Question: How do you mobilize, or militarize your country now?

[Kinkness]

This isn't a complaint thread. I'm generally just asking how you do it now from before, or what options are available.


So previously if you wanted to go to war, you'd have to save up some form of "military funds" to be able to recruit, and upkeep a large invasion force to win wars, etc. Or, if your neighbors are unruly and rowdy quite often, and keep wanting to poke you with a sharp stick, you'd have to manage your income a bit more to allow yourself to upkeep a larger military to hopefully persuade your rowdy neighbors you're not a good target.
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This strategy and tactic doesn't seem to be possible anymore. The most you can do is raise your levies, and that's it, and that's not even a good move since those populations are now not adding anything to my country, and are essentially farmers/citizens being pulled from producing for my country.

I'm not going to go completely on the right swing and claim its paradox dumbing down their games yet again, since the Marius update did actually add quite alot more depth and immersion to the game, with armies being literal parts of your population and having to work around that cultures/area's usual military compositions, which I really do like.

But it does beg the question to be answered.

What options do I now have to move my assets around to allow for a larger army if need be?

What options do I now have to defend myself from a strong opponent, besides just throwing mercenaries at them?

It seems like now the options are less, and even more in favor of snowballing since smaller countries are literally hard limited in army size now.

Again, not complaining, I'm legit wondering what my options are, and if I'm missing something, so I know how to better strategize.

 

[Kahldris]

Ya maybe there should be a way to militarize your nation more. Of course it should result in a great cost to your economy.
Edit: Though we are all trying to figure out how levies exactly work.

 

[Less2]

Yeah, there needs to be some kind of way to turn gold into more troops. Tribal starts where everyone in a region has basically the same number of troops are just fully RNG otherwise.

 

[Todie]

there needs to be some kind of way to turn gold into more troops

This way is called mercenaries.


Other than that, I suppose it commes down to how many integrated non-slave pops you have and what strata threy are from. Nobles make for some heavy levies etc...

 

[Kaelic]

This way is called mercenaries.


Other than that, I suppose it commes down to how many integrated non-slave pops you have and what strata threy are from. Nobles make for some heavy levies etc...

Yeah, Mercs is the answer. Though I find them prohibitvely expensive for a lot of small/medium nations at the start. It's not the up-front cost, but the maintenance. Like 4-5 a month for 4.5k men? Jesus wept.

 

[Todie]

Another part of early progression with small nations is to play it clever with your diplomacy. Though, given that opinion-improve costs gold now, that might also get tricky.

 

[Rabid]

Unless you're tribal, you can change laws to make your levies larger.

 

[Baldamundo]

Some initial thoughts:

1. money still matters
   1. if you can afford them, mercenaries can make a huge difference and potentially are more decisive than ever?
   2. if you've unlocked legions & have enough pops in the relevant regions, more money means you can build bigger legions with a higher ratio of high quality troop types
   3. if you've got enough money, you can keep your legions drilling for more experience and more military traditions
2. some buildings have military effects, but im not clear how significant they are
   1. foundries give +50% bonus starting experience. i'm not sure how much this matters how what scope it's applied to (levies from that province? from that region? legions?) or whether it stacks, but it's not nothing
   2. training camps & barracks give bonus manpower. I think this is less important now, but for some nations it can matter a lot
   3. earthworks give negative combat width + enemy attrition to the territory - which seems like it might be potentially quite powerful, if situational?
3. technology matters
   1. every level of martial advances gives you bonus morale (and increases maintenance cost tho)
   2. inventions can be invested in any category, and some of the military ones are potentially very powerful - especially the ones that add discipline or enable legions
4. population demographics now matter a lot
   1. the more integrated culture pops you have, the larger your levies (or the larger your maximum legion size)
   2. the balance of integrated cultures affects your troop composition. even within the same cultue group, e.g. Hellenic Thessalian give you heavy cavalry, Italiotian give you light cavalry, Lacedeamonian give you heavy infantry. Some cultures give rarer units like chariots, horse archers, war elephants. This means you potentially have some important choices about which cultures to integrate, at what speed, how to pursue assimilation, etc
      1. I guess if you immediately assimilate everyone, they'll all have big happiness maluses, but you'll maximise your levy size. Your primary culture might not have an ideal levy composition, so assimilation might not always be the best option in the long run.
      2. There's now potentially interesting choices and interplay between choice of Military Traditions and conquest and integration since you can unlock some of the different culture group trees (there seem to be limits to this, however - e.g. Celt and Punic can unlock Roman traditions, but Greeks can't)
   3. pop class might matter? the dev diaries said it would, and some have reported that the files indicate that citizens & nobles should give higher quality levies than freemen, but I can't find any indication of this in-game, so it's hard to judge.

That's just off the top of my head from having played the new patch for a day - I'm sure there's stuff I've missed or misunderstood. I think with the new update there's definitely more depth and choices re militarisation, but it's a lot more complicated and a lot of it much longer term - i.e. as a small nation there might not be much you can change in a limited timescale.

 

[Synen]

I would say that the Epirote and Macedonian cultures have the best levy compositions. Epirote has 20% light cavalry, 40% heavy infantry and 40% light infantry. Macedonian has 15% heavy cavalry, 35% heavy infantry and 50% light infantry. If you intend to stick with levies then in my opinion you should pick the military traditions that buff the unit types of your levy composition which usually means sticking to the military traditions of your own culture.