia), EE spear militia (same as Northwest European town militia), EE crossbow militia (although EE crossbow militia is actually better than NW European crossbow militia, albeit, no match for pavise crossbow militia), halberd militia.

Byzantium seems like a mixed bag. Their byzantine infantry and Varangian guard are good, but their lack of gunpowder stuff makes cities less militarily potent in the long-run. In addition, militia cavalry from cities with merchant guilds is the only cavalry they get -- no race tracks like Muslims, no hoping for the Templars or Hospitallers to grace your city with a chapter house like Catholics.

Anyone want to try giving the most city dependent and castle dependent factions ratings? Maybe 0 is average, -5 is the most city-dependent faction you can think of (like Milan), and +5 is the most castle-dependent faction you can think of? Or whatever scale you'd like.

[Aeratus]

The Northern and Central European factions, along with the Byzantines, are the most castle dependent. This includes HRE, Poland, England, Scotland, Denmark, and Hungary. These are the the "castle factions."

The other factions all have decent units that can be trained from cities.

[SonofaBooyah]

Isn't it the later you go into the game, the better the units you can make from cities? That's what I found, that all your early and high period units like knights/ feudal units and archers and any other specialist units came from castles. And in the late period, most late period units like Pikeman and gunpowder units and Cannons can be made from cities.
The point is to render castles useless like it did in reality, because by that time not only did cities produce more money, but they were now training the troops as-well.

[Maklodes]

While Hungary clearly doesn't have anything like Italian-grade militia, I'm reluctant to class any faction that gets pavise crossbow militia as truly castle-dependent faction. It seems more like they're intermediate-grade --- not helpless without castles, but certainly having some big gaps without them. (It seems like if you were to try to do a city-based game as Hungary, getting battlefield assassins might be a make-or-break issue. If you have various poor militia (spear, halberd), pavise crossbow militia, hussars, and battlefield assassins, you might do okay as a cities-only Hungary, although you still won't be anything like as powerful as you'd be with a few castles. Hungarians certainly get better missile infantry from their cities than anything coming out of their castles (where their top-tier units are crossbowmen, who not only lack a pavise shield, but have lower attack and shorter range as well).

[Aeratus]

^ True for factions like Spain and the Turks, but not true for factions like the HRE.

As far as gunpowder units go, only musketeers are worthwhile as for gunpowder infantry, but only 6 factions can train musketeers. Gunpowder cavalry is still trained in castles. For the HRE, their best gunpowder unit is the Reiter (mounted handgunner), which is trained from castles, not cities.

Most pike units are useless in vanilla, due to bugs in the game engine with secondary weapons. In the case of the HRE, their best pikemen is the pike militia, which has very little combat value even compared to other militia units like the Saracen Militia.

In Kingdoms, the HRE's city makes a comeback when Forlorne Hope becomes the strongest infantry unit in the Teutonic Campaign.

[Avatar]

I wouldnt abandon castles as Turkey, simply because of whats going to be coming over the horizon later in the game. Having a bulwark or two that you can retreat to and wear down the Mongol hordes makes preparation a little easier. I'm aware that you can also meet them in the field, but its nice to have the option available.

For most factions the city dependence is more obvious late in the game when you have properly developed settlements. For factions that dont have decent early militia (read, pretty much anyone that isnt Italian) then city troops are going to be painfully weak until you get the higher tier stuff.

[SturmChurro]

Obviously, Italian factions other than Sicily just generally have no use for too many castles, because of their militia quality. Not to say with any faction you actually need to have a lot of castles other than for defense purposes. You could make a couple castles your recruitment centers (depending on how far spread your kingdom is) and convert everything else to city with any faction.

[lolIsuck]

France is dependant on castles untill late in game when you get the Scots Guard, Gendarmes and pikemen.

England needs castles to have any kind of decent cavalry or their mighty longbowmen.

HRE hasn't really got the most smashing army ever and is nothing without castles for the first part of the game.

Just about every faction relies on castles early in game, it's not more then logical that the units from the cities improve in quality too through time but I don't think there are any factions that would funcion great without any castles at all.
The only factions that don't need castles in the early game are the Italian factions as they can recruit infantry in cities that can compete with castle units, even they though need castles for cavalry and heavy infantry.

[... where did it run?]

HRE is the most castle dependent. They have nothing to recruit from cities which is worth while in the battlefield. Therefore is quite hard to bolster your main armies with reinforcments. Which leads to less flexibility in campaign strategy. And therefor why I dislike to play with that faction.

And about milan, it doesn't need castles for heavy cavalry or heavy infantry. But... castles have some better quality units.

[Sitalkes]

An interesting discussion - does this change the usual advice of having a ratio of 1:3 castles to cities in your empire? You will need some castles whatever the faction as you can only get some guilds (eg the knightly orders and the Sherwood archers) and upgrades in castles eg if you build the later cavalry facilities in a castle, any cavalry you send there afterwards can get an experience upgrade.

[Aeratus]

For the castle to city ratio, I usually have about around 1:1.5 regardless of faction. I don't think the ratio is important, because you'll usually be training out of just a few settlements, and money (the main advantage of cities) isn't a big deal after the early stage of the game.

[PrestigeX]

I feel that all factions are dependant on the Castles because of Cavalry, and to some extent missile troops.

It is the City-Capable factions that should be mentioned - those factions who can produce a number of units, or particular class of unit, from their cities.

Milan especially, but all the italians -- solid infantry & great crossbows.

Milan even has their best Cavalry unit from cities if I remember correctly (Famaglia Ducale)
You don't notice much of a advantage from the castles as an italian , and their cavalry is kinda mediocre (exception sicily norman knights) so its not felt that much if you roll primarily with the city.


The WORST city-troop factions , for me , would be . denmark, poland, and russia. These seem to be the factions where I rarely train troops from the city.

I go with 7 cities to every 1 castle.

[Macunaíma]

The Moors need their castles, dude. True that Urban Militia is awesome and you can recruit Arab Cavalry and Christian Guard, but the rest of the roster is all in the castles.

[SturmChurro]

The Moors need their castles, dude. True that Urban Militia is awesome and you can recruit Arab Cavalry and Christian Guard, but the rest of the roster is all in the castles.

You could say that for any of the other Muslim faction's early game. Early Muslim militia's are just terrible. Same goes with all the eastern Catholic faction's like Poland and Hungary. Russia too.

[Aeratus]

The muslim factions are pretty good in terms of not depending on castles. They can all train the Saracen Militia, which is basically the European Armored Sergeants with free upkeep. Secondly, they can also train the Hashashim from cities, and that is nearly the the most powerful standard infantry unit of any faction. Third, with the race tracks, all muslim factions can build two types of cavalry from cities.

Russia has very weak city units early on, but they have the Cossack Musketeer later on.

[Maklodes]

The muslim factions are pretty good in terms of not depending on castles. They can all train the Saracen Militia.

Moors can't. They do get swordsmen urban militia, though.

[Macunaíma]

If I'm not mistaken Saracen Militia is actually better than Armoured Seargents. And the Moors don't get Saracen Militia, they get Urban Militia, which is heavy infantry. So, if they're gonna just have cities, they'll just get poor Spear Militia that doesn't hold the worst heavy cavalry.

[Maklodes]

If I'm not mistaken Saracen Militia is actually better than Armoured Seargents.

I could be missing something like animation rates or something, but I think that 1) Armored sergeants are slightly superior in a fight against cavalry, because they have 1.2 mass instead of 1, and 2) Saracen militia might hold up better in hot climates, since they have lower heat fatigue.

Other than that (plus a few effects like armored sergeants being better in snow and forests, and saracen militia being better on sand), I think they're identical.

[MDCCLXXVI]

Can someone please elaborate what is wrong with pikemen?

I am playing a vanilla campaign (only my second), with Scotland.

I would really rather the pikemen act more like hoplites (RTW), or at least do a good job of impaling charging enemy onto the pikes.

Instead, the enemy just stops when they "hit" the pikes, as if hitting a wall. Sometimes they keep doing the running animation, against the 'invisible wall' of pikes.

And then, to my dismay, the pikemen lift up their pikes and draw their swords when I want them in phalanx formation.

So is there actually something wrong?

--

Scotland is more than capable of defending cities against huge stacks, with just the militia troops. Good solid heavy pikes, even Noble Pikemen, some spear militia to fill in the gaps, and the catapult/ballistas for ranged street fights. I really just want the pikemen to act more like hoplite phalanx... Are they supposed to or not?

--

Regarding cities:castles, for me probably 5:1 ratio, maybe 3:1 until I have the area locked down and the front line has moved on, then I'll convert all but one in the region.

Scotland, as I said, really only needs castles for offensive purposes. Swordsmen and highlanders, and some horse.

In a late game campaign with them now, and haven't recruited more than 4 units of archer ... I just find them ineffective after last campaign with English RLs.

[Aeratus]

Can someone please elaborate what is wrong with pikemen?

I am playing a vanilla campaign (only my second), with Scotland.

I would really rather the pikemen act more like hoplites (RTW), or at least do a good job of impaling charging enemy onto the pikes.

Instead, the enemy just stops when they "hit" the pikes, as if hitting a wall. Sometimes they keep doing the running animation, against the 'invisible wall' of pikes.

And then, to my dismay, the pikemen lift up their pikes and draw their swords when I want them in phalanx formation.

So is there actually something wrong?

That's a known problem with pikemen because the pike mechanics were changed from RTW to M2. The only solution is to edit the files to remove the swords.

Please note that if you remove the swords, it will make pikemen overpowered, so you'll need to further adjust stats of the pikemen and maybe other units. For example, in mods that have balanced sword-less pikemen, pike militia have 1 attack and 0 defense, while dismounted knights have about 10 attack and 20 defense.