A couple of suggested "iron man" rules

[screwtype]

I've taken notice of the talk here in recent days about adopting various "iron man" rules concerning unit building. One that I agree is essential is to do no unit retraining - it just makes expansion far too easy.

But there have been a few other rules proposed concerning restrictions on new unit recruitment. I think one proposal was that you only recruit in cities which share your culture. Another, that you only recruit from cities in your home country or from the cities you begin the game with. Another idea is to only recruit from your capital - a bit extreme for me.

Personally, I've always thought you should be able to recruit in any city, but I've never much liked the way you can conquer a foreign city in RTW and immediately be able to crank out military units of your own culture's type from what is essentially an enslaved and hostile populace. It offends my sense of realism. There should be a period of time in which a newly conquered city is becoming assimilated to its new masters and their culture, before they become a reliable source of recruitment. But how to simulate that?

It occurred to me as I was playing today that there is actually an easy way to simulate this period of assimilation already built into the game. And that is the phenomenon of unrest. When you conquer a new city, there is always a degree of unrest apparent in the public order list. So all you have to do is to make a rule that you cannot do any recruiting in any city which is experiencing any degree of unrest.

Adopting this rule has a number of realistic and agreeable consequences. The main one is that it prevents you from recruiting right away in a newly conquered city - and the time you might have to wait to start recruiting can vary a lot. But I think there are other consequences. For example, I think I'm right in saying that you can lessen unrest by putting in a stronger garrison, or lowering taxes. Later in the game, it's not unusual to get some unrest even in your home cities, so adopting this rule might mean that you can't simply use these cities as both cash cows and recruitment centres. If you want to recruit, you may have to put in a stronger garrison or lower taxes.

Also when there are rebels in a province you usually get some city unrest, so there's an added incentive to deal with those rebels quickly. You may even find that as squalor takes hold in the midgame, you can't recruit from your larger (and better developed) cities at all!

Taking this idea one just step further, you could also make it a rule that you can't crank out miltary units from military buildings of a different culture in cities you've conquered. So not only can you not recruit right away, but you must also pull down those foreign military buildings and replace them with your own. This is another method of making your expansion just that little bit slower and more expensive.

Anyhow, I've been using these rules in my latest campaign and they seem to be working quite well.

[Sin Qua Non]

Those are some good observations about one of the major aspects that lead to huge armies and steamroller games. Have you tried RTR 6? Their area of recruitment concept and auxilia phases address these issues in a creative way. It makes you think twice about committing large armies and advanced units, since the nearest retraining/construction facility may be many turns away.

My ironman contribution: No army can stay in the field without a general. When generals are killed in battle leaving the fielded army without one, another must be dispatched ASAP.

[screwtype]

No, I haven't tried RTR 6.0 yet. I did play RTR 5.x. Now I will probably wait for the post-BI version of RTR, or perhaps the post-BI version of SPQR.

BTW, I like your ironman contribution. I might adopt that one myself. The only problem I see with it is that you wouldn't be able to get any "man of the hour" adoptees, which is one of my favourite game features. But I suppose you could modify it by saying, you can't move or stay in foreign territory without a general. Then you could still generate your men of the hour from fights with rebels, or when defending your own territory.

[professorspatula]

I too am for the no armies without generals, although slightly different. I set up my own rules, although never got around to playing a campaign through to use them much.

Part of the rules was having 2 distinctive types of force: garrisons (for defensive duty) and legions/attacking armies. Only legions/attacking armies can move into enemy territory and they must be led by a general. If the general is lost in hostile territory, the army must either retreat to a previously built fort and await the arrival of a new general, or it must retreat immediately to friendly lands.

Any army without a leader such as a garrison army, is also only allowed a maximum of 10 units in it to suggest without a good leader, the army is too big to organise. The exception being legions who have lost their leader, they can keep their units until a new general comes along.

I also had restrictions of the types of units allowed in the legion/attacking force and making sure balance was retained (eg, for a Roman army, legionaries must make up half the total army, on a per unit basis, rather than man for man). Reinforcements had to be brought in to fill in any gaps before the legion could move on again.

There were also other restrictions and factors I won't bore you with, although one of note was once a unit reached x amount of experience, it couldn't be retrained, only merged. No more 5 men with 8 experienced being retrained as 80 men with 8 experience.

The basic idea was to create mini-campaigns where you form a structured army with a leader and send it off to fight in hostile regions. You stick with that army and reinforce it when you can instead of just sending in a rag-tag bunch of units to win all your battles.

With BI, you can recruit generals now so the idea of having armies always led by a general is a definite possibility.

[screwtype]

my own rules...

Hmmm, I like some of these ideas as well. I'd be interested to hear what your other ideas were as well. ( you are a bona fide professor after all )

I quite like the idea of a ten unit restriction on any stack without a leader. The only problem with this sort of thing of course is that if the rules get too complicated there's too much bookkeeping and it becomes a chore trying to remember it all. It's the sort of thing that would be better built into the game itself, but I don't think CA would go for that level of complexity.

[Sin Qua Non]

The only problem I see with it is that you wouldn't be able to get any "man of the hour" adoptees, which is one of my favourite game features.

Now that you mention it, I have never really missed it that much. I do still occasionally get them when I sally from a besieged city or attack straight from a town, in which case I still consider the army to be attached to a city (with a projection force of one turn's march). Actually, I have been getting so many adopted heirs that I can manage cities and keep a sizeable field force. The original intent was to force me to balance governors and standing armies, with an eye to how much income I a gaining/losing. But some games it seems that half of the ancient world wants to be part of my family!

[YAKOBU]

Hello there

I also use some of the rules you people have mentioned. I tend to recruit my high level troops from my capital and destroy army buildings when taking settlements. Then I limit myself to only producing first tier troops from these settlements. I also used to have set legions: 10 infantry (hastatii etc), 3 cavalry and 2 missile, with the other 5 being local mercs.

One question I have: I agree with the problems on retraining but having no retraining means you miss out on the upgrades, unless you only retrain a full unit. I think it may be best to limit retraining to 1 unit per settlement per turn. What are your thoughts?

[professorspatula]

I think retraining lower level units is fine (say 3 chevrons or less), but experienced units only when they are near full strength (90% at least). Therefore they can still have armour upgrades etc, but they can't replace their dead will high experience new recruits. The idea is to be forced into merging battle hardened and depleted troops and to form proper veteran units. Every man in a five chevron unit will have therefore fought dozens of battles. You'll feel more inclined to protect these men. A 9 chevron unit will basically be elites you'll not want to throw away because you can't replace them. As well as veterans, the bulk of your army remains as rookies. You won't care about them until they too have reached a high level. I think it adds some personality to the units. If you just retrain freely you never really care what happens to any of them. If you add this to having proper structured armies each led by their own general, you get a new level of interest. Trying to keep to these rules is another thing altogether though!

[Kraxis]

Just a little pointer here...

If a governor has a trait or ancilliary that says +1 to Unrest you will see a small Unrest image (5%) for as long as he is there.

I have several times suffered these kinds of ancilliaries or traits in most if not all my cities. Making the rule to be extremely hard! We are talking worse than most.

A more balanced rule would be that the city must have a gorvenor's residence of your culture. That will force you to never train anything from captured Huge Cities, and you are forced to weigh your options with regards to other cities. Should you Exterminate or just occupy? One will make it a lot more manageable and you get lots of money, the other will allow you to soon change the govenor's residence.

[YAKOBU]

Hi Kraxis

I like the sound of your rule on governor's residence and have not heard this mentioned before. Now how about using your rule and combining it with always destroying army buildings in enemy settlements? The 2 together would make recruiting high level troops a very lengthy process.

[Kraxis]

Hi Kraxis

I like the sound of your rule on governor's residence and have not heard this mentioned before. Now how about using your rule and combining it with always destroying army buildings in enemy settlements? The 2 together would make recruiting high level troops a very lengthy process.

Well... Of course you could do that, but I think it would be too long. Think about how long it takes to begin some serious recruiting in your home provinces.

My underlying thought is this: When you get your culture's palace the population will realize you are not there for the short haul. This is serious and you are in control. They will begin to calm down and even turn to you. But their own homes and their own cultural styles would of course not change just because the rulers were different. And any barracks are just as good.
If the locals are used to coming here, then lets use it. Pramatic behaviour.

[Jambo]

One rule I like using regarding retraining units is to always press "m" first to merge the units. If units are all fairly well damaged then this reduces the number of possible units to insta-retrain.

I don't like the destroying of buildings idea. Not only does it reward you with plenty of denari, but it also means that if the AI were ever to retake the settlement then you'd be facing multitudes of peasant and militia AI armies.

[screwtype]

Just a little pointer here...

If a governor has a trait or ancilliary that says +1 to Unrest you will see a small Unrest image (5%) for as long as he is there.

Well then you'll just have to move him out

I have several times suffered these kinds of ancilliaries or traits in most if not all my cities. Making the rule to be extremely hard! We are talking worse than most.

I don't think it's so hard to check your governors' traits now and again, in cities where unrest doesn't seem to be declining...

I guess you could also add a caveat that governor-triggered unrest doesn't count.

Like I said I haven't fully playtested this rule yet but you haven't convinced me it won't work

A more balanced rule would be that the city must have a govenor's residence of your culture.

Let me get this right. You mean, you can only retrain once you have overbuilt the existing governor's residence, ie when the city's population reaches a new development level? But what about cities which have reached their maximum development level? There'd be no way to ever use them for retraining, would there?
Otherwise, I think it's a fair enough rule. But ATM I think I still prefer the unrest rule. Maybe some combination of the two for extra challenge.

Edit: Here's one way to get around the huge cities anomaly. You could just enslave or exterminate in such a city, and then wait until the population builds up again to its next development level before you do any retraining in it. That way you would simulate rebuilding an upgraded governors' residence.

Yeah, I guess your idea could work after all. I'm still partial to my own idea of using unrest though. Perhaps I'll try using both rules.

[screwtype]

One rule I like using regarding retraining units is to always press "m" first to merge the units. If units are all fairly well damaged then this reduces the number of possible units to insta-retrain.

I agree. Just merge your units first and then retrain your fully populated units for their upgrades. I don't see this issue as a problem.

I don't like the destroying of buildings idea. Not only does it reward you with plenty of denari, but it also means that if the AI were ever to retake the settlement then you'd be facing multitudes of peasant and militia AI armies.

I don't know about "plenty of denarii", you get a few pennies for them is all. In order to overcome your other objection, all you need to do is keep the old buildings until you're ready to pay for the replacement. Then destroy the old building and replace it with one of yours in the same turn. Problem solved.

[screwtype]

IEvery man in a five chevron unit will have therefore fought dozens of battles. You'll feel more inclined to protect these men. A 9 chevron unit will basically be elites you'll not want to throw away because you can't replace them. As well as veterans, the bulk of your army remains as rookies. You won't care about them until they too have reached a high level. I think it adds some personality to the units. If you just retrain freely you never really care what happens to any of them.

Yeah, I totally agree with all of that. In Shogun you really *do* care about those battle hardened veterans because there is only one place to get them - in battles!

It's such a shame that the same attention to these little details hasn't gone into RTW. Everything has been made so easy, that the game ends up losing all its flavour and personality.

[screwtype]

I also use some of the rules you people have mentioned. I tend to recruit my high level troops from my capital and destroy army buildings when taking settlements. Then I limit myself to only producing first tier troops from these settlements.

"First tier" is a bit rough. What only peasants, or peasants and watchmen? Limit them to hastati, velites and equites, maybe.

I also used to have set legions: 10 infantry (hastatii etc), 3 cavalry and 2 missile, with the other 5 being local mercs.

Yeah, after my last campaign I decided I needed to set some limits, especially on the number of cav. In my current campaign I figured I'd only include two units of equites per army. But as it turned out, I had so many generals that I've ended up with stonking cavalry armies without training any equites at all!

As for mercs, I think either none at all, or limiting them to one or two per stack. Mercs just make the game too easy, like retraining.

Oh, and BTW, yeah I think retraining one full strength unit per city per turn (for the weapon and armour upgrades), is fine.

[YAKOBU]

Hi Screwtype

Apologies if I was unclear, I consider first tier to be the first tier of army buildings. This would include hastatii, velites & equites as I don't use peasants.

[Sheep]

I try to only have full-stack armies led by generals outside of my territory (inside my territory I have a homeland defense force which is NOT led by a general to fight rebels and the like, which still allows me to get the occasional Man of the Hour). And I generally will fight until the number of soldiers becomes too low to be useful and then I will hang back for a few turns, merge my experienced units and refill my armies with green troops from the homeland. Also I try to restrict my generals to one theater, like Greece, or Spain, etc.. And then after the area is conquered the general(s) get to be the governor(s) of the bigger city(s). Then I transfer all his combat-related retinue to a younger family member who I pick to be my next general and lead that army. Most of the time this keeps me from having 8-10 star generals which totally unbalance the game. Also, after conquering a city, I have to leave my army inside of it until I can come up with a big enough garrison or a governor to keep it happy. So in order to blitzkrieg an area I need to have 2 or 3 full legions, otherwise conquest is slower going.

[Kraxis]

Yes, I meant that conquered Huge Cities can't help you out. They are rather few really. At least with the last government building.
But you could of course do your idea of 'rebuilding' the population to a more loyal group.

Huge Cities often have a serious recruiting potential, often the most developed (makes sense right?), thus you can recruit extremely good troops there. This will halt that.

[Veresov]

My own personal iron man rules are to leave generals in the settlements. Only captains can lead armies. This really makes combat hard and challenging.

[screwtype]

My own personal iron man rules are to leave generals in the settlements. Only captains can lead armies. This really makes combat hard and challenging.

Ha! You beat me to it Veresov. I was just about to post the same thing.

Yeah, after reviewing this thread I realized that Generals really give you too much advantage, especially when it's so easy to get stars. I got a couple of stars in my last few turns just from autocalcing against the remnants of previous battles! LOL.

And it's not only the stars. Generals themselves are also kicka$$ combat units, especially early in the game when it counts most. Yeah, the game should be a lot more challenging without the use of generals.

[HarunTaiwan]

Here's my simple "Ironman" rules:

1 beer after each victorious battle against a enemy full stack.

1 beer after each enemy city taken.

I never seem to finish a turn.

[Magraev]

I've tried razing every building I can in cities captured. This means it will take a while to get anything worthwhile out of the new conquests, both in terms of troops and trade. I made one exception - you can keep the church/temple if it is one you can build further up. You could expand this to allow building of your own culture to remain.

A tip is to always exterminate larger towns when you get them - otherwise you have a certain rebellion on your hands.

Another advantage of this strategy is that you get loads of cash at the price of a smaller income.

[screwtype]

Here's my simple "Ironman" rules:

1 beer after each victorious battle against a enemy full stack.

1 beer after each enemy city taken.

I'll drink to that!

[Kraxis]

I've tried razing every building I can in cities captured. This means it will take a while to get anything worthwhile out of the new conquests, both in terms of troops and trade. I made one exception - you can keep the church/temple if it is one you can build further up. You could expand this to allow building of your own culture to remain.

A tip is to always exterminate larger towns when you get them - otherwise you have a certain rebellion on your hands.

Another advantage of this strategy is that you get loads of cash at the price of a smaller income.

Yes, but this really hurts the faction you might be hitting. Should they by some extreme effort manage to retake said city it will be useless to them, and they certainly don't need that.

[zukenft]

I'll add mine.
unit retirement : every time you merge depleted units, disband the unit with less than full strength (which usually have high experience).
The other way to say this is every time you take a province, disband one unit from the conquering army.

[Magraev]

Yes, but this really hurts the faction you might be hitting. Should they by some extreme effort manage to retake said city it will be useless to them, and they certainly don't need that.

That's true, but that just gives the effect of a scorched earth policy, or if you will the devastation of war. I restrict myself in other not-so-exact ways like not starting any wars, so all in all I get a real challenge.

It may not be the best for the AI. That would be a "no armies at all"-rule making the game a bit pointless

[Kraxis]

That's true, but that just gives the effect of a scorched earth policy, or if you will the devastation of war. I restrict myself in other not-so-exact ways like not starting any wars, so all in all I get a real challenge.

It may not be the best for the AI. That would be a "no armies at all"-rule making the game a bit pointless

As long as it works for you...

[denmj]

Just a list of my rules I use for RTW.

1 archer for every 3 infantry max. 1 cav for every 5 units not counting general. No siege equipment. No mercs. Dogs are modded out of my games.

Can't recruit out of a town with less then 6k population.

I can't attack any city that the senate doesn't tell me to ( as the a rome faction). Unless that city has sent 3 armies to attack me.

Can't start any wars. Have to be attacked by a faction before going to war. Unless the senate tells me to attack as a rome faction.

I must garrison a city with 3 garrison units before the army that took it can leave that city.

* Garrison unit is the unit that one step up from peasent for each faction. ie. town watch, milita hoplites ect..


All in all I have had my most intresting campaigns now with these rules. My standard armies are very small usally 3 infantry one archer and a general.

My greatest fight so far has been with my 3 infantry and one archer and general against 2k of the enemy. I won but it was the most nail bitting experiance to date. I even had the archers in the melee and fighting. End result was the AI losing the fight with 90 men left. I had like 120 men left out of 355.

I also have some really good generals.

[Herakleitos]

There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread, cheers to you all!
Here's the list I will be using in my next campaign:

- No (re-)training of units unless the governor-building is your own.
(full units can be retrained for better weapons).
- If the governor building is already of the highest level then units
can only be (re-)trained when unrest is no more then 5%.
- retraining of units only if they are on a minimum of 90% strength
- retraining of silver and gold chevron units only if they are on 100% strength
- armies in enemy territory can only attack if led by a general
- when transporting units overseas; one ship per infantry unit and two ships
per cavalry unit. From quinquiremes up ships can transport 2i or 1c.
- restriction on selling map-information - 1000k max

I was also thinking about making the ability to train units dependable on cultural penalty, will have to look into that...