Do Event-Obtained Troops Cost Upkeep?

DonCorazon · #1 November 30th, 2007, 01:23 PM

I am playing a Lucky Pretender and have received a couple batches of 100 militia that appear to be fairly useless in battle. Do I also have to pay upkeep for these fools?
Thanks

thejeff · #2 November 30th, 2007, 01:36 PM

Yes. Kill them off as quickly as possible.

(Or use them for sieges.)

It's particularly bad if you're playing LA Ermor...

Edratman · #3 November 30th, 2007, 01:42 PM

I cannot say for sure but I have always assumed that the milita and occasional flaggelants require upkeep. There are no special icons indicating that they are free or anything to distinguish them from recuitable militia, which in my mind makes them the same, and thus require upkeep.

The flaggelants are not great, but neither are they bad if you have a decent bless. I just march the milita off to battle, put them in front, script them to atack closest and put all other troops on hold and attack orders so the milita ranks can be reduced as much as possile. No matter what I do, some survive and then I repeat the above.

On occasion the militia will rout quickly and take everyone else with them. (They run backwards very well. Maybe you can figure out how to incorporate that into some new strategy.) I really don't understand the mechanics that lead to that.

Caduceus · #4 November 30th, 2007, 01:45 PM

Meat shields at the front line to cut them down or time to invade the water.

thejeff · #5 November 30th, 2007, 01:47 PM

Too many militia can lead to routing. 75% dead or routed and the whole army will flee.

Lazy_Perfectionist · #6 November 30th, 2007, 01:56 PM

As militia aren't especially durable...
Take one low pop (500 or so) low income (3-7 gold) province. Move your militia in there, and pillage, plunder, overtax, and (if you've got undead/demonic priests) turn some pop into ghouls, with the goal of zero population. If you've got low admin fortresses, or they're nowhere nearby, you'll have the perfect dumping ground for all your militia to die of disease, without managing a battle. Not quite as quick to take out that upkeep hit, but lazy elimination.

On certain maps, I do find those free militia especially handy for patrolling my borders and preventing those assassins from 'friendly' countries coming in.
40 is about an even chance of detection, 80 is near spotless, and 120 might even catch glamoured units reliably.

Edi · #7 November 30th, 2007, 02:28 PM

Event militias have the same monster id as one of the recruitables, so yes, they cost upkeep. Roughly 1 gold for every two militia.

DonCorazon · #8 November 30th, 2007, 02:31 PM

Argh thats what I thought...these bums are draining my treasury. I plan to ship them off to a particularly dangerous province. Mwahahaha!

jaif · #9 November 30th, 2007, 03:22 PM

I tend to toss a commander onto them, couple them with a few decent troops, and use them to take indies on a secondary front. Later in the game, I use them to make a nuisance for someone else.

If your army is big enough, then they make good cannon fodder.

-Jeff

NTJedi · #10 November 30th, 2007, 05:36 PM

Quote:

DonCorazon said:
Argh thats what I thought...these bums are draining my treasury. I plan to ship them off to a particularly dangerous province. Mwahahaha!

Yes the milita event has been previously discussed on the forums and the vast majority agree it's a bad event.
What's really bad is when they land in a province where there's also another army and the end result can be starvation/disease.

The milita can land in deep secure provinces as well where killing them might take 8+ turns of marching. The milita event means you pay more gold upkeep, you need to feed more units and you have a ton of low morale weak units.