Wizards and Warlords

Wizards and Warlords

Not enough ratings
Military Unit Basics
By zgrssd
Recruiting units from local cultures is a tricky mechanic that hard to explain.
While there is a basic tier and type System, the varriances between cultures can be enormous. And as cultures are randomized, there are no standing asumptions to start from.

This guide tries to fix those issues a little.
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
It is more of a guideline, then a rule
The game is literally designed to have a randomly generated world - random cultures included. Thus two cultures of the same species can have vastly different technology.

Furthermore, there can be no asumptions about any species for any given game. A race might not exist and any culture might have had a history that prevented or forced cultural development.
Also the rules are not yet fixed as of writing this, so even without that Randomisation the information in this guide is volatile.

As such this guide is more about guidelines, then hard and fast rules.
Racial Regiment Template
One of the few seemingly fixed parts of the game, are the racial templates. These do not seem to change between world creations. However there are still totally randomly generated species wich ruin too many asumptions even here.

As in about every Fantasy setting ever, Humans are the baseline we can compare all other species to.

Dwarves severely lack in mobility and somewhat in scouting, but have Courage and Discipline in Spades. They are also small, while still having a relatively normal Equipment cost

Ogres have toughness, courage and twice the Hitpoints. But their equipment is also almost twice as expensive, they lack discipline and scouting

Race/Culture interactions:
The idea of a Ogre in full heavy plate armor would be scary. But not only is such a unit expensive, the technology for it is at best unlikely in a ogre based or allied culture.
There are (or should be) some interaction between the physical stats and cultural development.

Lifespan and Aging:
A species that lives long and/or takes long to grow up, is quicker to develop technologially. They have more time to grow old, more time to develop and maintain technological knowledge and have more incentives to develop technology (to protect what little manpower they have).
Nothing shows that as well, as that Dwarve and Elve cultures tend to be the most developed ones.

Equipment cost and natural stats:
Having a high equipment cost modifier or good natural stats, is another incentive against technological development.
The Ogres actually live 50% longer then humans, but tend to be behind in culture since their equipment is much more expensive, they lack discipline but have way better stats.
It is all in the Culture
While the Racial stats and abilities mater, culture is usually way more important. For examples of differnt cultures, you usually do not have to look further then Human. Cultured Humans and Human barbarians are often very far appart in how they fight.

A lot of things from a Culture mater:

Technology:
Perhaps the biggest decider of how a culture fights, is their technology level.
Barbarians will not be running around in plate mail. But they are a whole lot more likely to get Berserkers, Elemental Magic and simialr things.
Meanwhile in a Cultured, Highly Cultured and Master Smith Culture it is hard to find a unit without any armor. And Honor based warrior cultures (Chivalry and Bushido) are more common.

Primitive Cultures tend to have cheaper units that have a high tendency to be Berserkers too (making them unlikely to rout). If your main concern is spamming out a lot of units quickly, they are usually the way to go. Just do not expect any Discipline from them

Technologically advanced Cultures tend to have better units - but also much more expensive ones. If your main concern is preserving manpower or positions in the combat resolution, they are generally the way to go.

Culture Traits
Drunken Barbarians or bears fight differently then Chivalrous knights on horses.
Note that not every unit from those cultures has those modifiers. Unless explicitly noted, only units with the Special benefit from it.

These decide what the cultures Units, Workers and Followers specialize in. It also often includes major modifiers for city stats, wich can make holding a conquering city trivially easy or almost impossible.

Alingment and Dogmatic variants
When a Wizards and a populations allignment greatly missmatch, there will be no would be no way for the Wizard to recruit from them.
However, Conversion actions can change them. These are special actions that convert the population in and recruit people in a "Dogmatically Charged" variant.

Units recruited from these variants can have merely different Allignment, but they could have entirely different tags or classificaitons as well.
Recruitment via mana
Mana is not only there for spells, but can also be a major military factor. A unit that is paid in mana, is no less valid then one that is paid in gold or food.

4 Types
There are 4 distinct types of creating units that need mana upkeep:
Summon
Bind
Raise
Create

Various Trait and Mastery bonuses only affect the Cost or Upkeep of specific types.

No Manpower
There is no manpower invovled. There is no penalty for being above capacity. The upkeep costs are thus mostly fixed.

The one exception is the splitting penalty (see Upkeep), wich does apply to these units.

More then just mana
Generally these kinds of Units cost some mana to create. A few require only mana. However, there are plenty of units that need "more" for creation - and rarely even upkeep.

Gold is the most common, especially with Raised Units that have equipment and Created units.
Food is not uncommon for Bound creatures.
But in the end, everything is possible.

Free Mana for Upkeep
You get a certain amount of mana that can only be spend for maintaining units that require Mana upkeep. This could be seen as a equivalent to Manpower. Exceeding this amount will simply mean that it starts cutting into your general Mana income.

The free mana is 10 per Level of the Wizardtower.
Merging, Splitting, Replenishment
There are 3 different measurements of size at play.

Unit Size
This is what freshly recruited or misshap free summoned Unit of that type will start with. Predominantly it is 100, but some bigger monsters have smaler unit sizes.

Max Size
This is how high the unit can replenish. This usually starts at the Unit Size.
However, summoning Misshaps and certain spells can reduce the max Size of a Unit.
Some units do not replenish (meaning Max Size always follows Current Size).

Current Size
How many soldiers the unit actually has right now. Again, this starts at the Unit size. But it can only replenish up to Max Size.

Splitting and Merging
Splitting a unit will split the current Size and the Max Size proportionally.
Merging units will combine the current Size and max Size proportionally, but only up to 100.

The takeaway is, that you can not get around recruiting new units via splitting. If you split a unit with 100 Unit, Max and Current Size (100/100/100), you also split the Max Size resulting in two units with 100/50/50. Additionally, you would pay more upkeep (see there for details).
Recruitment Pools and Upkeep
Each Culture has it's own Recruitment Pool. It decides if you can recruit new units, and how cheaply the recrutiment and upkeep is.

Fielded
How much manpower is currently in the field and in training. Units are calculated by their full strenght here, regardless of losses.

Pool - Base
This is a especially hard to loose part. If there is not enough temporary manpower left, base manpower is used for recruitment - without being consumed. That means with at least 100 base, you can always recruit a unit.

Base is primarily provided by Settlement and Fortresses, but some is gained from followers of the culture as well. In settlements, it is provided by Warrior pops and thus primarily dependant on the Military score. Fortresses tend to have a fixed amount (~750).
Base drifts towards what is provided by all such sources, but slowly. That means a temporary loss or gain of city or fortress will not instantly have effects.

Pool - Temporary
The second half of the pool, and especially for early Wizards the bigger one. If a Event gives Recruits or a Follower is gathering recruits, those will be Temporary Pool parts.

Temporary pool are used up when recruiting new units, before base is even looked at.

Over Capacity Surcharge
Fielded is compared to the Total Pool (Base + Temporary). If Fielded is bigger, there will be a surcharge to Gold Upkeep, Gold Recruitment Cost and Training Time. Other resource costs are not affected.
The actuall penalty caps out at +100%, but the displayed excess can be much higher then that.

This has the following ramifications:
- As long as base is at least 100, you can always recruit. But the price might be prohibtive.
- If Fielded is lower then Base, there can never be a upkeep surcharge
- If Fielded is higher then Base, Temporary Pool is used to make up the difference, but any recruitment will increase the fielded amount and decrease the temporary pool. So 200 men of temporary recruits are needed to support a 100 man unit without penalty.

Footnotes
- The Temporary pool will be reduced as losses are replenished
- Recruitment actually looks at the predicted pool situation after the button is pressed, when giving costs for recruitment and Upkeep. It does not give then current upkeep situation
- If all you got is 1 unit or less, the penalty is capped at 15%. You still need 100 temporary or base manpower to recruit anything new.
- The Formula if the base is 0 is stated as: 0.025*N^2 + 0.05*N + 1.2 as for 1.0.0.35beta, with N being the Normalized Units, roughly "Fielded/100".
- A unit with losses has the upkeep reduced by half the losses in percent. Note that the Unit size is used for this, so a unit with reduced Max Size is treated like a unit that has losses.
Temporary Recruit rules
Wich Character you send on a "Gather Recruit" Task maters. I am jsut going to quote the Developer on this. The data was given back for the 1.0.0.42 beta/1.0.0.32 life

Originally posted by Valravn Games:
The base value when gathering recruits is 25.
Matching culture: +50
Otherwise: +2 to +65 depending on cultural attitude (Admire is +50, Worship +65)

Character traits/skills also modify it:
Attractive: +2
Cautious: -1
Depressed: -5
Energetic: +2
Insane: -1
Inspire Courage: +2
Intimidating: +2
Logistics: +5
Paranoid: -2
Proud: +1
Reckless: +1
Scarred: -1, +0, +2 (depending on whether culture is peaceful or warlike)
Sophisticated: -1, +0, +1 (depending on development of culture)
Train Troops: +5
Ugly: -1
Maimed: -2 (for some cultures)

Religion-class characters gain a bonus or penalty based on the target culture's attitude towards the religion of the character.

Martial-class: x150%

After that a bunch of dampening factors may be applied depending on whether the resulting number of temporary recruits is high compared to the (target) base recruitment pool of this culture.
3 Comments
zgrssd  [author] 22 Feb, 2024 @ 5:23am 
@Marcellinio99 Back when I played there was a option to view your current manpower pool.
But it has been literal years since I played.
Marcellinio99 22 Feb, 2024 @ 2:28am 
So.... is there any way to see how may peppel are left in your recrutmet pool as a Wizard?
BigRedman6666 22 Mar, 2021 @ 3:12am 
Nice