Don't Understand Raising New Armies

[Violent Lucidity]

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Is this game designed so you have to spend 50 turns slooooooooowly building up each unit to full strength so the grandchildren of your original conscripts are ready for battle? Or are we expected to take half-strength armies into battle? Genuine question. It is this aspect alone which makes me hesitate to invest any time whatsoever into this game.

[bearfieldlee]

You aren't doing anything wrong. This system was an attempt to represent the difficulties of raising a feudal army. The men are mustered and then slowly report for duty from all areas over time. It's a bit of a "love it or hate" it scenario as far as the player base goes. I also think it was done so that losing an army has dramatic effects on your defence as it did historically. You have to plan battles carefully because a major loss can have the enemy sweeping through your (mostly un garrisoned) land.

[phil_adelphia]

It's exactly what I love about the game. Unlike other Total war games, every single man counts, the resources of people and food are scarce and reflect well the situation in England at that time.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by giggles:

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Is this game designed so you have to spend 50 turns slooooooooowly building up each unit to full strength so the grandchildren of your original conscripts are ready for battle? Or are we expected to take half-strength armies into battle? Genuine question. It is this aspect alone which makes me hesitate to invest any time whatsoever into this game.

It's not really that hard to reckon with, once you are open to it, and definitely not anything like 50 turns.

The way it works, is units start at 30% of their full potential strength when they muster. So, for example, on "Large" unit settings a line infantry unit is 120 men at full strength; it will muster (ie. be recruited/built) with 36 men.

At the beginning of each turn phase, an additional 10% of full strength equivalent will be added (ie. 12 men in this example), so a unit recruited on turn 1 at 36 men (120 full strength potential) will be 48 men at the start of turn 2, then 60 men at the start of turn 3, etc., until it reaches full strength of 120 men at turn 8 (eight).

The proportions are the same for other troop types, and other unit scalings, as well. So, if max strength for the unit is 90 men, it will again start at 30% strength (27 men), then gain 10% strength per turn (9 men), so by turn 8 it is 90 men strong.

At standard then, you're looking at 7 (seven) turn phases till full strength.

Now, this mustering rate can be modified, owing to a variety of factors: army supplies situation; faction mechanics; faction events and dilemma decisions; character traits; local province infrastructure; army location; army "stance"; etc.

This means that the "bad news" is that sometimes recruitment can be slow. For that matter, recruitment can be effectively impossible altogether, if your faction doesn't have enough Food resource, which is markedly different from past TW games, where all you needed was money.

On the upshot, mustering rate can be significantly increased if you manage your faction mechanics well, and make good decisions within faction events and dilemmas. Character traits and province infrastructure can bolster this as well. That means you can have situations where armies go from 30% initial strength to full strength in as little as two (2) turns.

Keep in mind that the AI is under the same constraints as well. AI factions must also muster, and wait for units to come up to full strength; AI factions need both Food and Supplies to do this; and they can be hampered by you attacking their regional and provincial infrastructure, amongst other things. On higher difficulties (Hard and above), AI gets increasing bonuses to recruitment, but a good player can match it by smart faction management and strategy. On lower difficulties (Normal and Easy) the AI is actually liminalized relative to the player, and the player should be able to out-muster the AI, other factors being equal.

An option to consider, is that you need not take smaller units to battle if you find that too annoying, or if it messes with your tactical planning too much. What I am referring to, is the "merge units" mechanic, which lets you merge two or more units of the same type and class, when they are at less than full strength. The way you do that is on the world map/strategy map: use Ctrl + click to select the respective units from an army's unit card panel, then Ctrl + M (check your key bindings in Options) to "merge" them. So if you muster three units of, for example, Levy Spears on turn 1, at 36 men per, you can merge them into a single unit of 108 men (36 × 3), and you can do this immediatley, right after recuitment, without having to wait for a turn phase.

The Merge Units mechanic therefore allows you to control larger units of a given type and class immediately, or enroll a newly-mustered unit into an existing, already-mustered unit. The catch is, this still depletes units from the unit pool, so while short term strength for the army may be consolidated at the unit-class and type level, and overall army numbers increased, longer term strength for the faction as a whole may be sub optimal.

Something else to consider is that in Thrones of Britannia (ToB), recruitment is immediate (ie. same turn): you click on a unit in the pool to recruit it, and it shows up immediatley in the respective army, and this happens anywhere within your faction's territory, regardless of local infrastructure. In past TW games, you had to wait at least one turn phase before the unit that you recruited appeared on the map, and the type and class of unit recruited was only available to the army provided that the army itself was in a region of the map where the relevant building infrastructure for that unit existed.

So all of the TW games have always had constraints of some form to unit recruitment, just as all RTS games have some kind of mechanic for building units, operational and tactical "hex based" wargames have point systems for building army lists, etc.

ToB simply approaches this constraint from a different angle. It lets you recruit units immediatley into the army stack, in any region you control, but with the tradeoff that those units are still in the process of mustering to full strength.

[Burno]

I think people who play this effectively avoid having an army at all and work on the conscription policy basis... but without accurate mechanics in the game to represent it. I found this game to be a huge letdown. The geography is lazy. The art is reductive and lazy. All that being said with the mind to the resources of the developer. I feel this as the game a few were behind and then an exec said.. lets get this done quick and cheap!

[Narwhals"oh mein gott Anhalte!]

the merge unit isnt really a tactic i like to use though however, as it takes from your pool of available units an if your @ war could mean Doom for you and your Territorial gains an or Home. I guess its fine in a pinch but overall i think its bad idea lol, good tip though.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by *Narwhals*Strange Animal*:

the merge unit isnt really a tactic i like to use though however, as it takes from your pool of available units an if your @ war could mean Doom for you and your Territorial gains an or Home. I guess its fine in a pinch but overall i think its bad idea lol, good tip though.

Yes, merging will, in the long run, radically diminish your faction's strength. It's inherently inefficient use of resources.

But, as a short term tactic, it can be useful. It allows you to increase a given army's numbers by around a couple hundred percent in one turn, so if you need to meet an immediae or imminent threat, it might be necessary.

It also varies depending on the unit. Levy type units are both more plentiful in the pool, and usually replenish within the pool faster, so merging them isn't as dangerous as with, say, Berserkers, Hunters, Alban Crossbows, Huskarls, or other "elite" troops.

But yeah, it's a tactic that shouldn't be generally used, only if it's the very early turns or some other tenuous situation where your faction might simply get wiped out by large amounts of enemy coming in.

If Food availability is very low, it also allows more men to be mustered in a short time than what the Food would otherwise allow. Consolidating three Levy Spears into one unit at 10 Food might make a lot more sense than having the three, separate units at 30 Food, because you have e.g. 108 (36 × 3) men in one card versus three, separate cards of 36.

[CrêmeTropBrûlée]

Merging units also make newer ones availables faster, hence you can grind the military technology tree much faster and few turns laters have newer types of units availables

[Julius Geezer]

Originally posted by Burno:

I think people who play this effectively avoid having an army at all and work on the conscription policy basis... but without accurate mechanics in the game to represent it. I found this game to be a huge letdown. The geography is lazy. The art is reductive and lazy. All that being said with the mind to the resources of the developer. I feel this as the game a few were behind and then an exec said.. lets get this done quick and cheap!

How is the art and geography of the game lazy?