Garrison and public order

[d3nn16]

Is there anyone who did some research on how garrison affects public order ?
I found out it was function of the population of the city and that it wasn't function of number of soldiers (it needs 5 peasants to reach 5 % PO while it takes only 3 italian militia for the same PO and all this in a huge city with about 30k population).

[Snipafist]

This is because peasants have the "is_peasant" ability. They implemented this in RTW: Barbarian Invasion, because previously too many people were garrisoning towns with just peasants because they were numerous and cheap. Now they only count for roughly half a man, so it's best to garrison with actual militia troops.

[pevergreen]

Plus militia troops = no upkeep!

[supadodo]

Plus militia troops = no upkeep!

Well actually there is a limit to this
2 free for town
3 free for large town
4 free for city
5 free for large city
6 free for huge city

Luckily the game automatically detects the highest upkeep unit and gives the free upkeep to it. You can see which unit gets the bonus by the darken blue unit card. Because of this you can stock up to 6 high lvl militia to better defend your city and the rest town militia because they have the lowest upkeep.

Numbers still seem to do the trick. Bigger size units seem to give more garrison PO's

[Foz]

I posted this already in the squalor thread, but wanted to post here too since it's a more obvious place to discuss it. Basically, aside from the fact that peasants count 1/2 for PO, the PO system for garrisoning seems very easy to determine: in short, it's entirely based on the number of actual men in the garrison. I'll cite the results that indicate this from the other thread:

I was asking myself what would be the best unit for garrison :
I'm playing as Venice and after some research I found this (I'm not playing the English version so the translation may not be the same) :

PO---Peasants--Crossbow--Archer-----Italian--Spearman--Crossbow--Mounted
----------------Peasants---Peasants--Militia---Militia------Militia------Militia
5%-----5----------3---------3---------3---------3---------3---------5
10%----8----------5---------5---------4---------4---------5---------7
15%----12---------8---------8---------6---------6---------8
20%----15---------10--------10--------8---------8---------10
25%----20---------13------------------10--------10
30%----------------15-----------------12--------12
35% ---------------17-----------------14---------14
40%----------------19,20--------------16 --------16
45%-----------------------------------18---------18
50%------------------------------------19--------19

As we can clearly see, Italian Militia and Spearman Militia are the best performers, and coincidentally have the largest base unit size. Archer Peasants and Crossbow Militia are in second, again having the same default archer unit size that is a little lower than that of the spear units. Then come the mounted militia performing poorly, as they have a far smaller unit size. Last are the peasants, as they are half a man for garrison purposes and therefore just a hair less effective than mounted militia since 60 / 2 = 30 is what they count as for garrison PO, where cavalry have base unit size 32.

So at least for PO purposes it seems you should garrison the largest unit at your disposal, which is a fact easily missed if you have not specifically tested it or noticed that different units cause different amounts of public order. There of course may be other reasons to garrison archers or cavalry, as they both can play very useful roles in a defensive capacity.

For those of you further interested in in the calculations, it appears that the 20% level represents the least common multiple of units with 40 men, units with 60 men, and units with 75 men (note I'm playing with unit sizes 1.25 times the base values listed in the file, apparently). That is to say, that level is attained exactly by an even number of each unit size, and represents 600 men in the garrison. Then if 600 men equals 20%, we know that 300 equals 10%, and 150 equals 5%. So as it turns out, 2 units of spearmen are exactly enough to give a 5% bonus to garrison PO, which is a very useful thing to know. Could prove very helpful in balancing those cities that are just on the edge, without so much guesswork...

[econ21]

So the size of the settlement has no effect on how many troops are needed to give a specific public order benefit? For some reason, in RTW, I'd always assumed larger cities needed bigger garrisons to get the same % boost to order.

[Foz]

So the size of the settlement has no effect on how many troops are needed to give a specific public order benefit? For some reason, in RTW, I'd always assumed larger cities needed bigger garrisons to get the same % boost to order.

Not sure on that one, honestly. I can't recall for sure if I've ever seen a garrison number above about 45% when I capture a settlement, so testing would have to be done to determine this.

Either way though we can assume the units are at least as effective as I suggested at providing PO, as d3nn16 tested with huge cities which would require the most units if population or city size is a factor.

Also a minor quirk, but it appears that you don't get the first 5% PO bonus until you've garrisoned a few more men than 150. The 10% breakpoint, though, does seem to happen for 300 troops, so it's likely that 5% is set just a little higher than 150 men for some as yet unknown reason. Archers required 3 units to achieve 5% PO, and represent the least men to accomplish this on the chart, at 180. Then we can note that 2 spears = 150 men were not enough, nor were 4 cav = 160 men, so the actual breakpoint for that first 5% must be (160, 180]. My personal guess is 175 since it's a nice number. Of course after that level my estimate begins to apply, with spear numbers going 4/6/8/10 etc. There's still a few weird things like 19 spears give 50% PO, and only 7 cav = 280 men give 10% PO, but largely the estimate that 150 men = 5% PO holds very well.