"Building" Troops?

[Der_Leprechaun]

Hey, I'm a longtime HoI and Vicky player, but I'm totally unfamiliar with Crusader Kings. I'm playing the Mid Campaign as Germany, and when I'm looking at the regiments I can mobilize in comparison to my vassals, rivals, etc, they're tiny in comparison. My question is, how do I get them to an equal level? I don't see a way to build soldiers like in other games, so I'm a bit confused.

 

[Grauuu]

Amount of troops in a province is affected by the income. Income, in turn, is affected by the rulers Stewardship, so having a good steward will severely boost the overall manpower of your nation.
Hope it helped clear things up a bit.

 

[KonradRichtmark]

Well, there isn't much to "do" (as in, make a conscious decision to do) to increase stewardship. Your ruler has whatever stewardship he has, and that's it, and which courtier to appoint as steward is almost always a no-brainer. The only way to expend resources to get even more stewardship would be through marriage, either to get a better steward to your court or to increase the loyalty of some guy with insanely high stewardship but negative monthly loyalty. Marrying off a daughter to such a guy gives a whopping +2% monthly loyalty.

Other than that, the social balance of power in provinces can be changed to increase troop amount. As far as I know, increasing noble power decreases income, but causes a net increase in the amount of troops in the provincial regiment.

 

[Snaake]

In the long term, richer provinces and building income-increasing (+x gold per month, even though the in-game texts usually say per year, or +x% gold) province improvements will increase the maximum amount of soldiers a province can recruit at a time.

After disbanding the regiment from its previous service or improving the income of the province, it will take time for the recruiters and trainers to replenish it back to full size.

This is the first I've heard (not saying it's necessarily false though) that social balance affects the amount of troops, except negatively since changing the composition will lower loyalty of the other social groups and hence lower income. Other than the balance of power, the terrain of the province affects the troop composition (how many knights vs. light cavalry vs. peasants with pitchforks), as well as your ruling law. There's more on the troop composition calculations in the FAQs I think, but at least Feudal Contract gives you about 30% more troops than some of the others (pretty much all of it just light infantry though: in battle, they're cannon fodder at best, and they're expensive to ship around the Med in crusades, but the extra numbers come in handy for speeding up sieges).


The size of the regiments your vassals will mobilize if you ask them to depends on the setting of your scutage slider. The higher scutage is set at, the more money your vassals give you, but the less troops will be available for you when you ask for their troops.

If you check the war declaration screen for how many troops your rivals can get, I think it counts all the troops in their entire nation. So for a French count, the French kings and all his dukes' and all the french counts' armies get counted, but you likely won't have to fight all of them if you play your cards right.

 

[Der_Leprechaun]

Thanks for the responses so far.

It seems to me like you're saying that the amount of troops I can call up from my provinces depend on my income. If I have higher income, then the number of troops will go up.

The problem is, though, that I'm making 82 a month in income. As an example, in Innsbruck I can call up slightly less than 1,500 soldiers. France, by contrast, has an income of 65 per month. In Ile de France, they can call up well over 6,000 troops. Moreover, I've recently inherited Franconia, and was watching as I took over and unpaused the game. The number of troops can be called up from Franconia nosedived as soon as I took control of the region.

It's very strange that I have 208,000 manpower and a decent income (again, this is a new player's perspective) and the armies I can call up are tiny in comparison to France and even vassals like Genoa. (Genoa can call up over 7,000 troops).

I still don't understand what's going on. Am I not doing something correctly?

EDIT: I think I might have just figured it out. All of my provinces actually have very low income in comparison to their neighbors...

So, in that case, how do I improve a province's base income?

 

[Jossar]

The base income is just that: base. Provinces are set a certain way to reflect economic factors of the time and natural prosperity of the region (so, Nubia for example can never be as good as Byzantion, all things considered equal).

As mentioned before however, technological advances, +gold and +% gold advances, and high stewardship will all increase the amount of money you get out of a province and the maximum number of recruitable troops.

But that does leave one in the annoying situation of having to pray that your king/steward doesn't drop dead in the middle of a war, lest the army suddenly go downhill...

 

[unmerged(75851)]

Knights tend to be the best troops, so high nobility is good if you want them.

 

[Grauuu]

How many counties are you personally controlling? Maybe you rule over too much land personally, and in effect, income in all provinces will go down.
If you click on your shield in the top left of the game, what does it say your efficiency percent is? If below 80-90%, you need to hand out more land to maximise profits.

 

[TempestDK]

Thanks for the responses so far.

It seems to me like you're saying that the amount of troops I can call up from my provinces depend on my income. If I have higher income, then the number of troops will go up.

The problem is, though, that I'm making 82 a month in income. As an example, in Innsbruck I can call up slightly less than 1,500 soldiers. France, by contrast, has an income of 65 per month. In Ile de France, they can call up well over 6,000 troops. Moreover, I've recently inherited Franconia, and was watching as I took over and unpaused the game. The number of troops can be called up from Franconia nosedived as soon as I took control of the region.

It's very strange that I have 208,000 manpower and a decent income (again, this is a new player's perspective) and the armies I can call up are tiny in comparison to France and even vassals like Genoa. (Genoa can call up over 7,000 troops).

I still don't understand what's going on. Am I not doing something correctly?

EDIT: I think I might have just figured it out. All of my provinces actually have very low income in comparison to their neighbors...

So, in that case, how do I improve a province's base income?

As Grauuu says, you are probably over your limit in personal demesne provinces ... depending on your title tier (count, duke, king) and your ruler's Intrigue score (Spymaster's score doesn't count), you have a maximum of provinces you can rule directly without suffering in effeciency.

So lets say that you are getting 100 gold a month from your personal provinces (leaving out scutage etc. from vassals) and you are at exactly maximum allowed demesne (so still 100% effeciency), then you inherit a province which gives you 2 gold/month, but your effeciency drops to 90%. You are now making 91,8 gold/month, and thus will have less troops available than before you inherited.

Now lets say that you inherit a large duchy that gets you well beyond your maximum, then even though you get more land, you will see income and manpower plummet for your personal provinces.

Also haveing low effeciency (below 80%) will fire bad events for your ruler, like getting stressed, depressed and eventually crazed.

So you probably need to give out some titles to vassals.

Also be aware that provincial traits like 'Revolt', 'Looted', 'Plague' etc. will seriously reduce income and manpower for those provinces.

 

[Snaake]

Everything people said about keeping high efficiency (hurts your troop amounts too), building advancements etc. are correct, but concerning your examples of Innsbruck vs. Ile de France/Genoa:

EDIT: I think I might have just figured it out. All of my provinces actually have very low income in comparison to their neighbors...

This.

Ile de France is one of the top 10 base income provinces in the game, and Genoa is high too. The size of the provinces regiment is calculated off that provinces income. Places like Genoa, Byzantium and Alexandria can easily get regiments over 20 000. The fact that you have 208k manpower just says that you+your vassals would have 208k troops if you all raised them, but scattered all over, and the 82 income also includes scutage, which only reflects negatively on the amount of troops at your disposal. Total income doesn't really say almost anything about the amount of troops at his disposal. Germany/the HRE doesn't really have any really rich provinces, unlike a lot of other countries, which tend to have at least one (Cordoba, Essex, Ile de France, Byzantium, Baghdad, Alexandria, Praha...) that's significantly more wealthy than the rest.

As for the Franconia issue, if you're saying that the max. amount of troops you could call up nosedived, that's due to the lower efficiency and/or stewardship you have. If you're saying the amount of troops you could call up immediately after conquering dropped as opposed to what it was before you occupied it, that's because you've killed all the previous troops, or they're still serving their former master. Newly conquered provinces usually have almost no troops to begin with.

 

[KonradRichtmark]

One thing to add on demesne size penalty, it is possible to go down to 80% efficiency without actual loss of income. A Royal Post in a province negates the first 20 percent points of large demesne penalty. It imposes a -5% income modifier on the province, but it also increases noble and burgher loyalty by +0.20 per month and is thus well worth it imo.

 

[Snaake]

One thing to add on demesne size penalty, it is possible to go down to 80% efficiency without actual loss of income. A Royal Post in a province negates the first 20 percent points of large demesne penalty. It imposes a -5% income modifier on the province, but it also increases noble and burgher loyalty by +0.20 per month and is thus well worth it imo.

I thought the royal post was 10%. Grand palace gives a further 20% of efficiency penalty negation, but I think you still count as having less than 80% efficiency for the stressed/crazy ruler events etc., it's just that the province does give more gold.

And it's hard to get a grand palace everywhere (so you can't lower efficiency too much because of it, at least not under 80 which would be otherwise possible when combined with a royal post), and under FC you can't tax the nobles for all the +loyalty modifiers you're getting anyway, so while the royal post is pretty good since you can run at 85-90% efficiency quite safely (don't think there are really any negative effects), the grand palace may not be worth it.

At least not for purely efficiency. Then again the -% income buildings aren't that bad in the long run once you start having most of the province improvements built, since there's far more +income things, and your demesne limit grows every century anyway.