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J

jubey

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Jun 11, 2013
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  • Europa Universalis IV
  • Hearts of Iron III
should I delete my legions when at peace in order to save money ??? maybe just keep 1 legion with only 1 unit on drill mod for military xp ???

do I loose manpower or military xp doing this ??
 
yes, you save money at peace by deleting your legions but:
  • the units deleted lose all their military experience or defense bonus and will start from 0% when you recruit them again
  • when you recruit new units you will have to pay for them, thus to save money you need to know that you will be more than 1 year without them as recruiting cost is 12 x maintenance cost
  • when you recruit new units you will have to spend manpower on them, losing manpower when you need it more, that is when you start a war
All in all, you are better served by having a legion fully drilled but rightly sized so your economy has a surplus and can keep growing by investing in new cities, buildings and slaves relocation.
 
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Also, one advantage I find with legions (among others) over levies is that they can be stationed wherever you want in peacetime (levies too, but it's generally better not to keep them in peacetime). If you disband them after the war, when you recruit them again, it will be in their region of origin (in the capital province?). You don't need to recruit them in advance, move them around and let war exhaustion start to build up as it is the case with levies. If you're small, it doesn't make a big difference, if you're big, it does.
 
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After years of beeling towards legions I have started to play more with levies and combinations of both. I think that legions versus levies comes down to your preferred playstyle. Each has it's pro's and con's.

Legions are more about quality and power projection since you can move them around at any point to where you want them to be but comes at the cost of lower income.

Whereas levies are more about quantity and will give you more income during peace time to build up your economy/country but comes at the costs of lower research during wars, the inability to respond quickly in defensive wars and the need for a big manpower pool to compensate for losses due to the lower quality.

You can somewhat compensate for the downsides of levies by going for a more hybrid approach by either using a few merc armies or a small legion per region as an advanced guard for a quick response to hold off your enemies until your levies arrive or as a siege army if you use engineers.

Overall I would say that Legions will win you the battles and the wars but levies can still compete if you spend the extra income to build up your country for wars of attrition by investing into your manpower pool. You might lose many battles but you will win the war(s) on manpower.
 
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Yes I agree, even when I'm big and rich, I still don't go full legions - they are too costly. Also, I like having a few amount of levies that I can raise in emergency when your legions are far away and your territories are threaten - also you can easily split them, all stacks keep a general, which is not the case with legions. I also use mercenaries - only problem with them is that it takes a long time for them to be at full morale.
 
In single player especially you can forgo legions for a long time against many opponents and simply crush them with numbers. Legions are much ore important in mp.
 
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I mean, I just keep legions existent but not raised unless I'm actually at war. It ensures that I don't need to continually remake legions over and over, which is also... rather expensive.
 
jubey said:
do I gain military xp by keeping 1 legion of only 1 cohort on drill mod ...???
Click to expand...
Sorry you didn't get an answer back in June, but the answer is yes - you gain a boost to xp based on the average experience of all raise cohorts. So if you only have 1 legionary cohort on the map (levies included) that's drilling to the max it can, you will get that military xp buff. Keep in mind, though, that this approach means your xp gain will drop dramatically during wartime.

Phili said:
My first use of legions is to build Roads.

Infrastructure - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com imperator.paradoxwikis.com
Click to expand...
You can also just use a levy from a crummy region to build them.
 
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DukeLeto42 said:
Sorry you didn't get an answer back in June, but the answer is yes - you gain a boost to xp based on the average experience of all raise cohorts. So if you only have 1 legionary cohort on the map (levies included) that's drilling to the max it can, you will get that military xp buff. Keep in mind, though, that this approach means your xp gain will drop dramatically during wartime.


You can also just use a levy from a crummy region to build them.
Click to expand...
If you use a levy it costs 50 per territory to build a road and you'll quickly run out of money.
If you have a Legion with an Engineer it costs 10 per territory. You also need 5,000 manpower so I use 1Engineer+1supply+8LInfantry.
Also; before my first legion I use mercenaries to get better Military leaders and extra manpower but which gives a penalty to the rate you gain experience which is then spent on Military traditions.
When I switch from Mercs to legions its at a time when my Aggressive Expansion is a problem and I know I wont be fighting a major war for several years. So I can disband my Mercs and sort out things like province loyalty.
 
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Phili said:
If you use a levy it costs 50 per territory to build a road and you'll quickly run out of money.
If you have a Legion with an Engineer it costs 10 per territory. You also need 5,000 manpower so I use 1Engineer+1supply+8LInfantry.
Also; before my first legion I use mercenaries to get better Military leaders and extra manpower but which gives a penalty to the rate you gain experience which is then spent on Military traditions.
When I switch from Mercs to legions its at a time when my Aggressive Expansion is a problem and I know I wont be fighting a major war for several years. So I can disband my Mercs and sort out things like province loyalty.
Click to expand...
And during war this legion will be good to siege/assault those pesky lvl1 forts. And find many other uses, like if it has a high martial general, it can be used as reinforcement for a big levy stack with a low martial general.
 
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Ir0nSlug said:
And during war this legion will be good to siege/assault those pesky lvl1 forts. And find many other uses, like if it has a high martial general, it can be used as reinforcement for a big levy stack with a low martial general.
Click to expand...
Nothing better than fighting Rome Latium 100k stack when their consul has Martial 2.

Cannae all over again :D
 
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