The FAUST guide and free garrison units

**Guyus Germanicus** · 07-30-2007, 05:27

I was noticing something during one of my campaigns that I wondered if anyone else noticed. In Brandybarrel's FAUST guide he talks about units that are 'Free City Garrison.' In the guide, pretty much any unit that is a militia unit qualifies as a free city garrison. Hence, the unit does not get charged to your faction's troop carrying costs when it is garrisoned.

But it appears that those unit types that qualify for free garrison status have to be recruited in the city they are garrisoned. If they are recruited in that city you can literally fill up the 20 openings for garrison troops with them and the entire garrison is a freebie. Your faction is not charged for them. If, however, they are moved out of that city, or they are moved into another city different from where they were recruited, they are charged to your faction at the normal carry-cost rate.

Also, since you can not recruit militia units from castles, no castles can be garrisoned for free. A bummer, but apparently that's the case. For example, the Mamluks start out with two units of militia spearmen in Gaza. They are not free of garrison charges since they were not recruited from Gaza (and couldn't be since apparently no castle can recruit militia units.)

Also, if you have any question as to what units are being charged to your faction in any given city, you can run your cursor over a unit in a city, and the unit will tell you whether it's a free garrison charge or not.

So when you're looking at the FAUST chart on which units are freebies, you have to remember that those units that are free garrison units have to be recruited from the city they are being garrisoned at before they are qualified to be freebies. And, you can't remove them from garrison duty, apparently, to another city and get them garrisoned for free.

If anyone has noticed anything different, feel free to chime in here. If I've missed something, Guild veterans are welcome to correct any mistatements here. But that's how the game appears to work to me. Forgive me if I'm repeating an observation that was already brought up in another thread.

I going to assume Brandybarrel has already noticed this qualification, and I'm just a Johnny-come-lately.

**phonicsmonkey** · 07-30-2007, 05:42

actually I'm pretty sure you can move militia units around and still have them form part of a free garrison, so long as there are free garrison slots available in the destination city

the key is that the free garrison size is limited by the size of the city - so a huge city gets more free garrison slots than a large city. those slots can only be taken up by certain types of militia unit, regardless of where they were trained

you can tell which troops in a city are free of upkeep because the unit card has a dark blue background

there are mods which activate the free garrison script for castles - one of which is carl's problemfixer - different kinds of units are then allowed to be free of upkeep when garrisoned in castles

I don't think it matters where you train them

**supadodo** · 07-30-2007, 05:51

This is some stuff I noticed.

The militia unit only gets free upkeep if the city has the building to produce them. Example: City Watch builds Saracen militia so if you do not have city watch and you garrison a saracen militia in it, you still have to pay for the upkeep.

The maximum free upkeep for a huge city is 6 and 1 less for every lesser city. And like phonicsmonkey said, you can tell by the dark blue card. Conveniently, the Ai automatically makes your militias with the highest upkeep free.

**ReiseReise** · 07-30-2007, 07:33

Supa is right. And i'll reiterate.

The unit does not have to be from that city, but you must be able to produce it there. (So for european factions your spear militias are NOT free in a town with only level 1 barracks). However you can move them between cities and they will be free if they can both produce them, and this is actually a blessing because IRL militias are protecting their homes and a militia unit from London would have no reason to be stationed in some God forsaken French pigsty, however the game sees no difference.

Bigger cities get more free units, from 2 to 6 i believe depending on the size.

The computer does a pretty good job of selecting which troops are free, eg it will make a full unit free instead of a partial unit when there is a choice.

Castles don't get free units, as they are (supposedly) garrisoned by professional soldiers instead of militias.

**Gray Beard** · 07-30-2007, 11:21

I use the Lands to Conquer and Anno Domini mods. I think that both of those give you the ability to garrison up to 20 militias in a city or town for free as well as in a fort. If not, I've been doing better economically than I though I was.