Recruitment Limitations

[Malachus]

Remember that awesome feature of RTW where recruiting units subtracted from the population of your cities?

Did CA decide to not include that in MTW2?

As it stands now, you can create really large armies unchecked so long as you have the money. At least with the population declining as you did so, there was a certain balance that had to be met between military and economy.

Does anyone else find the lack of this feature disappointing?

[Quillan]

I don't. Remember something, the unit scales are different in ancient battles than they were in medieval battles. Armies of 100,000 men per side were not uncommon in the ancient world. They were unheard of in medieval times. It's a lot easier to raise medieval armies which would in reality consist of a couple of thousand men than it would be to raise 40,000 men from a province in roman times, without depleting the population.

There's already something of a limiting factor in the recruitment pools. Yes, a settlement can recruit up to 3 units per turn, but each unit type also has a maximum number of units available for recruitment at any given time. The better ones don't replenish too quickly. I've just reached the point where I can build musketeers in my Spanish campaign; one unit was available when I completed the barracks (15,000 florins and 8 turns by the way, and that was the last of 8 barracks buildings I had to build to get there) and new ones only come up every other turn afterwards. It's going to be a while before I can even put 4 units of musketeers into one army. Trash troops can be quickly raised all over, elite troops require a lot of investment in infrastructure all over before you can spam hordes of them.

[nameless]

There were tons of people complaining about those limitations.

Plus, MTW2 uses a recruitment pool so I don't think it would've worked properly with the RTW population method.

[Lord Condormanius]

I liked that feature a lot. I found it a good way of controlling my population. I would really like to have it back, especially when playing 0.50 timeframe.

[afrit]

I most certainly prefer the new system. That and the fact that wall towers do not auto-fire are the best modifications to the game, IMHO.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

I got mixed feelings on this one..in some ways I prefer the RTW recruitment method....more logical IMO. With MTW2...well even retraining takes a while sometimes...something I will get used to no doubt...

SO on that one jury is out for the time being. I liked it in RTW in that you could in theory run out of people! not just a military problem..but it made finances an issue too...so I think it was a good feature.

I didnt mind the wall towers firing...I mean this was a city or fortress...militia troops etc....more realistic in a way...currently if no units are there..no firing! That isnt ideal IMO...so nobody would be in the towers? Hmm dont think so! lol

If part of your unit went off into the towers etc to fire..then yeah great..as it is you dont have that.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it! That is becoming my motto for MTW2!

[GFX707]

The problem with the RTW recruitment method for me was that not every single person recruited had to live in that exact city....I mean what about recruiting from surrounding towns, villages etc? There is not just a city and then a void completely free of humanity all around....the problem I have with the M2TW recruitment system is that it's gone from being able to recruit 120 men every 6 months to being able to recruit 360 men in two years....a step backwards despite seeming like an improvement at first.

I won't mention anything about my fleets taking twenty years to cross the mediterranean.

[Lord Condormanius]

...the problem I have with the M2TW recruitment system is that it's gone from being able to recruit 120 men every 6 months to being able to recruit 360 men in two years....a step backwards despite seeming like an improvement at first.

I won't mention anything about my fleets taking twenty years to cross the mediterranean.

These are just a couple of the reasons that I changed the timescale to 0.50 (6 mos/turn).

[GFX707]

I wonder if you can change the timescale to 0.08....roughly one month per turn? I had a think about it, and movement rate wise it seems the most realistic option. That way it doesn't take forty years to march your army across Europe.

[Lord Condormanius]

If you did that, there would be 5300 turns. The way the economy is set up, you would be having huge cities in very early years. Also family members and named characters age correctly with 6-month turns.

[Heledir]

How do you change to 6 month turns?

[Lord Condormanius]

You have to change the timescale from 2.0 to 0.50 in the descr_strat file. You can also change the diplay to show years instead of turns by deleting the line that says show_years_as_turns. If you don't know what any of this means, I can direct you. It's really easy.

[Helvio]

with recruitment tied to populations in RTW, I liked to recruit stacks of peasants in an overcrowded city & move them to an underpopulated city (newly sacked or whatever) then disband them.

My reason for doing this was top keep an overcrowded settlement from rebelling & bump the underpopulated settlement up to the next level. Other times I would recruit stacks of peasants from an overpopulated rebellious city & replenish my recruitment settlements as well.

[Heledir]

No I get it i'l have to change it. It sounds better that way.

[Lord Condormanius]

No I get it i'l have to change it. It sounds better that way.

Some people don't like it. I think it is way better this way.

[Oaty]

I like the new system but, I'd like it better if it came from the population on top of that. And the "exploit" from RTW would be much harder to pull off financially, queing up 10 units to reduce the population would cost a lot more as 3 would pop out the next turn plus the recruitment pool would run out if money wasn't a problem. IMO cities grow too quickly without it and there is not much of a race to make huge cities.

I wonder why CA did'nt make the recrutment that way, the biggest problem in RTW was that the AI would destoy its whole population by the constant recruitment.

[Lord Condormanius]

IMO cities grow too quickly without it and there is not much of a race to make huge cities.

I totally agree (my last post was in reference to 0.50 timeframe). I think that right now, while it is nice to be able to recruit 3 units at once, it just seems too easy to do so. A population check would be nice.\

My cities are so overpopulated, I'm almost praying for God's mercy of the Black Death.