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Maintenance costs change all unit balances in SP. Maintenance cost is more important than purchase cost. 10 years is a decent average lifetime for a unit – if you are as aggressive as most MTW players! Over this time period for most units you will spend twice as much on maintenance as on purchase.
Peasants are an extreme example – they cost 50 to build, but have a maintenance cost of 38 per year. After only 1.3 years, maintenance costs exceed build costs! So if you know you won’t need them next year, you are better off disbanding them and rebuilding.
Over a 10 year period, arquebusiers, crossbows, gallowglasses, clansmen, kerns, pavise crossbows and urban militia are as cheap or cheaper than peasants.
General lessons from looking at maintenance rather than purchase cost:
Advanced units become relatively much cheaper
Maintenance costs for high and low tech units tend to be similar. For example, Chivalric Knight purchase cost is 7 times steppe cavalry [875/125]. 10 year cost is only 3 times [1725/525]
Missile units become cheaper
Arbalesters and crossbows look better value.
Artillery becomes much cheaper
Artillery has very low maintenance. A catapult costs roughly the same as jinettes to purchase. After 10 years, the catapult costs half the jinettes.
Feudal units are expensive
Over 10 years, Feudal Knights are as expensive as Gothic Knights. Feudal Sergeants are as expensive as Chivalric Sergeants.
I5 different kinds of troops:
Keepers
Never disband these units; invest in upgrading armor and weapons; expose them to easy combat to boost valour
Examples: all artillery; all ships; high tech knights (crusade, chivalric, gothic, teutonic, high/late royal, lancers) arbalesters, SAP, foot knights, janissary hvy inf, turcoman foot, nizari
Mainstay
These units are the mainstay of your frontier forces; invest in upgrading armor and weapons
Examples: archers; mtd crossbow, chivalric MAA, crossbows, gothic sgts, halberdiers, order foot, horse archers, varangian guard, kwarazmium cav, desert archers, futuwwa, janissary inf/archers, ottoman inf, berber camels, AUM, billmen, longbows, jinettes, gendarmes, Italian light inf, boyars
Garrison units
Use these units as the mainstays of your garrisons; they keep regions loyal at minimum cost. Don’t worry about their maintenance – you will always need a solid core of these units
Examples: arbalests, arquebusiers; crossbows; gallowglasses; highlanders; militia sgts; spearmen; swiss pikemen; urban militia; chivalric sgts, ghazi inf, saracen inf, nubian spearmen
Disposable
Keep these units for a specific purpose – to balance an army, launch an invasion. Keep them in action, replace with garrison units in safe areas. Use them aggressively in combat
Examples: feudal MAA, pikemen , feudal knights, mtd sgts, steppe cav, kataphraktoi, pronoiai allagion, byzantine inf, ghulam cav, sipahi cav, muwahid inf, saharan cav, murabitin inf, hobilars, vikings
Specific turn purpose
Don’t build them in the first place without a very good reason, disband them the moment you no longer need them, or send them on suicide runs in combat
Examples: most mercenaries; peasants, fanatics, feudal sgts, spearmen
Adding fuel to an already raging fire, the maintenance cost adds great balance to the SP game. However, you cannot use the same purchase cost system for MP – buying valour, and upgrades with zero maintenance required creates imbalance. I would like to see the solution for MP recommended by others in this forum from Ancient Miniatures – put limits on each troop type by faction and era, so that a historical, balanced army must be created, leaving victory to combined arms skill and tactics. An early Turkish army could be:
0-4 Spearmen
1-3 Ottoman Infantry
1-4 Saracen infantry
0-4 Ghazi Inf
0-2 Archers
2-4 Desert Archers
1-3 Armenian Heavy Cavalry
0-3 Ghulam Cavalry
1 Ghulam Bodyguards (General)
0-1 Khwarazmium Cavalry
0-2 Ottoman Sipahi
2-4 Horse Archers
0-2 Turcoman Horse
0-3 Bedouin Camels
So, you have to pick a historical core – (in the examples above, 1 Ottoman, 1 Saracen, 2 Desert Archers, 1 Armenian, 1 Ghulam, 2 Horse archers). You then flex the rest depending on your style, terrain and your opponents faction. and terrain. The other 8 could be all heavy cavalry or all spear armed.
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Ive played a bunch of campaigns and never looked at build cost once!
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peasants cost the same upkeep as most of the standard units. It's calc'd on unit numbers (and plus peasants give the same loyalty boost as most units anyways)personally, i'd only suggest peasants for pincushion/castleassault duty[/list]
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Mainly the reason I rarely disband armies is for the time when I start invading and all of my provinces get whiny and pissed off. It's nice having thousands of dufuses around to spread out and keep the peace (boy, do I miss the STW days when you could have a wall of armies and hundreds of empty provinces behind them.) http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Not complaining - it certainly has made the game tougher and more interesting.
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Nice Post.
Serves to example the direction the Devs are moving. While the intertwinings of all the "balance" elements may not YET work perfectly, a lot of foundation has been laid for future versions of the game. Can't wait for TW3, when things s/b worked more perfectly.
I kinda like your idea for MP. It might serve to nullify the Unit Stat (Statusticians) fighters; and lend for a "truer" tactical challenge.
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Peasants are good for garrison duty. You almost always should have a garrison in every province so they are not going to fight anyway and peasants have build cost and one of the cheapest support costs. They increase happiness the same per unit as the others anyway.
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Peasants have 100 men, and that's why they are better for garrison duty than the rest. As far as I have noticed, the loyalty boost from garrisons comes not from the number of units, but from the number of men present in it. You can get more men in shorter time by building peasants at same cost, and that in turn makes your armies available and your worries over sooner. Sure, they cannot serve as a reserve, and they can't quench down backprovince revolts, but the way the revolts are now, neither can militiamen.
Davout, if your division is meant to purely reflect the cost groups, it's ok. But if you're suggesting the actual role in which the units should be used, I doubt that you'll be able to defend your borders without arbs and spears very effectively, the Byz won't go too far without any cavalry, turcoman foot are worthless imho, etc.
[This message has been edited by hrvojej (edited 10-15-2002).]
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It is not much more costly to build better units as garrison, units that can always be somewhat useful, one way or another one... I mean, in case of internal problem, Peasants are useless. Better pay spearmen slightly more, & having a far better reactivity.
Anyways, as garrison, nothing beats the spy horde...
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War is not about who is right, only about who is left
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instead of disbanding them why dont you use them as cannon fodder, its the best thing you can do for the poor little bastards (refering to peasants here) anyway i dont think many people buy peasants, id rather use urban militia early on
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Well thats what you get when you put an accountant in charge of the military...
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Actually all this is useless. Because You still end up with 1/2 million florin bank accounts anyway. So saving all this money is actually useless since thier usually is not a money problem in this game.
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Quote Originally posted by hrvojej:
turcoman foot are worthless imho, etc.
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Well, I beg to differ.
I suppose you want to replace them with Ottomans. That is good when you will face lots of melee units.
But if the enemy has lots of missileunits then the Turcomans comes into play.
They are fast and they have effectively 4 in armour making them better armoured than any other footarcher. So basically they should win any ranged combat one on one.
Also they might not kill a lot in melee, but they have geed defense considering they are archers, so they will last long enough for any help to arrive.
Their main problem is their Morale.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
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Quote Originally posted by malkuth:
Actually all this is useless. Because You still end up with 1/2 million florin bank accounts anyway. So saving all this money is actually useless since thier usually is not a money problem in this game.[/QUOTE]
but we all really appreciate the time and effort devout went to putting together the matintenance costs stats.
thanks devout http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
