Army Structure & Recruitment

[gollum]

Originally posted by Asai Nagamasa
Indeed This is perhaps where MP differs greatly from SP. MP players can pretty much choose (buy) the units that suit them, whereas in SP battles you're often stuck with what is in the province at the time - and these may be remnants from a previous battle. There is a lot of improvisation and making do with what you've got, units having to adapt to different roles etc.

Unless of course your opponent does bring the correct counterarmy to what you brought

In SP actually you can make more informed decisions and suit more your army structure to the opponent due to the border forts and the agent intelligence. In MP there is always risk and a rock/paper/scissors game in the army selection too. You can have a slow but strong army or a weak but missile heavy and fast army or a cavalry heavy (very mobile) army or an infantry heavy (quite static) army or many many varieties of *balanced armies* that lie somewhere in between.

The terrain influences the decision - say obviously in a very wooded map - you want more infantry, while in a barren and flat map cavalry might be more helpful. The weather too - in a rainy battlefield - a teppo say heavy army is doomed.

Originally posted by Durango
Does anyone else have a slight problem of cheapness when building and planning your tech-tree? I do. It's like a strong unwillingness to not spend money on the better kinds of infrastructure. I always build the cheaper stuff first, but whenever a particular building costs more than about 600 or so and takes longer than 4 turns to build... I hesitate even though I know that it's necessary in order to get the better units.

"So, I need this big Baronial court to get the Knights of XXX..... I have the money.... but the Church and the mines are so cheap! Oh so cheap. Well, looks like my spearmen won't get support for at least another 10 turns...."

And when recruiting, this mindset gets even more troublesome. My armies are almost always crammed full of vanilla archers and crossbowmen (actually useful in MedMod mind you) just because they are cheap with low upkeep. When I look at the recruitment scroll, I just think "Hmm.... how about one more archer unit just in case.... they cost so little".

I certainly did - although the more i play the less i do. As a newby i wanted to build everything everywhere and later on i was hesitating to build higher tech buildings. Now a careful balance is what i do - in one province i go all the way for teching fully a single aspect (whether be knights, or high priests or agents or ships or agents). In 2-4 provinces i have decent military facilities and in provinces with many/high yield goods i aim first and foremost for the higher merchants. I try to just combine and use according to needs and the dynamics of the game and the cash flow/ cash available - without trying to impose my will too much.

While i was playing the MedMod i was very happy with it - however one of its weaknesses comparing to vanilla is the lack of variety (to justify the large tech tree). Its rosters are too linear. This is good on the battlefield but it fails to make the campaign tech aspect of the game shine. Nowdays for SP i prefer home moded vanilla.

However dont get me wrong - the Medmod is one of the best mods and i hold it in very high esteem.