Bribing brigands: A source for pop growth, garrisons.

I used to kill brigands to give new troops and generals some seasoning. Not anymore.

Brigands can cost half as much as the same unit trained normally. Sometimes they're full price, sometimes not. Granted, you get junk: peasants, low-level spears, archers. However, these units are just fine for garrisons, sapping or to simply disband to grow the population.

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On a side note, not all peasants are created equal.

Parthia, Egypt, Carthage, Numidia, Spain, Armenia, Pontus and Egypt have peasants with 3 attack, 2 charge bonus and 3 defense. This compares to 1 attack, no charge bonus and 1 defense for Romans, Seleucids, Greeks, Macedonians and Thrace. The other, barbarian factions have 1-0-4.

But if the brigands have units that u cant potentially build in your faction then they just dissapear or do they also automaticly disband and join population??

The men in a rebel owned unit that you can't build yourself disappear from the game when you bribe them. They do not contribute to city population growth.

Playing as the Macedonians, I tend to get a lot of rebel peasants and peltasts when I move into Ilyria, so bribing them helps me to expand my small and undeveloped northern cities.

Bribing rebel armies has two other advantages:

- Avoiding the battle saves the lives of your men, so you do not have to inhibit the growth of your cities by drafting more men into the army.

- It is a relatively cheap way of picking up extra generals, useful if you do not have enough family members.

I bribe every rebel general that i can, to add to my family tree. (As a side note, i dont bribe enemy faction units, as it makes the game too easy.) For non general rebels, i usually allow my generals to initiate the first attack, which they flee from, to help them gain command stars. Once the rebel army has backed away from my city such that i cant attack and return the same turn, i send my diplomat to disband them. this last is mainly a time saver. i wish that you could bribe units from other factions, and retain the cool units (like recruiting mercs), like in MTW. disbanding unbuildable units is way weak.

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Originally Posted by Accounting Troll

Playing as the Macedonians, I tend to get a lot of rebel peasants and peltasts when I move into Ilyria, so bribing them helps me to expand my small and undeveloped northern cities.

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That's exactly what I do as Parthia for Campus Sakae, an isolated northern province.