Unit Upkeep

See also Honour and Recruitment and Repair and training costs

When you recruit a new group of armed men from your capital city, you will be able to see a "hint" link to the side of each recruitment centre. This information can be very helpful, especially for new players, as it will give you an idea of how long you can maintain this new unit in the field.

You should aim to make sure that you have enough gold on hand to maintain your unit for at least 1 week (including repair costs), and you should really aim for 2 weeks or more. That is because you get paid in bonds, which you must redeem in a city, but your men insist on being paid in gold. Therefore even if you get paid within a week's time you might not be able to redeem it in time.

Also keep in mind that the hint that is provided does not take into account any other expenses you might have, such as for paraphernalia. Therefore you must take into account those expenses yourself.

Also note that due to rounding (you can't pay in silver after all), the cost tends to shift a bit depending on how frequently you pay them.

This makes it all somewhat of a guessing game, and can be confusing for new players. There's no avoiding that it's a bit odd that the recruitment centres won't tell you how much the men will want to be paid on a weekly basis.

As a general rule though, you can gauge how much a unit's upkeep will cost based on their initial recruitment cost. A unit of 10 soldiers with a recruitment cost of 50 or higher will cost you about 14 gold a week, whereas a unit with a cost closer to 35 gold will cost you about 7 gold a week.

However, that's just an easy generalization. For instance, two units with the same initial cost can have very different upkeep costs. Take the following example:

Name	Cost / 10	Training	Equipment	Morale	Outcome
Quivers of Truth	36	35	45 / 65 (4)	72	With 42 gold can maintain a unit of 20 for over 3 weeks.
Lissambar Longbows	36	40	60 / 35 (4)	91	With 42 gold can maintain a unit of 20 for over 2 weeks.

From this we can guess that equipment has less of a role (or no role) in the upkeep cost, whereas Training and Morale do have an effect. Presumably though a unit with good equipment will have more of a repair bill to foot compared to a similar unit that has worst equipment.

You'll also note that the cost for a given unit will vary over time. That's likely due to the fact that Morale for a unit from a recruitment centre changes, based on how its region of origin is faring.