Raising armies...a new approach

[Red Harvest]

I've been musing about the limitations of the current TW system for raising representative armies. I've got a new idea for this, but let's take a look at why it even occurs to me: First, presently, we must await population growth and build trees to build representative armies. For myself, and apparenly many others, this means that by the time I get to any higher level troop types, the game is essentially over and the high end units don't get any real play time. As Romans, I won't get triarii until I don't need them. In fact almost all my fighting is done with hastati, velites, and equites without principes or triarii even in the armies. The Marian reforms, though early, are irrelevant because the game is essentially over by that point (something for another thread.) Second, once I can build the high end units, I can soon fill armies with nothing but "elite" units.

So here is the idea for a new approach (post RTW, perhaps in an expansion pack): allow faction members to raise some predefined size and composition armies based on building upgrade levels, rather than letting you field the best units you can produce--which currently leads to a "top heavy" army. That doesn't mean that they would all have to be identical distributions, but that lower upgrade levels would have more "vanilla" choices, while higher upgrade levels would allow greater variation in size and composition. Make garrison troups trainable, upgradeable on a per settlement basis.

Armies could be augmented after formation with some hired mercs and perhaps some special units, but the core would remain. Also, depleted armies would have to be retrained as a group (and perhaps upgraded that way.)

Example or Roman army build tree:
1st Building Level Army:
1 velite/1 hastati/1 principes/1 triarii/1 generals cav as a "legion"

2nd Building Level Army:
1 velite/1 hastati/1 principes/1 triarii/1 generals cav PLUS
1 alae legion group dependent on region (perhaps 1 allied skirmisher/archer, 1 light infantry, 1 heavy infantry, 1 light cavalry

3rd Building Level Army:
2 roman "legion" groups (with equites taking up the 2nd "generals" cav spot) plus 1 alae legion

and so on.

Allow substitution of some skirmisher/cav/infantry choices or distribution at higher build level or with cav and archer building upgrades. Begin offering elite units for various building upgrades, but limit them to small portions of the army. So if I have 3rd building level, plus enough archery ugrades I can sub in an archer unit for a velite in one of the legions. Or with cav upgrades perhaps I get more equites available or heavy cav. Various regions would give me more options. Buying merc supplements would add another dimension (but limited number of slots based on the army size and factions.)

The range of choices could and would be wider than what I listed, but the idea is that you build armies, with certain slots, and not everyone can be elite (or all cav, or all velites, or all hastati, etc.) There must be grunts in substantial portions.

I hope this makes some sense...it's a bit difficult to convey in a single post.

[chemchok]

Interesting idea, it would be cool to tie in ancillaries or traits with it; like generals with the "infantry genius" gets one more infantry unit slot available.

And I agree with your point behind this, I find myself having to hold back my expansion just to be able to field principes, and especially triarii.

[Proletariat]

Excellent idea. I just finished a campaign with the Scythians and one turn after I finished, I advance my capital to allow Noble HAs.

[Red Harvest]

Excellent idea. I just finished a campaign with the Scythians and one turn after I finished, I advance my capital to allow Noble HAs.

I finished the "short campaign" with the Scythians a few nights ago, without getting any of the noble HA's or even chosen archers. I wasn't rushing, but I had to conquer or my economy would collapse. I didn't have money for regular upgrades until I conquered and exterminated a new territory, then I had to prepare for the next conquest, before money ran out again. I am playing on just so that I can see some of the other units in action.

[Maltz]

Hm... So I am not the only whiner to see the "realism" mod actually EXTENDED all building time by 1 turn. How can I even see any principe this way? I guess playing styles vary very much among players. ~)

For the present RTW design, when Marian reform happens, the player should be quite developed (~30 towns) already, and all the good armies have reached out to far-away places expanding exponentially. There is no way to quickly replace the hastati & equite in a short time. Every major army is cruising and crushing anything on the way. There is no reason to stop them just to wait for one or two new, cool units to arrive.

I remember an "easy fix" idea: to make "instant upgrade" of our existing units to the new kinds, as long as they are retrained in any appropriate facilities. For example, all hastati become early cohort, principe become leg cohort, equite becomes regular cavalry, and so on.

For the case of "top units can never be seen/used in a campaign", currently I can only think of one solution: SHORTEN building times.

One "realistic way" is via Building "points", kind of proportional to pop. size (kind of like squalor level ). An advanced stable might require 20 building points. But it is possible to complete it in just ONE turn as long as you have enough squalor - I mean enough people. This way as long as you have enough people, you can quickly build up and produce good units. If you have extra building points you can also quene up more buildings to be completed in this turn.

Or, just mod everything to take shorter time to build.

However, in the case of "only top-quality units" after built up, I can't really think of any "popular" solution of it. Players would like to feel a sense of advanced - if I have to fight with a similar army makeup for 100 times, I would be a little bored then.

Another problem I can think of is you still have to ship new units out from the capital. Currently shipping is way too slow. I missed those "tele-ports" in STW.

***

I just thought of anoyther solution. We can have multiple "lines" of units. For example, the light infantry line, the spearmen line, the skirmisher line. It is a little bit like RPG - you choose a career path and advance with it. If you don't have enough experience - sorry you are a vanilla skirmisher.

Then, for a basic horse archer unit can "advance a level" as soon as they go into "an appropriate stable" for training, given that they have accumulated enough experiences (so there won't be ALL high-end units) and pay some cheap cash. This way, you can always have a mixture of basic horse archers and some noble ones. You can also directly produce noble archers fresh, but it will be much more expensive, and takes a long time to train (again, so there won't be all high-end units).

This way, you can constantly upgrade your functioning army through battles, while be happy to keep those old units because you hope that one day they will advance enough to be able to upgrade.

As you can see this solution is kind of "indirect". You probably still train the high-end, all-star units at home when you are as reach as the Yankees. (Well, the Yankees just "bribed them from friendly factions, who trained them from the beginning... Argh".) You can bypass the problem of "shipping units out from the capital" which takes years

[Mazoch]

An interesting idea. Another aproach might be to use some form of upgrading of unitis. If you look at, for example velite / hastati / principes, under the current system you actually tend to get a situation that is the opposite of the historical system. If I understand right, historically the velite was the newest and least experienced troops, who once they became more experienced was shifted to function like hasati and then principes. Thus Venlites would be the least experienced troops of the army and principes the oldes and most battle hardened troops.

In the game it tend to be the opposit. As time goes by and you upgrade your buildings you get new less experienced but more advanced troops.

An approach could, perhaps be to allow barracks to generate a basic form of infantry. Once the unit gains some experience it can be upgraded to the next level of troops. A higher level of barracks might 1) allow the upgrade to take place 2) allow newly formed units to start with an experience bonus to reflect thier better training.

This should also give the player a reason to use various unit types since activly using the lower tier units would ultimatly allow you to gain more advanced units.

[Didz]

This sounds very similar in concept to the way the army composition worked in 'Final Liberation'.

In that game one first bought a command stand which varied in price according to race and quality and came with a fixed set of unit slots.

So, an Imperial Mechanized Commander stand might come with four tank unit slots two infantry unit slots and two artillery unit slots. This limited the composition of the army to a specific mix of troops types.

Converted into RTW speak this would be the equivalent of a player buying a Roman Legion Command Stand and being presented with the opportunity to buy say four heavy infantry units, one axillary skirmisher unit, one cavalry unit and 1 artillery unit.

If the same player wanted a Cavalry Heavy Army then he would need to either purchase a lot of Roman Legion Command Stands and ignore the infantry and artillery options which would be extremely expensive or purchase an alternative ethnic command stand such as a Numidian Allies Command Stand which might have more cavalry slots but would only allow the purchase of Numidian Troops to fill them.

[Red Harvest]

Interesting idea, it would be cool to tie in ancillaries or traits with it; like generals with the "infantry genius" gets one more infantry unit slot available.

And I agree with your point behind this, I find myself having to hold back my expansion just to be able to field principes, and especially triarii.

I like that ancillary idea. I'm glad to see that my post was at least coherent, too. We're just scratching the surface with the possibilities.

I've been doing the same as you, holding back, and also forcing myself to build and *deploy* armies as discrete chunks with specific "slots" filled (skirmisher/light infantry/heavy infantry/elite infantry/cav.) I train replacements, or enlarge in legion increments. Not training loads of equites makes for a more challenging game (it is so easy to overpower the AI with equites.) My biggest armies now have only three equites... I limit myself to almost no archers, no wardogs on the field, no artillery, and I train a full compliment of velites.

On the surface, some of the limitations could seem a bit boring. However, I would contend that the ability to "game the system" now has the same result. There is no practical limitation to building very unbalanced armies--and in much of the game you are forced to do so!