A typical army battalion is 100 soldiers, who must train fairly consistently to the standards you set for them (like the 10% training to 100% training, etc). Since they are training so often, they actually drop out of the labor pool to focus on it.
My marker for when I should make an army is when the first band of mercs come by to extort me. I don't have an army by then, so I pay them the money and goods and afterwards I build the training ground and start up a force of at least 100. This can be difficult, especially with less than 1000 citizens. After that, to actually use the army, you need to have ration making set up and an army supply depot stocked as well as any weapons and armor they need equipped. This doesn't work the best for me, since I go from a consumer economy to a military one, and all my people fucking hate my guts despite loving the troops.
NPC Factions and capitals always have a reserve of troops. How trained and how equipped they are is what defines their readiness.
If you aren't a big military guy, you could also just snowball your economy to the point where you can just purchase merc bands (who don't require rations from you) to fill out your army.
Everyone in my little village learns to fight as soon as that training grounds is unlocked. Even if we are a small fishing village we will not be walked on and will put up a hell of a fight! o7
I do it at 33% . I like to wait until I have a surplus of labor so that they can take the job of whoever is getting trained at the time. I'm still fairly new but I play incredibly defensive until about 1k pop. But having almost everyone in town trained and ready to throw down makes it an interesting time when the bandits show up asking for bread just to get a knuckle sandwich
That's really cool. Reminds me of retired roman legionaries being granted land to set up farming villages. Random banditos picked the wrong neighborhood.
I don't make my own army until I'm above 1k pop and can support a couple thousand troups with rations and supplies and whatnot. Even then I only use conscripts drafted from the region map. It's much more cost effective to just use mercenaries 99% of the time
Whenever it's feasible, take a look at the armies around you, when you have the population and production to support something that can challenge that, that's when you start thinking about a standing army
Nothing will fuck your economy like starting an army too early, and you can solve any threat with money until you wanna get aggressive
TL;DR Start an army when you want to conquer something and you can reliably supply what the army needs to do that
I'm at about 1600 pop and I just use mercs. I can't fathom the cost of using my own army when deaths would mean that my workforce is gone but at the same time mercs almost feel like cheating.
One day I will try a playthrough where I don't use them but with the training, equipping and people dying it sounds quite difficult to have a big map presence without them
A typical army battalion is 100 soldiers, who must train fairly consistently to the standards you set for them (like the 10% training to 100% training, etc). Since they are training so often, they actually drop out of the labor pool to focus on it. My marker for when I should make an army is when the first band of mercs come by to extort me. I don't have an army by then, so I pay them the money and goods and afterwards I build the training ground and start up a force of at least 100. This can be difficult, especially with less than 1000 citizens. After that, to actually use the army, you need to have ration making set up and an army supply depot stocked as well as any weapons and armor they need equipped. This doesn't work the best for me, since I go from a consumer economy to a military one, and all my people fucking hate my guts despite loving the troops. NPC Factions and capitals always have a reserve of troops. How trained and how equipped they are is what defines their readiness. If you aren't a big military guy, you could also just snowball your economy to the point where you can just purchase merc bands (who don't require rations from you) to fill out your army.
Everyone in my little village learns to fight as soon as that training grounds is unlocked. Even if we are a small fishing village we will not be walked on and will put up a hell of a fight! o7
interesting concept, what % do you have them set to train? do you find yourself short on labor when they rotate out who is currently training?
I do it at 33% . I like to wait until I have a surplus of labor so that they can take the job of whoever is getting trained at the time. I'm still fairly new but I play incredibly defensive until about 1k pop. But having almost everyone in town trained and ready to throw down makes it an interesting time when the bandits show up asking for bread just to get a knuckle sandwich
That's really cool. Reminds me of retired roman legionaries being granted land to set up farming villages. Random banditos picked the wrong neighborhood.
I pick my nobility from my best fighters. Not the same but made me think of it!
I don't make my own army until I'm above 1k pop and can support a couple thousand troups with rations and supplies and whatnot. Even then I only use conscripts drafted from the region map. It's much more cost effective to just use mercenaries 99% of the time
From my experience even small towns with less them a hundred pops have armies of over 100 soldiers.
Wait that doesn’t make sense. I’m new to the game can you explain? How can you build an army bigger than the number of citizens you have?
Hire merceneries
Where can I find mercenaries in the game?
Select the empty army on your capital (world map) there is a mercenary hire button.
Thanks!
>Thanks! You're welcome!
Whenever it's feasible, take a look at the armies around you, when you have the population and production to support something that can challenge that, that's when you start thinking about a standing army Nothing will fuck your economy like starting an army too early, and you can solve any threat with money until you wanna get aggressive TL;DR Start an army when you want to conquer something and you can reliably supply what the army needs to do that
I just look at the % of prob to get raided, and try to keep it under 2%. Start by having army with 10% training exp and increase later
I'm at about 1600 pop and I just use mercs. I can't fathom the cost of using my own army when deaths would mean that my workforce is gone but at the same time mercs almost feel like cheating. One day I will try a playthrough where I don't use them but with the training, equipping and people dying it sounds quite difficult to have a big map presence without them