Different faction with different army organisation

[ray243]

One feature that I dislike in all the previous TW games and in the paradox's games is that the army organisation of every faction is more or less the same.

In Crusader Kings II especially, there is hardly any difference between the professional army of the Byzantine Empire and the feudal armies of the Holy Roman Empire.

The same can be said for the previous TW games. Sure, there are different unit types, and you do have the option of recruiting levy units. However, there are very little penalties if you are did not bother to disband a levy unit after a war.

Hence, it because extremely easy for any faction, be it big or small to develop a professional standing army as long as you have the wealth to do so.

If the developers want to make Rome II more fun and diverse for the gamers, they should implement a professional/levy army system for your Empire.

For a strong and centralised Empire, like the Roman Empire, you should be able to sole control of your armies. You should have the means to maintain multiple standing armies and appoint generals according to your whims and fancy. Such units don't need to be disband after the campaign is over, nor will the units complain too much about campaigning in far flung lands.

You as the Emperor should be the only person with authority to raise new legions and every single military unit is answerable to you. As long as you can pay for those soldiers, they will not rebel against you.

However, the cost of upkeep for these soldiers are quite high as you need to pay time full time, and you have to be responsible for arming those men.

For a Empire that is more feudal in nature, such as the Persian Empires, you should have less control over your provinces and your levies. While you can have a professional Imperial guard, you would need to call upon your vassal states to give you their armies. Your vassals should be able to control over how many men they should sent to you based on your ruler's reputation.

This is also an army that cannot be campaigning for too long. Those non-professional levies still need to return to their lands and farms after one or two campaigning seasons. If you attempt to leave them out in the field for too long, those levies and your vassals might attempt to stage a rebellion.

The advantage of having a levy based army is that there is very low upkeep and recruitment cost for your army, as they have their own lands to attend to and your vassals are responsible for equipping their men with armour and weapons. Although the quality of the armour and weapons will be quite poor compared to other more professional units. Such levies might not even be given any body armour! Although you might be able to have a much richer aristocratic class that will provide you with a larger amount of heavy cavalry.

For strong and centralised states that relies on a core of well-trained militias, they would have the same advantage as a levy based army. The only difference is the men themselves are responsible for their own equipment. These men will have to be much richer than most of your population, as they much own lands to afford all the armour, shields and weapon. As long as you have a sizable population of such men, you can have a strong army that will defeat most levy armies.

The downside is a militia based army have a rather limited window and a limited range of operation. While you can have sole control over your faction's armies, such units cannot afford to be campaigning for too long. If they are still campaigning for more than 2 campaign seasons or more, the men returning home might cause trouble for you.

All the veterans of your wars might lost their lands and become restless landless peasants. Your domestic situation might be quite volatile, with conflict going on between those who lost their lands and those that bought over all the untended properties. This might cause your military pool to dry up quickly unless you embark on some reforms, be it stripping the assets of the rich and giving it to the poor, or turning your army into a professional one that can pay all those landless citizens.

Another option for you will be to have a mercenary based military system. Your native population isn't well trained nor equipped to go into battles and campaign, but you would have a extensive connection to all the mercenary armies. They will be willingly to stay in the field and campaign as long as you are able to pay them. That does not mean you cannot have a strong core of home guard for your faction.

This is especially useful for factions that do not have a strong military tradition and need to rely on foreign troops. Of course, those mercenaries do not come cheap and you need to be rather rich to rely extensively on mercenaries. Building up ties to various communities also become important if you want to expand your army.


Hopefully, in Rome II, we will see the Romans and the various Greek city states employing a Militia system at the beginning of the campaign. The Parthians and Seleucids should employ a levy system, while the Egypians and Carthage should employ a mercenary based army. The various barbarian tribes should employ a variant of a levy system, where you are relying on all the allied tribes to provide you a sizable army for your campaigns. Due to a much stronger warrior tradition, the barbarian faction should have a much stronger infantry units than most Eastern levies.

This can provide the next total war game more replay value, more fun to try out the different faction and at the same time, a little bit more historical. This is where tech trees can become rather useful, with you attempting to reorganize your faction to suit your means.

[Titus Livius Patavinus]

The idea sounds cool, but I'm not sure how far you should take it, or can take it for that matter. The system is sort of there in the "levy/militia" units are weaker and more likely to route than the "professional" soldiers. Then there is the upkeep and recruitment between the two groups. The smaller nations will not be able to recruit that many of them while the larger ones will have armies of them.

[ray243]

The idea sounds cool, but I'm not sure how far you should take it, or can take it for that matter. The system is sort of there in the "levy/militia" units are weaker and more likely to route than the "professional" soldiers. Then there is the upkeep and recruitment between the two groups. The smaller nations will not be able to recruit that many of them while the larger ones will have armies of them.

However, the issue is the current system does not reflect your factions in any way other than upkeep cost. The social problems and military limitation of a faction's military exist beyond mere upkeep cost.

Upkeep cost doesn't reflect on the range of operation a levy or militia army, nor does it reflect on the issues your vassals will have with you if your levies are out campaigning for too long.

The current system makes it too easy for any player to turn their army into a professional one. As long as you have the cash, you can just recruit the elite units en mass, and you will be able to develop a professional full time army.

You don't want to punish the player too much obviously, but especially near endgame I always feel in TW games that my territories don't so much recruit troops as pump them out of some magical factory, instantly, on demand.

I think there is a greater need to punish players towards the end of the game than the beginning of the game. Too often it becomes easy for the player to reach a stage where he is raking in cash every turn and can afford a steamroll every other faction in his way with his massive army.

Players should have something to hold them back from conquering the entire world towards the end of the game. If it is so easy for people to develop a professional army, then almost every nation in the ancient world would have done so.

End games are often boring because players don't feel like his massive professional army are expensive to upkeep and maintain.

[Bobz]

However, the issue is the current system does not reflect your factions in any way other than upkeep cost. The social problems and military limitation of a faction's military exist beyond mere upkeep cost.

Upkeep cost doesn't reflect on the range of operation a levy or militia army, nor does it reflect on the issues your vassals will have with you if your levies are out campaigning for too long.

The current system makes it too easy for any player to turn their army into a professional one. As long as you have the cash, you can just recruit the elite units en mass, and you will be able to develop a professional full time army.

I think you just need to use some imagination really, rather than tie the game down in what could be very tedious micromanagement. Yes, levies and militia couldn't campaign indefinitely, but consider each unit as say 100 levies that are raised and disbanded as needed, rather than 100 individuals that stay fighting for as long as that unit is in use. In peacetime the unit would only notionally exist, the would-be soldiers are farming the fields or working in the towns - only when they're needed are they called up to war. When you're at war, the levied parts of your army return home between the campaigning seasons and are called up again if they're needed.

It may not all be strictly accurate, but its reasonable to suggest that as you're playing as your factions leader, these problems are sorted out by officials or your vassals.

And speaking of the campaign season, that is something I'd like to see implemented. You'd need mulitple turns per year, and in the winter have something like decreased move points and higher upkeep costs. Probably for another thread however.

[ray243]

I think you just need to use some imagination really, rather than tie the game down in what could be very tedious micromanagement. Yes, levies and militia couldn't campaign indefinitely, but consider each unit as say 100 levies that are raised and disbanded as needed, rather than 100 individuals that stay fighting for as long as that unit is in use. In peacetime the unit would only notionally exist, the would-be soldiers are farming the fields or working in the towns - only when they're needed are they called up to war. When you're at war, the levied parts of your army return home between the campaigning seasons and are called up again if they're needed.

It may not all be strictly accurate, but its reasonable to suggest that as you're playing as your factions leader, these problems are sorted out by officials or your vassals.

And speaking of the campaign season, that is something I'd like to see implemented. You'd need mulitple turns per year, and in the winter have something like decreased move points and higher upkeep costs. Probably for another thread however.

It doesn't have to be micromanagement. Such features can be implemented with minimum micromanagement.

You can have a faction menu that allows you to modify your form of government and army setup and you can recruit units without a big issue. An army management menu would allow you to disband or raise all of your levies with a single button.

[Lorddweeb]

If you went really crazy with some of this it could just turn into a giant micromanagement head-ache, but I agree with your general premise. The way the Native Americans in Empire both fought and raised armies in nearly identical fashion as the Europeans just drove me up a wall. It ended up creating bizarre scenarios where the way Native factions would win would not be via careful guerrilla warfare but by spamming the Europeans with Zerg-like mass, endless, cannon fodder.

The one core idea that I do like in your post is that there should be penalties for having giant armies of peasants who never disband. I think you could have a variety of factors such as:

1- Non-Professional troops automatically have some risk of disbanding after X number of turns.
2- Non Professional troops should fight harder and be more reliable in friendly territory than when out plundering others.
3- Non-Professional troops who are not in a friendly territory eventually cause some unhappiness in territories.
4- Heavy Losses of non-professional troops in battle outside of friendly territories has risk of causing unhappiness.
5- If you win a siege by sacrificing your own defending civilian garrison, those troops should not magically pop back to full health next turn.

In general I've also always thought there should be some better system of modeling that most of these cultures had quite finite populations. You don't want to punish the player too much obviously, but especially near endgame I always feel in TW games that my territories don't so much recruit troops as pump them out of some magical factory, instantly, on demand.

[Pheidippides]

I like this idea in theory. It could be accomplished within the current game system by adjusting the number of units "available" for recruitment in each system. For example, in a decentralized empire it would be important to appoint or keep loyal generals or nobles in each region. Their loyalty + tech of the underlying city + certain traits like Good Organizer would determine the number of units available and how fast units refresh.

In a militia system, raising the militia should severely impact the economy and income of regions with a high number of militia troops raised.

Mercenary armies could be recruited through the mercenary menu- you should be able to buy whole armies.

[Condottiere 40K]

If GDP drops if you over recruit in relation to your population size, that would be one disincentive.

[pattimang]

Then there is the upkeep and recruitment between the two groups

[Condottiere 40K]

If you combine it with recruitment pool(s), desertion permanently removes those soldiers; disbandment taking place in designated depots allows the recruitment pools to regenerate.

[The Great Montrose]

I like the bit about having to ask some of your maybe more outlying regions away from the capital for troops