Inequity in recruiting

[Strongwill]

As a new player when I read about how popcenter recruits (could only come from towns and cities, and they had to be trained and you had to make sure the census was high enough) I assumed the human troops were better than companions from the wild because they were more of a hassle to get and it made sense to me that trained troops would be better than some guys hiding in the bushes - but this does not appear to be the case.

I like the 1 troop per order. Seems like making wild companions more widely available is the easiest fix. I could also understand changing some mechanics for recruiting form popcenters. Maybe the first 2 troops come as "regular" but if you try to recruit 3 or more then brigades 3-5 would be green since you would be pulling from fresh troops. And up the revolt threshold to 5 troops.

Companion brigades is a huge issue, if a kingdom has very little selection, or you need elite/veteran brigades to get any good ones per your kingdom, then you have to rely on population center recruiting or magic summoned troops.

Magic summoned is mostly set w “good” kingdoms with the monster summoning spells, and the “evil” getting undead summoned. The undead are better w fear for some, bonus of flight from Spectors. But undead can be killed off by magic as destroy undead spells, where as monster summoning can’t. So a trade off when selecting.

Population recruited troops all need to be regular imo, and the cap of two should be lifted imo make it the same as companions (7 per turn).
Imo

[JohnnyUtah]

You could only recruit 7 brigades from a town once before exhausting the census. If you remove the census requirement then you're sort of taking the population dimension away from the game.

After thinking about all of this, I can see how the older limitation of 3 companion troops per turn was more aligned with popcenter recruiting. Raising the companion limit to 7 devalued popcenter recruits and it may have devalued named bridges from military kingdoms as well since it became easier to raise a volume of companions to counter stronger named brigades.

[Olorin]

Besides the drain on the orders, it also is a strain on food and gold to draft 7 companions on a turn. Drafting 5 trolls sounds good, until you factor in the 50,000 food and 60,000 gold it costs. Maybe late in the game that is easier but by then most pc have been supplying troops for quite a few turns.