The Design of Levies Achieves the Opposite of What it Sets Out to Do

[wingren013]

So as the manual informs us, levies are a troop type that gains experience slowly and provides a large refund of its cost when disbanded.

Standing army units and mercenaries on the other hand, have fast xp gain, but provide a limited refund when disbanding (none for the mercs actually)

The refund on disbanding seems to point towards you being intended to raise levies as needed, however the slow xp gain encourages us to play the other way. You almost never want to get rid of levy units because their xp is so difficult to gain and so precious.

Standing army units on the other hand, can be disbanded without a huge worry about leveling the ones you recruit next.

My suggestion to remedy this is to add an xp decay to all units. With the rate for levies being much faster. So keeping experienced levies around is near impossible without constantly being at war. You could reduce this decay rate with military expertise possibly.

This would encourage disbanding levies rather than hoarding them, and using your standing army units as an experienced core you want to maintain between campaigns.

[loki1006]

well fortunately it doesn't work - or is described - as you set out

there is no rebate on disband of levies but 50% for SAU (14.4.2)

in practice levies often gain a large allocation of XP when raised, key here are buildings, overall military experience and the military stat of any governor.

the speed they gain from combat is glacial

now whether they are worth keeping into peace time is very situational. If you have plenty of cash then less incentive to disband, clearly if you are short of cash strong reason to disband.

In general my mindset is to build as big a cash mountain as I can in peace as sooner or later you are going to get into the sort of war that triggers medium war weariness (which really hurts) or a low admin ruler (and thus high court costs). There are ruler traits as well that really hit you.

I've only rarely seen my levies get over 2* of experience, I've often had SAU at 4* or better. The point is the former can also be achieved by judicious recruitment.

But its not hard wired, the game suggests not keeping levies and in the main that is a sound way to play. It doesn't force their disband leaving it to your judgement

[PocusFR]

As Loki says, it's just not worth the running cost to keep levies indefinitely, only to have them ultimately reach experience level 2. It's a bad ROI.

[cranky corvid]

Originally posted by loki1006:

there is no rebate on disband of levies but 50% for SAU (14.4.2)

Untrue, disbanded levies definitely give resources back.

[prenticea]

Early on I disband levies alot as they are bad value for manpower compared to SAU. Later on I hit the SAU cap, and so start growing my levy collection.

I tend to hire mercenaries either on a very short term basis or when they are actually cheap (slinger and javelin skirmishers are good VFM)

Early on the ceiling tends to be manpower and metal, later, its more often money due to the price of perpetual war.

[diji]

Originally posted by loki1006:

I've only rarely seen my levies get over 2* of experience, I've often had SAU at 4* or better. The point is the former can also be achieved by judicious recruitment.

But its not hard wired, the game suggests not keeping levies and in the main that is a sound way to play. It doesn't force their disband leaving it to your judgement

For my first game, I've been playing as Catalonia and I got roped into war after war because I allied with Castilla (didn't notice the button to change auto-war joining). I ended up with half a dozen 4 star levies lol. I felt a bit bad disbanding them at peace time because of how much they've been through but my current ruler is a god awful administrator and cuts needed to be made. Also I somehow ended up with double the SAUs I'm allowed to have and I'm very reluctant to let those go.

Despite being a bit mentally exhausting, the constant war was actually a pretty good way of learning the combat mechanics and managing the effects of expansion.

[PocusFR]

Disbanded SAUs return 50% of each of the three resources, while Levies return 90% of the manpower and 75% of the metal and money. Additionally, SAUs pay a smaller fraction of their initial cost in upkeep compared to Levies, which further favors disbanding Levies from an economic standpoint.

[diji]

Originally posted by PocusFR:

Disbanded SAUs return 50% of each of the three resources, while Levies return 90% of the manpower and 75% of the metal and money. Additionally, SAUs pay a smaller fraction of their initial cost in upkeep compared to Levies, which further favors disbanding Levies from an economic standpoint.

Is it intended that you can go over your SAU limit somehow or did I encounter a bug? I'm not sure how I did it though, maybe an RGD. If it's not a bug, is there a consequence of remaining above the limit?

[PocusFR]

There is a buglet where you can exploit the unit queue and go above. Beside that, it's ok if you get more SAUs than allowed with decisions yes.

[diji]

Originally posted by PocusFR:

There is a buglet where you can exploit the unit queue and go above. Beside that, it's ok if you get more SAUs than allowed with decisions yes.

Thanks :)