Info about the Barbarian Recruitment

[The Stranger]

i've been working on a Recruitment and Maintenance Cost layout. i'm done with the civilised way of recruiting (byzantines) and paying but i dont know how the vikings and franks, etc did it.

did they payed for the warriors equipment or did they payed them themselves.
did they got land in return or moeny. it's very important. were they trained by the goverment or not.


Maintaincost
food = 0.25 per man (pricecan be discussed)
pay = it varies per unit (nobles are mostly pretty expensive)

Recruitment cost
weapons = price varies per unit (high quility weapons are more expensive)
armour = varies per armour type and quality
training = highly trained = 1 per man per turn
trained = 0.5 per man per year
untrained = 0
horses = 3 per horse


if they are recruited by the goverment you have to pay a recruit cost, if not you dont, but that automaticly increases the maintenance cost cuz they'll prolly ask might or land in return for their service.

[Meneldil]

A horse should cost much more than a man. Only the wealthiest people could afford a horse back then (and I'm not speaking about a war horse). I think horses were more expensive than slaves in some regions.

Edit : well, since I'm not part of the team, that's none of my business, I'm merely poiting out facts, but OTOH, having horse units really expensive would probably screw up the AI, who can barely hire anything else than skirmishers in vanilla RTW.

[The Stranger]

that can be fixed by boosting trade and income by religious buildings. its already more expensive than a man, cuz to hire a normal soldier is like 1 denari a turn. a horse costs 3 per horse, in a unit of 80 men thats 240 denari, that already more than most units cost in vanilla, add armour and weapons you can come to over 1200 denari to recruit a horse unit. in my game cataphracts cost 1272 denari to recruit 250 to maintain, cuz they ask money and not land in return for their service.

[GoreBag]

I think training a man would cost less than giving him a horse.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Well as far as the Saxons, by that system there would be no recruitment cost for some units as they were required, not asked, to fight. Actually the whole thing is very confused and someone else can probably explain it much better but I have a feeling your current system would lead to no cost for the bulk of Barbarian units.

[Ranika]

Gaelic chiefs and kings paid for their soldier's equipment, except for swords and other more expensive or specialized weapons (but they did pay for armor, in most cases; while a lower soldier COULD get chain, a chief wouldn't pay for it, but for elites like Ridire, the king or chief would finance it), 'elites' had to pay for their own specialized training (in most cases), and while horsemen had to qualify in certain training tests (which they had to finance, if the tests would require any equipment, like 'javelin rings'), they had to provide their own horses.