What's the economics of keeping Public Order in cities?

[Jason X]

The garrison option works really well for England/Scotland, but on my current Egypt campaign, there are no free garrisoned units.

eh? you get loads of militia units as egypt, including the wonderful saracen militia! also halberd militia?

[Marauder]

eh? you get loads of militia units as egypt, including the wonderful saracen militia! also halberd militia?

The militia units are incredible, I use them almost exclusively for infantry, but they don't seem to get the free upkeep in cities/castles. I'm playing unmodded vanilla 1.2, maybe a switch to 1.3 would fix that, or I just go to the trouble of downloading one of the good mods out there...

[RedKnight]

I'm using vanilla original 1.2.

Marauder, you only get free units in cities, not in castles (right click on the icon for your city/castle in the Buildings list; it tells you how many you get - or not). That's the bad news. The good news is that castles never need anything but one unit to stay peachy, at least so far in my games (I've only played about 50 turns into a campaign so far).

I restarted a game now that I understand free units correctly - and am finding that after about turn 20 - after I have been able to get Town Watches or Guards, and corresponding militia (Town Militia or Spear Militia) spread around, suddenly I start having plenty of extra gold each turn. Previously when I was spamming peasants all over (which was a lot of hard work!), it seemed like I was always just barely having enough money each turn. Now I know why.

[Yoyoma1910]

Also I see the various types of Public Order imposed by buildings in cities. Some of them look really bad, like a small church costs 800 and give 5% order - but so does a regular church, just 5%, which means it adds nothing to Order, right? While costing twice as much. Yeah it gives double the conversion, but priests are a lot cheaper, and mobile even. So,

Churches are important structures. They not only increase happiness, but also:


a) Convert settlements, which also raises happiness
b) Allow the construction of more priests
c) Will raise the piety of your geneal, if he is in the city or castle when the church is built. Priests also do this as well. Piety is the trait that affects a general's ability to raise income while in cities and castles.
d) Will allow you to build bishops at higher level buildings.
e) Will allow the theological guild series.

And without churches and the priests they allow, how are you going to control the Papacy?



To gain the troop type as a free unit, you have to be able to build that type of unit in that particular city. This includes not only the basic militia, but also specialty units. One of the few benifits of Merchant Calvary is that they have free upkeep in cities where they can be built. I'm not sure if it applies to all units that can be built in the city, though.