Urban militias are not army units

[Dark_Magician]

Well this is just it - city guards are employed by the relevant City Councils to do following:

1) Keep law and order in the cities (+ loyalty inside city).
2) Man city defences (towers, walls) and equipment (oil boils).

They are paid by the citizens and not by the central budget, at least nowhere in developed societies where cities are following Magdeburg (sp?) code or Lubeck law! This means the costs of the town militia to the Crown (especially in the cities under their own jurisdiction and self-governement) is zero and these units are not to be taken out outside their city. To do it - be you king or senior - you'd have to take the city first.. so you would then be in possession of their bodies.

EDIT:

In simple terms, militias are better at keeping law and order than the army. They are locals and familiar with the city, they know bad spots and they don't incite hatred. They know the towers and walls stuff too.

On the other hand they aren't trained to march in lines and sing songs as regulars are.

[Leet Eriksson]

I'm not sure i understand, this game is not about 100% historical accuracy, its ultimately your discesion to have militia in your army or not.

[Dark_Magician]

Well, actually it is more up to what kind of politics a state develops. Independant cities in medieval Europe which weren't under firm central control and enjoyed independancy tended to get rich and develop reinassance stuff. Though they may have been far less loyal if things went wrong.

But I don't deny that asking for such variety in a single game is probably too much.

[z2ei]

It's really just a gameplay thing. With the way the game is, you've got to have garrison troops, or you'll get problems with revolts.

What I don't like are mods that take out the reasonably priced garrison troops, and give you nothing in return. *eyes RTR*

[Dark_Magician]

It's really just a gameplay thing. With the way the game is, you've got to have garrison troops, or you'll get problems with revolts.

What I don't like are mods that take out the reasonably priced garrison troops, and give you nothing in return. *eyes RTR*

lots of things are conditional. One of those is empty cities that you could just march in. Though it is in fact highly unlikely if you don't have gates opened before you - they always have guards of their own

Another surreal thing is towers firing at you. Manned by who?

[player1]

I don't think current campaign engine with allow city defense units only. If you need urban militias represented in needs to be an army unit. Then it's to a player not to move them from city or not.

[z2ei]

lots of things are conditional. One of those is empty cities that you could just march in. Though it is in fact highly unlikely if you don't have gates opened before you - they always have guards of their own

Another surreal thing is towers firing at you. Manned by who?

I was just saying it in a gameplay sense. (You wouldn't catch me leaving my cities unguarded, for tactical reasons). The cheap troops (militia, peasants, etc) are just there to prevent unrest and the like, not really to use as frontline troops. Yeah, people (or the AI) shouldn't be using them outside of cities, but they do.

Now, I didn't like the arrow towers myself. Those things fire faster than a M60 does.

[player1]

Maybe if they make those troops have lower upkeep if inside the cities, so they is gameplay reason for them to not leave the city.

[Bob the Insane]

Well this is just it - city guards are employed by the relevant City Councils to do following:

1) Keep law and order in the cities (+ loyalty inside city).
2) Man city defences (towers, walls) and equipment (oil boils).

They are paid by the citizens and not by the central budget, at least nowhere in developed societies where cities are following Magdeburg (sp?) code or Lubeck law! This means the costs of the town militia to the Crown (especially in the cities under their own jurisdiction and self-governement) is zero and these units are not to be taken out outside their city. To do it - be you king or senior - you'd have to take the city first.. so you would then be in possession of their bodies.

When playing MTW I always had this abstraction thing in my head. The troops I controled where not all the troops in the kingdom, they represent the troops loyal (mostly) to the King/faction rather than the town watches or local troops loyal to the provincal nobility. It was from this mystical pool that revolts came from and it was the loyalty of the provincial nobles that was represeted in the provinces loyalty rating...

It was these same mysterious individuals that manned the castle towers and fought the Kings enemies as long as there where at least a few of the Kings troops around to "encourage" this loyalty (thus an apparantly ungarrisioed town we immediately surrender to an invading army)...

So a unit of militia or peasants on the map represented a militia raised in the name of the King and sent into his service wIth officers appointed in the name of the King also.

I would love to see a feature where towns and cities automatically generated some default units (based on the size of the population and any buildings) for any siege battle representing the local militia or even peasants fighting to defend there homes.

[Dooz]

When playing MTW I always had this abstraction thing in my head. The troops I controled where not all the troops in the kingdom, they represent the troops loyal (mostly) to the King/faction rather than the town watches or local troops loyal to the provincal nobility. It was from this mystical pool that revolts came from and it was the loyalty of the provincial nobles that was represeted in the provinces loyalty rating...

It was these same mysterious individuals that manned the castle towers and fought the Kings enemies as long as there where at least a few of the Kings troops around to "encourage" this loyalty (thus an apparantly ungarrisioed town we immediately surrender to an invading army)...

So a unit of militia or peasants on the map represented a militia raised in the name of the King and sent into his service wIth officers appointed in the name of the King also.

I would love to see a feature where towns and cities automatically generated some default units (based on the size of the population and any buildings) for any siege battle representing the local militia or even peasants fighting to defend there homes.

Oh man, that would be so awesome. I've been dreaming of such things since... um I guess since the idea first crossed my mind. I wonder if it would at all be possible through scripting.

[Ludens]

I would love to see a feature where towns and cities automatically generated some default units (based on the size of the population and any buildings) for any siege battle representing the local militia or even peasants fighting to defend there homes.

I would like that too. Cities and castles should come with their own garrisons, which cannot move, or at least cannot leave their provinces (and will have lousy morale if they are not defending their homes). The problem with making the mobile, however, is preventing the A.I. from misusing them.

[Bob the Insane]

I would like that too. Cities and castles should come with their own garrisons, which cannot move, or at least cannot leave their provinces (and will have lousy morale if they are not defending their homes). The problem with making the mobile, however, is preventing the A.I. from misusing them.

Don't make them mobile, don't even put them on the strategy map... They only appear when defending a city or castle from an assault (possible when sallying also) and are generated on the fly based on the size of the settlement, the population and the buildings there)...

I found it annoying in RTW that you could attack a city of 20,000, but because they only have one unit of peasants garrisoning the city then only 200 blokes appear on the walls. Out of 20,000!!

I don't think these units should ever be better than peasants or militia but it would make things a little more interesting. You could even reduce the population of the city by the number of casualties that these troops take (a bit like a single battle horde effect).

[doc_bean]

Don't make them mobile, don't even put them on the strategy map... They only appear when defending a city or castle from an assault (possible when sallying also) and are generated on the fly based on the size of the settlement, the population and the buildings there)...

I found it annoying in RTW that you could attack a city of 20,000, but because they only have one unit of peasants garrisoning the city then only 200 blokes appear on the walls. Out of 20,000!!

I don't think these units should ever be better than peasants or militia but it would make things a little more interesting. You could even reduce the population of the city by the number of casualties that these troops take (a bit like a single battle horde effect).

I like it ! There should be a risk of them surrendering without a fight though, and the number should be dependent on who attacks, how long you've held the city, etc...

On a side note: couldn't you just reduce the movement points (on the strat map) to zero for Town militia ?

[Husar]

City guards that only appear when a city is attacked are already implemented in Knights of Honour, so it´s not that new. For M2TW there would just be the problem how to handle them. I fyou have a 20 unit limit, you either need to cut the allowed amount of garrisoned units, make them computer-controlled, or give the player 20 units + the city guards in a siege(in case the player has 20 garrisoned units, of course). That´s a programming decision CA would have to make and I think they decided to leave such city guards out and make them recruitable units for the player.

[doc_bean]

If you have a full army in the city there is no reason for the people to fight.

I imagine if the full army gets beaten the people will probably be too scared to fight back themselves...

So size the amount of 'extra' units should also depend on the size of both your and the enemy's army.

[Dooz]

I like it ! There should be a risk of them surrendering without a fight though, and the number should be dependent on who attacks, how long you've held the city, etc...

On a side note: couldn't you just reduce the movement points (on the strat map) to zero for Town militia ?

Hey now! Is that not possible? Does anyone know how to reduce the movements points to 0? Although I imagine that could cause problems if you want to move in a full army for retraining or whatnot, but small price to pay. Ah, and the AI might just make a lot of immobile units that never move out of the cities and... well... that would not be cool.

Other than that, the reason there are the number of troops there are defending cities compared to actual population could be thought of as troops loyal to the local ruler or whatnot, so it could very well go without a fight if there is no garisson, or just few people willing to fight. This idea of reasonable abstraction is borrowed from a poster in another thread.

[Gaiseric]

that would be cool.

Another thing that would be cool is if a king needed to grant titles/provinces to his nobility/family members. The family members would then become vassals and control the provice as their own. (building ther own troops and becoming like an auto-managed settlement in RTW) The king would be unable to build troops or buildings there but the vassals would do it for him and he would recieve some income from the province.

This is where loyalty could come into play: When the king declares war he needs the vassals permission to use the troops from the province. If the vassel has low loyalty to the king, he can refuse your request to mobilize and declare war on you. If the vassal accepts then his troops become yours to use on a campaign.

This idea would elimante the annoying task of worrying about garrisons and might add some variety to the gameplay. Instead of playing the King of England you could play as one of his vassals.

[hoom]

Don't make them mobile, don't even put them on the strategy map... They only appear when defending a city or castle from an assault (possible when sallying also) and are generated on the fly based on the size of the settlement, the population and the buildings there)...

I'm pretty sure Roma mod or SPQR mod had a script that did this.
Never played it & I understand the implementation had some issues but I always thought it was a bloody good idea.

If integrated into the engine by CA, you could have a proper levy system for campaigning armies too, where they go away & tend farms at the appropriate season.