User Guide

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when we look at the way in which combats are
resolved.
At the end of each line is the cost that must
be paid from your treasury to begin recruiting
this type of regiment, and the length of time
it will take before the unit is ready for action.
Clicking anywhere on the line will issue the or-
der to begin recruiting one of these regiments.
If the line is greyed out, you either lack the nec-
essary 1000 men in your manpower pool, or
you don’t have enough cash in your treasury
to afford the unit. It will also be unavailable if
you are already recruiting in this province, be-
cause a province is only able to recruit one new
regiment at a time.
As soon as you issue the order for a unit
to be recruited, a graphic will appear in that
province on the main map to indicate that a
regiment is being recruited. A bar beneath the
graphic allows you to monitor the progress at a
glance, and hovering your mouse pointer over
the graphic with display a tool tip indicating
the type of unit and expected date that it will
be ready. The regiment will have no ability to
protect the province until it has been fully re-
cruited and trained. If you lose control of the
province before the regiment is ready, the re-
cruitment will be cancelled, and you will lose
the money and manpower you spent.
When the recruitment process is complete,
the new regiment will appear on the main map
and if you wish, you may place a new order for
the province to begin recruiting another new
regiment. Although the new unit can be giv-
en orders immediately, you will almost always
want to wait for a while before sending it into
battle because a new unit will have extremely
low morale when it first appears.
Mercenaries
If you are in urgent need of military forces, you
can check to see whether there are any merce-
naries available for hire in a province. If there
are, the available mercenary regiment types
will be displayed in the lower portion of the
recruitment interface. Unlike your own regi-
ments, a mercenary regiment has no recruit-
ment delay and will be ready for service imme-
diately. It will be placed on the main map as
soon as you decide to pay for it; however, like
your own regiments, it will have an extremely
low morale when it first appears.
While having a regiment become available
instantly can be handy, there are several disad-
vantages that you should consider before em-
ploying mercenaries:
• A mercenary regiment will only contribute
one-third of the normal amount to your
military tradition when it participates in
combat. This will make it much harder for
you to gain the high levels of tradition nec-
essary to recruit the best possible generals.
• Unlike regular regiments, a mercenary reg
-
iment is never upgraded when you change
your preferred unit type. Once it has be-
come outdated, you will need to disband
the regiment and hire a new one that has
more advanced weaponry.
• Mercenary regiments require double the
normal monthly maintenance cost of a
comparable recruited unit.
Each geographic region in the world has a
limited number of mercenaries available for
hire, and they are provided on a "first-come,
first-served" basis. Each time a country hires
a mercenary regiment, it is removed from the
"regional pool" that supplies all of the provinces
in the area. The pool will slowly replenish over
time, so if there are no mercenaries available
when you check a province, it is possible that
one will become available later.
Army Information
When a regiment is recruited and placed on the
main map, a new army is created that contains
only this unit. The regiment is automatically
given a name that indicates its province of ori-
gin, and the same name is given to the army.
If you click on the unit, the army information
box will appear near the upper left of the main
map.