About Hordes and their mechanics

Has anyone seen an investigation of how hordes spawn? I mean once you have occupied a city and then decided to respawn or become a horde again?

Also How many horde warriors are settled once a town is occupied, how is that determined. Is it numbers alone or types of troops?.

Are there any ways to preserve horde troops(as least the good ones) once you have taken a few towns.

In my limited experience of hordes I seem to only take 3 town before all my hordes are gone.

Thanks for any correspondence?

BTW it(and related questions) would seem a good topic for the Ludus Magna

No way to determine which horde units stay and which disappear. But IIRC you lose a third each time you occupy a new city. So after you take your third city, you are cleaned out.

The manual says that if the unit name has "hord" in it, those units will return to peasant mode once you settle. Also, if you settle and have no "hord" units left, no peasants will be available to you and your settlements will not be able to prosper or (procreate). All "hord" units are usually lower--peasants or town militia type of units... be careful because they tend to be lower type units people have a tendancy to use them as bait or fodder while they take more care in preserving their stronger expensive units by the time they are ready to settle, they no longer have any peasants to build their settlements.

In my limited experience of how a new Horde is composed by, the size of the last town a fraction loose is a rare hint for the size of the uprising Horde. The smaller the city, the smaller the army. The quality of the new Horde army looks to be affected by the technology this last city had before it falls. I tried to lower the new Hordes quality by using Assasins against their best improved buildings, but this does not affect the upcoming Horde.

My key experience to this statement was my Sassanid campain in 1.2. The Vandals had setteled down in Greece and the last city I took over was Konstantinople. The uprising Horde was bigger and much better equipped then the starting Horde of the Vandals. Konstantinople had been the capital of a normal Vandal empire over a serious period before I conquered it. Most normal cities you take and force a fraction into a Horde are not that impressive, so the differences are small in the composion of the Horde.

Will be great if others can prove my experience or even the opposite. At least there is a randomn factor. All of this is concerning into AI Hordes. I never settled down as a Horde and went back to this mode later on. Maybe it can help to find out the mechanics.

I think it can be nothing else than your prediction, Teja.