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]

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!

[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.

[Didz]

Another concept which would add to the richness of the game in terms of raising units is if the units were actually drawn from the population of the city where the units was raised as in Civilisation.

the consequence then ought to be that the movement of that unit away from the city ought to add to public unhappiness as not only are their men being taken away but the unit paid for with their taxes is being withdrawn leaving them more vulnerable.

It also follows that certain cities should be the source of certain racial and ethnic troops types.

[Medieval Assassin]

"Omg rom iz a duxkz i cannot evin build my own trops..." ...

[Jagger]

As anyone determined how generals units are upgraded into basically new units? I know MTW did it and I think RTW does it.

If that process is known, you could use the same process to upgrade old hastati/principe/triari into legionary units.

Also you might be able to link experience levels allowing conversion from velites to principe to triarii.

[anti_strunt]

There was a way to have units morph into other units as the periods shifted in MTW, but RTW has no periods, and it seems that the upgrade function is broken anyway (an Imperial Palace is supposed to upgrade Roman bodyguards, but doesn't).

[drone]

I like Mazoch's idea, it would work well for the Romans, might need tweaking for other factions, but it would work as long as there is a defined troop tree (infantry, missiles, horses, etc.). Elite troops are elite for a reason (training, equipment AND experience), pulling elite troops from the general populace seems a little wrong. In the Roman case, velites could be recruited from the populace, and sent to war. Once they have gained some experience (say 2 chevrons), they could be retrained up to hastati in a town with the right building. Retraining would cost some money and some of the unit's experience. The experience lost is reflected in the better unit stats. If it wouldn't be too complex, vacancies in a hastati unit could only be filled by merging a experienced velite unit, not through retraining in cities.
This would continue up the troop tree to triarii. Romans players would be forced to create lots of velite units, and be forced to use them to get the better units. The building requirements for units could be reduced to reflect equipment requirements only. After the reforms, units could be merged into early cohorts, and fight up to legionary/urban. New cohorts could be trained, but the cohorts created from experienced hastati/principes/triarii would have more experience. Similiar paths could be made for cavalry, archers, horse archers, etc. Losing a elite unit would be much more painful...

This breaks down for special units like nobles, but nobles should probably be limited anyway (maybe by # of provinces). How many nobles can exist in a 10 province faction?

[Jagger]

As anyone determined how generals units are upgraded into basically new units? I know MTW did it and I think RTW does it.

If that process is known, you could use the same process to upgrade old hastati/principe/triari into legionary units.

Also you might be able to link experience levels allowing conversion from velites to principe to triarii.

[pyrocryo]

valid points everyone.
for pre-marian era, i think CA is stucked to its habit in STW and MTW (advanced building for advanced unit). While it can work in previous games, the era of RTW actually made it unsuitable since technology as a whole doesn't advance that much. Mostly, it is tactics and strategy that are improved, not the machines.
my addendum:
GENERAL:
1) Building should reflect the betterment of equipment. Although difficult, it could reflect the difficulty of a long war. (Like to see Urban Cohort moving forward equipped with lorica hamata heheheh)

PRE-MARIAN
1) A separate Javelin/archer unit to replace velites
2) Are Velites actually formed the missile unit of Rome? If not, than it's better to erase it. Just stick with Hastati -> Principe -> Triarii.

POST-MARIAN:
1) All units auto-upgraded to its equivalent. I recommend Early Legionary-Legionary-Urban
2) First Cohorts should be Praetorian. Although historically all legion has aquilfer, since this is morale-wise, it should be represented with the most famous unit in the Republic.

MISC:
1) Perhaps to reflect better training, a barracks that produce hastati/early legionary in the city that has a better unit (e.g. Triarii/Urban Cohort) can produce better early unit?

[KyodaiSteeleye]

This would go against the whole 'tech-tree' part of the strategy game for military buildings (which i can't say i'd miss too much), but i too am frustrated at being unable to use 'higher' units early in the game - eg: as Seleucids, i'm stuck using militia hoplites and cavalry skirmishers for an age - which is fine, but even a small empire would have had some elite troops (besides general bodyguards) - so if I were to do a concept for a new way of troop production, I would base it on a different system, where the numbers of different units, of different types, is reliant on the cities/population that you have. Therefore, you can only raise a maximum of 5 units for each city in your empire, let's say, and only one of those can be an elite troop type.

This would get over the problem of not having troops available for most of the game, would automatically balance army composition, without limiting the choices of unit that you have in your armies. You could still have an army entirely made up of elite hoplites - but it would mean that all your other armies would be made up of levies!

I like the previous idea of being able to recruit regional troop types from specific cities - in the case of a roman player this would limit what auxillaries he could field with his legions.

[SwordsMaster]

I thought asbout it in a slightly different way: What if a general, instead of having just 1 command rating had 3:

1. Cavalry rating: the number of stars will dictate the number of cavalry slots in the stack

2. Heavy infantry: same as above

3. Archer: same as above.



And then allow the rest of the stack to be a mixture of everything else EXCEPT the ones above. That would limit your choice while allowing some flexibility.

Every gen would start with say command 3 (random as in vanilla) that would mean that every one of the above stats has a 3 as its value.

The average command value would add to the attack or morale or whatever.

If a general is born with NO command, he can earn his first stars commanding a set of "other" units to get to his first 3 stars.


Ok, I know thats impossible as of now, but could be an idea for the future, couldn't it?

[Paul Peru]

I think having the command stars, VnVs and ancillaries of the generals deciding what number and types of units they could lead in battle would be a good concept. (Perhaps with a penalty if trying to command a larger/different army.)
That might make a multi-star general less overpowered, while making "general-grooming" still more desirable. If captains could lead an army of any size against a general with all kinds of bonuses and a "correct" army, that might be interesting and challenging.
If bribing were less exploitable, the naturally limited number of family members would cap the number of armies it'd be viable to drag around in the fields. (at least for civilized factions - barbarians might still have lots of captain-led rabble)
Buildings-wise I think the version where a Roman gets hastatii, principes and triarii if there's barracks, but of varying quality according to building level makes sense. Maybe they should get velites from the barracks as well. I'd prefer separate buildings for archers, mounted units and for artillery.
I think some of these things are actually quite moddable. The ancillary/VnV-system and triggers is relatively flexible. So is recruitment-options and building effects. Not sure if the number of units controlled by the general can be made to count, though...

[Siris]

My Roman what I call Legions, but you could say their each an army solo, but I put like nine as one and give them all Family Generals, then I have one kick butt army.

But they consist of this, not for skills, well somewhat, but for building time since Urban Cohort & Pratoreion's take two turns to create, same with Legionary & Preatorein Calveries:

For each stack, they all are exactly made up of this:

10 Units of 161 Legionary Cohorts
4 Units of 161 Archer Auxilia's
1 Family Genearl Calvery Unit
5 Roman Calvery Units of 108

That's my typical army. I have a grand total currently of 10 full legions of this exact make up, and another six are in creation, almost completed, about four more turns, and I'll have another six.

Its a pretty good fighting force, but if your going against a tougher enemy, spend double the time & build it with:

10 Units of Urban Cohorts
5 Units of Preatorian Calvery
4 Units of Archer Auxilia
1 Family General, or Calvery Unit Captain

[Red Harvest]

PRE-MARIAN
1) A separate Javelin/archer unit to replace velites
2) Are Velites actually formed the missile unit of Rome? If not, than it's better to erase it. Just stick with Hastati -> Principe -> Triarii.

Not sure what you are saying, velites WERE the missile units of the Roman legions. They were the skirmishers of the Polybian legions. They are just a later form of javelinmen (that were present in the pre-Polybian legions.) It is a natural outgrowth of the peltasts of earlier hoplite armies and also of the javelin using Samnite armies they faced as well. Archers were not really used by the Romans until later. So replacing velites with archers would be backward. Augmenting with archers would make sense after rather hefty upgrades to army capabilities. Slingers would be more likely than archers.

[Red Harvest]

This would go against the whole 'tech-tree' part of the strategy game for military buildings (which i can't say i'd miss too much), but i too am frustrated at being unable to use 'higher' units early in the game - eg: as Seleucids, i'm stuck using militia hoplites and cavalry skirmishers for an age - which is fine, but even a small empire would have had some elite troops (besides general bodyguards) - so if I were to do a concept for a new way of troop production, I would base it on a different system, where the numbers of different units, of different types, is reliant on the cities/population that you have. Therefore, you can only raise a maximum of 5 units for each city in your empire, let's say, and only one of those can be an elite troop type.

This would get over the problem of not having troops available for most of the game, would automatically balance army composition, without limiting the choices of unit that you have in your armies. You could still have an army entirely made up of elite hoplites - but it would mean that all your other armies would be made up of levies!

I like the previous idea of being able to recruit regional troop types from specific cities - in the case of a roman player this would limit what auxillaries he could field with his legions.

Yes, that is what I was after. The tech tree would not be eliminated though, just changed in function. Instead of completely transforming your army by replacing "early" troops, building upgrades would result in unit upgrades/substitutions and allow formation of more powerful armies (or perhaps armies with an extra unit or two.) It could still apply various bonuses as well.

I would really like to have some good units on both sides fairly early (but in precious small amounts) but throughout have them hard to obtain, so that much of the stock of an army is grunts of varying types.

[KyodaiSteeleye]

agreed.

[Didz]

One of the early wargame campaigns I ran had a mechanism which allowed troops to gain expereince during battle and these same troops could then be transferred as the cadre of new elite units.

That would make much more sense than the current RTW arrangement where units can be trained as veterans from raw recruits.

[Ellesthyan]

KyodaiSteeleye says it. Bring down that techtree!

[Red Harvest]

Another thing I would like to add in my vision of this, the smaller armies could be merged into larger ones under the command of the most senior officer/faction leader present. This is how one would cope with larger armies and bring sufficient force to the field.

I haven't decided whether recruitment should be done on a provincial or regional basis. It could be done so that an army was recruited in either the capital or a regional center (with one or several associated provinces.) Perhaps 1 turn builds would happen when sufficient structures were available in the various settlements in a region--but you might be limited to some weaker constituents for parts if some of the settlements had only low level structures. Or the army build might be multi-turn if recruited from a single settlement, etc. The army would only be able to take the field when completed, except in defense of the settlement where any completed units would be available to take the field.

[Razor1952]

The biggest shame of the vanilla game, all those beautiful units and nowhere to use them.

So I've started a basic mod where all the capital cities have maxed buildings, just one per faction. The player can then choose to make a limited number of advanced troops from the start.

Perhaps not the most elegant solution but one which achieves some of your aims easily now.

I guess Marius is going to be a problem, if only I could script it to say 245 bc.

[Red Harvest]

I've considered doing the same, Razor. And I am going to make a post-Marion campaign for myself (with enemy hordes nicely built up too.) The negative is that since I usually can't afford to build many units early on almost all of them would tend to be high end. The AI seems to have the money to pour out tons of units, so I imagine I would be facing elite hordes too. Still it would be a nice change of pace.

The part that is lacking to me is the "balanced army" build restrictions (and army composition) that I think the game needs. Availability of elites was often restricted by things like population demographics (nobles, specific tribes, land holders of some level, religious position, etc.) So pumping out one or two every turn should be impossible.

Another way of accomplishing this might be to cap the building of elite units as some percentage of total army strength. But again we need the ability to build them early on.

[Razor1952]

Or only your capital can make those top level elite troops... ever! ie. you get em from the start but only a few.

[pyrocryo]

okay if velites is a historical unit then put it on.
but i think putting it in under the infantry upgrade line would be self-defeating
since skirmisher troops usually have a long time to gain experience.
but enough about the romans. How about other factions? Egypt? Parthia? Pontus (why is this faction must be manually unlocked? They actually got to greece for god sake!), Macedon? German (an early sack of Rome would be nice)