Discussion on the Recruitment System

[Deteriorate]

Hey everyone, Titanium Team would like your input on the future recruitment system in Titanium.

The current recruitment building tree is open to change as well as the ability to recruit troops based on region.

The building tree could be changed to something more in line with what HURB has done, with one main recruitment tree for professional type troops, while militia are raised from the city barracks. Stables etc could be made useful by adding experience points or increasing unit pools further, having a larger impact on attracting guilds etc.

What region based recruitment change means, is that currently if Scotland wants to recruit for example Highlanders, they can recruit them in Scotland with high replenishment rates, England and Ireland with low replenishment rates, but can not recruit them outside of these areas. Other factions of course can only recruit Highlanders in and if they conquer the Highlanders home region, Scotland.

This puts factions that are local troop dependent at a severe disadvantage (Turks, Hungary, etc) in the sense that they lack a competitive roster beyond their borders, where in a lot of cases no/few local troops are to be found. (Western Europe, Italy, Greece)

This could be changed because nations could have colonized other areas with their people and fighting tactics, (For example: Mongolians comprised a very small part of their western armies, the rest were just taught their tactics IIRC) and your ethnic troops would be recruitable across the map.

Now in order to keep this in line with historical realities, there are ideas for restricting access to your ethnic troops across the world in addition to the slowed unit replenishment already in place such as a religious conversion requirement. Also (and I'm not sure if it's possible) maybe a minimum public order requirement. Another possibility is a colony or culture building chain that must be created to recruit units abroad.

To take this further would be the option to make more troops local leaving only specialized and elite units as faction unique, to retain each faction's strengths and weaknesses to a degree. So if the Almohads conquer parts of France they would over time be able to recruit Light Men at Arms at reduced replenishment rates. In this case, the Crusader States would be treated as a distant power occupying a foreign land, their units would not be allowed to be recruited by, for example Fatimids.

This will require a lot a fine tuning to balance but can be done in stages; what we are looking at is developing a long term vision on recruitment overhaul.

What does everyone think?

[Larkin]

I like the idea of region-specific units recruited only in those regions/nearby regions. I love playing as the Greeks in RSII, for example, and being able to recruit area-specific units for an army in each region - so an eastern army is comprised of eastern units, a northern army of northern units etc.

I think a colonial building chain - perhaps one that requires a public order/religious requirement to fire.

[Melooo182]

I think a colonial building chain - perhaps one that requires a public order/religious requirement to fire.

+1

I know that the religion one is possible since Kingdoms, dunno about the public order one, but if it was possible in RTW, maybe is in M2TW too.

[Darksaber11]

I've posted in another thread that I would love to see a recruitment system similar to the one from HURB in this submod. I'm not an expert on SS, or any Total War game really, so I can't say with authority how being unable to recruit local troops that would normally be core to a faction's army on the front lines would affect different factions, but my gut tells me that the kind of people who want to play Titanium will see this as a good challenge, rather than a problem.

[Olisippo]

The building tree could be changed to something more in line with what HURB has done, with one main recruitment tree for professional type troops, while militia are raised from the city barracks. Stables etc could be made useful by adding experience points or increasing unit pools further, having a larger impact on attracting guilds etc.

For me this would be a great addition.

What region based recruitment change means, is that currently if Scotland wants to recruit for example Highlanders, they can recruit them in Scotland with high replenishment rates, England and Ireland with low replenishment rates, but can not recruit them outside of these areas. Other factions of course can only recruit Highlanders in and if they conquer the Highlanders home region, Scotland.

This puts factions that are local troop dependent at a severe disadvantage (Turks, Hungary, etc) in the sense that they lack a competitive roster beyond their borders, where in a lot of cases no/few local troops are to be found. (Western Europe, Italy, Greece)

This could be changed because nations could have colonized other areas with their people and fighting tactics, (For example: Mongolians comprised a very small part of their western armies, the rest were just taught their tactics IIRC) and your ethnic troops would be recruitable across the map.

Now in order to keep this in line with historical realities, there are ideas for restricting access to your ethnic troops across the world in addition to the slowed unit replenishment already in place such as a religious conversion requirement. Also (and I'm not sure if it's possible) maybe a minimum public order requirement. Another possibility is a colony or culture building chain that must be created to recruit units abroad.

To take this further would be the option to make more troops local leaving only specialized and elite units as faction unique, to retain each faction's strengths and weaknesses to a degree. So if the Almohads conquer parts of France they would over time be able to recruit Light Men at Arms at reduced replenishment rates. In this case, the Crusader States would be treated as a distant power occupying a foreign land, their units would not be allowed to be recruited by, for example Fatimids.

This will require a lot a fine tuning to balance but can be done in stages; what we are looking at is developing a long term vision on recruitment overhaul.

What does everyone think?

Wouldn't it be possible to allow the retraining of local troops outside their areas? So while you couldn't build new local units, you could at least retrain the ones that you send outside their regions (with slower/faster replenishing rates linked to law/unrest an Religion/unrest levels)? This could represent reinforcements sent from the regions to replace losses of the units sent.

[Melooo182]

Wouldn't it be possible to allow the retraining of local troops outside their areas? So while you couldn't build new local units, you could at least retrain the ones that you send outside their regions (with slower/faster replenishing rates linked to law/unrest an Religion/unrest levels)? This could represent reinforcements sent from the regions to replace losses of the units sent.

I don't think it is, it seems you either can build the unit and retrain it or nothing at all, there appears SS devs tried a workaround by setting the unit availability to a decimal value but doesn't seem to work very well or at all :/

What i've gathered so far:

- Regular Barracks tree: train local militias
- Elite Barrack tree: train faction unique units
- Colonial Barracks tree: train faction's militias overseas
- Stables tree: cavalry bonuses?
- Archery ranges: archery bonuses?

This brings into question as well the 2 settlement types system.
While for one i love the siege battles on castles/fortresses/citadels,
the recruiting limitations imposed by this system is not very good, specially for the AI, look at Denmark for example, most of the time they end up eaten by Norway simply because the later start with castles.

So i propose keeping Castles and Cities but more on aesthetic level, maybe cities can still produce more money than castles and etc, but the recruitment should be even for both...then perhaps make castles have cheaper military building and defenses upgrades.

what ya say about this last?

[Deteriorate]

I've always thought myself that One Settlement Type was the best, but I think in the battle map it should be castles instead of cities, or a combination of both where large settlements always have multiple walls.

Constantinople had many walls but because of it's economic importance is given a city status and therefor in the game has only one wall. I find multi-walled settlements to be a lot more fun to conquer, opposed to how cities if you break down their wall and charge in, the AI immediately runs to city center and sit like ducks

[Melooo182]

Yeah but given we have no one capable of editing settlements right now to make the perfect combination of both (It would be awesome to assault a huge city with inner walls segments like citadels), we better keep both settlements types but without the recruitment restrictions.

Later we could learn how to do this ourselves .

Another thing, higher settlement levels should give more of an edge in recruiting than they currently do, like for example allowing much more recruits per round, in turn upgrading settlements should be perhaps harder.
This should make things more realistic IMO, allowing small but more populated empire fight off another with huge landmass but scarcer population.

[Deteriorate]

Fair point, upgrading cities in particular should be harder in this case to make castles relevant, since they are more difficult to grow in population

[Mihajlo]

well Im not sure what is in a submod so I'll write ideas:

- You should use system similar like in HURB, making one building for recruitment. What I think it should be chain-linked = you need stables + military building (lets call it like this) for HA, add archery on that for HA, archery + military building for ranged foot unit, etc. When you link events to unlock units and link hidden resource in edb = this should work like a charm. Make top elite units region locked, ie you can train scolarii only in nicea and constantinople.

- Not sure if you have this but: in case there is units like archer and archer militia, please cut one. No point, same goes for everything else (france dont need chivalric knight and french noble knight, use 2nd one). Just put town hall to be building for militiaa: spear militia, archer/crossbow militia, sword militia. Use different typs for different era (no more halberds and militia halberds, use only 2nd one.). Also this will cut work for making gar.scripts, if you gonna make some.

- use RR/RC please for unit stats and edb and few more files, you know what I mean

- I like what you did with religious orders and it is much better like this (myself always do same in my own modifications). What you can do is put min 80% religion needed for recruitment of a professional units and for faction unique add hidden re. as well...

- What are you planing with guilds? I was thinking to put one unique guild for each faction (only buildable in capital) to represent unique bonus for faction -> french will have (example) knight_horse_guild: exp for HC, some % off for training HC, trait for generals for using cav.,trait for movement +% and so on... If it is not possible, then make one building for each faction and script it (for AI) or made it from the start (might be even better). Make 3-4 upgrades and tide it for some event so you can divide eras. (I have quit some ideas here!)
(in case guilds stay, then tide some units for guilds...)

- tone down population growth (not as much as in ss 6.4 tho) and also cut bonuses from buildings (I can remember if 0.5 works or only 1, 2, 3 and so on...), religious convert rate, etc. this will slow recruitment via not be able do develop city fast.

- cut replenish rate for elite units for human player, make it 1:4 in favor of AI, at least.

- I discover that field cost script put me on bay for blitzing. War cost, a lot, and in TW games there is no factors that can easily represent this. However this little script eliminate most of unrealistic "all in blitz" + keep money in players treasury more realistic. For me.I dont even play without it (easy to put/cut from camp.script also)

- I do think you should use only city and no castles. Only more then one wall is a problem, rest is all in favor of towns (maybe rise hp for walls and rise damage for keeps arrows will sort this out?)

and so on... as you can see not all is for recruitment, but maybe you find something interesting and useful cheers and happy modding!

regards

[Remonster6x]

we better keep both settlements types but without the recruitment restrictions.

Another thing, higher settlement levels should give more of an edge in recruiting than they currently do, like for example allowing much more recruits per round, in turn upgrading settlements should be perhaps harder.
This should make things more realistic IMO, allowing small but more populated empire fight off another with huge landmass but scarcer population.

I always hated the idea that London could not train professional troops because it's not a castle. At least be able to replenish troops in any town across the world without training a new unit and shipping it to that city. The greeks used any conquered cities people to replenish their ranks. Sadly there is no way to do this with all troops as you run out of space (I think 27 or 30 units is the limit).

A small amount of region troops are great to add to the base army. There should be a long delay between conquering a city and producing retraining troops which could be colonial building that HURB did so well. Have troops from a barracks etc. require the colonial building already built.

A small change I would like to see is: areas that have a low population but a history of good soldiers should have the ability to train higher end troops without upgrading the town. It can be at a very low rate. I'm talking Norway, Scotland, etc.

[Altair Ibn La Had]

Again ill, post this here.

I think HURB had a great idea for recruitment, and one that would not be overly difficult to implement. Instead of barracks and bowyers, there should be a feudal recruitment system. Kind of similar to ideas in the old Rome Total War mod Europa Barbarorum, you could switch the barracks/bowyers with a new building type: provincial status. For example, Toulouse could start as a county but after time become a duchy or earldom. This would strengthen the local ruler, and be a realistic representation of feudal structure. More Knights would own more land, allowing more and better units to be called into "official" service by the king. All this could be simulated just by switching the descriptions and icons of barracks to say an image of a manor or castle.

[smitty]

Again ill, post this here.

I think HURB had a great idea for recruitment, and one that would not be overly difficult to implement. Instead of barracks and bowyers, there should be a feudal recruitment system. Kind of similar to ideas in the old Rome Total War mod Europa Barbarorum, you could switch the barracks/bowyers with a new building type: provincial status. For example, Toulouse could start as a county but after time become a duchy or earldom. This would strengthen the local ruler, and be a realistic representation of feudal structure. More Knights would own more land, allowing more and better units to be called into "official" service by the king. All this could be simulated just by switching the descriptions and icons of barracks to say an image of a manor or castle.

I second the HURB feudal/tribal etc. system. Its recruitment feature was one of the main selling points for me, and provided for the most balanced AI armies I've seen in any mod when it came to historical composition (recruitment pools reflected army composition, RollingWave did a great job with few feudals and lots of levies but all recruitable from day 1).

[Paul_Atreides]

Again ill, post this here.

I think HURB had a great idea for recruitment, and one that would not be overly difficult to implement. Instead of barracks and bowyers, there should be a feudal recruitment system. Kind of similar to ideas in the old Rome Total War mod Europa Barbarorum, you could switch the barracks/bowyers with a new building type: provincial status. For example, Toulouse could start as a county but after time become a duchy or earldom. This would strengthen the local ruler, and be a realistic representation of feudal structure. More Knights would own more land, allowing more and better units to be called into "official" service by the king. All this could be simulated just by switching the descriptions and icons of barracks to say an image of a manor or castle.

I really like this contribution.

[Altair Ibn La Had]

I took a look at the extinct mod "Das Heillige Romische Reich" and I think it has a great system as well. Basically, you grow a towns governmental buildings in correlation with size and walls. Once this is built you have access to urban levies. Farms enable rural levies. Training fields, barracks, bowyers and stables unlock new recruitment slots. However, only levies can be directly recruited in cities. But, Feudal structures can be built which allow the recruitment of most troops i.e. archers, knights horseman artillery spearmen pikemen. A character can receive feudal titles in that province, allowing him to then call the units from the feudal buildings into use. This system would hereditary, so his son or brother could inherit the title and be able to call up an army there. I think real recruitment has something along these lines. Perhaps in late campaigns i.e. 1400 onward, you could build an governmental building in the capital to enable professional armies instead of Feudal ones.

[Darksaber11]

A couple lessons I would suggest learning from HURB:

1). Some units can definitely be culled. Byzantines don't need to be able to recruit three different types of archers, for example, and the western European powers could probably do with fewer options for knights. This would open up some room for unit variation elsewhere.

2). I don't know if it's possible, but it would be really nice if infantry that traditionally carried both a sword and spear (can you tell I like playing as the Byzantines a lot?) could actually do so.

3). Having professional units require the standard training buildings (Archery, Stables, etc.) might make a good deal of sense.

I hope you are also considering implementing the non recruitment-related features of HURB as well, I am a huge fan of the variety of buildings added by that mod.

[Altair Ibn La Had]

I think the mod authors of Titanium should also look at BGR V and its recruitment. There is no building based recruitment. Your general recruits using Feudalism to muster Knights and levies. I think traits could be assigned through scripts to where your faction leader gets say 12 retainers stating "Lance Privilidges". This enables a General to recruit. A trait like lord of a town would let him recruit there. You can build castles in cities to simulate more land being vassalized in the province, and this could have many effects. You could then recruit more elite troops like Knights. But I think that recruitment through barracks is simply unrealistic for a medieval game.

[minhnd6789]

Good morning, gentlemen, I just have a tiny suggestion that Hashashim can be recruited from Castles.

[Used2BRoz]

Ideas:

Make all of a faction's units recruitable in either city or castle (if you're going to keep both). This would certainly help the AI as it would the be able to rebuild damaged units in any settlement.
You can of course have all towns and have castles as perm stone forts. So battles will be fought in both. This would also allow for some simplification of unit types - one basic spear and one basic archer / crossbowmen, rather than having one for castles and another for towns. Better troops, if available from all settlements, need to have their availability reduced accordingly. Possibly to the level of only allowing rebuilding existing units on lower levels of settlement.

Horses need stables so tie recruiting of faction specific cavalry to stables. Put them in towns and castles. I don't like the RR system of having them recruitable from walls - having them from stables gives a better reason for upgrading stables.

Recruiting units not related to the faction should be done through the mercenary system. That makes them available to all factions that control a region. They need to be better distributed too - so kurdish units can be recruited in historically kurdish areas for example. This makes for a much simpler EDB for example.

Having a religion based requirement for recruiting own units is worth trying out, it would stand in for cultural assimilation.

It might be worth looking at reducing the building tree levels for some building types -it would prevent building many units very quickly. Longer recruitment times or smaller recruitment pools would also slow the game down.

I'd prefer a slimmed / simplified down mod that was easier to make then one that was over-complicated.

[Melooo182]

Make all of a faction's units recruitable in either city or castle (if you're going to keep both). This would certainly help the AI as it would the be able to rebuild damaged units in any settlement.

Done for v0.9

This is worth checking:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14627521
as well as the Real Feudalism, which IMO is basically what RollingWave did but simplified