Different base for retinue cap?

[Grubnessul]

So, I've been thinking a bit about about retinues and don't think they are very well implemented: they get to big and are too cheap and you need to wait each time to hire a new one and check for this often. The cost is easily changed by adding a monthly fee to them, but the other two complains are not solved that way. My idea is the following: tie the number of men to a primary title, modified by technology. So a Count has a cap of say 500, a duke 1000, a king 2000 and an emperor 5000. Maybe some bonuses for the Islamic, slave army users. This would limit the size of the retinue and make creating a higher title more rewarding and visible. And it makes more sense: "I'm the emperor, so I deserve a 5000 men bodyguard" instead off, "yes we have a levy of X size so we can equip Y number of men for our retinue for no particular reason." Furthermore, this would slightly nerf buildings as they do not both increase your levies and increase your retinue cap.

A second change I would suggest is filling the retinue cap automatically. So you pick one type of retinue and be stuck with it, regardless of the size, instead of having to check back every time you have gotten some more land or built a building to see if you can recruit an additional retinue.

Thoughts?

 

[sergeant113]

I agree! Changing retinue cap through technology is unrealistic. From what I see, managing a seasonal army (levy) is harder than housing and feeding and organizing a standing army, provided you have the money to sustain them. There should, optimally, be no manpower-based cap. The cap should be determined by wealth (unable to pay your retinue should make for civil unrest, civil war and decreased fighting ability, or something like that) and political titles. As a single-province count I am only justified with a 100 men cap. But as an emperor, I should be justified with a larger retinue cap. Perhaps there should be a demesne decision to increase or decrease retinue cap that either please your vassals (my liege has a small standing army, i feel less threatened) or displease them (my liege has a huge standing army, I'm nervous)

Or at least, provide us the means to mod it in game. Yay mods!

 

[monsterfurby]

I would base it on the ability to attract people to your cause and get them to swear fealty to your name. In other words: Prestige.

Either let each character "buy" retinue cap for prestige (at an exponentially increasing cost) or tie it to dynastic prestige so that each new generation will have more men at their disposal.

 

[sergeant113]

Salahhudin had no considerable dynastic or personal prestige when he founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He could still field a huge Mamluke retinue.

 

[monsterfurby]

Salahhudin had no considerable dynastic or personal prestige when he founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He could still field a huge Mamluke retinue.

Weren't Mamluks basically just a caste of society, i.e. sworn to the institution of their liege rather than his person, and would therefore fall under levies (like western European knights) rather than standing retinue?

 

[sergeant113]

Weren't Mamluks basically just a caste of society, i.e. sworn to the institution of their liege rather than his person, and would therefore fall under levies (like western European knights) rather than standing retinue?

That's the Iqta' land holders. Mamluk, meaning "being owned", were standing slave fighters. Their only job is to play with weapons and fight their owner's enemies. I've always wonder if minor Emirs and sultan could own mamluks or ghulam?

 

[monsterfurby]

That's the Iqta' land holders. Mamluk, meaning "being owned", were standing slave fighters. Their only job is to play with weapons and fight their owner's enemies. Every minor Emire or Sultan owned some Mamluk, it's only a matter of size.

Alright, fair enough. I'm not an expert on that particular cultural sphere, so I apologize for any inaccuracies
I suppose that case is really not simulated, or would require a different rule from how it worked in Western Europe. You didn't really have that kind of retinue there, more commonly unlanded nobles sworn to their liege in one way or another. I suppose that this is what the Retinue system simulates in that cultural context, since mercenaries are covered as, well, mercenaries.

 

[sergeant113]

Anglo Saxon Kings maintained a good amount of housecarls. When Harold claimed the throne of Saxon England, he was an Earl, and not a part of Edward's dynasty. He still commanded the housecarls left over by Edward.

 

[Hootieleece]

I said in another thread. Ability to recruit 1 retinue unit per holding in Personal desmesne.make Military Organization Tech like legalism, except instead of # holdings increase # of recruit able retinue unit increase.

 

[sergeant113]

I said in another thread. Ability to recruit 1 retinue unit per holding in Personal desmesne.make Military Organization Tech like legalism, except instead of # holdings increase # of recruit able retinue unit increase.

If it is unit based, what is the right amount of troop in a unit? 100? 500? 1000?
Then, to maximize my retinue power ( since i'm only allowed to recruit fixed number of units), i'd go with the one that eats up the most manpower, aka kataphract or all knights one. Those with cheap light infantry cultural retinue that rely on number are at a great disadvantage here. 500 light_infantry vs 500 knights, no brainer, really!

 

[Hootieleece]

I understand what your saying about maximizing combat power, but the current system of being able to raise 50k of mostly Knights retinues as HRE Emperor in 1200 has to stop.

Since Cultural Units are related to ruler culture,I would see lots of people becoming French,German, Greek, or Altaic.Just to exploit the system as you describe and get the best retinues.

My suggestion would be at minimum upping the cost of Each Retinue unit by 50%.(Upfront and recruitment costs) and possibly tying the Cultural retinues to # of holdings with a level 2 cultural troop building.

I would keep the 500/man.

Or make all cultural Retinue units available to all characters and base the cost of non-ruler culture Cultural units at +10% per point of Foreigner malus of ruler culture to that culture.

 

[MasterOfGrey]

Money really is no object, unless they have an exorbitant monthly upkeep even whilst at full strength, then it doesn't matter what they cost really.

 

[Hootieleece]

Money is no object......but in this game manpower is also.Unless you are a Count/small Duke.

HRE Emperor has Retinue Cap around 160k about 1200AD.(enough to recruit 50K of Knights)France has one of about 75k.

The problem is like many of the mechanics doesn't scale well to realms much bigger than say England in 1066 start.(about 90 holdings)

So after upgrading a few buildings in all my Castles and my vassals doing the same.I'm able to field and ukkeep more soldiers in my Retinue than France did at Crecy(1346) a 150 years earlier.

 

[grommile]

tie it to dynastic prestige

Well, that's one way to make Seniority inheritance OP.

 

[sergeant113]

I said in another thread. Ability to recruit 1 retinue unit per holding in Personal desmesne.make Military Organization Tech like legalism, except instead of # holdings increase # of recruit able retinue unit increase.

Recruiting retinue based on demesne is great, but instead of 1 unit per demense, make it 500 manpower per holding.
Make ranks multiply this number. A count get a raw 500 manpower, a Duke gets 2x500, a King gets 3x500, an emperor gets 4x500 per holding.
Make a demesne decision, similar to the feudal levy decision to increase or decrease this manpower per holding cap. A larger multiplier makes vassal nervous about your large retinue, but a smaller multiplier makes them less worried.
Make realm "martial" stat contribute some multiplier to retinue manpower.

 

[Talq]

Make retinues a separate realm law. Changing feudal obligations to tax obligations (which funded retinues) was actually a big reform over this period. Possibly link the realm law to crown authority as well (so you can't get retinues from vassal manpower at autonomous vassals, but can do more as you move to absolute. (but PLEASE Paradox make it a levy->retinue conversion not a retinue plus vassal malus conversion!)

So retinue manpower would be demense (limit) + what you get from crown authority + realm law.

I would toss any idea that gives emperors more than kings simply for having the title. All the AI emperors are excessively powerful anyway (especially when in history all of them were mainly in decline more or less through the period)

Prestige isn't a great idea - kingdom retinues didn't just melt away just because a new ruler took the throne (any ensuing civil wars did that)

Money really is no object, unless they have an exorbitant monthly upkeep even whilst at full strength, then it doesn't matter what they cost really.

Actually the current cost structure has the odd effect of discouraging people from actually using them (to the extent of wanting to pull them out of seiges), and bankrupting the AI blobs. Getting charged 20.0 everytime the stupid units take damage (even 1% attrition) gets really expensive, real quick. Still a problem of if you want them to have a monthly cost AND you want people to recruit them, you need to reform the tax decisions so its actually possible to fund them sensibly.

 

[Grubnessul]

You can always scale the reinforcement rates down to reduce monthly cost.

 

[sergeant113]

cost should be balanced between reinforce cost and maintenance. Right now reinforce cost is a tiny bit too much, and there is no maintenance at all.

 

[Grubnessul]

The discrepancy between the costs of a full and reinforcing retinue is indeed a bit too big. But I think that's less problematic than their overall size. I'd say they should be the core of your troops. Your elite, so to speak, not sufficient in number to to fight your entire wars.