RTW/BI Poll : Do you use PEASANTS ? [Archive]

Severous

03-31-2006, 07:24

Yes

https://img92.imageshack.us/img92/8601/brutii259s32dp.th.jpg (https://img92.imageshack.us/my.php?image=brutii259s32dp.jpg)

This lot came with a town I gained through diplomacy. So I used them on a bunch of rebels.

Normally peasants are garrison duty.

If any find themselves in a bigger battle I will often put them in open formation and draw the enemy fire. If the enemy attack them on the ground I will retreat them luring the enemy into a trap. I also used them vs chariots when tons of infantry mobbing bogged down chariots soon kills the chariots.

AndyNgFL

03-31-2006, 08:21

Normally peasants are garrison duty.

If any find themselves in a bigger battle I will often put them in open formation and draw the enemy fire. If the enemy attack them on the ground I will retreat them luring the enemy into a trap. I also used them vs chariots when tons of infantry mobbing bogged down chariots soon kills the chariots.

Hmmm ... good point !

Summary so far ... Peasants can be used for :

1) Garrison Duty

Peasants are cheap to recruit and maintain !

Normally, I use 1 Peasant unit for every 1000 population in a city.

Bigger unit size = less garrison unit used = less $ maintainence $ cost
(might be useful for large city size and for a faction with a poor economy)

2) Cannon Fodder

Peasants in open formation can draw enemy fire. Especially in a STALEMATED battle where micro managing your units is essential to win the battle or the army you are using has weak ranged units (e.g Spain). Enemy units like Velites, Hastatis will use up their ammo very fast. Without thier ammo, it will open up more tatical possibilities for you.

I also find them useful in city siege battles (stone walls). I will use them to push Siege Towers and capture enemy "Towers" while the other infantry units engage enemy units in the melee. "Towers" captured will shoot at the enemy below the walls while they can't do shit to you.

3) Bait

Drawing enemy archers out from their rear. You can then charge them down with your calvary.

If the enemy give chase to your Peasants. You can then lure them into a trap. (E.g lure them in range of your archers OR they chase you so deep that you can use your calvary to smash into thier flanks or rear)

3) Bog down Chariots

Tons of infantry mobbing bogged down chariots soon kills chariots. (good idea contributed by Severous ! )

To be continued ...

Ludens

04-01-2006, 12:27

No. Though they do have their uses (mainly providing cheap mass when you don't care about routers), I prefer something that won't die like flies.

Antagonist

04-01-2006, 12:46

They can be useful in battles sometimes (for the reasons listed above) but I would never build them for that purpose, only use them if they were already there at the start of the campaign, or as part of a bribed army.

The main use I have for peasants is in the campaign game: training a bunch of them and moving them around and disbanding is a useful method of managing populations, which is especially important if you play on Huge unit size settings, as I do. I tend to mod my game to allow 0-turn "recruitment" (more like conscription) solely for peasants for this purpose.

Antagonist

Arbaces

04-01-2006, 12:48

peasants aren't such useful, militia units are enough

Severous

04-01-2006, 13:33

I would not build peasants or town watch for combat purposes. They will get used in battle if they happen to be in the wrong place at the right time.

Only plan to use peasants for garrison and population movement (I play large setting).

Dont build town watch. Not as cost effective as peasants for public order and not good enough for combat.

So thats another use for peasants..thanks to Antagonist for mentioning it...moving population around

longbowmen

04-02-2006, 02:13

for RTW i spam lots and lots of peasants to maintain loyalty in conquered towns so that my fighting troops (hastati, equites etc.) can quickly move on to conquer the next town.

for BI its necessary to keep in mind that peasants have halved effectiveness as garrison units, meaning for 120-unit peasants has the same effect as a 60-unit town watch, so it really depends.

they are gd for pumping the population size of a small town (build peasants at large towns and disband them in small ones) so that you can get to a large town quicker. small towns' growth rate are really slow until they get to a decent pop size.

Wardruid

04-02-2006, 04:29

I use peasants to do ram and sapping work when the enemy has archers.
Peasants are also useful for wearing and slowing down units esspecially cavalry.

YAKOBU

04-02-2006, 09:24

I never ever use peasants in my game. I know why some people use them but I don't agree with filling a setttlement with them to keep public order down. Each to their own I guess.

:charge:

Tellos Athenaios

04-02-2006, 14:47

I use them to maintain public order, and sometimes I attach them to an army to allow more siege equipment to be built in one turn. I've only done that once so far, but it turned out usefull.

(I don't like waiting for a settelment to fall under the might of my armies - so later on I always make sure to have some onagers or ballistas included in any invading army.)

Thracian 06

04-02-2006, 17:28

I never use peasants. I only save up and build good buildings to produce better armies.

ArnoldLol

04-02-2006, 18:44

i only use them to garrison rebelling cities.

Barbarossa1221

04-02-2006, 22:57

I never use peasants on the battlefield and when I do its usually because some fool has decided to siege my city and I throw peasants at him before my main force hits
But other than that I use peasants as a garrison because of their large number and cheap cost.

Goalie

04-02-2006, 23:12

Peasants are completely worthless on the battle field except if you want to waste the enemies arrows. The only time i ever use them is in campaign to raise popularity.

allfathersgodi

04-09-2006, 01:32

I use them only as Garrison forces in my rear areas and as cannon-fodder. I was thinking of ways of how they would be more valuable to me and came to this conclusion.

It was a common practice of the Roman Empire to use its soldiers to build public works and other such stuff, using peasants as help to construction work would be an immense boost to their status, but of course you should be able to take any ground combat unit (except siege crew since there are not enough of them) and use them as workers....

What would also be nice is to take them and sell them as slaves, or rapidly train them to better units...

kburkert

04-09-2006, 07:43

i use peasents for garrison when i cant recruit any other unit.

Darren_Shan

04-09-2006, 07:52

do u use peasent?

yes for cannon fodder sometimes :D

orangat

04-09-2006, 23:05

I hardly ever use peasants in battle, they die/rout to quick to even work as chariot speedbumps. Apart from meatbag duty to soak up arrows, their main use is to garrison cities.

Guthwyn

04-09-2006, 23:15

Playing as the Greeks, I recently had to use peasants to move a siege tower into place. A group of archers on the wall and the wall towers shot 'em up pretty good, but the great thing about peasants is: you don't care. They actually finished off the 6-8 archers that were left on the wall once they had climbed the tower. While they were getting shot at, my Spartan hoplites climbed the wall unimpeded (no losses) and captured the gate.

So yes, I think peasants are great for drawing fire. But I won't use them unless I have to.

It was different in MTW, when your first couple battles could hinge on a peasant unit charging at the right time.

Guthwyn

bamff

04-11-2006, 04:38

Haven't played RTW, but the lot of the poor old peasant looks much the same in both MTW and RTW (and indeed throughout history) - theirs not to reason why, there just to do or die, etc.....and generally that is what they do in alarming numbers.

On occassions I suppose it can be useful to have a few of them just to discourage AI factions from attacking (bigger stack looks scarier than a smaller stack, even if there is no substance to it).

Apart from garrison duties, they (peasants) get the same treatment as mercs - use them on any mission that will involve a big body count and will thereby spare more useful and more expensive troops.

Papewaio

04-11-2006, 05:55

In RTW I use them to breed Spartans!

Playing on huge unit size, I ship in as many peasants from non-combat unit producing cities. I as quickly as possible increase the population of Sparta and at the same time I always make sure I'm queueing up the builds that will create the Spartans. If there is spare time I invest in buildings that will enhance the troops.

So I like to think of my peasants as the helots who help create the economy that makes the Spartan warriors sustainable.

I've yet to think of a city that I need to populate up that quickly to create the equivalent of Spartans in RTW:BI. Warlords would be a good thing to go for if I was finding that my family was being whittled down to quickly.

Taurus

04-11-2006, 11:22

In the single player campaigns I use peasants at the beginning to fight in my armies and later on to occupy my cities etc.
In multiplayer I use peasants as fodder if I have any spare cash.

PseRamesses

04-12-2006, 10:25

...I also use peasants as "emigrants" and send them from fast overgrowing cities to settlements that needs to be boosted to the next level. It´s pretty fast and above all cheap.
I never use them in battles but I do use them as garrison units in the beginning of the game until I can afford to replace them with better units.

Alexan

04-12-2006, 12:32

Yea, peasants are only good to suck some arch volleys vs mediocre players.

macsen rufus

04-12-2006, 12:53

I usually have a rule to never train peasants, and even disband my starting units, but in my current campaign (Scythians, H/H, huge) I've found my population is growing so fast and "happiness" buildings so few I have to use them to shift population around. I usually send them to captured cities with good facilities and too little population to train any units in. Once disbanded there the city has enough population to train something useful instead!

I never use them in battle -- "sending untrained men in to battle is to throw them away".

Garvanko

04-12-2006, 13:01

I only use them as garrison.

Dutch_guy

04-12-2006, 13:09

I don't use peasants.

:balloon2:

Severous

04-14-2006, 02:42

I am using peasants to train my army.

Senate mission makes me take a town I do not want to hold. After taking it I exterminate and strip all of value, put the tax up very high, and withdraw the garrison. Two turns later it revolts back to its previous owner..and gets loads of peasants as a garrison.

This is a predictable supply of enemies. They can be quite strong though..with much experience weapons and armor.

My closest big fight ever was won by a unit of peasants I happened to have along with the army.

rotorgun

04-14-2006, 04:30

After taking it I exterminate and strip all of value, put the tax up very high, and withdraw the garrison. Two turns later it revolts back to its previous owner..and gets loads of peasants as a garrison.

This is a predictable supply of enemies. They can be quite strong though..with much experience weapons and armor.

My closest big fight ever was won by a unit of peasants I happened to have along with the army.

Something quite similar happened to me once when playing as the Brutii. I had take a town in Germania that the British had captured from them earlier. After taking it in a bloody seige, I was forced to leave behind a small garrison and meet another Brittanic army in the field. The town revolted and, to my suprise, the rebels filled the town with a large comtingent of mostly peasants, supplemented by a few militia, warbanders, and barbarian cavalry. All the rebel units had at least 3 silver chevrons,silver sheilds and swords! :oops: After driving off the field army, I reinforced from my closest settlement and came back to besiege the rebel town. :wall:

After about 6 turns of weakening them down, I attacked. The mostly peasant army nearly defeated my superior, highly trained, experienced, mostly Urban Cohort and Preatorian Cavalry force. It was about the second most costly victory I have ever had. It was shocking to see several of my Urban infantry units routed by these ragamuffin blighters. :sweatdrop:

Yes, properly trained and equipped, peasants can be quite capable for a low cost. It can even be a severe phsycolgical blow to an online opponent if he is not suspecting such a ruse.

rotorgun

04-14-2006, 04:34

After taking it I exterminate and strip all of value, put the tax up very high, and withdraw the garrison. Two turns later it revolts back to its previous owner..and gets loads of peasants as a garrison.

This is a predictable supply of enemies. They can be quite strong though..with much experience weapons and armor.

My closest big fight ever was won by a unit of peasants I happened to have along with the army.

Something quite similar happened to me once when playing as the Brutii. I had captured a town in Germania that the British had captured from them earlier. After taking it in a bloody seige, I was forced to leave behind a small garrison and meet another Brittanic army in the field. The town revolted and, to my suprise, the rebels filled the town with a large contingent of mostly peasants, supplemented by a few militia, warbanders, and barbarian cavalry. All the rebel units had at least 3 silver chevrons,silver sheilds and swords! :oops:
After driving off the field army, I reinforced from my closest settlement and came back to besiege the rebel town. :wall:

After about 6 turns of weakening them down, I attacked. The mostly peasant army nearly defeated my superior, highly trained, experienced, mostly Urban Cohort and Preatorian Cavalry force. It was about the second most costly victory I have ever had. It was shocking to see several of my Urban infantry units routed by these ragamuffin blighters. :sweatdrop:

Yes, properly trained and equipped, peasants can be quite capable for a low cost. It can even be a severe phsycolgical blow to an online opponent if he is not suspecting such a ruse.

AndyNgFL

04-21-2006, 07:16

The following factions' peasants have an ATT/DEF 3/3 fighting attribute :

Parthia
Egypt
Carthage
Pontus
Armenia
Numidia
Spain

The following factions' peasants have an ATT/DEF 1/4 fighting attribute :

Gaul
Germany
Briton
Dacia
Scythia

The factions' peasants not listed above all have a 1/1 fighting attribute.

:book:

edyzmedieval

04-21-2006, 13:41

I haven't played Vanilla RTW for a long time, since I play now EB. ~:)

But when I did play, I rarely used peasants, because they were useless in combat. When I want garrisons, I set up a balance:

-combat power
-money
-unit size

After I checked everything, then I start pumping those units to get rid of surplus population.

BigTex

04-21-2006, 15:29

Havent played BI in a while (busy with EB), but I used to use them for garrison and a screen for my limite's. In the early parts of your campaigns as romans, the peasants are indespensible as a screening force and arrow shield, the enormous amount of space they take up in loose formation is quite amazing. I often use them as destracting cover while manuevering my heavier forces for a flank or to split their lines before engaging.

They may not be the best in a fight, but skillfully used their indespensible.

roman pleb

04-22-2006, 23:16

If you train them to about silver shields/ silver swords, they can be a pretty good flanking unit! I also use them as a garrison in cities I know aren't going to be attacked.

AndyNgFL

05-16-2006, 04:39

Summary so far ... Peasants can be used for :

1) Garrison Duty

Peasants are cheap to recruit and maintain !

Normally, I use 1 Peasant unit for every 1000 population in a city.

Bigger unit size = less garrison unit used = less $ maintainence $ cost
(might be useful for large city size and for a faction with a poor economy)

2) Cannon Fodder

Peasants in open formation can draw enemy fire. Especially in a STALEMATED battle where micro managing your units is essential to win the battle or the army you are using has weak ranged units (e.g Spain). Enemy units like Velites, Hastatis will use up their ammo very fast. Without thier ammo, it will open up more tatical possibilities for you.

3) Siege - Who do the dirty work ?

I also find them useful in city siege battles (esp stone walls). I will use them to push Siege Towers/Rams and capture enemy "Towers" while the other infantry units engage enemy units in the melee. "Towers" captured will shoot at the enemy below the walls while they can't do shit to you.

Sap the enemy walls ! Casaulties ? You dont care ! Let the peasants do the dirty work !

3) Bait

Drawing enemy archers out from their rear. You can then charge them down with your calvary.

If the enemy give chase to your Peasants. You can then lure them into a trap. (E.g lure them in range of your archers OR they chase you so deep that you can use your calvary to smash into thier flanks or rear)

3) Bog down Chariots

Tons of infantry mobbing bogged down chariots soon kills chariots. (good idea contributed by Severous ! )

Peasants are also useful for wearing and slowing down units especially cavalry. (good idea contributed by Wardruid ! )

4) Move Population Around

Its a cheap and good way to hasten the developement of a settlement. If you have the extra cash, recruit peasants in a settlement, move them to a nearby settlement, and disband. The population of the settlement will increase and so will its "rank" ... thus developing into a bigger city very fast.

To be continued ...

Devastatin Dave

05-16-2006, 17:26

Yes

Dutch_guy

05-16-2006, 17:35

wow, DevDave posting in the Entrance Hall !

:balloon2:

stalin

05-16-2006, 17:38

I wonder mif one can play an entire capaign using ony peasants

Devastatin Dave

05-16-2006, 18:28

wow, DevDave posting in the Entrance Hall !

:balloon2:
I got "axed".:2thumbsup:

Dutch_guy

05-16-2006, 20:35

I got "axed".:2thumbsup:

Ah yes I see, what did you get yourself into this time ?

:balloon2:

Devastatin Dave

05-16-2006, 20:52

Ah yes I see, what did you get yourself into this time ?

:balloon2:
'Cuz, I fought the law and the... law won, i fought the law and the... law won.
The peasants rose up and... they got none. The peasants rose up and... they got none.
:laugh4:
And you can quote me on that!!!:2thumbsup:

Avicenna

05-16-2006, 21:16

The wrath of Beirut is now common knowledge even in the Entrance Hall :shocked:

Devastatin Dave

05-16-2006, 21:24

The wrath of Beirut is now common knowledge even in the Entrance Hall :shocked:
Well, lets get back on subject before I get "axed" permanently. I can't do doo-doo, can't even access my control panel.

Peasants are best used for population redistribution, other than that, they are about as worthless as discussing politics, religion, or anything of interest without passion or testicular fortitude.

limitedwhole

05-16-2006, 22:44

Using them to move population on the largest unit size is the main use I think. By drawing them from your higher growth territories to those small poducts with valuable trade resources and routes you can get a port up 5-7 turns earlier which is a big difference. For example Kydonia is incredibly lucrative but not worth much until you have a port. Rhodes starts with a port and the size doesn't matter much, it is an importer. Draw peasants from Rhodes every turn till Kyodonia is port sized.

Also someone mentioned above that they can build siege equipment which could be useful. Never had peasnats on the front lines.

I like to keep my public order high so that I don't have to garrison. If I do garrison it is usually with half spent worthless mercs.

Also you can cue severeal peasnats at once to make the public order go higher. My favorite trick is just to cue the unit you really want and thena string of peasants. This is really usefull for letting your army move out of territories you just conquered and onto the next territory.

They might do okay in combat with a mercenary peltast or soomething?

Severous

05-17-2006, 07:14

I am wary of queing too many peasants in the build que.

These have been taken from the population so will reduce the tax and trade income whilst pushing army upkeep costs onto other cities.

A useful tactic to be sure to allow your army to move on...but one to check out on the overall faction finances page if being done just to keep taxes high.

An enemy army on the battlefield will react to the distribution of your troops. Running some peasants around will cause the enemy line to readjust...tiring them.

Ardaric

05-17-2006, 09:15

On occasion I use them for pinning enemy cavalry down and let other infantry units flank the cavalry. Ido the same with priests. THey are just as bad and good as cannonfodder or suicide missions in the field

Lorenzo_H

05-17-2006, 09:59

When I can avoid using peasants, I don't use them. I never use them to fight, only as garrison duty.

btw where's the poll?

Krauser

05-17-2006, 15:56

I never use them except as the Gauls early game when taking out walls. Warbands can't sap so it's back to peasants for getting through walls. It looks like they do have their uses, they're just not the best unit out there.

Napoleon Blownapart

05-17-2006, 21:10

I try to only use peasents when either the town can't build a Town Watch/Town Militia, or it's the closest thing that faction has to a garrison unit.

stalin

05-17-2006, 22:18

I think Peasants have become an exploit. I never use them for battle just for moving populations around and lining up 9 units in recruitment queue in newly conquered towns to help control the unrest (1080 less in population helps a lot the garisson:pop. ratio) And another thing if an earthquake is coming that queue is saving you a lot of population from getting killed

AndyNgFL

05-21-2006, 05:12

for BI its necessary to keep in mind that peasants have halved effectiveness as garrison units, meaning for 120-unit peasants has the same effect as a 60-unit town watch, so it really depends.

huh ? 1/2 effect ? is it true ?

Ludens

05-21-2006, 12:59

huh ? 1/2 effect ? is it true ?
Yes, but only in BI. Not in R:TW.

Patriarch of Constantinople

05-23-2006, 05:12

I use them as cannon fodder and to distract enemies. works alot. like one time i killed the enemy general cause he charged my peasent which were aided by royal pikeman.

Rhubarbmisterwellington

05-23-2006, 14:27

In open Battle peasants are mostly harmless, but I have found a good use for them - they are great for chasing down routing infantry.

I have posted before about the advantages of abandoing the walls in a siege and defending the square. Provided you have a few units of troops (rather than peasants) you can bottleneck the invaders in a street. Queueing up peasants behind your troops seems to bolster the troop's morale, and when the enemy breaks, peasants are really fleet of foot - far faster than, for example militia hoplites (even when the latter are taken out pf phalanx formation). I do like the idea of angry mobs of townsfolk chasing down the cowardly curs!

IrishArmenian

05-27-2006, 23:33

No, why spend money on peasents when I could buy more of my favorite horse and cataphract archers? I use the free one at the beginning for a little bit and then disband them. They are a useless drain of money. (I do not care how little that money is!)

Severous

05-28-2006, 08:11

I buy peasants to release better troops from garrison duty. For every two units of peasants three, or more, regular units can be released from garrison duty and sent to the front. Saves money on both recruitment and upkeep.

I dont use peasants to run down routers. I could, and would, if nothing else was available. I would rather use a regular unit so they gained the experience. Im more likely to use that experience in future battle when its Equites that hold it.

-Silent-Pariya

05-28-2006, 08:38

In MP games *you can do the same thing for sp battles if you want i guess* peasants work great for taking enemy archer fire. However most smart players will simply manually aim past the peasants at your archers. However if you can get them to send 1 or 2 volleys at your peasants first it will give you that extra little advantage in the archer war and that could just win the day. They are also good for taking enemy javel fire if your facing romans.

In SP they are good put to use as garrison troops for your less likely to be attacked cities. Afterall they have the lowest upkeep cost and there 60 men a unit so there very good for garrising those cities you know wont be attacked anytime soon. And you can use your better soldiers to fight the battles for ya!

Manstein

05-28-2006, 14:33

If a large city is rebelling due to squalor, I recruit a lot of peasants and use them for garrison duty, while taking out the normal garrison and using it as a besieging army in case the city becomes rebel. Then I send the peasants to their deaths to try and besiege and retake the city. If that doesn't work, then the city's previous garrison takes over and besieges the city.

Shadows

05-29-2006, 18:01

I only use peasants when I have to, for example, if a city is really close to rebelling and I don't have any other choice, because the city is tiny and can only build peasants. OR if it is about to come under attack and again can only build peasants. Other than that I hardly ever use peasants, they are IMO not worth the cost, they run too quick and can hardly stand up to anything other than the enemy's most basic units.