Modelling recruitment (the "mercenary" alternative)

[Enguerrand de Sarnéac]

** Levies would be very cheap to raise but ruinously expensive to maintain (to reflect damage to crops, etc). You might need to script the disbanding of levies for the AI. Regular soldiers would have a lower ongoing cost, but a higher initial one (to reflect training, etc). Mercenaries would probably fall in-between these two extremes.

Exactly what I thought a few weeks ago, but didn't dare to say. Perhaps the MIC system shouldn't be totally abandoned (I really like it) but there should be some cheap one-season-levies available. Levies should be incredibly expensive to maintain, have the same bad value on the field, but should be ridiculously cheap. Regular troops the other way around (I can't really believe that the food of professional troops of a nation are it's main expense) If one raises an army, on the contrary, it would be devastating for a nation to upkeep it more than one year. It's not mainly the enemy armies that were historically devastating in war.
It would be a little unfortunate that the descriptions of the levies, written with so much attention and care, are disregarded by garissoning your towns by 240-men-units of Akontistai...

It's funny that you thought exactly of the same system like I did I don't think the EB team will change though, too much work done already on the current system...