Historical basis for STW etc (split from the Shogun II Thread)

[gollum]

originallyposted by Karl08
I can't think why you would want to, anyway, other than to cut upkeep costs...

That's one of the reasons; then the player can "make way" financially speaking to invest in the economy and hence outnumber eventually the AI armies. The other is making way for new units, that is upkeep costs allow you a certain number of units; once you get say Naginata afer building YariSam and Archers and Ashigaru all the while, you may want to disband a few and make way for a few naginata without danger that you go in the red.

The AI can't do either of these manoaevres so he is stuck with the units that he had produced in the early game in terms of numbers and tech. This is why the AI is benefited when the game is dynamic and campaign losses abound - he naturally gets a chance to build the new units and upgrade his economic infrastructure in those periods that he has received losses as then cash is liberated.

Version 1.12 does not allow manual pillaging or disbanding to the player and this makes quite a bit of a difference in the campaign game imo.

Also if you want the maximum effect of the maintenance costs try a campaign with huge unit sizes- even in RTW and M2TW the campaign works best at these settings - this is in all probability what CA is balancing it for as otherwise not enough men for invasion would have been available for the AI factions.