GNO Dev Diary 4 - Recruitment
Hello everyone, another fortnight, another dev diary. Today’s is about recruit troops to your army. Btw, I probably should get better about doing call to actions, so be sure to wishlist the game on Steam if you haven’t already, it’s the best way to support indies!
Read Time: ~5min (~1,100 words)
Above: Concept art of generic soldier
Dev Diary 4 - Recruitment
Named Characters
There are 2 types of Troops you can recruit, named characters and generic troops. In order to create an army, you’ll need to assign a character as the General. In battle, if your general goes down, all of your Troops will lose a chunk of morale, 5 for right now, but this may change based on more play testing. The General isn’t just a Troop with a target on their back however, every character has several Leadership Stats that come into play while they’re a General or an Admin managing your cities. Those stats are:
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Charisma: Recovers Troop morale faster on the campaign map. +1 Troop Capacity (Base is 10, max is 20).
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Authority: Passively increases Troop XP each campaign turn. +1 Troop Capacity (Base is 10, max is 20).
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Cunning: Increases vision range.
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Stewardship: Increase maximum supply.
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Intellect: Increase siege progress per turn.
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Zeal: Increases movement range.
Additional effects may be added as I work on the game, but this makes it so different generals will be predisposed to certain things. Charismatic and Authoritative characters are leaders of men who can manage large forces. After a battle your Troops will lose Morale along with HP, which will take time to recover, so a Charismatic General is able to get them back in the fight quicker, helping to press your advantage on the campaign map. High Authority makes a General a good drill sergeant, slowly training up your force. This in particular will need some fine tuning and I may limit it so that this passive XP doesn’t bring Troops over some level determined by Authority, this way it’s best used for bringing freshly recruited greenhorns up to a useful level more readily without being something you can use to snowball too hard. A Cunning General will be more effective at scouting. An effective Steward will be able to go longer without needing as frequent supply runs. An intelligent General will be able to siege cities quicker with superior engineering ability. A zealous General will be able to march his troops faster.
Once a General is picked for an army you can assign additional named characters to the army, these are called Captains. For now, a Captain’s stats don’t contribute to the overall Army, but I may make it so they supplement the General’s stats. This is one of those design decisions best reserved for playtesting, so we’ll see.
Assigning characters to an army is free, aside from the opportunity cost of making them an Admin instead. Characters are your most precious resource and they’re limited. Each Army or Admin essentially equates to 1 action per turn on the campaign map. You could put them all in one powerful army, but your Action Economy will be strained. Instead, you’ll want some balance of characters and generics.
Generic Troops
Every city on the map has a variety of economic Sectors in it, which each have a population working in it. For example, Ostia has a Hunting Sector as well as a Commerce Sector. Each combination of Sector type and Culture allows the recruitment of 1 type of troop.
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Ostender + Hunting = Trapper
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Ostender + Commerce = Caravan Driver
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Woadener + Hunting = Warden
This determines what Troops you’re able to recruit inside a city. However, you’ll need 2 things to actually recruit one of these troops to your army.
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Manpower/Levies: Not everyone in your Sectors is fit for soldiering. Typically, only 2-5% of a population is and as such you’ll be bound by the same constraint. Sector’s with high happiness will be closer to that 5% margin, while unhappy/rebellious Sectors may offer no levies at all. This means if you conquer somewhere and they aren’t loving the new manager, you won’t be able to easily replenish your numbers and you can find yourself in a pickle if this area is an active warfront. Some exceptions to this are the Barracks and Aristocrat Sectors, which have a 50% and 25% bonus respectively. Additionally, when generic Troops take damage, you’ll need fresh levies to refill their ranks and restore their HP. As of right now, disbanding Troops will return the population to the city you disband them in, but I may change this to the city/Sector of origin in the future.
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Each Infantry unit typically uses 500 population and Cavalry 250 for perspective. Recruiting these Troops will naturally impact your economy as those pops were producing goods before picking up a spear.
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The city of Ostia has a population of ~180K at game start, so it can support about a dozen troops before you need to wait for the levies to replenish.
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- Goods: When you try to recruit a Troop, you’ll need to purchase goods from the city. This is still very subject to balancing, but light troops typically need Textiles, Leather and Carpentry (representing shields and bows). Heavy troops require Arms, which are only produced by Smithing Sectors, which not every city has. Ostia for instance, will need to trade for Arms if it wants some of its best units. Finally, Cavalry need Horses. The recruitment cost is directly determined by the price to buy all the needed goods in that city, which has the bonus effect of meaning recruiting all at once will lead to a shortage in the city, causing prices to spike for some time afterward. This means it’s probably a good idea to build a few different cities for recruiting each type to save some money. I will likely also be adding an option to have an Army drill, where they will consume some goods in return for passive XP while depleting the Army’s morale and stamina for a turn. This way you are further rewarded for building up a military industrial complex, probably a better use of your tax dollars than schools and healthcare or other woke nonsense /s. Don’t forget to vote if you haven’t already and live in the US btw! Btw everyone knows /s is sarcasm right? Right?
Wrap Up
That’s pretty much it for recruitment. So far I think managing manpower has been an interesting challenge, primarily from a logistical standpoint. Needing to replenish your Army will typically mean retreating to a safe position after a big fight or creating a second Army to bring a fresh batch of cannon fodder recruits up to the front lines. This often involves splitting your forces creating moments where you’re more vulnerable and have to decide between pressing your advantage and falling back. The system also rewards managing your population’s happiness well. If you can make different cultures happy, you essentially unlock access to their troops too!
The next dev diary will go out on Nov 13th and the topic will be sieges! I hope to see you there!