Does anyone actually use militia units to fight?

[Memnoch]

As opposed to just garrisoning cities. I realise that the Milanese/Venetian/Italian spear militia is of considerably better quality than the average town militia/spear militia from a faction like the Danes, but does anyone use the swordstaff militia or crossbow militia as part of a regular "army"? Or are they just there for the free upkeep and for autocalcing rebel encounters?

I've developed this habit of using my militia as the latter - a sort of city police. I hardly even get them to fight, unless they're fighting low-quality rebels. When high-quality rebels pop up I'll always use regular army troops like Dismounted Knights or Huscarls or my cavalry to put them down...

[KHPike]

Generally, I build my archers and light horses and support units here. I keep one city beside my castles for this purpose. I build my siege equipment and ships in cities too.

However, when units with the 'long range missiles' attribute appears, I usually stop building militia archers.

[pike master]

militia units can usually be upgraded quite a bit like militia halberds and pikemen. im not sure if swordstaff starts out with partial plate or if they have to be upgraded too. but from my experience with swordstaff militia they appear to be a tough unit. they just suffer from the same problem all halberdier units have. they are too slow.

[Tuidjy]

I use the Russian crossbow militia as my primary missile unit. But that is
because I play with 'house rules' that limit the type of squads that I can
have in an army.

I love the power of the heavy cavalry in this game, but I hate its low price
and ease of recruiting. Thus I limit myself:

In my whole empire, I cannot have more 'drugina' units than provinces.
Each general can have a dvor (court) unit, and each drugina can have a
unit of youngsters (boyar's sons). Kazahs and Cossacks can be built only
in steppes provinces, and no more than three per province. Militia cavalry
can only be used in cities' garisons, and operates (mostly against rebels) no
more than a province away from its home base. Tzar guards only escort the
Grand Duke and his heir, and are limited to three each.

My noblemen do not fight dismounted, so all of my infantry has to be made
up of of citizens and peasants. I only wish that I could dismount my cavalry
before battle. Taking cities with these 'house rules' heavily relies on siege
engines and spies.

[IrishArmenian]

Only when I'm playing as an Italian faction.

[Foz]

How much I use city units as frontline fighters really depends what faction I'm playing. Some factions have terrible city-recruitable units and pretty much run entirely from castles. England is one I think of for this category, though even then some of the higher city-recruitable units are useful. Archer militia can be useful especially early in the game when you can't get ahold of better archer units in large quantities, and bill militia units remain useful as flankers pretty much forever. Other factions have amazing city units and pretty much can ignore castles entirely. Still others of course have a few more useful city units and so represent some sort of middle ground.

To the extent possible, I do recommend fielding some city units as part of field armies. There are several reasons for this:

1. It is better for you economically. Each stack will cost less to produce due to including some city units, and is also usually cheaper to upkeep as the city units are typically cheaper in that aspect too. This also means you can field and support considerably more armies at the same time, which gives a much greater amount of flexibility. Additionally, your lesser reliance on castles allows you to keep fewer of them around, adding invaluable income due to the extra castles you can flip into cities instead.
2. It is a better use of your resources. If your castles must bear all the brunt of your army building, they will become your limiting factor, while your cities sit idle. If you field units from both, full stack armies come out more quickly.
3. It is a better strategic option. Some factions offer decent city troops for melee fighting or for archers, and many have good anti-cavalry options: better-than-normal spears, and/or halberd/pike militia. Recruiting those units for use in the field lets you keep your castles focused on whatever the cities can't provide, and you'll end up with more well-rounded armies as a result.
4. It is better defensively. It puts frontline city acquisitions to work right away supporting army production, which in turn means your front lines more often have sizeable garrisons sitting around even without effort on your part. It also means any given settlement you take over can contribute something to your army and retrain some portion of its troops.

As for what units to include, obviously recruit any gunpowder units you can with preference. Other useful units include crossbow militias, swordsmen, any and all above average spears, halberds, and pikes. I'm not particularly fond of militia cavalry, but I'm sure they can find good use in a similar role to how people use hobilars: flanking, harassment, running down routers, etc. Granted they won't run as fast (they have the medium speed mount IIRC), but they have considerably better defense and so should still be useful (I easily use knights for hunting routers a lot of the time, and some of them have the med mount while some are slowest).

Hope that helps.

[Moah]

I've just conquered the world as Scotland making constant use of Pike Militia. The Basic pike militia are dirt cheap but effective, the heavy pike have armour and are more resistant to archers. Cavalry choices are limited as scotland but I have Hospitallers so in general terms.

Convert all but a few castles to cities (1 castle per "nation" - Nottingham, Toledo, Toulouse).

Castles produce Highland Archers.

Cities produce Pike Milita (but as you have more of them also cannon, ships, spies, diplomats etc)

As Hospitaller guilds survive conversion I recruit the best Knights from both cities and Castles! Antwerp (city) had a guild as did Caen (castle) allowing me to produce 6 hospitallers in one turn, or 3 archers and 3 pikes.

Interestingly I've found this combination unstoppable. Compared to my previous campaign as france (knights, knights and more knights!) world domination has been slower (took my around 70 turns to win, instad of 55 with france on VH/VH) but less hard, if that makes sense.

Although the armies have been slower I have never felt threatened even when at war with the entire world. In fact I don't think i've lost a single city once I've taken it. A combined pike/archer army (with a handful of knights/generals) seems pretty unstoppable - even against HA armies.

[Shaun]

I use large armies of Pike Militia with full armour upgrades, and also some halberd militia.
As an Italian faction I use lots of Italian Spear militia, they are cheaper than armoured sergeants, come earlier and can be upgraded to be the same level.
As Muslims, I use Saracen Militia a lot.
I also use swordsmen militia quite a bit as well.

[ASPER THE GREAT]

Cheep, cheep, cheep yes I use jav/spear all the time and I like the peasant archers better than the X-bows "FIRE" is great and the rate of fire is better too!!!! You can upgrade armor/weapon and they are pretty tough, you can also retrain and it don't cost as much.

[PureFodder]

They excell at going in first while my decent units circle round the flanks.

[JCoyote]

I love Swordsman Militia. Good in melee, good for defending walls, and inexpensive enough I don't mind having my artillery shoot through them.

[Quillan]

The level 4 barracks "militia" and the level 5 pike militia seem to be uniformly good. As Spain, I used a lot of swordsmen militia as front line combatants, and pike militia were a staple part of my later Venetian armies. I've seen Voulge and Halberd militia do very well also. Bill militia sucks, but that's only because of the 2h axe bug. I've fought a number of battles with town militia and spear militia units, but only when I'm forced by circumstances. Otherwise I use better units instead. When it comes to militia missile troops, it varies. I use archer militia only for garrisons unless I have no choice. Normal crossbow militia is the same. Pavise crossbow militia, of course, is wonderful stuff and I'd make heavy use of them.

[pat the magnificent]

i in my milanese campaign i don't have a single castle

[Slaists]

If one applies a shield fix, the militia fares pretty good on the battlefield. I use them frequently, as fodder and filler-upper mostly though.

[Memnoch]

Hmm...maybe I should use my Sword Staff Militia a bit more then. I don't think I've ever used my militia (except for Merchant Cavalry in places with Merchant Guilds) for anything other than interior troops to put down rebels (at least not once I started to have Viking Warriors and Peasant Archers available).

[zstajerski]

In short: NO!
In long: Not unless I really have to, like when i have no other unit available for recruiting in the ammount i need
In general: Militia's suck ass (once my 4 units of archer militia were routed by 1 unit of woodsmen and 2 units of peasants) any more questions about militia

[Drunkin General]

A unit is a unit, just because CA has tagged the unit with the word militia dosen't mean it is in any way inferior to the so called "professional" solider. I don't use units because of their names, I use them based on how they perform in battle, availability & probably most important is their upkeep.

[Sheogorath]

Depends on the faction.
With some factions you need a good pinning unit which can hold guys in place for you to wallop from afar.

Scotland for example. Their militia pikes are great for pinning enemies while you cirlce around with some nobles.

And with the Russians you dont have much choice initially, since your armies need at least some infrantry.

And there IS the general satisfaction of rushing a full stack of spear militia through the broken enemy gate and watching the massive fistfight which ensues.

[King Bob VI]

In my Egytian campaign I'm using Halberd militia and Saracen Militia as my front line infantry, is this a good strategy or are there better options?

[KHPike]

They're decent and are slightly better than standard militia units. Decent frontline infantry but don't expect them to hold out for too long. Follow up with flanking quickly.

[Ciaran]

My late game armies rely heavily on militia, namely Pike and Halbert Militia, as well as Arquebusiers. The castles supply the necessary additionals, Gothic Knights, Reiters and Zweihänder. You could say my cannons are militia-grade also, since I train them in my cities (only there I can also build the university line to improve them).

[Garnier]

In the later period of my english campaigns, in my traditional army of:

2 knights, 1 hobilar, 2 dismnted kn.s, 3 armoured sergeants, 3 billmen (or heavy billmen in some armies), and 4 longbows. I sometimes have armies with a makeup like this:

1 merch cavalry (or demi-lancers later on), 1 hobilar, 3 armoured swords, 3 spear militia, 3 bill militia (sometimes heavy), 4 archer militia.

To make the battles harder I have no general with the army (makes a huge difference) and neverr more than 15 unit stacks.

[gardibolt]

In my English game I use spear and archer militia to fight all the time. The spearmen in particular are decently tough in schiltrom.

Town militia is pretty useless, other than public order purposes.

[GuyofJerusalem]

I often use militia to make battles harder and also because I have very few castles. It is great to watch spear militia or whatnot kick ass of advanced armies.

As the Moors in one of the first games I played, I once had to sub out all the old spear militia and arab cavalry and used them with poor generals to attack Western Europe just for kicks. To my dismay they killed everything, even advanced knights just so long you flank them properly.

[Doug-Thompson]

As Muslims, I use Saracen Militia a lot.

Ditto.

[alex9337]

I have used full stack city militia armies to attack enemy cities that I have spied on and can see that there are not many enemies garrisoned there.

This solves the problem for me of having to move my conquering (castle built) army out and back to a castle to "re-stock" my armies. With the proper buildings in the newly taken city, I will eventually be able to "re-stock" the conquering army without ever having to have them leave; they are in their new "home".