Idea: Recruitment pools

I've been toying around with this idea in the back of my head for awhile, so I thought I'd finally write it down. Basically, I find the current recruitment system unsatisfactory.

My idea was to have a system of recruitment pools for everything that is part of a particular unit. For example, a cavalry unit would need to recruit from the soldier pool, and the horse pool. These pools would grow every turn based on the available population and the resources of the region itself.

The growth rate would be tailored so that a city of 20,000+ would be able to field a full unit every turn (or retrain a bunch of units, as retraining would draw from the pool as well), while a small town of 1,000 would not.

From a gameplay perspective, this would help take away from the "elite unit" syndrome. For example, Carthage would no longer be able to constantly stream out elephant units. Nor would they be able to make nothing but Long Shield cavalry. Egypt wouldn't be able to field full chariot armies. Parthia wouldn't be able to field full horse archer armies, etc. It would also make retraining your forward armies more problematic, as you'd need the pool to draw from. And finally, it would encourage people to not butcher every city they conquer. If they dropped the population too much, they'd have trouble fielding men from the pool to retrain/recruit.

The major downside that I see is that it becomes another stat to keep track of. It's easy to simply look at a single population value, having to track multiple pools would be more difficult. Still, I think a decent UI could alleviate that problem for the most part.

Bh

Your idea makes sense, but implememnting it is pretty near impossible methinks.

This is a "for the future" suggestion. Obviously it's not something that modders could implement. We can only hope CA is still paying attention. ~:)

Bh

Ok, I get you. I was going to post before that it wouldn't solve anything with the AI's priorities as is.

Adding to this, raising an army in Lords of the Realm II had a negative impact on loyalty and it took some time to restore it. This always made good sense to me. It might not fit current game mechanics of course.

The elite pools should be rather small and they should take some time to replenish. Building elite units of the same type back to back should not be a common luxury.

Some of this gets back to the raising armies vs. recruiting units. Armies should still have to be more balanced. Upgraded structures should improve overall army size (or even build time) and add some better substitute units in the army, but the armies should still have a core characteristic. This would probably help the AI build better armies in spite of itself.

I wouldn't mind seeing each unit have home provinces, so that if the province is lost they might either rebel, turn mercenary, deplete, become non-retrainable, etc. Of course, the AI probably couldn't handle this very well...

I agree to some extent, but Parthia and Scythia should have a bonus on horse pool growth IMO, especially Scythia as their entire culture is centered around horses in many ways.

good idea

I've also longed for that day.

The day where the populations where certain units are recruited from are not assigned a spot on a unit card, but a spot on a region code which depicts where they came from, what their stats usually are based on that fact, and the history of the region for certain effectiveness of warriors from that area.

The day that units are not units, but are the amount of men who flock to the banner of a certain warrior (your faction leader) and it is not something which you can decide (the size of this pool perhaps?). There would always be a small calling, but it would be neigh impossible to be hated by the populace, conquer one large city and pump out elite units (WRONG!).

Recruitment doesn't occur as it does in the game, I'd love to see it be much more flexible in terms of the hows and the whys of there being mail-clad lancers as opposed to hobilars. Realistically would you expect scores of fully armoured and elite soldiers to come out of a backwater town, however many buildings you build there?

Realism is a dream for the gaming industry. We really shouldn't kid ourselves.

Something i'd also like to see is lower starting stats for units, but bigger benefits given by experience. For instance a cohort that has just been created should have lower stats (and therefore be less effective) than one that has been in the field and fought in a couple of battles. At the moment there is no need to try and 'blood' untis on the battlefield as you can just keep churning out effective units one after another as all units start off with fairly decent stats.

Wasn't this done in STW? I'm not 100% sure, but I seem to recall that certain units needed more than one type of building to make. For instance, heavy cavalry needed not just a stable but also an armoury, which could only be built in certain provinces. I think the same went for Naginata. Training troops didn't deplete "pools". However, the system of limiting provinces which could build armouries and what have you meant that not every province could field elite units.

I might be totally wrong though...

No you are quite right about that storyteller. IMO one of the best balancing acts in the TW series was the starting positions in STW. For example choosing factions was based not just on wealth but also access to iron reserves and troop bonuses. You could go for the poor Mori with abundant access to iron deposists or the rich Hojo who had to fight for strategic deposits of Iron or field non-elite armies.

Conquering provinces like Shinano(?) with iron reserves, cav bonuses and terrain that would allow the AI to hold high ground and crush you at ease was very hard. Achieving it felt like youd really won something.

Sorry, digression. The other advantage this had was not just access to some elite troops, but as all the factions were the same, getting an edge with better armour often made a real difference to your armies.

I was musing the other day that elite units should simply be units that take longer to build, ie they are units that get more training than usual.

But perhaps a more realistic alternative would be to have your elite units drawn not from city pools at all but from your battle hardened veterans. Why for example should you be able to build "chosen swordsmen" from scratch? Surely they should be drawn from veteran campaigning troops, not greenhorn recruits? And where did principes and triarii really come from? Battle hardened veterans.

So it would probably make more sense if you could only recruit the basic level units in your cities, but get an option to "upgrade" units in the field once they have reached a certain experience level. And just to make it a little easier, let's say that an upgraded unit can then draw replacements directly from city retraining, according to the principle that a hardcore of veterans in a unit is almost as useful in combat as a unit made up exclusively of vets.

Another advantage of this system would be that it would really hurt when one of your elite units got completely wiped out, because you wouldn't be able to easily replace it ~:)

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Originally Posted by screwtype

I was musing the other day that elite units should simply be units that take longer to build, ie they are units that get more training than usual.

But perhaps a more realistic alternative would be to have your elite units drawn not from city pools at all but from your battle hardened veterans. Why for example should you be able to build "chosen swordsmen" from scratch? Surely they should be drawn from veteran campaigning troops, not greenhorn recruits? And where did principes and triarii really come from? Battle hardened veterans.

So it would probably make more sense if you could only recruit the basic level units in your cities, but get an option to "upgrade" units in the field once they have reached a certain experience level. And just to make it a little easier, let's say that an upgraded unit can then draw replacements directly from city retraining, according to the principle that a hardcore of veterans in a unit is almost as useful in combat as a unit made up exclusively of vets.

Another advantage of this system would be that it would really hurt when one of your elite units got completely wiped out, because you wouldn't be able to easily replace it ~:)

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I agree with this to a degree. I would modify the suggestion by allowing you to split experienced units to seed a number of raw units, thus 1 high xp hastati could go to 1 hi xp principes or be used to seed 4 lower xp principes. It would reflect the ability to raise legions from scratch by seeding units with a small number of experienced troops. I think this would also allow you to get more attached to the units.

A lot of the mods tend to keep elite units limited to their traditional regions if I understand correctly. I like this idea although it adds some complexity to the set up files and is going to require the player to keep track of more things. I don't know how well the AI does with it.

yeah, i did that too. i made the most elite units restricted to their home base.
using hidden_resources in the descr_building.txt

I hate it how when you start building something that you can't build anything else. How ridiculous. There would be nobles breeding their elite sons into warriors, growing their broods while the commoner has to put forth their swords to uphold the warrior elite as auxiliaries.

The way recruitment occurs presently is such a static and economy based system. "Click Build, have money, have population, build complete" Instead of taking into account the realities behind the entire process of fielding an army.

I wish people with thoughts such as those in this thread were the ones creating the games, so many wasted ideas.