I was writing up a "player's initial thoughts" post, but got sidetracked. My biggest issue with RoP at present has been the unit building and replenishing system, and some thoughts for an altered system in an AGEOD game using the same underlying engine came to mind.
My thoughts center on manpower, as the issue of highly qualified versus ordinary men and officers is one the game developers are clearly grappling with.
Let's start with some concepts:
* Better equipment is ordinarily a matter of spending more time and money. Better men is a problem that time and money can only partly solve.
* Most men can serve in the artillery (there are always spaces for horse-tenders and ammo-carriers), given additional time for training. Not all men can effectively serve in a cavalry unit, regardless of the time spent training.
* Some men are suitable for elite units. Others are not. Some are suitable cavalrymen. Others are not.
* Some men can be trained, over time, to become worthy of elite units or to become good cavalrymen. Others can't.
* Most units can be modeled in one of four ways:
- Units with low personel qualifications/training and little equipment (militia, rag-tag horse),
- Units with low personel qualifications, but more training and acceptable equipment (ordinary foot and horse, most artillery)
- Units with fairly high personel qualifications and excellent equipment (guards infantry, heavy horse, etc.)
- Units with extremely selective personel qualifications and the best equipment money can buy (the creme de la creme)
* When we say "men", we actually mean "men and officers", because a quality unit requires more effective leadership. This is an important reason for limiting the advance of "men" from lower to higher rank, for adjusting the rate and amount of advance by nation, and for imposing a time and financial cost for such training.
This suggests the following system:
* Replace the "conscript" resource with three manpower (actually manpower and leadership) classes:
- Levies: The basic manpower resource. Untrained, and suitable only for militia.
- Soldiers: Troops with decent training. Suitable for ordinary and militia units. Adds quality if assigned to milita.
- Veterans: Troops with either excellent training or real battlefield experience. Suitable for any unit. Adds considerable quality if assigned to milita. Adds quality if assigned to ordinary foot or horse. Can create or replenish extremely selective units only if some additional requirement is met (such as a unit cap or a maximum replenishment quantity or percentage per turn).
* Training allows most, but not all, men (and leaders) to go from "Levy" to "Soldier". Training may (depending on the country and period of time) allow some men to go from "Soldier" to "Veteran", but this takes longer and doesn't work for all men. Training takes time and consumes small amounts of Money and War Supplies.
* Whenever men enter the replacement pool, they do so as Levies, Soldiers, or Veterans, depending on the national manpower parameters (fresh men) or the unit they came from (in cases of battlefield injury, attrition, or disbanding). We allow the free disbanding of unsurrrounded non-General units in a depot, city of size 2+, or fort. When a unit is disbanded, its type and unit experience govern the mix of manpower classes obtained.
* When a unit is replenished, it uses the mix of manpower classes most suitable for its type and unit experience. If not enough men of the higher class are available, then the replenishment ignores unit experience and considers only unit type - if the player hasn't untoggled the option labeled "Allow unit experience to drop by adding replacements, if necessary (more flexible unit replenishment, but may cause unit quality to drop)". Players can toggle a second box to "Allow men of higher classes to enter lower-ranked units as replacements (more flexible unit replenishment, but loss of trained troops to lower-ranked formations)". The men actually supplied to a unit alter its new unit experience.
* Building infantry units takes manpower of a particular class and (for most units) not too much additional time. Building artillery units takes manpower of a particular class and more additional time.
Building cavalry units is trickier. You need suitable horses. The man and officers need to be capable of serving in a mounted formation, and not everyone can do this. We can model all of these constraints by allowing some national percentage of these men (with some nations and times having higher and lower percentages) to be suitable for cavalry. Such men can be used in any unit type. The rest can only be used for infantry or artillery. Allow "Cavalry Training" to move a fraction of the available manpower each turn from one class to another (perhaps again nation-dependent). Allow the attrition of war (especially on horses) to move men back again.
* So, we're looking at, for each nation, a 3 by 2 grid of manpower. Players alter this grid to suit their needs by selecting Training and Cavalry Training, by disbanding units, and perhaps also by spending EP (or the equivalent) to activate great events (like "Build a War College" or "Establish a Royal Stables").
* Now we can remove most limitations on number of non-elite units. If you've trained the Veteran Cavalrymen necessary, then you've invested plenty of time and resources already and so should be allowed to mobilize or replenish ordinary Cuirassier units to the limits of your Veteran Cavalrymen, Money, and War Supplies, without much additional build time.