Noob question: How does army work

[MyTurdsEatPPL]

I know how basic battles work but how do Army compositions work and more importantly how do i get a bigger army

[Kimlin]

Here watch this, it is a lot easier than typing all aspects on my phone.

https://youtu.be/f7t9Sz93F-A

[Mr Conspicuous]

Short answer.

You build barracks, military camps, in your settlements. Also you can create men at arms regiments they're active standing army and best troops overall. How many troops you can muster is based off your characters military skill, your spouse's military skill, and your marshal's military skill, and level title you hold... emperor will be able to muster the most troops.

All this is well and good but if you do not have gold income you will be in the negative very quickly. You have to balance your income/troop count or you can find yourself in a lot of trouble. When you have a negative balance your troops do want to fight if they're not being paid.

[Supply Slut]

Originally posted by MyTurdsEatPPL:

I know how basic battles work but how do Army compositions work and more importantly how do i get a bigger army

Your army has 3 main components:

Levies: these are conscripted peasants from your lands. They are weak, poorly trained, poorly equipped. These are the weakest soldiers you can have, and frequently the biggest portion of your army. They come from lands you hold directly or a portion of the levies from land your vassals hold.

Men-at-arms: these are professional soldiers. You hire a company of (usually) 100 of them at a time. You get a cap on how many companies you can have and the company max size is also capped. Both can be increased from increase in rank, technology, dynasty perks etc.

Men-at-arms continued: these have a lot more variety than the other two components of your army. You can hire heavy infantry, archers, light or heavy cavalry, siege equipment… all manner of things. And they each counter or are countered by different types of other men-at-arms. These troops vary in stats, but in general they are much better than levies. Hiring and maintaining men at arms costs gold, more when you’re actively fielding these troops, less when they are at full strength and not being used.

And finally:

Knights/champions: these are characters who serve as warriors in your army. The important stats here are prowess and knight effectiveness. At base of 100% knight effectiveness a single point of prowess on a knight translates to 10 times the damage of a single levy. So a 10 prowess knight is doing as much damage as 100 levies. Knight effectiveness is a modifier for this: 175% knight effectiveness means your 10 prowess knight is now doing as much damage as 175 levies.

In most cases a combination of these 3 components makes a good army: levy’s to be fodder, they are mostly there to die. And then men at arms or knights (or both) as your heavy hitters.

[MarkFranz]

Originally posted by MyTurdsEatPPL:

I know how basic battles work but how do Army compositions work and more importantly how do i get a bigger army

Ignore army composition entirely. Spam single MMA type, which have best stats, and build buildings what increase that MMA stats. As well as ones that improve Knights, as you can make space marines out of knights if build right buildings which increase they efficiency.

[Kimlin]

Originally posted by JF:

Originally posted by MarkFranz:

Ignore army composition entirely. Spam single MMA type, which have best stats, and build buildings what increase that MMA stats. As well as ones that improve Knights, as you can make space marines out of knights if build right buildings which increase they efficiency.

I think this strategy will be obsolete by the next patch tough. They are reworking buildings and MAA, and one of the stated goal is to nerf this way of playing.

Was that a stated goal? I must have missed that.

[Kimlin]

Originally posted by JF:

Originally posted by Kimlin:

Was that a stated goal? I must have missed that.

Quote from the last Dev Diary : "Buildings used to give global bonuses to various MaA types, which would either be very underwhelming (the bonuses are quite low individually) or extremely overpowered (Building barracks everywhere and having nothing but Heavy Infantry MaA would let you defeat anything and anyone). For this reason, we’ve introduced Men-at-Arms Stationing."

Even if you don’t build any buildings for MaA, it’s still a better strategy to build 1 single type. This isn’t going to change that.