Some ideas on changing recruitment

[part_time_player]

Something I was thinking of modding in my game, was just inviting some discussion

I like to play Early era games and I always feel like the majority of my armies consist of lots of spear militia and a couple of family members for cavalry. There's some peasant/Levy archers available too but they're too ineffective to bother with. It takes 30-40 turns to get decent Castles with the ability to train some more professional infantry but even then they are very limited numbers so a huge portion of the game is spent with a quite boring army. I also find it annoying how basic level infantry in cities and castles are different, and I think it's weird how you can conquer territories on the other side of the world and still recruit lots of troops that are unique to your faction.

The changes I considered are therefore:
1) Remove peasant level units from the game
2) Make some medium level troops more available
3) Make replenishment of medium and higher level troops faster
4) Do not increase replenishment of lower level troops at higher building levels
5) Make many more units regional, with the "native" faction to that region able to recruit more of them than other factions

Here's an example of what it might look like, for demo purposes I will use a hypothetical Burgundy faction that starts with 1 town and 1 castle.
1st level town and castle barracks can both train spear militia
2nd level town and castle barracks can both train sergeant spearmen (castle can train more)
3rd level town and castle barracks can both train armoured sergeants (castle can train more)
3rd level castle barracks can also train swordsmen
1st level Bowyer can train Archers (attack 3), 2nd Level Bowyer can train Crossbowmen (attack 8)
1st Level Stables can train Mounted Sergeants, 2nd Level can train Mailed Knights
Note: higher level barracks would not increase recruit pools on lower level units but they DO increase their experience level, and replen rates on all infantry are more similar

By the time you have 3rd level facilities in both regions, assuming the recruitment pools were full, you could recruit in total:
4 Spear Militia (2 in city, 2 in castle)
3 Sergeant Spearmen (1 in city, 2 in castle)
3 Armoured Spearmen (1 in city, 2 in castle)
2 Swordsmen
2 Archers
2 Crossbowmen
2 Mounted Sergeants
2 Mailed Knights

The current equivalent would be something more like:
City: 4 Spear Militia and 2 Crossbow militia
Castle: 2 peasants, 2 spear militia, 2 sergeant spearmen, 1 armoured spearmen, 1 swordsmen, 3 peasant crossbowmen, 2 levy archers, 1 archers, 2 mounted sergeants, 1 Mailed knights

So the main differences are:
4 spear militia instead of 6 militia and 2 peasants
8 medium infantry instead of 4
4 decent missile units instead of 7 bad ones and 1 decent one
2 light cavalry and 2 heavy cavalry instead of 2 light and 1 heavy
Overall 20 units instead of 23

In the current setup I wouldn't even recruit the peasants, peasant archers, levy archers or the crossbow militia (maybe the xbow militia..)
That leaves me with 6 spear militia, 4 medium infantry, 1 archers and 3 cav, and with faster replen on the militia, if I want a full stack it would fill up with more militia before anything else. In the new setup I get 4 militia, 8 medium infantry, 4 missile and 4 cav and that just feels to me a bit more balanced, a bit more realistic and a bit more interesting to play with.

In addition, although this is a secondary project, I would consider making the recruitment on ALL of those units different depending on region. So in western Europe you would be able to recruit them all normally, but outside of that region you would be able to recruit half as many and you supplement that with local troops. If for example the Moors conquered my territory, they would be able to recruit spear militia, armoured spearmen, mailed knights etc in low quantities, as well as low quantities of their own troops. Higher level troops, elites etc would be faction specific not regionalised, but some other troops would be region specific regardless of faction (like the prussian troops, but have more like that). If I was the moors and had captured Burgundy, I would still be able to train 20 men, but they would be 10 local Burgundian units and 10 Moorish units (or something like that).

I plan to do all that by changing the units and buildings file, I'm not going to create any new units (beyond my ability) although instead of just removing things like peasants I could just tweak their stats a bit maybe. Alternatively removing them altogether and standardizing city/castle troops could open up some slots for adding in some interesting regional troops.

Just wondering if anyone thinks this is good/bad/crazy, will it change the game, will it confuse the AI or make it go broke, will it make it easier or harder, more or less fun? curious to hear your thoughts.

[Dekhatres]

Area of Recruitment system kinda requires a lot of work iirc, i've seen a very extensive one in Bellum Crucis where for example you can only recruit english knights in England, french knights only in France and so on


replenishment rates, i personally changed them to be a bit lower for infantry and much lower for cavalry, i also allowed elite/exceptional units to be recruited from lower level buildings but with decreased replenishment rate, like you can recruit Khassaki from a much lower level barracks but only once every ~40-20 turns


tbh i wouldnt like to see moors field mailed knights or byzantines use janissaries or anything like that

[Jurand of Cracow]

I think these are the questions each mod-maker poses himself, so you're likely to re-invent the wheel again. I think it'd be interesting for you to explore how these issues were dealt with in the submods to the SS, especially HURB and SSHIP.

[Dekhatres]

I think these are the questions each mod-maker poses himself, so you're likely to re-invent the wheel again. I think it'd be interesting for you to explore how these issues were dealt with in the submods to the SS, especially HURB and SSHIP.

SSHIP is pretty much spot on, not a fan of the 2-3 turn build time on most units tho

[BatGoat]

I think it's fine how it is. Levy Archers aren't as bad as folks make them out to be if you only use them at the start of the game vs. peasant/spear militia type troops. The only troops I don't recruit on a regular basis are peasants. Everything else pretty much gets used and recruited until it is rendered obsolete by an upgrade, at which time, I either disband old units far from my fronts, or merge them until they're too small to matter.