Army Structure & Recruitment

[gollum]

heh - alright then.

It depends upon;

1. Currently holding territories and income they yield
and
2. How easily defensible they are (amount of bottlenecking ie how many stacks you need to defend decently your area)
and
3. Where your next rivals are (nextdoor or in another continent?)
and
4. The ratio of trade income over agricultural income and how these relate to the maintenance costs currently (essentially profits with trade and agriculture Vs profits with trade only and Vs profits with agriculture only)
and
5. Campaign stage (early establishing phase? mid-game of preparing to take out the main competition somewhere in the map? or late game preparing to conquer the world?)

All these interact between them - but i ll comment on all through the two most important ones.

No 5 - Campaign stage and No 1 Currently Holding territories and income they yield. These are probably the most important two factors in how to set out your future strategy and infrastructure plans.

At the early stages - obviously you need to guard religiously whatever infrastructure you start with - if it is pillaged its a huge set-back or game over. Little more is needed to take out the local opponent (another fort with basic bowyer/spearmaker/town militia and if recruitable from there horse farmer is more than enough). However its always best to make that Fort with the future in mind ie calculating how the situation will be after you take out whoever you are fighting.

Say in vanilla if you play the Turks and decide to rush the Eggyptians - its good to wait to get your hands in Tripoli and start building up that Province. This is because Tripoli will not immediately border the Byzantines (your next opponent) and there is scope in building it all the way to Fortress level to take advantage the many trade goods there. Also in the future its coastal region also will provide quick transport to wherever your wars are.

By comparison - investing early in say Syria isnt as streaamlined, since Syria cannot trade by sea and your troops will need to reach the coast from it to travel by sea to where your wars are. However just because of that (no sea access) on the other hand - Syria is safer from a sea invasion that in a moment of carelessness or weakness could cost you a lot of florins and turns of investment in Tripoli.

The income of the area you begin with also dictates your war and infrastructure strategy plans. If say you play in vanilla Novgorod (the precursors of Russians) in early - then you might want to build one Keep in Novgorod with the buildings that become available with it and a Fort with bowyer/spearmaker/town militia/horse farmer in say Muscovy and in the rest of the provinces just Forts and Border watchtowers and farming upgrades and nothing else.

Thats because your lands are poor and in addition there is no time to expand anywhere alse before the Horde hits. You need to use the florins available to you to build an army to fight the Mongols and cant afford building up your provinces - otherwise you ll be wiped out. Since your provinces are poor you are also forced to build the farming upgrades in order to be able to sustain more units against the Horde - but this of course loses you time and pins you down in the area. But its the only way to go while in that position if you dont want to be wiped out or give too much land to the Horde that can make it a chronic problem.

By the middle stages you have vital space in the region of origin and are safe locally - it is time to prepare to meet powerful nations close or far away to you that are threats. Optimally in this stage your intial (and by now most developed province) becomes your technological spearhead in one area - military/espionage/religious/naval-trade. Along with it you should be preparing 2 to 3 other provinces in various degrees and in those branches of the building tree that are necessary to complement each other. The most crucial thing is to keep up with the pace of the happenings in the campaign and develop according to plan AND according to the dynamics of the particular position and campaign. Do not get overstretched or wait too long to build church/monastery/reliquiary AND cathedral in a province before you start making troops for them to get the morale bonus. Church and monastery are more than enough.

Also usually in this stage is that trade income can help your cause. Trade income is large but cannot be gotten in the middle game after you go to war against whoever you chose to - because they might be spread in the seas or there might even be no trade partner. Hence the preparation/peace stage of the middle game is the best time to set up trade and enjoy the benefit of the extra cash in order to build up your provinces to the point that you can build a stack with all the goodies you have available until the Castle level within 4-5 turns.

At the late stage you should be the main undisputable power (or otherwise still struggling with your middle stage opponent(s) that means the middle stage aint over). By now you should have 5-6 well developed provinces of your own amongs which 2 should be Citadels for a while already. In addition you should have whatever highly developed provinces you captured from your rivals. use these to maximise their yield if they are backwards militarily or to boost your production capavility if they do have significant military infrastructure. Spend some time to bring all of them you intend to at the level you think they need to be - and after that start churning out stacks for the final campaigns.

In regards to the army structure it depends really the faction i play, the mood i am in and the era.