Anaris Family/Anton's Tome/Units
Unit Recruitment and Maintenance
Probably the most important thing to understand in BattleMaster is how to obtain and maintain a unit. You start out with a small personal guard, supplied by your family, but sooner or later, they're going to get killed, or desert you, or you'll leave them behind for one reason or another, and you'll need a new unit.
Recruitment You can only recruit troops in the capital of your realm. The option is under "Orders" (either "Add Recruits" if you have a unit, or "Recruit a unit" if you don't). Once you click it, you will see a list of the various recruitment centers you can hire troops from, and information about the centers. For example:
| Unit Name | Unit Type | Training | Weapon/Armour Quality | Home region | Morale | Available | Cost per 10 men |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leohampton Centurions | Inf | 40 | 80/60 | Leohampton | 100 | 10 | 41 gold |
The first is the name of the center. This will be the name of your unit if you don't change it (you can name your unit whatever you want, just make it something sensible and nothing obscene). The second is the type of troops. For now, you can only recruit infantry (Inf) and archers (Arch), and they're the ones you'll want to hire most often anyway. The next number is the training percentage. This affects how well they fight in combat, but also how much they cost to keep. You can raise this value through training sessions once you have your unit. The following two numbers are the equipment quality--first weapons, then armour. These also affect how well they fight, but do not cost extra to keep, and cannot be raised. The name after that is their home region, and the number next to it is their starting morale. Next is the number currently available (more will appear each turn) and finally the cost per 10 men.
Units will need to be paid about once a week. You should always try to make sure that once you've hired the men for your unit, you will still be able to pay them, so don't just recruit until you have no money left, unless you know that you will get some more money before you have to head out to war. If you are recruiting a new unit, there will be a "hints" link next to the cost for each unit type, which will give you an idea of how many men you can recruit and still be able to pay them.
Your General will be very peeved with you if you develop a habit of over-recruiting, so it is best to learn early on how many you can safely recruit. When in doubt, recruit fewer men. And ask for help.
Maintenance This has several aspects. The first is payment, which I already touched on. The others are training, entertainment, and repair. Your unit has 6 numbers that affect its performance in combat (which is summarized in the combat strength, or CS).
- Training is how experienced your men are. This number can never go down, except when you recruit more men (because it's an average for your unit).
- Cohesion is how well your men get along. This can also go down when you recruit more, and when your equipment damage is very high, but no other time.
- Morale is how happy your men are. This goes up and down a lot, and your best bet for raising it if it's down is entertainment.
- Equipment damage is what it sounds like. This goes up gradually through normal wear and tear, and more in battles and training sessions. You can repair it at blacksmiths.
The armour and weapon quality cannot be changed except by recruiting more troops, so we can ignore that for now. Training and cohesion are the ones to focus on for the moment. These two numbers can be raised by training your men--the more training, the more they will increase. However, be careful of your morale dropping and your equipment damage rising. The best way to train is in a city, because there you can entertain and repair damage immediately. Also, you should try to find out which types of entertainment your men like (they will tell you when you find it), because entertaining them like that can also raise their cohesion--sometimes quite a lot.
Thus endeth the lesson.
