Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

I am playing a Lucky Pretender and have received a couple batches of 100 militia that appear to be fairly useless in battle. Do I also have to pay upkeep for these fools?
Thanks

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Yes. Kill them off as quickly as possible.

(Or use them for sieges.)

It's particularly bad if you're playing LA Ermor...

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

I cannot say for sure but I have always assumed that the milita and occasional flaggelants require upkeep. There are no special icons indicating that they are free or anything to distinguish them from recuitable militia, which in my mind makes them the same, and thus require upkeep.


The flaggelants are not great, but neither are they bad if you have a decent bless. I just march the milita off to battle, put them in front, script them to atack closest and put all other troops on hold and attack orders so the milita ranks can be reduced as much as possile. No matter what I do, some survive and then I repeat the above.

On occasion the militia will rout quickly and take everyone else with them. (They run backwards very well. Maybe you can figure out how to incorporate that into some new strategy.) I really don't understand the mechanics that lead to that.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Meat shields at the front line to cut them down or time to invade the water.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Too many militia can lead to routing. 75% dead or routed and the whole army will flee.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

As militia aren't especially durable...
Take one low pop (500 or so) low income (3-7 gold) province. Move your militia in there, and pillage, plunder, overtax, and (if you've got undead/demonic priests) turn some pop into ghouls, with the goal of zero population. If you've got low admin fortresses, or they're nowhere nearby, you'll have the perfect dumping ground for all your militia to die of disease, without managing a battle. Not quite as quick to take out that upkeep hit, but lazy elimination.

On certain maps, I do find those free militia especially handy for patrolling my borders and preventing those assassins from 'friendly' countries coming in.
40 is about an even chance of detection, 80 is near spotless, and 120 might even catch glamoured units reliably.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Event militias have the same monster id as one of the recruitables, so yes, they cost upkeep. Roughly 1 gold for every two militia.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Argh thats what I thought...these bums are draining my treasury. I plan to ship them off to a particularly dangerous province. Mwahahaha!

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

I tend to toss a commander onto them, couple them with a few decent troops, and use them to take indies on a secondary front. Later in the game, I use them to make a nuisance for someone else.

If your army is big enough, then they make good cannon fodder.

-Jeff

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Yes the milita event has been previously discussed on the forums and the vast majority agree it's a bad event.
What's really bad is when they land in a province where there's also another army and the end result can be starvation/disease.

The milita can land in deep secure provinces as well where killing them might take 8+ turns of marching. The milita event means you pay more gold upkeep, you need to feed more units and you have a ton of low morale weak units.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Drowning them is also fun.

Equip item which allows largish army underwater, march underwater, put all the militia in the leaderless box.

Poof!

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

I would like to see the militia event deleted from the game, its unnecessary micro, as it becomes a case of how can I kill those militia as fast as possible.

If its meant to be a 'lucky' event replace them with heavy infantry or archers or something more useful.

I have had 500+ of the little cowardly chaff draining my treasury before now... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

There is a number of times when the militia events are good, particualiry at the beginning of the game. You can use them for:
patrolling
defenders in castle
sieging
decorations for enemy knights lance tips

It is when you get a large number of thos eevents that they become a problem.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

That's brillant.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Yes they do.

Unless you need a patrol force for a province, they are extremely annoying.

A disband command for units whose time has passed would be really nice.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Really the militia event should stay. What dominions desperately needs is a /disband/ command. This would be great for LA Ry'leh who gets tons of useless underwater only freespawn.

Jazzepi

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

I've had important armies pickup starvation and disease because of the important army marched into the province struck with the militia event.

The militia event should provide fewer units of much better quality. The gold and supply upkeep combined with low morale weak units makes this event bad 80% of the time.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

According to the manual you shouldn't pickup disease from the first round of starvation so a disband command would eliminate that worry.

In that case the worst thing that could happen would be that you move into a territory, militia event occurs, and then a fight happens. I'm not even sure if your troops go through their "eating" cycle in the turn order before fights are resolved. If they do, then you would have to deal with the morale penalty during the fight, if they don't then it wouldn't be a big deal.

Jazzepi

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

If the militia event is a 'lucky' event it needs to be changed to being a 'unlucky' event which it is the majority of the time.

Militia are virtually useless in combat. If they come in contact with enemy troops they will die very quickly and rout your entire army, sometimes resulting in better quality units dieing.

Also they are a drain on your treasury and have a strategic move of 1, meaning they can take 1/2 a dozen or more turns to move to somewhere you can dispose of them if you have a large empire.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

I disagree.

Militia might suck in combat, but they are outstanding patrollers.

Do the math...they're among the best "destealth strength/upkeep" units available. (Slingers are slightly better, for the record).

Assign 40 freebie militia with an indie commander, and set to perma-patrol your capital: for 21 gold/turn, you'll deny capital scouting reports to your opponents, and prevent most "instill uprisings", "preach the word of god", and "assassinate enemy commander" attacks. Initial investment: 30 gold.

This is invaluable when playing a nation like TC with its +25 stealth spies, or for preventing assassation of a global-enchanting-mage. Station them at a choke point to prevent monkeys from slipping behind the lines.

In addition, they're also good "fort reconstruction/upkeep" units. Use them to buy time for a counterattack, and when supplies start to run low, send them on a suicide mission without consequence (maybe a little guilt).

If you really hate them, give them to a commander, set them at the front & attack closest, commander to hold x 5 then retreat. Free experience for the commander.

Every unit has it's place.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

If you are still running a strong gold economy, then militia has some limited uses. But if you have gone over to a blood economy, or have death scales and it's late game and you're operating on a gem economy, then militia can really suck what little gold you have away. Their arrival can make it impossible to build a badly needed new lab or temple you were planning on constructing. Zero-upkeep summoned fliers are better destealth strength/upkeep or fort reconstruction/upkeep troops if you have no gold.

They can cause disease due to starvation when you move a 1-turn starving (not yet diseased) army to a safe province, only to find out that province has less supplies that you thought because it has become infested with volunteers.

Of course you can get rid of them in combat or water, but with land-move-1, if 60 arrive in a province 5 turns from the nearest front then they will eat 60*.5gold*6turns=180 gold before they die (since there won't be a commander when they arrive). Plus you need 2 new commanders to shuttle them around, if your existing commanders are not in the area or are busy being used as blood slave buses.

Militia is fine for order-misfortune nations, who don't get them. But they suck for luck-turmoil nations, who get them but don't want them.

Re: Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?
 

Very good point.