Recuitment question?

[The_678]

Has it been posted anywhere how the recruiment system is gonna be in mtw2? I was really dissapointed in Rome when all you need is a barracks or whatever to produce units. The way they did it in MTW with need both a spearshop and horse breeder etc way better. I really hope they bring that back.

So does anybody know how it is supposed to be? I looked in the F.A.Q. but no answer there hoping somebody here has seen something I haven't.

[Duke John]

I like R:TW's system better although in my opinion I'd rather see the techtree system not being used at all for recruitment. Never have I read something like: "King Edward III did not have a Level 3 Spearmaker in Wessex. As a result his army was severly lacking Knights." I've seen this game mechanic too many times, it's time to move on, please.

[Gaulgath]

I like R:TW's system better although in my opinion I'd rather see the techtree system not being used at all for recruitment. Never have I read something like: "King Edward III did not have a Level 3 Spearmaker in Wessex. As a result his army was severly lacking Knights." I've seen this game mechanic too many times, it's time to move on, please.
Hehehe, agreed. Something new would be nice! :laugh4:

[ivoignob]

I agree with "The_678". The game will be much more fun, when you have to combine different buildings in order to get a unit. This way you have to consider sometimes, which buildings to build first.

[Peasant Phill]

I agree with duke John. Something similar to the feudal recruitment system would be nice. You wouldn't have a standing army except a very small group that would be your household troops. Armies could only be kept together for a certain time after wich it dissolves again. The number of men recruited would be in comparison with the inhabitants in an area calculated together with your influence, dread and the loyalty of the local lords. Maybe even involving some diplomacy: you could give some favorable conditions to cities and lords in order to gain more troops. The quality of your troops would be calculated by the riches of the land, the technology level in those parts and the recruitment ground (meaning cities give militia, castles give knights and MAA). If you wanted to bulk up your army you could also recruit some mercenaries.
Except for the mercenaries, there wouldn't be any recruitment cost but the upkeep should be enormous.

[x-dANGEr]

I think that their is already a new recruitment system. Just knowing that their will be castles and cities gives you that thought.

[Duke John]

Being able to recruit unit a + b+ c from castles and only unit a from cities is not really a new system. Heck, we already had that in the Middle Earth: Total War mod for M:TW-VI.

[x-dANGEr]

But that isn't the case as far as I know. It has been said in an interview, that improved cities can recruit better units than castles.

[Divine Wind]

But that isn't the case as far as I know. It has been said in an interview, that improved cities can recruit better units than castles.

Probably just a better Militia unit or something...its not exactly ground breaking.

[Peasant Phill]

No not really groundbreaking at all.

AFAIK the better militia units will be the better units in general. Castles will produce the best units in low tech situations while cities will produce the best units when reaching full tech level.

CA said already on numerous occasions that a conversion from castle to city will be possible but costly. This will force us to plan ahead in order to keep up or stay ahead in the arms race. I like that part as it isn't 'mindless' upgrading anymore but rather assessing a situation so you can decide in which settlements you want to develope in a certain form. I hope this will be of some strategic importance, e.g. if castles are harder to siege successfully than cities. Otherwise it's only a question of dividing your settlements in the two forms.

[econ21]

Probably just a better Militia unit or something...its not exactly ground breaking.

It'll be interesting to see how CA implement it. Potentially, it might be one way to model the switch from a feudal system (castle units rock) to one based more around a national army (city units rock) that the French were moving towards at the end of the Hundred Years war. I would expect cities produce cannon, handgunners and pikes as late period units; castles produce knights and men-at-arms earlier.

[Papewaio]

I like R:TW's system better although in my opinion I'd rather see the techtree system not being used at all for recruitment. Never have I read something like: "King Edward III did not have a Level 3 Spearmaker in Wessex. As a result his army was severly lacking Knights." I've seen this game mechanic too many times, it's time to move on, please.

You may want to review the rise of the Republic of France and how it was then able to conquour so much of Europe. It could be put like this.

"Napolean having access to Paris which was becoming one of the greatest arms producing cities in Europe allowed him the ability to field a well armed national force."


Nonetheless, in the 1780s, under the artillery service's aegis, the inventor Honor& Blanc set up a machine shop in the keep of the Chateau de Vincennes where he achieved the first interchangeable parts manufacture for muskets. Meanwhile, everywhere else in France military gun production collapsed and did not revive until the crisis of 1793. The republic's desperate struggle to massproduce weapons despite a severe shortage of gunsmiths led to the huge state-run Paris Arms Manufacture. Low-skill labor and radical politics determined production practices. Quantity superseded quality

Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815 (http://www.looksmartfamilytree.com/p/articles/mi_qa3686/is_199908/ai_n8872693#continue)



His remarkable series of military triumphs were a result of his ability to apply his encyclopedic knowledge of conventional military thought to real-world situations, as demonstrated by his creative use of artillery tactics, using it as a mobile force to support his infantry. As he described it: "I have fought sixty battles and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning." Contemporary paintings of his headquarters during the Italian campaign depict his use of the world's first telecommunications system, the Chappe semaphore line, first implemented in 1792. He was also a master of both intelligence and deception and had an uncanny sense of when to strike. He often won battles by concentrating his forces on an unsuspecting enemy by using spies to gather information about opposing forces and by concealing his own troop deployments.

Upgarded tech... telecommunications, the use of spies etc

[Quietus]

Has it been posted anywhere how the recruiment system is gonna be in mtw2? I was really dissapointed in Rome when all you need is a barracks or whatever to produce units. The way they did it in MTW with need both a spearshop and horse breeder etc way better. I really hope they bring that back.

So does anybody know how it is supposed to be? I looked in the F.A.Q. but no answer there hoping somebody here has seen something I haven't.
From Gamedaily (http://pc.gamedaily.com/game/features/?gameid=4928&id=296):


Training your new recruits has also been sped up. In Medieval 2 you can train up to four new recruits in a single term.

A player can churn out troops so can the AI....

[Ignoramus]

What I always dreaded: The Blitzkrieg: Total War.

[Martok]

What I always dreaded: The Blitzkrieg: Total War.


Well c'mon, CA can't please everyone. The majority of TW players (note that I don't claim *all*) have often complained about how ridiculous and unrealistic it is that we can only build one unit per turn, regardless of how many training/recruitment facilities a province may have. While that's true as far as it goes, it was of course better gameplay-wise to only have the ability to train one unit per turn, for the reasons to which you've already alluded (otherwise everyone could have huge armies right away, etc.)

So with this particular situation, what are the developers supposed to do? They have to make a choice between realism or gameplay--one is going to get sacrficed at the expense of the other, at least to a degree. No matter what they decided in this case, they're pretty much "damned if they do, and damned if they don't". In regards to training units, it appears CA decided the lesser of two evils was being able to train multiple troops at a time. :shrug:

Personally, I'm pretty ambivalent as to how recruitment works. As long as it's well-balanced, I'm okay with it. Besides, there's a built-in restriction to training more than one unit at a time: You do that too much, and you're going to quickly run out of money. ~;)

[wraithdt]

You can fine the answer to your question here along with many other juicy info about M2TW as of this moment.

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm55.showMessage?topicID=1905.topic

[Tzar Dusan of Serbs]

I think it could be realy cool that upkeep of the units is high so you need to have realy good economy and leser standing force,I would like to see something like mobilization in times of war,althou i do not realy how it can be done.It would be more historicaly acurate,couse most feudal armies were made of peasents who were forced to go in the war,especialy when you were atacked by stronger enemy.This would be cool that you have in the game some feudal lords in your country who could build up your armies if you have high influence or raised a rebelion if you have low influence or if you have high or very high taxes,I think it would be great,but I dont know how realistic it could be done

[B-Wing]

I'm not very picky, but I thought that MTW had too many buildings, personally. It wasn't necessarily that it was too complicated, I just thought it was kinda ridiculous. Many units didn't seem to fit their building requirements. Not every unit with armor needed to an armor smith, not every unit with swords needed a sword smith, not every unit with spears needed a spear maker, and not every unit with bows needed a fletcher. So I don't see why they even had so many different buildings, when there were so many "exceptions to the rule", so to speak. Something more logical and/or more realistic, or at least simpler (but not as simple as RTW), would be preferable to me.

As for how many units can be recruited a turn, I think the level of buildings should affect this. I assume improving a blacksmith shop means larger, more numerous blacksmiths, and therefore more units that can be armed in a given amount of time. For example, a Level 1 Blacksmith can produce 1 unit of level 1 soldiers in a turn, while a lvl 2 Blacksmith could produce 2 units of lvl 1 soldiers or 1 unit of lvl 2 soldiers a turn. I think that's a reasonable way for it to work. Of course, I don't know anything about how feudal/medieval recruitment and arming worked, so you history buffs could probably offer a more realistic system.

[lar]

why not have an option to make it 1turn per unit or option for the unit pool recruitment thing. bit of a big option, but there are some other things that could be solved by adding both.

[Kralizec]

I'm not very picky, but I thought that MTW had too many buildings, personally. It wasn't necessarily that it was too complicated, I just thought it was kinda ridiculous. Many units didn't seem to fit their building requirements. Not every unit with armor needed to an armor smith, not every unit with swords needed a sword smith, not every unit with spears needed a spear maker, and not every unit with bows needed a fletcher. So I don't see why they even had so many different buildings, when there were so many "exceptions to the rule", so to speak. Something more logical and/or more realistic, or at least simpler (but not as simple as RTW), would be preferable to me.

I actually liked MTW's system of multiple building combinations. Do I upgrade to horse breeders guild and armourers guild to train Kataphractoi (shock cavalry), or do I build swordsmith and bowyer's workshop to train Byzantine cavalry? (versatile horse archers)


Never have I read something like: "King Edward III did not have a Level 3 Spearmaker in Wessex. As a result his army was severly lacking Knights."

The level 3 spearmaker is an abstraction that represents the infrastructure of a province, and the overall skill of the weapon smiths. Of course, differentiating between spear/sword/armour makers is pretty odd.

But I still think the general idea is sound. You could for example have a "feudal estates" line of buildings, wich allows for knights to be built. Buildings like "smithing guilds" and "merchant quarters" grow a middle class that allows men-at-arms and the higher end militia units to be recruited, and so on.

[Alim]

It depends on people's individual preferences but I think I like the new system better(being able to recruit 4 units per turn). If the units upkeep costs are very high, so you can't have a standing army, this will be a much more realistic representation of medieval recruitment. As an additional benefit this will make it much harder to have very high valor/experienced units, apart from your household troups, which will make things easier for the AI.
The castle/city development system is also a good thing although in MTW1 many players would specialise their provinces anyway, i.e assign some provinces as economic, others for producing cavalry and others for infantry, in order to get to elite troops faster and get the most out of province-specific bonuses. But is all seems like a step in the right direction.
As for the old MTW system of complicated tech trees for some units it at least meant that it was a lot more difficult to produce elite troops since building all the required buildings took a lot of time and even more money. However, it still meant that at the beginning of the game you couldn't have any feudal knights at all but after maybe a 100 years you could have entire stacks of them. It would be great if there was a system whereby you could recruit troops such as the heavy cavalry right from the start but have a limit on how many of those units you could have in your army at one time, to represent the fact that the pool of noblety who could fight as knighs and other elite units was limited. Also, in a Byzantine army you can't really have more than one unit of Varangian guard at a time.