Standing Armies

[Hexatorium]

So I'm very new to this game, and am wondering if there is a way to maintain standing armies, because my current territory has grown rather large and I am not best of friends with the neighbours, and want to have some defences ready in case they come knocking. So is retinues the only style of standing army, and if so, how do you get larger retinues?

[Khan Boyzitbig of Mercia]

Retinues are indeed the standing army. Realm size, your title tier and the military organisation tech in your capital along with the training grounds building in castles (garrison of MR trading posts, and their patrician holding's military warehouse) all affect your max cap.
Counts don't tend to have much cap while an emperor could have over 20k cap with ease.

[Mentos]

Retinues are in fact your standing army. You get more by gaining land, and increasing military organization in the technology window.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

Standing armies don't really exist until well into the EU4 period.

Even Byzantium discontinued the Retinue system 300 years before the earliest CK2 start date and switched to the Theme system because they simply couldn't afford to upkeep them anymore.

(it's honestly silly that Legacy of Rome adds them back in, instead of fleshing out the Theme system)

The closest you can get to a standing army without using retinue is being rich enough to keep mercs hired full time. (if you manage to vassalize them, they become MUCH cheaper to hire and maintain, making this more likely to happen without being truly massive or a Merchant Republic).



For more retinue cap you become utterly massive (it's based on the number of holdings in your realm and then modified by MO tech and Title rank), be a Emperor, and have really high military organization tech.

[Hexatorium]

Alright awesome, thank you guys

[Laiders72]

OP as others have noted retinues are standing troops. The forums and wiki are full of advice on how to best contruct retinues or you can experiment for yourself. Mercenaries can also be used to get a standing force immediately before a war (or permanently if you're rich enough).

The only troops that prevent a declaration of war are called up levies.

Originally posted by kaiyl_kariashi:

Standing armies don't really exist until well into the EU4 period.

Even Byzantium discontinued the Retinue system 300 years before the earliest CK2 start date and switched to the Theme system because they simply couldn't afford to upkeep them anymore.

(it's honestly silly that Legacy of Rome adds them back in, instead of fleshing out the Theme system)

The closest you can get to a standing army without using retinue is being rich enough to keep mercs hired full time. (if you manage to vassalize them, they become MUCH cheaper to hire and maintain, making this more likely to happen without being truly massive or a Merchant Republic).



For more retinue cap you become utterly massive (it's based on the number of holdings in your realm and then modified by MO tech and Title rank), be a Emperor, and have really high military organization tech.

Retinues are hardly completely unhistorical. Housecarls (insert preferred version of term here) were effectively standing troops of a lord's household (also covered some other types of manservants etc. but we'll ignore that). They were paid to sit around in his halls and defend them or train to defend them or go burn someone else's hall to the ground. The king's housecarls would form the backbone of the Royal Army augmented by local lords, their housecarls (retinues), fyrd (trained reservists) and outright levies (originally the term fyrd applied to all levies but a series of reforms culminating in Alfred the Great's burgh system elevated them to a trained and often experienced reserve force called up before levies to augment household troops). The entire military system of England in 1066 (and earlier) depends upon professional standing troops/mercenaries followed by a semi-professional reserve force followed by actual levies.

Likewise, I believe that the Hundred Years' War led to the professionalisation of the armies of France and England. Eventually it was basically being fought by standing armies of professional soldiers augmented by mercenaries. It started with the more widely understood notion of a Medieval army comprising of a small number (well not so small for the French) of knights, their squires and retainers (all professional and often mounted soldiers; a knight would bring around three or four fighting, mounted men-at-arms with him to battle who are not strictly speaking knights), mercenaries of mixed quality and quantity and levies of similarly mixed quaility and quantity.

Indeed the Medieval period always had a retinues of professional soldiers centred around landed martial lords whether they were knights and squires (plus other retainers) or eorls and their thanes and housecarls or (insert system I don't know about here). The problem presumably then is that they are represented as a standing force. Even this is mostly accurate. I mean knights and their squires etc. were professonal warriors/soldiers first and foremost. Their job was to fight and die in return for land and other boons. They were tied to their land but they would also be the first called up when war threatened (in other words before the player has declared war). Intially in game these standing forces are too small to fight independantly without support from mercenaries or a call-up of levies. As the game progresses, they increasingly become the core of your force capable of fighting wars and even winning them with less or no support. This depends on retinue composition, leaders, opposition, terrain, abusing or not abusing AI etc. Again this seems broadly historically accurate.