Ethiopian cawas are (presumably) accurate in terms of feudal levies. They reach staggering abysses of usefulness in game.

[BaronNoir]

Simply said, how are you supposed to use the CAWA ? (this is likely a bug reported a few thousand times, but you cannot raise them per state. You raise all of them, in one state)

The (discutable) premise seems to dump military power instead of gold or manpower. This make sense both for gameplay and historical reasons : this is essentially a panic button.

But in addition to the issue that I struggle to see in what circumstances military points would be less valuable than gold or manpower, the Cawas need reinforcements in MP and gold. You dump 200 military points to get 20 regiments of 100 men that need reinforcements ? (thus gutting you in gold and MP, two commodities that Ethiopia always have in abundance...)

(I perceive that the Cawas are better than most infantry thanks to special modifiers and that you are presumably supposed to use them as permanent troops. Withtout cavalry and cannon ?)

 

[santali]

(I perceive that the Cawas are better than most infantry thanks to special modifiers and that you are presumably supposed to use them as permanent troops. Withtout cavalry and cannon ?)

Well, you can just merge them with cav and cannon, they're not mercs.

 

[Siddy00]

You can also recruit individual Cawa regiments from the macrobuilder.

Edit: typo

 

[Chairswing]

You use them like you use the Janissary regiments: You don't

 

[EarlKonrad]

You use them like you use the Janissary regiments: You don't

There are two types of special units:
1) Don't bother recruiting.
2) Streltsy.

 

[Less2]

The actual stats of Cawa are arguably balanced. Paying mil mana and then needing to reinforce is a hilarious joke. Early game you don't want to pay all that cash (amplified by +25% reinforce cost), mid/late game mil mana is way too important to be spent on recruiting individual troops.

There are two types of special units:
1) Don't bother recruiting.
2) Streltsy.

Technically you don't even recruit streltsy.

Banners are OK though.

 

[BaronNoir]

The actual stats of Cawa are arguably balanced. Paying mil mana and then needing to reinforce is a hilarious joke. Early game you don't want to pay all that cash (amplified by +25% reinforce cost), mid/late game mil mana is way too important to be spent on recruiting individual troops.


Technically you don't even recruit streltsy.

Banners are OK though.

Exactly. You get a (good) infantry unit that cost mana AND almost as much gold and mp than a vanillla infantry. That's a lousy deal.

That said, the cawa modifier (the kingdom bonuses) are fantastic.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Banners are OK though.

Are they? Hordes have two weakness: poor economy and need to constantly be the aggressor.

Banners play into their weaknesses being a cheaper alternative to regular armies but being much slower to reinforce. Considering how economy isn't an issue for Manchurians after the first or second war with Ming, I find the fact that banners that longer to reinforce to be a deal breaker. You need to be constantly at war which leads your troops to be constantly reinforcing. You can't afford to have 8-10 units sitting idle waiting for more men.

Banners, in my humble opinion, are poorly designed (for the aforementioned reasons). As is, they would be much better if they were available to every single government type other than Hordes. And amongst all Hordes the Manchurian tribes are the ones that need them the least in the early game and past that they become increasingly useless, even with the recent buffs to their availability.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Bit of a shame that the banner modifier on reinforcement is multiplicative. I do think they're more usable than most other special units.

Amusingly, if you're one of the few nations that get them in national ideas, marines aren't that bad these days, performing only barely worse than standard infantry in land combat. Their main benefit is that they draw from sailors rather than manpower, and sailors otherwise tend to go unused. If you mix them into the army, it's like having extra % manpower recovery. If you're not one of those nations, however, you have to take naval ideas to use them which is too enormous a price for some extra manpower.

 

[holyvigil]

Bit of a shame that the banner modifier on reinforcement is multiplicative. I do think they're more usable than most other special units.

Amusingly, if you're one of the few nations that get them in national ideas, marines aren't that bad these days, performing only barely worse than standard infantry in land combat. Their main benefit is that they draw from sailors rather than manpower, and sailors otherwise tend to go unused. If you mix them into the army, it's like having extra % manpower recovery. If you're not one of those nations, however, you have to take naval ideas to use them which is too enormous a price for some extra manpower.

I may be bad at managing my sailors but I find if I am one of those nations I don't have sailors because of trade missions.

 

[Less2]

Are they? Hordes have two weakness: poor economy and need to constantly be the aggressor.

Banners play into their weaknesses being a cheaper alternative to regular armies but being much slower to reinforce. Considering how economy isn't an issue for Manchurians after the first or second war with Ming, I find the fact that banners that longer to reinforce to be a deal breaker. You need to be constantly at war which leads your troops to be constantly reinforcing. You can't afford to have 8-10 units sitting idle waiting for more men.

Banners, in my humble opinion, are poorly designed (for the aforementioned reasons). As is, they would be much better if they were available to every single government type other than Hordes. And amongst all Hordes the Manchurian tribes are the ones that need them the least in the early game and past that they become increasingly useless, even with the recent buffs to their availability.

As long as you have the spare forcelimit you can always simply run 2 Banners for every 1 normal unit. The -50% maintenance cost offsets running 2x as many units and as long as you consolidate before battles there's no real drawback since you'll reinforce the same amount per month at -75% manpower and +5% discipline.

 

[Shiny Dog]

Technically you don't even recruit streltsy.

Russia's AI will now gain sentience just to downvote you for saying that.

 

[Swirly Mango]

Bit of a shame that the banner modifier on reinforcement is multiplicative. I do think they're more usable than most other special units.

Amusingly, if you're one of the few nations that get them in national ideas, marines aren't that bad these days, performing only barely worse than standard infantry in land combat. Their main benefit is that they draw from sailors rather than manpower, and sailors otherwise tend to go unused. If you mix them into the army, it's like having extra % manpower recovery. If you're not one of those nations, however, you have to take naval ideas to use them which is too enormous a price for some extra manpower.

The problem with marines (and other unique units) is you can't make an army template of them.

Edit: I tried to play a sailor/forcelimit heavy building setup as England, having to individually recruit and merge units added too many clicks. I gave up that save as soon as I unlocked 10% marines.

 

[iClipse]

Are they? Hordes have two weakness: poor economy and need to constantly be the aggressor.

Banners play into their weaknesses being a cheaper alternative to regular armies but being much slower to reinforce. Considering how economy isn't an issue for Manchurians after the first or second war with Ming, I find the fact that banners that longer to reinforce to be a deal breaker. You need to be constantly at war which leads your troops to be constantly reinforcing. You can't afford to have 8-10 units sitting idle waiting for more men.

Banners, in my humble opinion, are poorly designed (for the aforementioned reasons). As is, they would be much better if they were available to every single government type other than Hordes. And amongst all Hordes the Manchurian tribes are the ones that need them the least in the early game and past that they become increasingly useless, even with the recent buffs to their availability.

I find one of the biggest issues with Hordes being manpower, and it's that that banners solve. Being constant at war also means you're experiencing attrition all the time. And banners fill that hole nicely, that and the fact that they cost very low amounts of money.

Maybe I don't play hordes well though. Never claimed to be an expert with them.

When recently replaying with banners, I did find them in my mind better in the past than what they are now. Maybe it's nostalgia.
Still, I found them reasonably useful and having access to them gives you different choices regarding idea groups (like, I always take quantity in my first few idea groups, usually 3-4th group), as well as with your government reforms where you don't need to take the manpower options. And with banners you can just ignore manpower in the time where it matters most (being the first 150 years, before the manpower manufactory is there to save the day).

What I often find useful is mixing them with other troops. That way you don't notice the lowered reinforcement rate as much. That, and having a siege stack of them as well.

Streltsy are the best though.

 

[Nostalgium]

The thing that Cawa do really well is instantly recruit to immediately give you claims on the southern tribes, to help you unify all of Sudan, Ethiopia and the Horn by 1460.

 

[Twoflower]

I found them quite useful when playing Ethiopia - they are kind of expensive, but they give a decent buff. If you try to stay within your force limit (which I know isn't necessarily "optimal" play) they are notably stronger than the same amount of regular forces.
You also need 30k of them to complete one of Ethiopia's missions.

The conscript Cawa button in the state interface is either bugged or completely useless - I actually made a bug report on this. The only viable way to use them is via the Macrobuilder which lets you recruit individual units.

 

[iheady]

I have lost my Cawa regiments (they were obliterated in battle) and the buttom to recreuit them is no longer there, thus I cannnot continue the mission tree (the mission requiring 30 cawa feeds into other that eventually lead to the final mission - a blessed empire -)
It's 1604, Ethiopia is a catholic republic, nobility state loyalty is 50% and my military tech is 15.
Any way I can recruit Cawa again?

Edit: I have found in other thread that you need a certain type of goverment, whether: the "Negusa Nagast Monarchy" and "Solomonic Empire".

I will then aim to complete de Solomonic Empire.

 

[Kapi96]

You use them like you use the Janissary regiments: You don't

Really?

I tend to aim for 100% Janissary infantry ASAP in my Otto games. The extra reinforcement cost can hurt early game, but only while in big wars. After you've switched your main trade city to Venice and have a decent amount of control in the node you should be swimming in money so then that isn't even an issue any more.

The military power cost of them isn't an issue. Military points are the least useful ones, you're going to have more than enough to keep up to date, or even ahead, on military tech. Manpower isn't usually an issue so devving manpower isn't that important (plus I don't like doing it in provinces with good trade goods since it'll increase the cost of diplo devving if/when I have excess dip points, so why not use some spare mil points on them?

And they are better than regular units. -10% damage received may not sound like much, but every quality bonus you have makes it easier to beat enemies. And the more you can stack on top of each the more space mariney you're going to be! Plus the double drill gain can be useful to make use of drill bonuses despite having minimal time to actually drill due to near constant warmongering.

 

[grisamentum]

I found them quite useful when playing Ethiopia - they are kind of expensive, but they give a decent buff. If you try to stay within your force limit (which I know isn't necessarily "optimal" play) they are notably stronger than the same amount of regular forces.
You also need 30k of them to complete one of Ethiopia's missions.

The conscript Cawa button in the state interface is either bugged or completely useless - I actually made a bug report on this. The only viable way to use them is via the Macrobuilder which lets you recruit individual units.

100% this. Especially in the earlier periods where you are in an aggressive war against Mam/Otto, almost all damage is shock, and fast teching may not be possible or efficient due to institutions, and it isn't that MIL-intensive to build a bunch of cawa relative to your empire size. 30 is probably a good amount for the mission as well as the relative size you are at that point in the game.

Naturally they really don't scale well into the mid/later game, when you're talking about spending hundreds or even thousands of mil points on a bunch of cawa. So I think the OP is half-right - they are not a good general purpose troop, but they aren't exactly a "panic" button either. They have a specific niche when you are a regional power trying to become a great power. After that point it stops being advisable to use them because gold and manpower are plentiful but sword mana isn't.

And yeah, the state button is absurd.

 

[jonjowett]

Amusingly, if you're one of the few nations that get them in national ideas, marines aren't that bad these days, performing only barely worse than standard infantry in land combat. Their main benefit is that they draw from sailors rather than manpower, and sailors otherwise tend to go unused. If you mix them into the army, it's like having extra % manpower recovery. If you're not one of those nations, however, you have to take naval ideas to use them which is too enormous a price for some extra manpower.

FYI, one of the 1000 gold trade company buildings ("Governor General's Mansion") grants +2% marines force limit, so marines are available to every nation in the game. (You may have missed this because there are 5 types of TC investments, but the UI only has space for 4, so there's a scroll bar.) Naval ideas are not required, if all you want are some marines.