Limit Recruitment of Certain Units

[Seikales]

I believe that some units in the game are too easily recruited and it makes pretty weird wars.

First of all, certain units require nobility or some physical traits, which you can not find in abundance. You just can not have 6 armies walking around full of Knights in shining armor, or perfect archers or pikemen. You just simply can not create an archer out of everybody, it takes some skill.

The same for all units. There was a reason for most armies in Medieval times to be made of what we call rabble, simple because there were a lot of them.

Plus, some people eventualy die. It simply does not make sense for a unit you create to stay around forever when your leaders, generals and even merchants die. They die, they get replaced, if they are sustained units. That means, they take up possible recruits. And this also means that they will limit other units to be formed off constantly.

In addition, it does not make sense to be able to recruit and sustain soo large armies in small provinces. How on the world are you going to feed them? Remember that they did not have 'canned food' or 'protein packs' to feed them, they fed from the local population and that can only be possible if it is large enough a region.

So, in short, I believe unit recruitment shall be totaly reconsidered. Putting more reality to the game will make it harder, thus answering all the pleas for countless demands on better campaigns. If all you could recruit is a few good units and large numbers of rabble, then you will see you just can not roll over whole world in a few turns.

[sapi]

I'll answer these in turn (all imo)

1) While you're right about nobility and the like, it's up to the player to restrict what he buys. If you feel that way then it's within your power to play historically.

2) You have a point, but can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have your best army just 'die off' in the middle of a war?

3) No. No. No. TW games do [i]not[i] need logistics. There's enough complaints about micromanagement as it is (with the agents) and any more will just lead to the game becoming frustrating. If CA came up with a novel way of implementing this (eg. having dynamic food stocks in cities, so that if a province was supporting thousands of troops it couldn't withstand siege for very long) that'd be fine, but it needs to be done carefully.

Finally, welcome to the Org

[Wardo]

I felt annoyed when I started a game as Milan and met Venetian Archers in full plate by the ~1100's (1 year per turn) while I could barely get units wearing chainmail (the Genoese Crossbowmen) myself.

I don't like seeing widespread plate especially early on. Sure, an expanded big Empire may be able to afford them in high numbers. Venice's wealth aside, it's just silly for me to finally conquer Venice and not be able to build plate units. Where did they got their plate from? By magic? I prefer to remove this priviledge, even if Venice should be rich enough to have widespread plate early on, I'd prefer to lock infantry plated units to a later date. It's more fun to have an evolution of warfare, technology and equipment. This is what I like in RTW's mod Europa Barbarorum. Starting with dirty cheap unarmored or barely armored Romans and getting to the widespread chainmailed Legionnaire.

Give me my spear rabble alright and let me upgrade them after establishing myself by the 1300's/1400's, but don't give me an enemy with plate archer-knights only a few turns into the game.

[sapi]

@Wardo - i find the opposite - pretty much everything i face is markedly technologically inferior to my troops, leading to pushover battles :(

[JCoyote]

Part of soldiers not dying off of old age is that they don't have names individually. The upkeep cost involves attrition and replacement of the individuals in the unit... only generals and royals who are not easily replaceable are seen to die.

[PureFodder]

I find the same. My armies of Lancers and knights are regularly forced to butcher the AIs poor little militia armies.

[TevashSzat]

Like sapi said, it would be impossible to have units that deteriorate slowly since it would deter lots of people from the game. Logistics might be able to be implemented, but like sapi said it would take a lot of work to get it in smoothly. As for being able to recruit nobility for your armies, i think you can put troop limits like agents and restrict the number of feudal knights you had say to 4 for every province which would make sense since the number of nobles you have is directly proportinate to how much land you have

[Seikales]

I am not suggesting to deteoriate a unit due to age. What I meant there that available pool for recruitments is allready used up when you have large numbers of units, just to keep them fit and full sized.

I do not suggest a total re-wamp of the units, or introduce more micromanagement. I just suggest that it should be real hard (for both the player and the AI) to recruit realy strong units.

And I still insist upon the point that perhaps the size of the army that is possible to sustain in a region has to do with the size of the city there, just to make logical gameplaying.

And I totaly agree with the fact that while I can hardly produce any units of significant value in my established cities, how come the 'rebels' end up with great units that spawn out of villages and farm lands in general is nonsense.

People use the stupidity of AI and probable flaws in game mechanics to win the game early. It is not that the game is easy, it is flawed intrinsicly that allows you to achieve an improbable goal through giving you too much possible power. If you were given weaker hands, the AI won't be outsmarted that badly.

So, once again, I say that some unit recruitment shall be limited or should spawn real slow. Upkeep of good units shall be considerably higher. Generals qualities and experience shall play more role in war then superb units en-masse...

And thanks for the welcome :) Hope you all enjoy the game more after the discussions we make, which is also a hope that CA somehow cares and listens.

[General Zhukov]

You just can not have 6 armies walking around full of Knights in shining armor, or perfect archers or pikemen.

I was thinking about solutions to this problem, and the idea of hard caps based on the amount of producing structures came up. But weird situations occur in that scheme, like large empires fielding armies in one place precluding the building of forces on opposite sides of the empire. No, no. The best solution appears to be slower recruitment and/or higher upkeeps for cream units. Lusted took this route in his mod. Of course, large armies of expensive horse and sword troops will already strain most factions during the early and mid periods. It's in the late game when massive armies of elites become feasible.

Plus, some people eventualy die. It simply does not make sense for a unit you create to stay around forever when your leaders, generals and even merchants die.

Upkeep cost handles the sustenance of generic units in a nice, unobtrusive way, I think. A small change that would help realism would be if units lost experience slowly after not engaging in battle for a while. Bronze chevrons could probably be maintained by drill/discipline, and would not decrease, but the idea that units who've earned silver and gold chevrons in battle will stay that hard-edged forever isn't realistic.

[dopp]

I think he means having unit caps based on the production buildings available, just like how you can only have as many priests as you have churches (I think). So, for example, a stables would say "Chivalric Knights: 4", but this would not refer simply to how large the recruitment pool for that settlement is (as it does now), but would be an absolute limit on the number of Chivalric Knights you could have in play at any time. If you built another stables somewhere else, then you could have 8 Chivalrics in play, and so on.

Edit: Having unit caps like this will also prevent people from having something like one castle for troops and 10 cities just generating income, because they would be limited to the number of troops the castle could support.

[zarker]

doesn't it depend on which faction you're playing?

Greeks and Romans were just too far ahead technologically of any other army that most battles were puchovers. for the greeks, only persia (and maybe egypt) were a match for them. And Roman armies just out-desciplined the hell out of everybody.

I read Alexander's (the great) history, and I couldn't believe how the hell he conquered so much territory, and faught so many battles, with practically the same army he started out with. Very little atrition there! Almost the same story for Ceaser J. Yet nearly all the Total-War scenarios have massive attrition rates.

I'm not complaining. I never wanted to grow up to be general when i was a kid, just somebody who liked playing absorbing computer games.

[JCoyote]

Yet nearly all the Total-War scenarios have massive attrition rates.

Well part of that is the high resistance to routing we're seeing. It used to be, you could to route an enemy much easier and the attrition for neither army was as high. Now you have to knock them down a small fraction of their starting strength, AND the rally back into the fight when they are combat ineffective.

[Cos3]

Don't give CA ideas for thier next game. I'm all for realism, but I couldn't stand it if units were continually depleted due to old age or disease. To be honest I would prefer micromanaging logistics instead of dealing with agents endlessly.

As the player, it's up to you to decide your army compositions. Play relatively historical army compositions and feel a little satisfaction winning some battles, or cheese your way through the game filling your armies with only the best units reducing even further the chance for a challenging battle.

Generally, the A.I doesn't use enough of the more elite units, so the problem lies with the player. We should be thinking of more ways to force the A.I to build more professional armies, not restrict it.

[zarker]

well - at least MTW2 is moving in the right direction, over RTW. I notice the retraining of depleted units is now capped. I've stopped saving the few lucky survivors for retraining. I now disband and re-recruit.

[Matty]

well - at least MTW2 is moving in the right direction, over RTW. I notice the retraining of depleted units is now capped. I've stopped saving the few lucky survivors for retraining. I now disband and re-recruit.

But if I retrain my half dozen remaining 3 chevron soldiers, the whole new team comes out at 3 chevrons, AFAIR. If I merge units, the skills are merged which often leads to (an appropriate) reduction in total unit skill.

And I role play the recruitment by limiting myself to one troop producing castle. Otherwise with my 300,000 florin bank account I could just steam roller anyone. Any losses then become more serious as replacements are a long way off...

[zarker]

yes - i noticed that too - maybe the unit retrains the replacements - passing on gained knowledge/expertise?