AGEOD Forums

What if any use have players found for militia units?

I personally find them mostly useless for anything but maybe as a picket line

Wouldnt trust a supply train for them to escort, they are no match against light troops.

I find them almost completely useless. Maybe they could be used as garrison units for home cities (=defensive). Waste of resources IMHO.

I'm also just using them as garrison troops. Playing as Prussia I was awarded a number of militia forces around the Pommern region (around turn 40 maybe). I formed them into a couple of brigades and sent them to cover some key towns in case the Swedes or Russians came calling. I've not recruited any myself though - I'm going for quality over quantity in my recruitment strategy.

aye, even with the Austrians, they are useless. I tried them in one PBEM since they are meant to solve the bottleneck of not enough cash to mobilise all your potential manpower, but ...

To keep an objective, militia is only good against civilians, as a police unit.
They could be here against a guerilla, for a line unit is expensive and not much better against a guerilla.
(But guerilla is not very usefull in Age games, for town are supposed always full of food coming from nowhere..)

Light units should be excellent to retreat (a prepared one in difficult ground) while doing decent damage, not to tactically stand their ground.
Then they may very soon counter-attack and take back the objective, only if in their retreat they have well soften their foe.

ERISS wrote:To keep an objective, militia is only good against civilians, as a police unit.
They could be here against a guerilla, for a line unit is expensive and not much better against a guerilla.
(But guerilla is not very usefull in Age games, for town are supposed always full of food coming from nowhere..)

Definitely, I imagine universal and plus modern terms they keep objectives and take "tribute" from peasants and take advantage from government funds if necessary.
And good against guerilla and such. But guerilla in morning disguise as farmer but at night appear as guerilla is another thing age engine can do but it gets complicated. Maybe in another game.

Trained militia can become regular units, and even elite units. It rarely happens, but for Prussia militias it happened when they garrisoned Konigsberg against Baris's Russians.

Militias are good as fire magnets. If you have some big regiments (with many elements) at hand, you can form them to a big brigade which then will pull the attraction of the enemies artillery fire.
You can also add militia regiments to regular or elite brigades to allocate some losses to them.