Reinforcement vs. Disband and Recruit

[godescalcus]

In terms of strict ducats, what costs more, to consolidate armies after battles and recruit new units (let's assume we're not recruiting mercenaries but simply replacing the units eliminated by consolidation) or to let them reinforce back to full strength?

I wanted to know about strict costs, not war tactics. I usually consolidate my armies in lumps of units to that each lump will generate a very low strength unit and the rest are full power, then I remove the low strength unit to a position of less danger while it reinforces. Rinse and repeat until I have a full strength army and another composed of weak units that I retreat. I don't know if this is useful and most of all, whether or not it's costlier than simply consolidating, letting the number of units be reduced and recruiting them back.

 

[defy]

I always wondered that too.

 

[KRBLACK]

reinforcement cost= 0.4 * (arriving base reinforcements/1000) * base regiment cost * (100% - sum regiment cost modifiers) * (100% - sum land maintenance modifiers) * (100% + 2%*MIL tech)

This is the formula as stated on the wiki.
So assuming you reinforce 1000 men (regiment goes from 0 to 1000) and you have no further modifiers:

0.4 * (1000/1000) * base regiment cost * 1 * 1 * 1.06 (if at MIL 3)
0.4 * 1 * base regiment cost *1 *1 *1.06= 0.4 * 1.06 base regiment cost
0.424 base regiment cost

You will save about 58%-36% money when waiting for reinforcement compared to training new regiments. (depending on MIL tech again)

I also read that extra reinforcement speed also indirectly reduces the cost. The formula uses base arriving reinforcements. If you have 133% reinforcement speed you will pay normal cost for 33% extra men. This means you will have a 25% cost reduction.

 

[deckhand]

I usually consolidate my armies in lumps of units to that each lump will generate a very low strength unit and the rest are full power, then I remove the low strength unit to a position of less danger while it reinforces. Rinse and repeat until I have a full strength army and another composed of weak units that I retreat.

Do you know about/use the Shift-Consolidate to preserve number of regiments with many zero strength if you've had a lot of losses?

Thanks for question. So, answer is it is much cheaper to reinforce than to build.
An exception could be if at end of war and willing/able/need to wait a while to rebuild. Then you would save the maintenance on all the forces you don't have.

 

[pttaylor]

yeah, if reinforcing after a war takes 10 months, then you're also saving 10 months of maintenance by disband + rebuild, assuming you want to have the armies full strength again within that time frame. If maintenance is pro-rata'd, which I believe it is, that's ~.5 of usual cost per month on average, over ten months. Unit maintenance is 0.1 of unit cost, so we're looking at 0.5*build cost in addition to the reinforcement costs. Comes out to about the same as building from scratch, and that's if you have the manpower to reinforce at full speed.
The main reason not to delete and rebuild is I think that mil strength counts number of units and is used in a lot of AI diplomacy. I'm not 100% if it's checking raw unit count as well as troop count, though, so it's possible that the 0 strength units don't actually help. Rebuilding is a lot of irritating micro, though...

 

[makaramus]

about maintance cost... peace time cost depends on your ideas
if you got "reinforce" modifiers then even at peace reinforcing might worth it.
even so you never want to disband... you can allways unite damaged stacks to fill missing ranks