Newbish question

[MaxWilson]

You only pay for it once, unless the enemy conquers the province. No upkeep. You have the right attitude towards PD, which is that you supplement it with "real" troops and use the PD as blockers/chaff. (Note that PD gets replenished even between battles, if multiple enemies attack in one turn.)

One down side to PD is that it's not mobile: 10 provinces with 20 PD each is probably the same price as a 200-man army that you could use to attack, or mass all in one place to defend. Also, you can't script PD to Hold And Attack. This particularly matters if you use army buffs like "Strength of Giants" or "Legions of Steel." Similarly, you can't use PD to guard your commands. Also, since PD is broken up into several smaller squads it often breaks more easily than one big squad would--although this depends on your nation (nations with low-morale PD suffer more). Having half your army take off running after taking four casualties (out of 40 men) is rubbish.

And of course, the final reason you might not want 20 PD in every province... it costs 210 gold. If you're fighting a human, that's an extra 210 gold you have to pay every time you (re-)take a province. If you're fighting against the computer, you could probably buy 1-11 PD or so in most provinces and leave the rest of the gold in the bank so that you can buy lots of PD in the provinces that need it. (For instance, if you go raiding in enemy territory, PD can make nice defensive reinforcements for when you get cornered.)

Edit: there's also a bit of psychological effect there. Buying too much PD can tempt you to stand your ground, in order to protect that 200-gold investment, when tactically you ought to retreat and buy time.

Sorry if I'm lecturing. Yeah, no upkeep is a nice perk for PD. Upkeep is 1/15 of purchase value for regular troops, half that for sacreds. Most summonables have no upkeep, except for the ones which are also purchaseable with gold (not necessarily by you) and some like trolls (have goldcost = 30, so upkeep is 2 per turn). Total upkeep is of course listed in the upper-right-hand corner of the map. Note that same mounted recruitables with a #secondshape (Machakan sacred spider-thingies and LA Agarthan Cave Knights) have no upkeep cost after their rider gets killed.

-Max