Very easily! Just change the modifier on the Military Organization technology!
Is there a reason not to have retinues?
- Thread starter Six-Monts
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Very easily! Just change the modifier on the Military Organization technology!
I love my retinue, but I let it stand in the back pretty often when levies can get the job done. Cheaper that way. I keep it on ships I can quick send around if I need to turn the tide of some key battles.
The Varangians see alot more action and losses because they're so cheap. I joke that those Varangians who survive when I assault castles get promoted to the Retinue.
The Varangians see alot more action and losses because they're so cheap. I joke that those Varangians who survive when I assault castles get promoted to the Retinue.
The current Retinue system is underused early in game and overused in mid and late game. The free maintenance and same retinue-manpower ratio for all political tiers make large kingdoms and empire too stable while small dukes and count disadvantaged. I want more ways to influence retinues, their ratio to manpower, their upfront and monthly costs, through events, decisions and even crown laws, with differences across the political tiers
Right now, after sometimes, players tend to stop using levy all together and rely solely on their retinues for war. Historically, no monarch ever had a large enough standing army to entirely replaced their vassal levy contributions. Even the Fatimid, the Ayyubid the Ottoman and other Islamic dynasties with their huge standing slave armies (the Mamluk and the Jannisary reaching 20-30,000 but never 100k like in game -.-) all needed to use vassal levies in all the wars they fought. The Byzantine Tagmata before the event at Manzikert (probably their at greatest strength,no?) numbered only 20,000, whose upkeep was large enough that Konstantine X needed to disband 50,000 Armenian (exaggerated?) garrisons to balance the budget (and to purge the monotheist, but more or less the excuse for budgetary balancing)
Right now, after sometimes, players tend to stop using levy all together and rely solely on their retinues for war. Historically, no monarch ever had a large enough standing army to entirely replaced their vassal levy contributions. Even the Fatimid, the Ayyubid the Ottoman and other Islamic dynasties with their huge standing slave armies (the Mamluk and the Jannisary reaching 20-30,000 but never 100k like in game -.-) all needed to use vassal levies in all the wars they fought. The Byzantine Tagmata before the event at Manzikert (probably their at greatest strength,no?) numbered only 20,000, whose upkeep was large enough that Konstantine X needed to disband 50,000 Armenian (exaggerated?) garrisons to balance the budget (and to purge the monotheist, but more or less the excuse for budgetary balancing)
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Thats EXACTLY why I choose not to activate the retinue DLC. It makes no sense for the medieval time period especially if you like playing western Europe.
Another example of Paradox sacraficing history to make a buck.
Clearly, because retinues were the one selling point of this mandatory Rome DLC.
Seriously, I recommend Hanlon's Razor.
They cost like 2 gold to reinforce a 500 heavy infantry retinue, which is incredibly cheap. Come to think of it, warfare in this game is silly cheap any way, except for mercenaries which are priced sufficient to make you think twice to hire them. Retinues and levies are so cheap that its a no brainer to build them to the max/ call them all at once regardless of what you need them for.
Yeah, levy maintenance is really way too cheap already, in real history you could be bankrupted from extended warfare with raised levies, but in the game the price rarely surpasses your income.
I just wish it was possible to at least mod in higher levy maintenance and a constant maintenance for retinue. With the retinues being free unless reinforcing you can just keep a huge doomstack in your capital for emergencies only, for free. It makes it near impossible to lose, because even if all your vassals rebel you probably still outnumber them. Aside from being ahistorical, it's just plain boring.
Question: What is the best retinue (tandem) to have. I would have thought that it would be the 400 heavy infantry + 100 archers mixed with the reverse for a balanced, 1000 man group. But from the responses in this thread, I would think it would be the heavy + light cavalry group.
Levy maintenance can be modded by increasing the cost of each type of unit in defines.lua file. Totally agree with your second point
If you take a glance at define.lua file, light cavalry sucks at everything except pursue. Knights, on the other hand, in incredibly powerful in melee phase. But having a lot of light cavalry, according to combat.txt, will prolong the skirmish phase a bit, where your heavy cavalry don't contribute much. Among the default non-cultural retinues, I'd say heavy infantry + archer combo = most cost-effective. As far as cultural retinues are concerned, the more knights, the better
I like retinues but i think they are too numerous. They make military buildings much less important because of this. Maybe if they were 100 instead of 500 for each retinue and the retinue cap decreased accordingly (to 1/5th) it would be better but this is something that needs to be tested.
The cataphract retinue (byzantine cultural retinue), 300 heavy cav and 200 horse archers. Strong as hell, and can regularly beat armies almost twice their size.
Oh. Thanks. What culture do you have to be to get knights? Is it French or German (or something else)?
Byzantine and French, German and Norman, i think. They're in the 00_retinue_subunits.txt file
You only start to have large retinues very late in the game I had a Hispania which took over all off Europe and deep into Russia and I had I think 4 or Retinues of 22500 each so 90k to 112.5k men. Its a lot but by that stage my levy size was 450k+ possibly more. And as people have said at that stage it becomes crazy expensive after a war.
I think Byzantine at the start of the game can have 5 Cataphract levies so 3.5k men actually it may be less. I dont think this is really too ahistorical though late game you do have wars where only levies fight.
I think Byzantine at the start of the game can have 5 Cataphract levies so 3.5k men actually it may be less. I dont think this is really too ahistorical though late game you do have wars where only levies fight.
Late game?
I pick on weak oponents only with retinues and the varangian guard right after the initial war as byz emperor.
depends what is a weak opponent, I like to get my war out of the way as soon as possible and assaulting can be expensive
It's a different story if you start as count, but if you start as emperor they only have 300 men garrisons. Those are eaten up easily with 1.5k retinues and the guard. I keep my vassals happy that way and eat up counties and douchies before I'm going to build the frontline against the mongol invasion.
Really great idea. Retinues would surely become much much more interesting this way