Optimal military building strategy

[Beagá]

After checking how tactics work now and the possible tactics involved, I guess specialization in troops for each combat phase (that is, focusing on archers and heavy infantry, instead of both light cavalry and archers) is better than having one level 1 building for each troop in the castles.

So, what is the best strategy to build military buildings? On which to focus? If possible, hints according to the culture as well (after all, pikemen become much more viable for italians, heavy cavalry for greeks etc etc due to the special buildings they get). Also, how you use retinues? Again, I believe specialization pays off.

 

[Bob_the_Insane]

I have noticed that the AI tends to start out with the +XX number of troops over the +% levy size buildings... Makes sense I guess...

 

[zork283]

To do an actual analysis you would need a list of the buildings and there effects. But I do agree with Bob, that you want to get the buildings that give you flat numbers of troops before the keeps, which give you a multiplier to your levy size. However, I think you would want the wall first, because it is cheap, and gives money and increases the fort level in addition to the multiplier.

I believe that a players retinue cap is determined by the total number of troops that they can raise, regardless of the quality of those troops. If that is the case then you would want to build militia training grounds and its upgrades, since they give you the most troops. With Retinues, you would want to build training grounds and cultural buildings that boost the quality of your units in your units in your capital, since the capital's buildings and tech apply to your retinues.

 

[Pode]

I did an actual analysis back in the days before tactics, the thread still lives in the FAQ somewhere, but is unfortunately locked from comments. Set up a seperate feedback thread that died many moons ago. Techs don't change the basic unit relative strengths so long as you have equal tech for the types you're comparing. Now that the effects of tactics are up on the wiki some enterprising soul (possibly even me) might work out the odds of each tactic and the expected strength of each unit type and update that work. The sheer number of possibilities is somewhat daunting though. Gut feel is that it's awfully hard to beat the Byzantine retinue of cataphracts and horse archers though.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

When people have looked at this, they've concluded that it's still best to build all the cheapest buildings first instead of specializing because it's much more cost effective. You get a lot more additional troops per gold with a 150 gold building than you get with a 400 gold building. Even if they're not the troops you want.

Retinues are a completely different matter. There, specialization is always better for the reasons you mentioned.

Personally, I build all the cash buildings first -- cities and walls. Then buy whatever is cheapest starting with the militia / archers, then barracks, then cultural building, then stables, then keep. That's focused on getting the most raw numbers first.

 

[The_Blind_One]

Go for whatever gives you the most troops right away.

So those are the militia barracks.

Specialy in vanilla, because they also provide you with archers and will allow your troops a much more effective skirmish phase. Seeing as how normaly castles start out with 0 archers... this is a great improvement in combined arms. Secondly it doubles your total troop amount if you build all 3 improvements. More troops is definantly king in alot of situations.

After that, you should decide what is more important. Mopping up and later hard hitting troops? Stables. Damage and morale endurance? Barracks.

When you have atleast those at level 2 or 3 you should consider building keeps and the like. It is only at that point that they provide equal amount of troops for the same price. You should only build keeps earlier if they are special territories on which you hope to fall back from and let the enemy siege for an eternity.

 

[Beagá]

Meh... so numbers still trump everything, to an extent.

I was curious in particular because both the italian and greek buildings are quite interesting... and was thinking of focusing on their respective units first (that is, lots of pikemen buildings for the italians, for example.

 

[Talq]

The problem with pike buildings is you don't get many pikemen in total, so the bonus applies to only a small number of troops. The italian building is also a morale bonus, and your pikes not wanting to run away isn't much use when the other 90% of the wing also gets to make its own decision. Add in the low numbers of troops, and its not really worth building early.

The italian specific strategy is melee phase & gives a bonus to pikes and heavy cavalry. To be honest, I've had appreciable difficulty getting it to work (& prefer pikes+archers for my retinues as a result).

The greek building is unquestionably good, courtesy of it being two powerful troop types (and its retinue is plain overpowered).

 

[Casiru]

If you have lots of retinues as a german/frank etc then you will probably qualify for the cultural tactic. When your tech is high enough to access the higher tiers of your special building it can be a good idea just to rush the special building. The HC using the tactic will dominate everything other than mongol archers (because of their tactic).
Once you have enough HC the other unit types don't even really matter anymore, they just absorb some of the damage.

For other cultures most don't have a cultural tactic so they tend to be weaker however spamming your cultural unit is almost always a good strategy since you only have to beat the AI unless your MP... at which point the frank/german cultural units reign supreme.

 

[The_Blind_One]

oops I forgot cultural buildings

build order.

1. Militia barracks (for double troops & archers)
2. cultural buildings (for lots of extra quality troops)
3. Barracks or Stables (either defense and endurance or mop up and attack respectively)
4. Keeps

build walls and moats or whatever whenever you want to increase the time it takes for the enemy to siege a province. I'd advise only using it in your capital if you run alot of risk, or border provinces with dangerous realms or heck u got nothing else left to build. It's really the last thing you should build except under some extremely rare conditions...