TIP: Increasing your recruitment que

[Shahed]

Hi everyone !

Here's a tip which I discovered a while back, thought I'd share it.

• Train units in one settlement.
• Move them to another settlement which also has the buildings required to recruit these units.
• Disband the units.
• Next turn your recruitment que will have these units in it.

You can use this to reduce travel time to the front, and to concentrate your production. In the following example I wanted to centralise most military production to Nottingham.



Hope that's useful for someone.

SALUTE !

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

That's different. Seems like a lot of work, but I guess it could be useful if you know that you're going to have a war soon...

[Shahed]

Most likely you'd be producing units anyway (if you were playing the total war/domination way). I remembered also that I had a high level armorer at Nottingham, so I could have all those armored pikes coming out from ONE spot, nicely and neatly organised into pike & canon armies.

This also helps you to some extent to get rid of your excess cash.

[Doug-Thompson]

The importance of this is that you can reduce maintenance costs massively. Just have a massive buildup right before you attack.

Also, I'm going to use this in my current Hungarian campaign. I have all much of North Italy, but retraining my HA is a major hassle because the closest castle is Bran. Now I've captured a HRE castle at Innsbruck. I'm going to send rookie HA from Bran to Innsbruck and disband them. That way, I won't have to pay maintenance costs and restore my veteran HA after each battle.

Good find, Sinan.

[WhiskeyGhost]

also, it makes getting some of the guilds a little easier for some factions. Like if you want Sherwood Archers, you can just buy and disband your best archer unit in Nottingham over and over to build up the points for the Woodsmans Guild. No more waiting for good units to respawn (which give more points i believe) or filling the gap with fodder units (like peasant archers)

[Kobal2fr]

So in essence you're just paying for them twice to avoid some upkeep ?

[Shahed]

Thanks Doug. Good points Whiskey ! I forgot to mention this but I used it before as English. Indeed that's probably one of the best things, you can have HIGH end units in the ques, mo more waiting ! kobavelli, in essence you don't pay upkeep and can produce a long run of units from a location of your choice. I don't really care about the money, never short of it. It's probably cheaper to pay upkeep but that's not my point, the emphasis is not economic but military.

[Doug-Thompson]

So in essence you're just paying for them twice to avoid some upkeep ?

Yes. An Hungarian Noble unit at full strength costs 210 florins a turn. It costs four turns of upkeep just to move it from Bran to North Italy. The recruitment cost of 750 plus four turns is 1590. (Thanks for the correction, Sinan.)

Just a couple of disbanded rookie units should increase Innsbruck's "pool" enough to keep up with demand until I can build enough stables.

Unlike the Egyptians, for instance, Hungary is an HA faction that cannot build racetracks. It makes the retraining situation more challenging.

I would have made a castle out of one of the Italian towns if they weren't all making money hand over fist.

[Shahed]

That's 1590, if you mean (210*4) + 750 ?.

[DVX BELLORVM]

Sinan, may I ask you, how come you have 5 recruitment slots available in your citadel? I can have only 3. Did you mod it, or am I missing something?

[Shahed]

Sinan, may I ask you, how come you have 5 recruitment slots available in your citadel? I can have only 3. Did you mod it, or am I missing something?

Yeah sure bro, ask away. Well spotted !

I have 5 in citadel because I'm using Foz's castle fix, which gives as follows (IIRC):

Castle => 1 Free upkeep unit, 3 Recruitment slots.
Fortress => 2 Fre upkeep units, 4 Recruitment slots.
Citadel => 3 Free upkeep units, 5 Recruitment slots

Free upkeep is only for those units for which you have the required buildings on location. This enhances the AI as well as the player's game. You get to represent the small nobility through these units. There are also indications that free upkeep in castles was supposed to work. It helps the AI since anything that gives money to the AI helps it become stronger.

Check this...
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=79633

...and this...
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...3&postcount=14

... for a better game ! If you have any futher questions, fire at will.

[DVX BELLORVM]

That's cool, thank you!

[Shahed]

Pleasure.

[frogbeastegg]

Neat!

I wonder if this is an intended feature? Seems a bit powerful, and it substantially bypasses the intended limitations created by the recruitment pools.

[Shahed]

It is a loop, one which can enhance game play or ruin it, this depends on the player's choices. If you use it to enhance the game experience, it sure will. If you exploit it it will ruin your game. I used it in that game and in a game as England to enhance my game, and it sure did.

It was GREAT to have Caen as an archer's academy.

In my game as Scots, it was fantastic to produce my armies almost entirely from Nottingham. I had such a lot of fun in that campaign, small empire, powerful gunpowder and pike armies, it was awesome. Plus the best part was that I had everything 100% under organized military style control. You'd think Attila himself was managing that empire, it was so neat and perfect. I loved it.

Entirely up to you all if and how you use it. Don't ask me how I always end up with these bizarre discoveries because I don't know.
I'd appreciate if my name was not connected to any exploits, as that's not how I play the game, and I don't encourage it.

[Guru]

Another "Sinan Exploit"! An interesting find, though I probably wont be using this; too much work.
-Guru

[Kobal2fr]

Another "Sinan Exploit"! An interesting find, though I probably wont be using this; too much work.
-Guru

Not really, but definitely too much forethought for me. I make it up as I go along, and like in chess only plan maybe one or two turns ahead, tops .

Which is probably one of many reasons I mind-bogglingly suck at chess, come to think of it. (gotta love English syntax. Hurray for improvised words !)

[andrewt]

Thanks Doug. Good points Whiskey ! I forgot to mention this but I used it before as English. Indeed that's probably one of the best things, you can have HIGH end units in the ques, mo more waiting ! kobavelli, in essence you don't pay upkeep and can produce a long run of units from a location of your choice. I don't really care about the money, never short of it. It's probably cheaper to pay upkeep but that's not my point, the emphasis is not economic but military.

Is the recruitment queue only increasing in the place you disbanded them on or every place?

[Shahed]

It only increases by the number that you disband, where you disband them.

[Slaists]

Thanks Doug. Good points Whiskey ! I forgot to mention this but I used it before as English. Indeed that's probably one of the best things, you can have HIGH end units in the ques, mo more waiting ! kobavelli, in essence you don't pay upkeep and can produce a long run of units from a location of your choice. I don't really care about the money, never short of it. It's probably cheaper to pay upkeep but that's not my point, the emphasis is not economic but military.

If the point is not to save upkeep money I am not sure I understand the reasoning behind this tactic. In order to disband you have to have the unit trained somewhere, so you already have it, and obviously have walked it into the province you want it in anyway. Why disband and retrain (unless the motivation is to save upkeep)?

[Shahed]

... to have a larger pool at the recruitment location of your choice.

[Kobal2fr]

Agreed with Slaists : if you don't care about the money anyway, what do you care about the recruitment pool ? Might as well retrain the units there if need be then just keep them up, no ?

[Shahed]

Because you don't want the units active unless you need them and you only want to produce them from the location of your choice, at the time of your choice.

[Kobal2fr]

Because you don't want the units active unless you need them and you only want to produce them from the location of your choice, at the time of your choice.

Then it becomes an upkeep deal, doesn't it ? Why else wouldn't you "want the units active unless you need them" ?

[Slaists]

Because you don't want the units active unless you need them and you only want to produce them from the location of your choice, at the time of your choice.

Agreed with Kobalt: is there any other downside than upkeep to having units "out in the open" rather than in the training pool?

[Flavius Merobaudes]

Armies out in the open led by a captain only might become rebels.

And I like to keep my empire clean so I can easier concentrate on the important things. Concerning my lands I'm kind of an organization freak and everything needs a clear structure. I would not like having stacks standing in the landscape and not use them.

No wise leader would have his army concentrated in one spot in his own territories without a clear mission...

[Shahed]

I like it neat and tidy as well, nothing that's useless is hanging around. M2 campaign map is more an organisation game than anything else, for me. And once again, the whole point is to have units in the que at the location of your choice. You can train them somewhere else and walk them over and have them hang around of course. That's not what I would do and there's no huge downside to doing that, if you do it that way. It's just neater to have them in the que, at the location of your choice.

I'll try to rewrite the first post tomorrow. I think it should have explained it better.
Basically I was hoping the screenshot would do all the talking so I did'nt type much !

[Slaists]

oki doki, understood.

as for me personally: if I need or anticipate needing an army (and have trained it, and can aford its maintenance), I rather prefer to have than disband and re-train later. but that's my personal preference.

however, this method seems a nice way to save on maintenance costs, especially at the beginning of the campaign when the council of nobles grants you those 4 mailed knigts as a mission reward, effectively wiping out your turn profits (not that I ever intend to train many mailed knights though).

[Shahed]

Now there you go, another use. Bravo !
Thinking out of le box !

[Dorkus]

This is excellent for retraining purposes. After a big fight or two at the front, your forces are generally seriously depleted, but also with significant experience. Instead of sending them back into the empire for retraining and then having to send them back to the front, you can send units from all over your empire to your front, plop them down in one city, and instantly retrain your vet troops to full strength.

Incredibly useful for a faction like Byzantium, which otherwise gets a max 3 recruitment pool and very slow growth, on vards. Immediately after taking a castle it takes 5 turns to grow a single unit for retraining!