Recruiting better troops

[MF]

Newbie here again. So yay I actually won a battle honestly. What a slaughter on both sides. So I'm mustering troops to replenish the ranks, and I'm also constructing buildings here and there which supposedly will let me recruit higher quality troops.

So questions. Do I have to go to the town where that building is located in order to get those specific troops, and do I have to disband my existing units first, or do they just get 'upgraded' ?

TIA

[Yews]

Recruitment is provincial; even if your chariot assembly building is in Mycenae, but you own both Mycenae and Corinth, a hero who’s currently in the wilderness around Corinth will be still be able to recruit chariot units. If the same hero steps into Tirynthia he won’t be able to recruit chariots anymore even if you entirely own Tirynthia, since he’s no longer in Mycenaeca which is the province where you built the chariot assembly building.

I think the maximum number of units under a single hero is 19 but if I’m not mistaken it can be increased with unique traits or something.

There are unit upgrades in the game, where some unit is an improved version of a worse unit and you can select an already existing unit and click ‘upgrade’ and turn it into a better version of itself, but the only culture that can do this that I know of is the Amazons whose entire recruitment system revolves around recruiting the worst imaginable units and gradually turning them into overpowered versions of themselves. Not sure if this is a thing with Mycenae.

On the campaign map you can merge units that suffered enough losses for their separate strengths to amount to less than or equal to a full strength unit via selecting both and pressing Ctrl+M. Potentially if a hero’s entire force is damaged badly enough for all the units to be at around 5% of a full unit’s strength, Ctrl+M will merge all the survivors into a single unit.

[MF]

Originally posted by Yews:

Recruitment is provincial; even if your chariot assembly building is in Mycenae, but you own both Mycenae and Corinth, a hero who’s currently in the wilderness around Corinth will be still be able to recruit chariot units. If the same hero steps into Tirynthia he won’t be able to recruit chariots anymore even if you entirely own Tirynthia, since he’s no longer in Mycenaeca which is the province where you built the chariot assembly building.

I think the maximum number of units under a single hero is 19 but if I’m not mistaken it can be increased with unique traits or something.

There are unit upgrades in the game, where some unit is an improved version of a worse unit and you can select an already existing unit and click ‘upgrade’ and turn it into a better version of itself, but the only culture that can do this that I know of is the Amazons whose entire recruitment system revolves around recruiting the worst imaginable units and gradually turning them into overpowered versions of themselves. Not sure if this is a thing with Mycenae.

On the campaign map you can merge units that suffered enough losses for their separate strengths to amount to less than or equal to a full strength unit via selecting both and pressing Ctrl+M. Potentially if a hero’s entire force is damaged badly enough for all the units to be at around 5% of a full unit’s strength, Ctrl+M will merge all the survivors into a single unit.

Once again, thanks so much.

Hot damn this game has some interesting mechanics. Hot take on the Ctrl+M ha ha - I really could've used that last night.

[valky]

Originally posted by MF:

Hot damn this game has some interesting mechanics. Hot take on the Ctrl+M ha ha - I really could've used that last night.

CTRL + select the same unit(s) and RMB on some of the selected units is basically the same :) It's not limited to only 2 units, just use better judgement while selecting the units you wanna merge. (edit: you should see a merge-icon)

^above; it's also wise to built 2 recruitment provinces - one for dedicated melee & one for ranged. Ranged recruitment province should have at best 1 wood region (or 2) as a specific building provides ammo on recruitment + combined with a shrine of Artemis.
Melee units don't matter, but the shrine - preferable Ares (attack) or Athena (defense), depending your preference.
Hephaestus can retro-upgrade any unit in that specific province, so it's usually the last one I built.

[on a weird sidenote: there used to exist 2 provinces with 3 (!) wood, so the recruited ranged ones got a crapton of bonus ammo, but they patched it for the better and now there are only 2 or 3 provinces with 2 sub-regions of wood: still a crazy boost. Lycia has access to 1 of them right away ^^]

[MF]

Hmmmmmm was hoping to have a go at Corinth over lunch here at the office. I have 20 units raring to go. Only for some inexplicable reason my save from last night didn't make it up to the cloud, even though Steam clearly told me that it had. Now that's incredibly odd and more than a little frustrating. Hope those save files are still on my PC at home - it took a lot of turns to get back to strength.

[Yews]

Province specialisation is a somewhat advanced aspect of the gameplay; ideally you should have particular provinces (or encampments if you are not settled) that produce units while other provinces (/encampments) provide the military ones with resources; livestock and so on. How many provinces you have to specialise and what exactly they should specialise in depends on the faction, as well as the stage of the campaign. For instance normally as any faction you want to focus on chariots early on, but as Mycenae you might prefer to expand into Arcadia where centaurs dwell, and focus on them instead of chariots, simply because they are close enough and although few, more effective.

[MF]

Originally posted by Yews:

Province specialisation is a somewhat advanced aspect of the gameplay; ideally you should have particular provinces (or encampments if you are not settled) that produce units while other provinces (/encampments) provide the military ones with resources; livestock and so on. How many provinces you have to specialise and what exactly they should specialise in depends on the faction, as well as the stage of the campaign. For instance normally as any faction you want to focus on chariots early on, but as Mycenae you might prefer to expand into Arcadia where centaurs dwell, and focus on them instead of chariots, simply because they are close enough and although few, more effective.

Still not quite sure how to get better troops. I've built better buildings etc in Corinth (which I just took) as well as my home capital, but I still only get the same choice of units when I muster. Right clicking on the building type tells me that I should be able to recruit, for example, shielded spearmen. But nope. Just the usual tavern dregs when I go home.

If I have to own the entire province that brings up another problem. I'm on great terms with Argos, but all of a sudden they swooped in and took Stymphalos (and I got a message to the effect that 'the Corinthians' were no more). So what do I do to take that town now and complete my province ? I want to build a temple and I need a town with an empty slot, so to speak. It looks like I'll have to declare war on my closest ally and trading partner ?

[Yews]

Just conquer a comparable settlement elsewhere and offer it to Diomedes in exchange for Stymphalos. I’ve had a situation where I captured Athens and Marathon with the help of Odysseus who was coincidentally raiding the area, but he seized the opportunity and got its hands on Thorikos while Hippolyta settled Keos. Naturally I wanted Attica whole so while in a game without settlement trading I’d have to resort to sabotage or blunt war against both, here I just exploited the fact that Lycomedes declared war on me, came to the Sporades where he lived, got rid of him, and handed over the formerly his settlements Peparethos to the Amazons and Skyros to Ithaca (or perhaps the other way around — don’t remember because there was no difference to me what to offer to whom). Both Odyssey and Hippolyta welcomed the offers so much that they even paid me a lot in every resource on top of the settlement exchange itself.

I have no idea what’s going on with your recruitment. A couple pictures could help.

I think you can’t set up an altar outside of a real city like Mycenae.

[MF]

Originally posted by Yews:

Just conquer a comparable settlement elsewhere and offer it to Diomedes in exchange for Stymphalos. I’ve had a situation where I captured Athens and Marathon with the help of Odysseus who was coincidentally raiding the area, but he seized the opportunity and got its hands on Thorikos while Hippolyta settled Keos. Naturally I wanted Attica whole so while in a game without settlement trading I’d have to resort to sabotage or blunt war against both, here I just exploited the fact that Lycomedes declared war on me, came to the Sporades where he lived, got rid of him, and handed over the formerly his settlements Peparethos to the Amazons and Skyros to Ithaca (or perhaps the other way around — don’t remember because there was no difference to me what to offer to whom). Both Odyssey and Hippolyta welcomed the offers so much that they even paid me a lot in every resource on top of the settlement exchange itself.

I have no idea what’s going on with your recruitment. A couple pictures could help.

I think you can’t set up an altar outside of a real city like Mycenae.

Hmmm the lack of building slots means I have to actually 'think' about what I wanna build.

As for swapping villages - that's a very interesting idea. Not sure how I'll do that but I do know I don't want to go to war with Argos. it just feels sleazy and it'll hurt my rep as I have agreements with him.

God I sound like a politician.

[valky]

Learn & play :)
it's a f* good game....

You might try Odysseus and play the whole quest-chain, if you are interested in some Illias lessons, you will be rewarded :P
'twas my absolute highlight in the whole game!

[Captain Baldy]

It's a beautiful game that's for sure
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3136456927

[MF]

Originally posted by valky:

Learn & play :)
it's a f* good game....

You might try Odysseus and play the whole quest-chain, if you are interested in some Illias lessons, you will be rewarded :P
'twas my absolute highlight in the whole game!

Yeah I've been at it a few times today, kicking ass and then getting my own handed right back to me. At one point I got myself a general, but he seemed to take over for the next battle. I think it might be because Agamemnon was still in traction after the fight outside Corinth.

Thank goodness for 'Save Game'. I'm going to have at it all over again :P.

Learning very slowly. Starting to get maybe a wee bit of muscle memory going in my right hand to direct the troops but it is definitely NOT second nature as with other games. Still - freaking love it.