Troop Recruiting Guide

Recruiting troops in Silverstag is much different than in vanilla Mount and Blade: Warband. To recruit troops, you need to be at the right center and that center needs to have the appropriate resources.

Centers

Centers are all of the towns and villages in the game. You can only recruit low-level (tier 1 and 2) troops at villages. You can recruit all levels of troops at towns. To recruit a specific faction's troops, the town or village must be currently owned by that faction. For example, if Suno is currently owned by the Rhodoks, you will only be able to recruit Rhodok troops in Suno. In addition, some centers have unique troops assigned to them that can be recruited there.

If you are in a center when you dismiss troops from your party, the resources that make up those troops will be returned to the center and can be used to recruit new troops. If you dismiss troops from your party in the field, those resources are lost.

Resources

To hire a troop in a center, you must have the appropriate resources available in the center. There are 4 types of troop resources:

-peasant

-veteran

-mercenary

-horse

Go to Reference Materials > Troop Trees to see these requirements in game. Each troop has a "recruit type" field that states what resource(s) are required to hire it, and what kind of resource(s) it gives when dismissed. Generally, Tier 4 and lower troops require peasants; tier 5 and up require veterans. Mercenary troops can be of any tier. If a troop uses a horse, it needs a horse to be recruited and gives a horse to the center when dismissed.

Centers will create peasants, mercenaries and horses slowly over time. The speed depends on improvements in the center and on prosperity. Veteran recruits can only be obtained by dismissing a troop that has "veteran" as a resource or by winning tournaments. Troops must be dismissed in a center to contribute their resources to that center for future recruits.

Recruitment condition and location

Troop choice is determined by the faction controlling the center, not by the center's geography. Any Swadian-owned center allows Swadian recruitment. Villages only allow tier 1 or 2 recruitment,while castles and cities allow the full range of units. You can dismiss any unit anywhere, but if you dismiss a veteran or mercenary unit in a village, you won't have any option to hire them back.

If you go back to the troop tree, you will see color coding:

-Black troops can be recruited in any faction center

-Blue troops can only be recruited if you are affiliated to the faction (as a mercenary or a lord)

-Yellow troops have specific recruitment conditions, written in the bottom left corner if you are looking at their stats and inventory. These conditions might be a specific center, honor rating, friendliness with a center, etc.

Example: The Swadian man-at-arms is a Tier 4 cavalry unit. It requires a peasant recruit and a horse and can be recruited in any castle or town currently owned by the Kingdom of Swadia. If it is dismissed, it gives back to the center a peasant and a horse. If you upgrade your Swadian man-at-arms by gaining experience, you get a Man-at-Arms + (or Veteran Man-at-Arms) which is a tier 5 cavalry unit that requires a veteran and a horse. You cannot directly recruit a Man-at-Arms+, but if you dismiss him you get a veteran recruit and a horse in the center where he is dismissed.

A fast way to get a lot of veteran recruits is to stack a lot of tier 4 units and level them to the next tier through experience, then dismiss them to get veterans. It is, however, super expensive, as it requires you to pay the tier 4 unit price and the upgrade cost. On top of that you will need to pay the price of the veteran unit you want to hire. Alternate methods are to rescue prisoners (if you roam around the slave mine you can intercept prisoner convoy) or to hire captured enemies.

This is however kinda moot, as the easiest way to stomp all opposition is to stack good tier 4 units and never upgrade them. You could mix in a couple veteran units that give good bonuses if you want, but you don't need an entire army of veteran units -- it's in fact not cost effective at all.

Credit to zapbib on the TaleWorlds forum