Recruitment pools (again)

[Numio]

Do you think recruitment pools will be for each individual unit or each type of unit?

Just occured to me because the first column of units each have 3 units availible and the second column each has 1 unit. It might be the case that building say the town militia would also deplete the spearman type unit above it. So you would have militia type units, elite units ect... all built from their respective pools.

Thoughts?

[Ulstan]

"We can only recruit 2 units a turn?"

Only? In RTW you get one unit a turn. Here for a minor city and with no other information about what effects recruitment pools we see that we can recruit at least 2.

[hoom]

I mean it has been in every version.

Actually it wasn't there to start with in Shogun, was added in a patch/bf Mongol Invasion.

I kinda liked it better without retraining because you often got stuck with the choice of merging green troops to an elite but depleted unit at the expense of reducing Honour, or fighting with them depleted at the risk of losing the unit entirely.
Actually I guess that is there in RTW with the Mercenaries since at least in RTR, some of the mercenaries are distinctly useful & rare

[Underdog687]

Can you make an army of just top noch units or do you have a limit of how many units can be produced by that given settlement, i.e. you can only have 3 living units of scot guards?

[Bob the Insane]

Can you make an army of just top noch units or do you have a limit of how many units can be produced by that given settlement, i.e. you can only have 3 living units of scot guards?

The assumption at the moment is that the recruitment pool is not linked to existing numbers of troops (though I think that could be a pretty cool mechanisim).

So to get this straight, we have two sets of controls to the number of units.

One is a recuitment pool for each unit type available which once increases over time based on the unit type and possibly the level of the settlement/buildings (in the example image we see 2 turns left until a 4th militia unit is available to recruit, but no mention on how long we have already waited).

Two is the limited number of recruitment slots available at a settlement, which refreshes every turn, based once again on settlement size and type perhaps.

So in the image above, you could recruit 2 militia units this turn leaving only 1 in the pool. So the following turn you could recruit only one,plus one of a different type. This would leave the militia recuit pool at zero, but the following turn that would be incrimented by 1 and you could once again hire one.

Additionally there is also an assuption at the moment that retraining works as before and is not linked to the new recruitment machanisim. Though interestingly that may have a self balancing effect. Assuming that decent sized settlements will have significantly more recruitment slots per turn then you will have to choose between new units and mass retaining (no 8 free slots every turn). There are more free slots for retaining in the smaller settlements, but by there nature this activity will quickly depopulate them. And given that you will be able to pull entirely new armies out of thin air in a single turn, the differential between recruitment and mass retraining is reduced.

Sorry if this is obvious, I was just trying to get it straight, plus it is 0545hrs and I have been at work since 0400hrs!

[sunsmountain]

Can you make an army of just top noch units or do you have a limit of how many units can be produced by that given settlement, i.e. you can only have 3 living units of scot guards?

Production caps, excellent! It would make the mid-to-end game a challenge! But I'm afraid this idea is too late...

There are more free slots for retaining in the smaller settlements, but by there nature this activity will quickly depopulate them. And given that you will be able to pull entirely new armies out of thin air in a single turn, the differential between recruitment and mass retraining is reduced.

There are 9 slots max for recruiting. In one of the podcasts i have heard the player being able to recruit 4 units/turn at the largest castles/cities (level 5). So level 1 = no units, level 2 = 1, level 3 = 2, level 4 = 3 and level 5 = 4. Being a castle may add 1 to that..
That leaves 5 or more slots for retraining. Given how retraining works in RTW, I do not think they have changed this. It actually means retraining 20 units will take longer if you are also building 4 units a turn... but you're creating more stacks at the same time: retraining 20 units takes 4 turns and gives you 36 units, effectively doubling the number of stacks you send back into the fray! (cool)

Being able to build 4 units in 1 turn favors the defender (quick defense force if under attack). Retraining depleted units quickly also favors the defender. Both are good things, because the AI will probably on the defensive against us, in general. On the other hand, attacks will be more surprising because of their size, but it will still take some time to recruit 20 men for a stack.

[hoom]

quick defense force if under attack

Only as long as you hadn't already depleted the pool

[Martok]

Can you make an army of just top noch units or do you have a limit of how many units can be produced by that given settlement, i.e. you can only have 3 living units of scot guards?

Production caps, excellent! It would make the mid-to-end game a challenge! But I'm afraid this idea is too late...

Actually, CA has said there will be limits to each *type* of unit you can recruit per turn, not just an overall cap.

Take a Fortress (the largest castle) as an example. (WARNING! These are just hypothetical numbers I've made up, and probably don't reflect what's in the actual game!) Let's say a Fortress allows you to recruit up to 5 units per turn. From what CA has said, we'd be able to recruit something like 1 unit of Feudal Knights, 2 units of Men-at-Arms, 3 units of Archers, 4 units of basic Spearmen, and 6 units of Peasants.

Let's say I choose that turn to recruit the 1 unit of Knights, the 2 units of MAA, and 2 unit of Archers. I would then have recruited my max of 5 units for that turn. The next turn, there will probably be 3 units of Archers available again, but probably only 1 unit of Men-at-Arms and 0 units of Knights. If I wait an additional turn, however, another unit of Knights will be available again. This is because Archers are pretty common and low-level units, whereas on the other hand Men-at-Arms are somewhat better troops, with Knights being the best of all.

That's my understanding of how the recruitment system will work, anyway. Take it with as many grains of salt as you're comfortable with.

[the_mango55]

I think that it will be almost exactly like that, however I don't think that there will be a certain number of that specific unit, I think there will be a certain number of units available of each tech level: peasant, militia, professional, elite. Take for example the Byzantines.

There are the four levels of Archers:
Peasant Archers
Archer Militia
Trebizond Archers
Byzantine Guard Archers

Then there are the four levels of Infantry:
Peasants
Spear Militia
Byzantine Infantry
Varangian Guard

Now lets say that there are an available 8 peasants, 6 militia, 4 professionals, and 2 elite. If you train a Byzantine Infantry then there will be 3 pros left, and if you train a Trebizond Archers then there will be 2 left.

EDIT: and this is the way that I hope it will be, if they gave us specific units available we would have less choice in our army composition, as everyone would train an elite unit as soon as it became available, so every army will end up being the same.

[Martok]

I think that it will be almost exactly like that, however I don't think that there will be a certain number of that specific unit, I think there will be a certain number of units available of each tech level: peasant, militia, professional, elite. Take for example the Byzantines.

...EDIT...

Now lets say that there are an available 8 peasants, 6 militia, 4 professionals, and 2 elite. If you train a Byzantine Infantry then there will be 3 pros left, and if you train a Trebizond Archers then there will be 2 left.

EDIT: and this is the way that I hope it will be, if they gave us specific units available we would have less choice in our army composition, as everyone would train an elite unit as soon as it became available, so every army will end up being the same.

Yeah, that makes a little bit more sense than how I put it.