Introduction/Recruiting

"How about recruiting? Any suggestions?"

"Plenty! First of all, you're going to need to head to the realm's capital. That's where all the training centers send their trained troops. Mostly it's tradition, but it's also so they get a little bit of city life before they go off to war.

"Once you're there, you'll need to figure out what sort of troops you'll want to command. When you're just starting out, you'll probably be limited to infantry, archers, or mixed infantry. The cavalry troops won't feel comfortable being led by such a new troop leader, and those special forces folks -- those snobs won't even give you the time of day `til you've come back covered in scars and glory. I've heard stories about special forces even refusing to work for one realm's Judge!

You raise your eyebrows and act suitably impressed.

"Anyway, your squire will head around to all the stalls and give you an estimate of what's available: What sort of troops, where they hail from, what kind of shape their equipment's in, how well-trained he thinks they are, and what mood they're in. He'll do a quick head count, too, and have a chat with their trainer about how much it'll cost you to hire them.

"You'll have to show up in person to do the actual hiring, and you'll need to bring cash. They'll want to have a look at you, and sound you out. No trainer worth his salt gives over too many of his boys to a green troop leader: it's bad for business if a large unit of his men loses a lot of battles. They get real upset with people who just want to hire one or two men, too -- these aren't bodyguards, after all, they're soldiers. You might get away with hiring as few as five of them at a time, but that's pushing it.

You listen carefully, but point out that you're not going to be recruiting fresh. Your family is supplying you with a dozen or so family retainers. You were just thinking about using some of the money they're giving you to add a few more men. Uncle Freddie nods.

"In that case, whichever you wind up getting, you'll need to add that type. If your family retainers are archers, you'll need to hire archers, because they don't get along with infantry."

"What about mixed infantry?", you ask

"That's something else entirely -- those are specially trained infantry. You can't just add archers to an infantry unit or something, you've got to hire men specifically trained that way."

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Recruiting a unit is one of the more important actions of the game, and it usually bears thinking on. It ties in heavily with gold management, a very important skill.

A unit costs you gold in two ways: there is an up-front cost for hiring the men in the first place, and they must be paid every week thereafter until you abandon them, or they are killed in battle.

As a beginning troop leader, you'll be given either an infantry or archer unit, usually between 15 and 20 men strong. It's your choice, and both are good choices. As a rule of thumb, infantry units will help you gain prestige and honor faster than archers, but tend to take more casualties in battle.

Do not despair if your unit is not very tough, or tends to run from battle! These things can improve over time, as the unit becomes better-trained, and more cohesive. Your unit will gain training either by being explicitly trained by you, or by surviving battles. It will become more cohesive over time simply by existing and spending time as a unit, though it's easier for them to get to know each other over drinks in a city than out on the march.

The only thing you can not improve directly is equipment quality -- your men were trained on their particulr equipment, and would not perform well with any other. You can gradually raise the average quality, though, by hiring men with better equipment. Of course, those new men will need to be integrated into your unit in order to bring cohesion back up.

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