Advice

Training Soldiers

The T1 order

The T1 order is the most complex of all the orders in the Legends system and there are tons of things that you can do to screw it up. These are the basics you need to deal with for starters:

 

1. The Sponsor of the order is the character that does the training. 

The Sponsor

  • must be owned by you
  • must not be Insane
  • does not need to be in the ‘Target force'[=force that will receive the soldiers], neither need he be in the ‘Pop force’ [= force that holds the population that will be trained into soldiers].

So the force in which the Sponsor is, the ‘Target force’ and the ‘Pop force’ can be three different forces. Everything and everyone involved just needs to be in the same province. (So you can e.g. also train with a character that is in a guild in the province.)

 

2. The Target of the order is the ‘Target force’ and the slot you are to train troops into. The ‘Target force’:

  • must be owned by you
  • does not have to be the same force as the ‘Pop force’
  • does not need to hold the Sponsor
  • must be in the same province as the Sponsor

 

3. The ‘Pop Force’:

  • must be owned by you
  • must hold the population segment, holding the population out of which the troops are to be trained
  • must hold the possession slots, holding all the equipement and crowns needed for the training
  • must be in the same province as the Sponsor
  • may not be under siege

So you couldn’t train soldiers with money from the personal possession slots of the training character. Neither can you train out of population owned by an other player (he will have to gift the population to you by gifting the force holding the population).

 

4. The Amount of soldiers to be trained:

  • depends on the non-blessed up Tactics rating. i.e the first number on your character’s tactics line, NOT the value between brackets {}!
  • can be pumped up by using spells and potions to increase your Tactics
  • (but as indicated, you cannot use blesses for this purpose).
  • is at most equal to 3 times your non-blessed up Tactics if the troops race is of Equal or Compatiable Race
  • is at most 1 times your non-blessed up Tactics if the troop race is a Non-compatiable but not a Hated Race
  • may not be of a Hated race; you may not train population of a Hated Race. A race is considered Hated if:
    • a) The race to be trained is listed as hated under the training character’s racial hatreds.
    • b) The race to be trained has the trainers race listed as hated under its racial hatreds.

So not only people that you hate, but also people that hate you, cannot be trained!

To make things easier, the LPE lists under your trainer’s race two sets: Compatible races (= those that do not hate you) and Hated races (= those hated by you). Usually your Secondary races at setup are also Compatible races – unless they hate you…which in some exceptional module story lines may happen. 

 

5.The starting training level of the troops:

  • depends on the non-blessed up Personal Combat rating, being the Base value of Personal Combat plus adds from status and items
  • can not be more than 1/2 of your non-blessed up Personal Combat rating
  • can not be higher than the trainings level cap of level 12 (unless stated otherwise for your module)
  • can be pumped up by the use of spells and potions; however you cannot pump up your Personal Combat for training purposes for more than 10 training levels or +20 PC. As indicated, Blesses do not count.
  1. Training troops into slots already occupied must mean that the troops must have to be identical in respect to race, equipment, training type and status. Levels and morale will be averaged out with fractions rounded in various odd ways. If the trained soldiers are not identical to those in the target slot, then the whole order will fail.
  2. Notice the differences:

(a)

  • inflicting with a Special Training Type will require 1 unit of a certain item to be spend per soldier
  • inflicting with a Supernatural Status will require 1 unit of resource (often flora) per slot of soldiers (i.e. per spell casting).

(b)

  • when inflicting a Status, the item (flora) needed has to come from the possessions of the Sponsor, who must know the spell
  • when inflicting Training Type, the items needed have to come from the possession slots of the ‘Pop force’ (the force hosting the population segment providing the soldiers).
  1. The costs for the special trainingtypes (see p. 78) are an addition to the normal militia costs, not a replacement of it: 

So NOT: TL*special costs 

and NOT: TL*10*special costs 

as I’ve seen suggested by some people, 

BUT: 

costs per soldier = 10*TL + special costs 

So a level 6 Axeman costs 95 crowns (6*10+35), not 210 or 2100!

 

Order T15

1) With this order you can only supply existing troops with a new Training type, whether they had already a training type or not (in the first case, the new TT will fully overwrite the old one). You cannot increase Training level (TL) or add a supernatural status. And you must retrain a whole slot. The soldiers must be in a force owned by the sponsor, and may not be in a guild or marketplace.

2) The retrainer must be in the same province as the target force, and he must of course have the necessary skill(s) to inflict the new training type.

3) The (re)trainer must have the PC and Tact required for the TL and amount of the troops to be retrained, as if he trained them from scratch. However, he does not need to have any requirements (ability or items) associated with supplying a supernatural status that the troops already have. 

 

Example 1

To retrain 30 Vampyre Rangers level 12 into Vampyre Knights, the retrainer must have a PC of 24 (2×12), a Tact of 10 (30/3), but does not need to have the Greater Vampyre status.

4) This order does not take into account the TL of the soldiers in regard to costs. The costs are only the special costs for the Training type only. The crowns must come from the force in which the soldiers are. 

 

Example 2

To retrain the Rangers mentionned under point 1, the retrainer has to spend 65 (special cost of Knights) per soldier. The costs are the same no matter what the training level of the troops is. In this way it makes no difference in regard to money costs whether you first train them militia with TL 12 with order T1, and then give them Knight skill with T15, or trained them TL 12 Knights with order T1 straight away. The first option however does cost you an extra character action!

NB: you may give T1 or T15 as Standing Orders (= Transfer/Training Orders (p. 181) that automatically will go off at every production until changed/cancelled). This means that on your first turn after production, your characters will already have used up some or all of their character actions (i.e. these were spent on the T1 and T15 orders during production).

 

This article is reproduced with kind permission from “Aayko’s The Legends Corner”.