Gabanus Family/Garas/Recruitment capacity

Providing recruitment capacity

While those of noble blood are the pumping heart of any army, their impact is largely determined by the soldiers they command. How well are they trained, what are their specialities and what variety can they choose from once entering the city's centre in search of new men to fight for them? An army comprised of weak men, guided by strong willed nobles, will still do poorly against a veteran army. An army of strong infantry alone, will still be crushed by a skilled commander who has sufficient bows at his disposal and the proper understanding of battle settings. The variety in one's army is key, the availability of cavalry on one side can have a crushing impact if used well, but if your realm does not train cavalrymen, or archers, what choice do you have? If you realm does not train skilled infantry, will you lead the pathetic excuse they do offer?

Basic recruitment centre information

• The amount of men which can be trained in a centre is directly related to the size of the recruitment centre.
  • Increasing the size of a recruitment centre becomes increasingly difficult and the largest city centres are known to have cost several thousand gold coins to increase.
• The maximum amount of trainable troops of a centre is dependend on the region type in which it resides
  • This is due to the availability of menpower to train, proper trainers willing to settle, the availability of skilled construction workers and the presence of wealth to fund and maintain a centre
  • In a simple centre (lvl 1) you can train
    • 25 archers/infantry/mixed infantry
    • 20 cavalry as they require more space
    • 15 special forces, as they require much more room and personal attention by trainers
  • There are 4 generally standardized centre sizes, each double the previous one
    • More rural, simple, lands can sustain centres double the size of the simple centre (lvl 2 ==> 50 - 40 - 30 trained men respectively)
    • Townsland centres can sustain double the size of the more rural regions (lvl 3 ==> 100 - 80 - 60 trained men respectively)
    • City and stronghold centres can sustain yet again the double of a townsland (lvl 4 ==> 200 - 160 - 120 trained men respectively)

Realm wide recruitment dilemma's

As the number of recruitment centres in a realm increases, so does the strain on available trainers and resources to provide for these centres. When there are no centres, it is relatively easy to combine the best of trainers, resources and materials to fashion elite recruitment centres and maintain them properly. As more of the veteran trainers are occupied at different centres however, it becomes increasingly difficult to get several experienced and skilled men together to lead a new centre. Realms often suffer from this as their skilled trainers are spread out over dozens of centres. There are two specific considerations every military leader has to consider when discussing the matter of providing the infrastructure for sufficient and qualitative troops for the realm.

• The more centres your realm has, the less likely your chances are of constructing a good new centre, as the more spread out your quality trainers will be.
• The more quality trainers / centres you have in rural regions with limited capacity, the fewer that remain for your city centres with large capacity

Solution

If your realm suffers from the above scenario and overall has mainly mediocre centres, or good centres in small rural areas, but lackluster ones in your cities, then there is only one solution remaining, albeit a very drastic one. The following steps must be followed in exact order, deviation from it will result in the repetition of the negative effects described above.

1. Destroy ALL recruitment centres not in the rural areas, no matter the quality
2. Destroy all recruitment centres in townslands,
   1. Unless it is a highly qualitative R5 Special Forces centre, or a highly qualitative cavalry centre (as those are rare and townslands can still provide 60 SF and 80 cav respectively)
3. Destroy all recruitment centres in cities, even those of 'decent' quality, unless they are
   1. High quality SF or Cav (regardless of size)
   2. 1 city has multiple centres of good quality which are expanded to size 3 or more. In this case only destroy the bad centres
4. Start searching for trainers only in the cities and only hire them and build a centre once you have sufficient for a highly qualitative centre
   1. Make sure the cities together have at least 1 archer centre each and 1 or 2 infantry centres combined to ensure variety in your offerings.
   2. Only quality infantry is not desireable
   3. For archers focus on weapons and training primarily, armour is only secondary
   4. If archers are of extremely good quality, you can have 1 centre of ranged 3, as they can be mixed with R4 from other centres later
   5. If special forces are of extremely good quality, you can have 1 centre of ranged 4, as they can be mixed with R5 from other centres later
5. Once the cities have 3 or 4 good centres each, do the same for townslands until they have 2 good centres
6. Fill up the rest with centres in rural areas
   1. Ranged 5 special forces centres in rurals at this point can be useful, as they can be combined with R4 from cities
   2. Unless ranged 5, do not build special forces in rurals as the capacity is too limited
   3. Cavalry can be build in rurals, if you want to increase your overall potential availability of them, but are limited to 40 men per centre