New recruitment system: recruitment pools

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Originally Posted by Faenaris

I like your idea, Duke John. Maybe modders will make it so? I think I'll go suggest this to the MTR team, just in case. :)

EDIT: And Warmachine, please mate, let it rest. Continuing your discussion will only earn you a warning from the moderators.

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Doubtful...I have received more than one PM by moderators stating that they agree with me fully.

I love seeing the little bonds and pacts (they're certainly not friendships) that develop on forums like this. Then you run to eachother's defense when you make fools out of yourselves.

Duke John was defending someone who was flat out WRONG. It was addressed and it's over. Where you come into play (other than to pull at his coat tail and tell him how great his ideas are...so great they'll never see the light of day in a CA game :laugh4:) baffles me.

What did this have to do with you now?

edit: I just looked and realized that you yourself are not even a moderator. Where on earth do you get off giving directives to other members on the forum about what's going to earn them a warning? A warning for what...debating a topic on the forums? Get lost troll.

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Originally Posted by Duke John

In essence it is little more than the mercenary system in R:TW, which also had the pools that slowly replenished.

It is nice in the way that it simulates how rulers recruited and raised an entire army within a relatively short time. It would be used for a campaigning and disbanded afterwards, sometimes with the effect that there were too many soldiers with nothing to do which could band together as mercenaries (which I believe was also a feature in R:TW) or became a general nuisance (should be an increase in rebel activity).

In general CA has got the right elements together for recruiting and disbanding armies (could be more detailed, but then would M2:TW become a wargame). Where CA fails in my opinion is in limiting how much could be maintained, or in other words, how many armies could be fielded. At the moment there is still little reason to disband an unit as reducement in upkeep is not worth the possibility of raising it again for full price 2 years later.

So what CA really needs to do is ditch the cost of recruiting an unit. Raising an army didn't cost alot, it was maintaining it in the field that was a money drain. Reverse the system, so that raising an unit costs little to nothing but maintaining it costs alot, with a good reduction in upkeep when units are in garrison. There is no danger of abuse as these recruitment pools means that using entire armies as cannon fodder means that your country will quickly be without soldiers.

This would mean that the defence of a region is much easier (good for the AI!) as you can quickly raise a defence force. Steamrolling over entire Europe will be much more difficult as your economy will probably have trouble providing the upkeep. Add in a modifier for upkeep depending on distance to a home region and conquering America will be a very a challenging undertaking as it would be near impossible to maintain a large enemy there, which will put you in the same shoes as the Spanish Conquistadors.

Units will need to keep their experience but that shouldn't be too hard if CA made the size recruitment pool a constant meaning that from Settlement A there can be not more than X knight units, be it in the field, in garrison or not recruited.

The player will have an easier time controlling his army as he doesn't constantly need to check for recruitment, merge armies or other tedious jobs. He just needs to keep his neighbours in check while awaiting for the right moment to attack.

Just imagine: you have filled your treasure to maintain an army in the field for 6 turns. You raise your army and you send it towards a seemingly vulnerable settlement. The enemy reacts by supporting the garrision with more units, making an assault on the walls impossible. Then you need to decide to start a lengthy siege and drain your treasury, to withdraw and disband to cut your losses or to venture further into enemy territory, increasing the stakes even higher. :2thumbsup:


Or course none of this will be seen in M2:TW, but one can always dream :beam:

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That's right...as "great" of ideas they are...they're just alternatives to what the professional devs have already come up with.

My suggestion? If you want to see these things in action...make a game of your own. Until then, leave this kind of work to the pros...you know, the people who do it for a living.

I personally put my money on a team of Devs at CA with Segas financial backing putting out a better quality project than some forum dwellar

Warmachine240 has accumulated sufficient warning points in this thread and elsewhere to earn a temporary time out. I'll leave his posts to stand, but no one else need feel obliged to reply to them and should certainly not do so in kind.

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Originally Posted by Faenaris

Maybe modders will make it so? I think I'll go suggest this to the MTR team, just in case.

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It all boils down to the AI. If it doesn't disband its units when the upkeep is too high then it wouldn't be very wise to increase it as it would mean that the AI will always be broke. You could give the AI extra money with scripts, but then it would still keep all its armies in the field, which on the other hand would be good for providing the player with a challenge. If you do give the AI extra money then do it periodically and in big amounts so that the recruitment isn't spread out but in bursts which probably increases the appearance of large armies as opposed to multiple small ones.

Thank you, econ21. It was getting a bit out of hand.

EDIT: Well, you got a point there, Duke John. Lets hope the AI can cope with the mechanics of M2TW, that is the one thing I truly want. But, CA has done it before, they can most certainly make a good AI again. :)

Just for reader clarity and not to stir the pot, I believe Screwtype was using LOTR2 to mean "Lords of the Realm 2" an excellent, though dated, medieval strategy game that was one of the first (if not the first) to incorporate tactical battles and castle assaults with a reasonable strategic component including unit recruitment based upon the amount of money one had generated and saved. I dont believe he was refering to the RTS based loosely on Tolkiens masterworks.

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It all boils down to the AI.

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Amen. I love this kind of recruitment system, and just hope they take into consideration:

- AI needs to build tech tree up, and concentrate on certain (for example barracks) buildings in one castle, while concentrating on other (for example stables) buildings in another castle. The reason for this is else their light cavalry and light infantry will face your heavy cavalry and heavy infantry, instead of heavy vs heavy.
- Stop recruiting and disband low level units after high tech units are sufficiently available. They drain upkeep and do not promote interesting fights.
- Supply lines. Having to travel back to a province just to get an army from that place is adding extra turns of non-action. It's better to have the recruitment pool of all the castles shared, so they can be recruited at any castle, except for newly conquered ones (until unrest/culture penalty is solved).

- Other than that, good luck with path-finding and making match-ups on the campaign map, this must be hard to program!

Many nice suggestions.. But one sentence summed it all up:

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It all boils down to the AI.

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It really does.. I'm very ok with the system (Not astonished, as it is already there in HoM&M..), but I don't think the AI will be so.. BUt let's hope that ~;)

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Originally Posted by SpencerH

Just for reader clarity and not to stir the pot, I believe Screwtype was using LOTR2 to mean "Lords of the Realm 2" an excellent, though dated, medieval strategy game that was one of the first (if not the first) to incorporate tactical battles and castle assaults with a reasonable strategic component including unit recruitment based upon the amount of money one had generated and saved. I dont believe he was refering to the RTS based loosely on Tolkiens masterworks.

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Yes, I believe he was referring to Lords of the Realm 2 as well. I've actually been playing that game a bit the last few days, and have been enjoying myself immensely. ~;)

In regards to the new recruiting system, I like the idea. As others have pointed out, however, the real test will be how well the AI handles the recruiting system. Given how little CA has talked about the AI (aside from reassurances that they're devoting a lot of effort on it), I'm going with the good old "wait-and-see" approach for now.

Of course, that basically describes my general attitude towards the entire game at this point. At this point, I've seen enough things about Medieval 2--both good and bad--that I'd decided I wasn't going to comment on the game much until it's actually out. (There's a reason you haven't seen me post in this part of the forum very much the last couple months.)

this will be awsome and a lot of more realistic as you wont just sit there and pump out preatorian cav/inf like in rome.

i belive that castles will provide all the real elite troops like knights and heavy cav while the last city levels will produce units like cannons. and as some one said before it should be made much harder to get and maintain elite troops like knights so you wont have 100% elite armies like those redicouless urban armies of rtw.

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Originally Posted by sunsmountain

- Supply lines. Having to travel back to a province just to get an army from that place is adding extra turns of non-action. It's better to have the recruitment pool of all the castles shared, so they can be recruited at any castle, except for newly conquered ones (until unrest/culture penalty is solved).

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IMO it will just make it unrealistic and one of the good points i see in this is that if you want a huge army you would actually have to recruit in all of your provinces, even in the farest corners and that you would have to face all the logistics and troop transportation problems.
if lets say you have counquered 20 provinces, then you would have a pretty large pool and if you then would be able to recruit the whole pool at your frontal castle it would just bring back the arcade style of urban massproduction a'la RTW.

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if lets say you have counquered 20 provinces, then you would have a pretty large pool and if you then would be able to recruit the whole pool at your frontal castle

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True, but that could easily be solved by adding a delay in recruitment from far away regions. You could display this mustering of soldiers by having large groups of little men moving over the roads like the little wagons that indicate trade. If a road is not continuous (blockade or enemy region between muster point and recruiting region) then no soldiers can be recruited from the cut-off region.

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Originally Posted by Bob the Insane

Personally I don't think the recruitment system will suddenly become "perfect" because of this, but it is a step forward...

I mean, look at RTW and a large city of thousands of people and only raise around 200 militia troops in 6 months? That didn't make much sense. I thoght the mod that set recruitment times to 0 so your recruit was based on your money and you population was a much better mechanisim (especially when combinded with maintain costs high enough to force to to disband you large armies after a while). But the killer for this was that the AI could not compete and it simply made the game even easier...

My hope is that the way M2TW works is not only an improvement of the mods in that production of elite units is controled too but my special hope is that because this is integrated into the game now the AI will be coded to handle it...

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I'm with you there. It sounds like with this system you could pump out 1000 militia in Rome in 1 turn but may take 5-10 years or more until you can do that again. But a small town like segesta you could only get a unit or 2 out of it every 5 years.

Another great thing about this is since STW the A.I. has always want into an expensive defensive mode right from the start. With this system a few A.I. factions could turtle and then all of the sudden open thier can Whoop-something and walk into your territory and give a friendly greeting.

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Originally Posted by Duke John

Or course none of this will be seen in M2:TW, but one can always dream :beam:

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Some very nice ideas there DJ. I especially like the idea of a maximum limit for each type of unit that a province can support. That would be a radical change to the game design though, and as you say I see little hope of CA ever adopting a system like that.

Obviously, we both see the need for a limit to the player's capacity to expand. My suggestion though, is for the inclusion of some sort of Malthusian rather than absolute limit as you have proposed here. In fact I just started a new thread on the idea.

I don't suppose my ideas have much more chance of being adopted than yours though ~;)

As far as recruitment pools changing the way player expands, the main question is probably whether the pool is empty or at current level when a city/ castle is taken over.

Empty pool will drastically reduce the leverage obtained from a new city/ castle.
Current pool will require careful AI pool management. If anything, I wish AI will try to keep enough cash to raise lot of troops if attacked to 1/ give the player a fight in defense, and 2/ give the player a pooless new city from where he won't expand fast.

// question: how will be the new balance between upkeep/ purchase cost?How will dismissing a unit affect a pool?

Louis,

Realistically, recruitement pools in newly captured settlements would be low (not many volunteers to fight for the enemy)

I hope they implement this.

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Originally Posted by Husar

What you propose makes sense, but, it's a game, this sounds like it gets closer and closer to a movie, but in a game I want to have control.
Especially if the unit composition had some random elements one might easily get frustrated if the AI always happens to get "better" compositions.

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Well, you can have control on the army composition indirectly. Want a pool with more horses? Get a stable. With more archers? Get a range. With men at arms instead of levys? Get a barracks... And so on.

Not to mention... Want cavalry at all? Get a castle... Want pikes? get a city...

Personnaly I welcome the end of the all "knights" or all "triarii" or all "whatever" army. However, if we get complete control of what we pick in the pool, eventually, I am not sure it's going to make a whole lot of difference.

Louis,

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Originally Posted by Myrddraal

Realistically, recruitement pools in newly captured settlements would be low (not many volunteers to fight for the enemy)

I hope they implement this.

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Realistically, yes, but I can see how a moneyless AI sitting on huge manpower pool can snowball and give even more troops to the player...

Either emptying the pool, or using rebellious/ loyalty to lower it... Or religion.

That raise an additional questio: would rebellion get troops from the province pool? In all cases? In some specific cases (civil war?) ?
(-> would be a nasty exploit: "I empty that pool because the loyalty is low, so they rebel with nothing: a case of fake good idea?)

Louis,

I guess not Louis. Usually, rebellions are kept secret till they're exploded. And more over, they're always organised.

Great! This is what I've been waiting for! It was so annoying to only be able to recruit one unit per turn. MTW2 is starting to get more and more interesting;)

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Originally Posted by Myrddraal

Realistically, recruitement pools in newly captured settlements would be low (not many volunteers to fight for the enemy)

I hope they implement this.

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That would depend on the morale status of the city in question. Since not all conquerers would be seen by the conquered as bad guys, a city that's close to rebellion anyway could provide a recruit pool.

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Originally Posted by SpencerH

That would depend on the morale status of the city in question. Since not all conquerers would be seen by the conquered as bad guys, a city that's close to rebellion anyway could provide a recruit pool.

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yeah, if lets say the french take an islamic city and then 5 years later an islamic faction reclaims it they would have a lot of bigger pool than the french got when they took it, so maybe this should be tied religion and what ever else popualtion morale stats there will be in the game. maybe the size and re-generation of the pool should rely on the popualtion happieness.

(just some spontaneous ideas, haven't thought em over)

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Originally Posted by Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe

Personnaly I welcome the end of the all "knights" or all "triarii" or all "whatever" army. However, if we get complete control of what we pick in the pool, eventually, I am not sure it's going to make a whole lot of difference.

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true... i have always been a perfectionist so i doubt that i will stop micro maniging up these "elite armies" i always use but atleast it will put some pressure on me so if i want a big army i will have to use low-class units to.

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Originally Posted by Mikhal

if lets say you have counquered 20 provinces, then you would have a pretty large pool and if you then would be able to recruit the whole pool at your frontal castle

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Originally Posted by Duke John

True, but that could easily be solved by adding a delay in recruitment from far away regions. You could display this mustering of soldiers by having large groups of little men moving over the roads like the little wagons that indicate trade. If a road is not continuous (blockade or enemy region between muster point and recruiting region) then no soldiers can be recruited from the cut-off region.

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Exactly what I had in mind. The point is to reduce micro-management getting all your troops to the front, but it shouldn't make your troops march there any faster. Compare the following situations.

Situation A:

You have 5 castles, each with their own recruitment pool (which is what the CA dev Dan Toose is implying). Each pool has say, 3 swordsman, per year. You buy all of them and then move 5 stacks to one of your front cities, taking 1 stack 3 turns, 3 stacks 4 turns, and 1 stack 5 turns. Appear on the campaign map they do. *little Yoda chuckle there*
Time spent on making the decision, clicking on one castle, bringing up the recruitment pool, selecting 3 swordsmen, clicking ok, scrolling to the next castle, giving way points, etc: 4 minutes.

Situation B:

I have 1 large recruitment pool, from which I can easily select 15 swordsmen. All I have to specify is where I want them, ie the rally point. The game should then delay these reinforcements according to the distance to the rally point. In the above example, that means the delay for 13-15 swordsmen is 5 turns. But the delay for 4-12 swordsmen should be 4 turns, and for 1-3 only 3.

In other words, selecting 15 swordsmen and a rally point is broken down into separate recruitment orders and distributed among my empire according to distance to the rally point. I don't have to worry, the little soldiers appear on the road and start marching. They can't be ambushed, they don't interact until they reach their destination. Time spent: 30 seconds.

If any settlement in between is conquered, the soldiers keep on marching, unrealistic as it may be (the road cannot be destroyed anyway). If the destination settlement (rally point) is conquered, the soldiers cancel their individual campaign map movement orders and instantly appear in their original recruitment pools again. If those pools are no longer available, they are literally lost (or appear out of thin air on the road they were marching on).

All this does is make movement of captain stacks invisible and automatic, IF you use a rally point. You can still use the manual method, of course. In the above example, it's smart for me to select 12 swordmen per year for the lowest delay. After several campaign years, I get 1-15 "left-over" swordsmen for a delay of 5 turns, no matter how many i select.

I really like some of these idea's, but I disagree with a couple of points:

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I don't have to worry, the little soldiers appear on the road and start marching. They can't be ambushed, they don't interact until they reach their destination.

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If any settlement in between is conquered, the soldiers keep on marching, unrealistic as it may be (the road cannot be destroyed anyway). If the destination settlement (rally point) is conquered, the soldiers cancel their individual campaign map movement orders and instantly appear in their original recruitment pools again.

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hmmm. I think it would be better if, should they are obstructed in any way (such as a settlement getting captured in the way, or an enemy army standing on the road), you'd get a message like the "Path Blocked" messages of Rome and that unit would be cancelled.

yeah,it's just great, u'll have much more soldiers (hehe i love that)
and more realistic, men to train peasant are definitely different those to train knights

not sure if i understood you but if you now had this little trade wagon style armies marching for a really long destination and when they are about half way you need those troops some where else would you be able to cancel it so they show up at thier location as a normal army? if not i would been getting pretty pissed on a system like that...

personaly i have always loved micro-managment and that my turns take really long. a good point with CA is that atleast in rome you could select a lot of those kinds of stuff like short or long campaign and manage all settlements so if they implement your system i hope that you can select to use the Rome style to as i don't see the advantage of having wagon like armies on the march instead of real captains. why not just let the AI create a normal army and automaticaly give it the arrow-path thingy to that castle when you use that one big pool thing?

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not sure if i understood you but if you now had this little trade wagon style armies marching for a really long destination and when they are about half way you need those troops some where else would you be able to cancel it so they show up at thier location as a normal army? if not i would been getting pretty pissed on a system like that...

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mmm, its perhaps best to leave them moving as stacks, but then the multi-turn movement orders that have to be given to them should be automated, as well as placing them in the queue, (after I order 12 or 15 swordsmen from the main recruitment pool of course).

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personaly i have always loved micro-managment and that my turns take really long.

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Me too, but that's also the reason why i have rarely finished RomeTW campaigns, playing fewer turns and battles, versus all the campaigns and battles i played in Medieval TW.

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a good point with CA is that atleast in rome you could select a lot of those kinds of stuff like short or long campaign and manage all settlements so if they implement your system i hope that you can select to use the Rome style to as i don't see the advantage of having wagon like armies on the march instead of real captains.

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The point wasn't wagons, though it would look funny, the point was to prevent me from having to go through all my settlement late in the game to get troops. In rome, you have to manage all settlements yourself (except perhaps tax rate) if you don't want all your cities to have stables, barracks, practice ranges and last but not least, the blacksmith. All of them. I'm sure glad that you can select that option instead of being forced to have a general there, but a short campaign doesn't solve the imperial campaign problem: That it's too much management near the mid-end to end to finish the game.

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why not just let the AI create a normal army and automaticaly give it the arrow-path thingy to that castle when you use that one big pool thing?

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Yes that would be better. The AI would still have to be smart in selecting pools that are closest to the rally point though. So you can quickly drain your pool towards two rally points, if your empire has two borders (most do, roughly). And not limit it to swordsmen (of course), if you want to add some cavalry to the same force, that is possible. But if you send them separately, they're faster (and automated ~:) )

One of the recent vids showed recruitment from a castle, was indeed highly reminiscent of RTW mercenary screen.

Regarding moving up to the front from castles, RTW did include rally points & surely that would do this?
I don't like the idea of some shared pool, too complex to do the delayed arrival & too overpowering if its really instant.

A point to bear in mind I think regarding overpowering, is that you presumably won't be able to retrain until you have sufficient population in the relevant pool so particularly management of elite troops is likely to be very critical.

Regarding the steamroller effect, It'd be cool to see an inbuilt version of the siege script with revenue from a besieged province for the siege turn being diverted into generating a bunch of troops in garrison (from the pool)

Really would like to see an economical situation that does make it worthwhile to recruit for campaign then disband to consolidate.

Also, gotta agree that the AI will need major work to be able to handle all this.

[edit]here's a screen grab, is more complex than just the merc screen
https://img216.imageshack.us/img216/...ruitxp4.th.jpg
Selected is Toledo the Capital of Spain which is a Castle.
Note can only build 3 units (this turn presumably?) so no spamming out huge armies in a single turn.
Probably a big city can build many more units per turn (at least up to 9 per turn anyway)
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I'm excited about the new recruitment system. Of course the AI won't be able to handle it, and of course the game will be cumbersome and easy to win once you've gotten through the first 50 turns or so no matter how good the A.I. is.

Can you really imagine a way to make the game more challenging once you already control 25 - 50% of the rescources on the map? At that point you are a superpower, and most likely the only one. I've always found that the only exciting time in any strategy game is the beginning of the campaign. Once you get near the halfway point, all you're doing is managing too many cities, provinces etc. and walking over enemy armies which can't hope to be as good as yours because they don't have the income to support it. Even if you had the Holy Grail of the TW wish list, a multiplayer campaign, one player would most likely come out as the leader fairly early on, making the remainder of the game tedious and boring. In fact, MTW comes closer to relieving this problem than any other game I've played by making the provinces so much more prone to rebellion when you get too many provinces.

Lords of the Realm II solved this problem by letting you conquer one map, and then start over again on a more challenging one. Of course, this is would never work in a TW game, as we are committed to our map of the medieval world and the flavor it lends to the game. (Sorry I had to bring that game up, I know it's been a point of contention on this thread, but it was a great game in it's time, and some of the concepts of LOTR II really could be incorporated in a MTW game)

Other than massive, abusive, and unrealistic AI cheating I really can't imagine any other solutions which would make an "epic" strategy game such as those of the TW or CIV flavor much fun beyond the opening moves of a campaign.

My personal solution is that I will refuse to read any guides until I've already become bored with the game. Hopefully, that will allow me to be challenged for quite some time while I learn some of the intricacies of the game for myself. Somehow, knowing the exact mathematical variables affecting my men at arms vs. Varangian Guards based on valor, terrain, formation, good/bad hair day, etc. takes some of the excitement out of it for me. It also makes the game too easy and makes the AI seem even dumber than it really is.

I think that the recruitment pools will be successul simply because they will add another wrinkle that will take time to figure out how to exploit properly, unless, of course, I start out already knowing all of the formulas that make them tick!

I think that the recruitment pools will be a success so long as the AI remembers to recruit quality as well as quantity, or else it'll only result in even bigger peasant hordes than those in MTW

The good thing about this is that even when you are really rich, later in game, you won't be able to build purely elite armies - the recruitment pools will prevent you acheiving total military superiority so easily, so the AI will have a chance, especially if the AI factions are capable of creating their own substantial empires.

Also, if the AI is good with its merchants, it might be able to stay rich, even if its empire is dwindling
So I think the later game in MTW2 should be better than in the previous titles.