quote:

ORIGINAL: ShaiHulud

Maulet- There is another option, which I think of as re-organization of the Army.

When you start a new game with countries like Spain or Turkey, your armies are in poor shape. To correct their initial deficiencies, first, go to the 'Economy' section. Reduce Military readiness as low as possible. Next, reduce recruitment to the maximum age of 41. Raise recruitment level to 2. Increase training to 16 months. This should bring your replacements to 4.50 experience.

Since you reduced readiness, your divisions will soon fall to 50% strength. After you have a good number trained, raise readiness back to 100%. As the new, better trained troops flow into your divisions, the overall experience will rise.

You can do this several times until your troops are at, or near, 4.50 and, with a fair general, they will be able to perform maneuvers more easily.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan

I agree with Joram.  If you are at war, or at risk of being at war any time soon, with a neighbor who can really hurt you, I wouldn't try this.

But, if you do want to try it, make sure you have plenty of trained draftees in your pool and that as many of your units as possible are either in a city or with a depot.  Rotate them in and out if you have to.

It also seems to me that if you set your readiness to 50, your militia will also shrink and then consume some of the better replacements when you up it again.  I don't know off hand if that will cause them to gain morale, or if they're stuck at 1.7; I've just never payed any attention to what happens when militia units are fleshed out with replacements.  If they do go up some, that may be a waste of good troops, since militia are usually just garrisons for your cities.  But, I guess if you want better milita units this may be a way to get them, if their morale does indeed go up like other units.

A lot to consider before doing this.  But, give it a try and tell us what happens.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ShaiHulud

By utilizing the 'Forage' designation for individual units, or armies, you can direct your replacements to the specific units/army that you want to beef up immediately. After you go with this approach you can reduce the draft size to one (thereby costing less) and let the other units catch up after you've upgraded your active force.

I'm curious about why you stopped at 14 months training? Cash flow, yes? Reducing readiness will, also, reduce your cash outflow. Consider that to get each extra .1 morale on a new unit you'd have to build another barracks level.