Recuitment question?

[B-Wing]

I'm not very picky, but I thought that MTW had too many buildings, personally. It wasn't necessarily that it was too complicated, I just thought it was kinda ridiculous. Many units didn't seem to fit their building requirements. Not every unit with armor needed to an armor smith, not every unit with swords needed a sword smith, not every unit with spears needed a spear maker, and not every unit with bows needed a fletcher. So I don't see why they even had so many different buildings, when there were so many "exceptions to the rule", so to speak. Something more logical and/or more realistic, or at least simpler (but not as simple as RTW), would be preferable to me.

As for how many units can be recruited a turn, I think the level of buildings should affect this. I assume improving a blacksmith shop means larger, more numerous blacksmiths, and therefore more units that can be armed in a given amount of time. For example, a Level 1 Blacksmith can produce 1 unit of level 1 soldiers in a turn, while a lvl 2 Blacksmith could produce 2 units of lvl 1 soldiers or 1 unit of lvl 2 soldiers a turn. I think that's a reasonable way for it to work. Of course, I don't know anything about how feudal/medieval recruitment and arming worked, so you history buffs could probably offer a more realistic system.

[lar]

why not have an option to make it 1turn per unit or option for the unit pool recruitment thing. bit of a big option, but there are some other things that could be solved by adding both.

[Kralizec]

I'm not very picky, but I thought that MTW had too many buildings, personally. It wasn't necessarily that it was too complicated, I just thought it was kinda ridiculous. Many units didn't seem to fit their building requirements. Not every unit with armor needed to an armor smith, not every unit with swords needed a sword smith, not every unit with spears needed a spear maker, and not every unit with bows needed a fletcher. So I don't see why they even had so many different buildings, when there were so many "exceptions to the rule", so to speak. Something more logical and/or more realistic, or at least simpler (but not as simple as RTW), would be preferable to me.

I actually liked MTW's system of multiple building combinations. Do I upgrade to horse breeders guild and armourers guild to train Kataphractoi (shock cavalry), or do I build swordsmith and bowyer's workshop to train Byzantine cavalry? (versatile horse archers)

Never have I read something like: "King Edward III did not have a Level 3 Spearmaker in Wessex. As a result his army was severly lacking Knights."

The level 3 spearmaker is an abstraction that represents the infrastructure of a province, and the overall skill of the weapon smiths. Of course, differentiating between spear/sword/armour makers is pretty odd.

But I still think the general idea is sound. You could for example have a "feudal estates" line of buildings, wich allows for knights to be built. Buildings like "smithing guilds" and "merchant quarters" grow a middle class that allows men-at-arms and the higher end militia units to be recruited, and so on.

[Alim]

It depends on people's individual preferences but I think I like the new system better(being able to recruit 4 units per turn). If the units upkeep costs are very high, so you can't have a standing army, this will be a much more realistic representation of medieval recruitment. As an additional benefit this will make it much harder to have very high valor/experienced units, apart from your household troups, which will make things easier for the AI.
The castle/city development system is also a good thing although in MTW1 many players would specialise their provinces anyway, i.e assign some provinces as economic, others for producing cavalry and others for infantry, in order to get to elite troops faster and get the most out of province-specific bonuses. But is all seems like a step in the right direction.
As for the old MTW system of complicated tech trees for some units it at least meant that it was a lot more difficult to produce elite troops since building all the required buildings took a lot of time and even more money. However, it still meant that at the beginning of the game you couldn't have any feudal knights at all but after maybe a 100 years you could have entire stacks of them. It would be great if there was a system whereby you could recruit troops such as the heavy cavalry right from the start but have a limit on how many of those units you could have in your army at one time, to represent the fact that the pool of noblety who could fight as knighs and other elite units was limited. Also, in a Byzantine army you can't really have more than one unit of Varangian guard at a time.