Derek, are you going to be implementing some sort of armor upgrades for city militia in 0.992?

Just a personal opinion but I don't think militia should get any upgrades.

Militia is your grandad grabbing his old pointy stick to see off the barbarians.

I think it would detract from having to build some decent defensive troops to protect your cities.

What's next? 'ED-209 patrol' upgrade? Where does it stop?

Dont get caught up on the name. Besides there are lots of well equiped militia in history, you are sterotyping.

It stops when the AI has some sort of defense that can stop a human from steam rolling. Remember this is a single player game, if the AI doesnt have a chance to stop you then the game sucks, no going online after 'training' with a crap ai.

If you read my initial response you will see I misunderstood the question and thought it related to the AI attacking human cities.

This is a measure of how grown up I can be - I can publicly admit my mistakes.

However;

If the AI decides to rely on militia and not adequately defend it's cities then it's the AI that is found wanting and bolting on a steel cuirass isn't really a solution. Improving the AI to be a better defender is the solution.

And yes I am stereotyping - because it's fun. A good deal of comedy relies on stereotypes....and irony

And that was a measure of how silly I can be.

I think the precise problem armour on militia would ease is rushing AI cities early-game with your champions as soon as you meet them. Often the AI is out adventuring and has no real army to defend with.

I think the militia should have the second best equipment you have researched. Weapons and armour. As it is now, some small gang of shrills that I dont notice, can take a huge city. Has happened to me several times. We dont have time (or the budget for upkeep) to produce defenders everywhere. To change that would entail rebalancing the game. Just give us some slightly better militia and not only in fortresses.

I also think that militia should have a disadvantage over regular armies, and that the player (and the AI) should should have to plan allocating troops to defend their cities.

Adding more defenders is one thing, since as a city grows so does the population, but arming them and armoring them seems like giving everyone free armies.

If cities were magically endowed with defenders that were capable of winning anything but a skirmish, then a critical part of the strategy (defence) would be eliminated, and conquest would be the only issue at hand.

If the AI is silly enough (BRAD !!!) to leave its cities defended only by their militia, then I should be able to steamroll over them with my well-armed and provisioned sovereign.

After all, I would like to be able to reproduce the sacking of Winterfell by Theon Greyjoy, and I very well can't do that if every city automatically has an army defending it...

This is what I do to the AI, and I gain a boost in score and put myself in a good position the rest of the game.  The AI is weakest early.

You would also be able to rush other players early on if the game had multiplayer, because the militia by no means mean any real help defending a city, there are no practical bonuses when defending your cities early-game until you get lightning hammers and your militia starts dealing damage.

I think militia should be equipped with the best spears, and the best chest piece armour available. You will still have to go tech for some defensive stuff, but the militia would have a slight nodge of defense stat, and a decent weapon.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

The human should be able to do this to the AI, and the AI should be able to do this to the human (on higher difficulty levels.)

Fix the AI, don't dumb-down the game.

How is adding armor to miltia dumbing down the game?  I can't that line of logic to make any sense.

I'd love to have militia auto upgrade to at least leather armour.  I would be more likely to venture out into the world if I knew my city was in safe (safer) hands.  The world needs to be explored and enjoyed rather than viewed from the safety of my battlements!  Before anyone says that I should be a better player cause they can beat everything on nutter bas*ard level, I'll admit that I'm not great at this game but just love to play it.

I would love to see this in. Taking over cities should be something you prepare an army for. Not just a lucky hero passing by and taking advantage of two men with clubs who happen to be the only city defense.

Leather and/or Rusty armor or even chain at the highest with a level 5 fortress maybe.  It's too easy for me to take cities from the AI.  I can pile shit troops to take cities.  And I mean shit troops with sticks and weakness I fast track and then rush with.

Thats a great idea Xia, the armour depends on the cities level - who's a clever boy! You have just won a pony!

What I'd like to see is something like:

- Armor/weapons depending on tech;

- Number of defenders depending on city level;

- Quality of defenders depending on type of city (Town, Fortress, Conclave). (Increasing squad numbers or composition, etc.)

I'm just playing devil's advocate with this one (maybe going a bit too extreme,) but I do caution against making the standard militia too good.

I would much rather have the AI be good at leaving some units home early game and also be able to employ a rush strategy against the human to force me to have to defend rather than everything be taken care of auto-magically.

Now, I have no problem with upgrading militia based on research (the warfare tree could certainly use another 3-5 techs, and this might be good content for that,) or buildings, or city upgrades.

Having to leave a hero at home would also make the governor trait more of a viable option, as well as making scouts more of an option.

+1

Leaving a hero at home?  Which home? Every city?  Leave troops to defend?  So limiting their ability to expand and defend their cities?  Cities being able to defend themselves better will help the AI more than it will the player.

These are all questions a strategist must ask, and answer.

I think that their should be an option to upgrade the armor for the militia by a strict cost that we do for other troops. We want upgraded armor we pay the gildar for those units to have them like any other troop that we have out in the field before armor and we want to upgrade that armor. If the unit dies a new unit replaces that unit and we have to pay again.

Although, I think this is a feature request but it fits with the current gameplay model. It's not automatic and it doesn't take maintenance fees, but an upfront gildar cost to do it. I also think this is AI friendly (or maybe easily implemented for the AI with hordes of cash)

I also think the upgrade function should also have some tweaks, because sometimes I don't want to upgrade my units past leather, but it happens automatically. Sometimes the best is not what I can afford, but I can afford the second best. I know that this is another feature request, but something to consider for an expansion.

And developers of strategic games, too.  The Civ series allows you to upgrade troops for a fee, so you can keep those stationed at home current with your latest techs.  I wouldn't mind seeing that in FE. 

I think upgrades to armor and gear should come with techs, city increases, and buildings.  If there is a fully built level 5 Fortress, I should expect it to have a lot of well geared defenders.  Archers in full leather and longbows, Infantry in chainmail, kite shield and mace.  And maybe Fortress only. I think Fortresses should be a lot harder to capture than cities and conclaves, but a bit of armor on some defenders in any city is fine. 

I get the feeling the whole armor thing is simply a design decision on whether city defenders are a ragtag militia or a geared garrison. Now there is some illogical stuff in the current design, as the militia's weapon does upgrade as the techs increase. So, in reality, we have naked militia members scrambling to defend their city, leaving behind any available armor, but grabbing the latest bad ass high-tech weaponry.  True glass cannons end game.

It looks like the devs think upping the qty of glass cannon militia is the way to go (vs. upping the quality) - which I'm open to that approach as well and haven't had time to test it yet. But a few builds ago I modded all the city melee defenders with a full suit of leather, kept the default weapon upgrade, and modded their encumberance. It seemed to go pretty cool early game. I've now landed on throwing X number of rusty pieces on them and balance the slots a bit. Does scrambling militia just throw on a chest piece and roll? Common sense might indicate throw on some chest, head, and legs and roll.

Upon release and for personal enjoyment, I'll probably mod city melee defenders with some armor because it just feels right to me plus it's easy to do. Either that, or Sean has already thought through 5 billion machinations of this in his balance mod and is just waiting to share when we go gold.