Unit Recruitment system

[Beiss]

I'd like someone to shed some light on the unit recruitment system.

From what I've heard, the number of recruitable soldiers will be growing all the time in your city, as long as you don't recruit them. Each turn will generate more recruitable soldiers (similar to the system in the Heroes of Might and Magic games). As long as you don't recruit them, you don't have to pay upkeep for them, and when you do recruit them, you can recruit many units in the same turn, because they're already trained. This system is pretty much like what the Swedish conscription system (used to) work like - you train solders constantly, but you only recruit them to be full-time soldiers when war breaks out. I think this recruitment system would be awesome and realistic, but I don't know for how long time in history this system has been employed in real life, and I'm not sure this is really the way things will work in M2TW, it's just what someone told me. Now, can anyone confirm or dismiss this information?

In case this is not how it works in M2TW, I'd like to elaborate a little more on the idea: if there's a crisis, e.g. the enemy are entering your territories and will reach your city/fortress in one turn, and you have no armies, then if you've had a barracks for a number of years there will be hundreds of soldiers that you can recruit in just one turn. Depending on how long it's been since these soldiers were trained, they will have a negative experience which will quickly be restored to "1" when they've seen a little battle (because if you don't practise, you forget. ) Regardless of whether this is how things work in M2TW, it think the concept rocks. It would certainly balance things and make conquering cities a lot less easy - but I also don't know if it's historically correct or not.

[Ryder65]

The only problem with a system like that is if you destroy the army the city raises then you have effectively exterminated the population. So, you would march to the gates of a large city, which in turn summons a defensive army entirely from its own population. When you destroy this army, you are in a sense also destroying the city...

[Byte]

Unless the civilian and military population is seperated. If it isnt then the system would match better to crusade armies that could replenish.

[Beiss]

I always exterminate the population in RTW anyway, even if it's my own city that's rebelling on me. Keeps the squalor down. Also, you wouldn't be killing the population entirely this way - not all of the inhabitants will defend the city, and what would be nice is if the enemy could surrender in the middle of the battle so that you don't have to kill them all. Also, if you kill a lot of the cities' men, your own soldiers are likely to want to take the cities' women for themselves, resulting in something of a population explosion, to be realistic (rape etc.). This is all very immoral, but who cares? Let's get medieval.

[MadeManG74]

I think it works differently from what i understand actually, the way i thought was that each turn you have so many recruitments you can make, for eg. in a large castle 3 units can be recruited that turn, then dpending on the buildings you might have the options of cav archers and infantry, each type having a limit. So you could then train 3 units of knights, or 2 units of knights and one unit of archers etc etc. then each turn the recruit limit resets. In other words the same as RTW but you can do 3 units at once. Maybe its completely wrong, but thats how i thouhgt it was going to work

[Mangerman]

I was thinking that it was something like that too. But Beiss' idea sounds interresting. I would love to see that in the game.

[Azai Nagamasa]

I think it works differently from what i understand actually, the way i thought was that each turn you have so many recruitments you can make, for eg. in a large castle 3 units can be recruited that turn, then dpending on the buildings you might have the options of cav archers and infantry, each type having a limit. So you could then train 3 units of knights, or 2 units of knights and one unit of archers etc etc. then each turn the recruit limit resets. In other words the same as RTW but you can do 3 units at once. Maybe its completely wrong, but thats how i thouhgt it was going to work

That's most likely what CA is doing.

Though, regarding Beiss's idea is that it seems as though it would cause alot more 'full stack' wars. Lets say France has cities garrisoned with a small force aside from a Governor as well, and they continue to do this for about 20 turns, without going to war with anyone. The economy prospers due to a low army upkeep, but then when France wants to go to war, they spam up full stacks instantly in each city with the money they have.

Just a thought, but certainly an interesting idea!

[mark0701]

All they have said is that multiple units can be produced in a settlement, but that there will be limits on the number of a certain type of unit you can produce at any one time. To my knowledge they haven't said how this will work.

I presume it work like this:

A castle has 8 "unit slots" to produce units in any given turn.

Each unit will take a set number of those slots (peasents 1, Archers 2, knights 4 etc).

You then get to chose whether you produce 4 units of Archers, 8 units of peasents, 2 units knights or some combination there of. As with RTW, each unit will reduce the population of the settlement.

I'd rather it was done via different class pools but that is probably a bit too complex for the audience CA is aiming at.

[Beiss]

Whoops, you're probably right, guys - the way just mentioned is likely how CA is going to do it.

As for full stack wars - I personally hated the minor battles where you had to kill 300 farmers with 2 units of cavalry. I could have resolved the battle automatically, I suppose, but then I would have received a lot more casualties than if I'd done it myself. I'd prefer to see fewer, but larger battles. Anyway, it's been said earlier that having a standing army in medieval times was near impossibly expensive. So, sure you could raise a large army very quickly, but then you'll have to pay upkeep for it, which you might not be able to do for long.

Also, to balance the ability to recruit so many soldiers at one time, you could make it so that the more trained soldiers there are in your city, the more likely it is that they will revolt if you don't treat the citizens well - and if they revolt, they won't just consist of peasant rabble (in RTW, your citizens would revolt with very powerful units despite the fact that there were no trained soldiers in it. With this system, a revolt with powerful units would make a lot more sense.)

To further balance things, maybe there could be limits as to how much equipment can be stored for a crisis. You can't train soldiers without weapons and armor (and in some cases, horses), and while the blacksmiths (/stables) will keep producing these, there must be a limit to how many you can store in your city. Upgrades could be made to whatever building holds this equipment, so more soldiers can be recruited at any given time. So each city should have not only a population number, but also a number of how many infantry/archer/cavalry/artillery units are availble to recruit and how many weapons are available. The more you have, the higher the upkeep (horses cost money, and guarding expensive war equipment probably will, too!).

Here's an ugly concept image that describes what I mean: the icons are barracks, archery, cavalry and artillery units, the number are trained men in city/avaliable equipment/maximum equipment storage. So what the numbers say is that you can currently recruit 400 infanty soldiers, 366 archers and whatever number of horsemen or artillery soldiers. I was too lazy to put out numbers for cavalry and artillery.



Also, a city with lots of money is likely to get problems with thieves (spies), who steal weapons and money (corruption will do its job here as well) and if your city is conquered by the enemy you will lose money.

Maybe this is all a little too advanced for a pick-up-and-play game like M2TW, but it would certainly be cool. It shouldn't be impossible to implement in a mod, at least.

[_GunneR_]

I thought it was just going to be the same as RTW except there would be a 0 turn limit for all units and and it only depended on population and money

[Lusted]

Nope, cities will only be able to produce 1 unit per turn by the sounds of it, and no cavalry or missile troops. Castles willbe able to produce multiple units per turns at the highest levels, and all troops types include the best units for each factions. I think this will add in a nice touch the difference between cities and castles. Cities wil provide a lot more income, but castles will produce most of your armies, so deciding where to build cities and where to build castles could be crucial to a campaign.

[Maethius]

I just hope the citys will also be defendable.

[Lusted]

Well from the looks of it they will have walls protecting them so yes they should be defendable.

[Proximus]

It work like this; the amount of unit slots are depending on the technology, presumably the level of the castle, whatever unit you choose to train will take one slot. The numbers of units of the same kind you can recruit in one turn are limited, for example 3 peasant units, 2 archers and 1 unit of knights. I assume the numbers varies with the level of the castle in the province.

[mark0701]

So basically it is like recruiting mercs.

Will be interesting to see what factors influence the number of units available.

[Beiss]

Yeah. Oh, and I hate those unit cards. Parchment rolls ftw!

[Cyrus the Virus]

a new screen to me and I agree on the Unit Cards, don't think they're finished, atleast hope so..Maybe the lowest priority now

[Proximus]

a new screen to me

That could be becouse I took the screen shot myself from this video, Medieval II: Total War 'Chapter 1' Movie.

[Beiss]

I haven't seen that one before. Thanks, dude!

[Hohenstaufen]

a new screen to me and I agree on the Unit Cards, don't think they're finished, atleast hope so..Maybe the lowest priority now

Eitherway we have a very good modding community....