How to recruit more troops ?

[Ayshiro]

Hi, I have a problem. I recently started playing the game, and after developing my economy, I want to recruit a regular army to begin expanding my territory.

I've recruited 4 x 100 infantry, but I can't recruit any more because my manpower is negative.

Can someone explain how this works ? (I play Tripoli).

Thx !

[Eltoron]

Originally posted by Ayshiro:

Hi, I have a problem. I recently started playing the game, and after developing my economy, I want to recruit a regular army to begin expanding my territory.

I've recruited 4 x 100 infantry, but I can't recruit any more because my manpower is negative.

Can someone explain how this works ? (I play Tripoli).

Thx !

It works with levies you can rise while you are at war. You can't build meaningful regular army until you get at least armory.

[Konstantin]

At the beginnig of the game you'll fight with levies, that you might improve with laws. Regular armies are something you have to research and improve, and they don't start that good.

[Nico]

Regular armies are utterly useless early on, so don't bother with them for now. The Levies that you can raise during wars is usually enough and early on also way stronger than regular armies. I think around age 4 the regular armies become pretty viable. Though adding a few cannons to your levies is still quite helpful for sieges early on.

And to get manpower you need to research and build armories, which should be part of the professional armies tech tree from age 2.

[Ayshiro]

So if I understand correctly, the strength of my army will depend on my population.

With 100k, I won't get very far if I want to invade a country with 300k, for example...

It's restrictive if you want to start small and end up big, when you're surrounded by larger territories.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Ayshiro:

So if I understand correctly, the strength of my army will depend on my population.

With 100k, I won't get very far if I want to invade a country with 300k, for example...

It's restrictive if you want to start small and end up big, when you're surrounded by larger territories.

While the population is certainly a factor it also depends on several other factors. The most important one being the control you have in each of your locations as they're a direct multiplier to your levy size. But obviously there are still many more, like your laws, advances and other bonuses that either define your base levy size or simply increase your levy amount by some percentage. But since control also defines the amount of money you get you obviously would want to maximize that one anyways.

And yes, to have a chance against bigger countries you probably either have to make alliances or have to start a war while they're down, like during a big rebellion or during a war.

[Will be deleted]

You need professional army institution to start unlock manpower producing buildings. Before that you pretty much stuck with levies and mercenaries.

[Eltoron]

Originally posted by Ayshiro:

So if I understand correctly, the strength of my army will depend on my population.

With 100k, I won't get very far if I want to invade a country with 300k, for example...

It's restrictive if you want to start small and end up big, when you're surrounded by larger territories.

It depends on population, definitely. But also on a lot of other things. Like lack of control reducing levies in location. Some laws and privileges also affects levies. And cultures too. By default only primary and acceptable cultures provides levies. So it's actually hard to say who is really stronger in your case.

And actually it's always about diplomacy and opportunity. Get some strong allies and strike while you neighbour is in trouble or busy. Not that much countries here is able to carry along.

[Damphair]

Originally posted by Nico:

Regular armies are utterly useless early on, so don't bother with them for now. The Levies that you can raise during wars is usually enough and early on also way stronger than regular armies. I think around age 4 the regular armies become pretty viable.

People keep saying this, I don't get it. My first small professional army beats levies twice it's size. As Muscovy I invaded the Golden horde with 3k professional units and I won battles against 12k where I was ambushed and not at full morale even.

[Ayshiro]

Thank you all for your answers, to be clear, I am in a normal situation, and not in a difficulty related to a lack of knowledge.