I finally noticed that Macedonian and Allied Thessalian spearmen only cost half as much as Paeonian or Illyrian mercenary spearmen. Since gold is now the limiting factor on how big an army you can build, you're better off using Macedonian or Allied spearmen for garrisons rather than building a native garrison after you capture the city.

I played a few years into the Philip campaign before I noticed this, and when I did an audit I discovered I was wasting enough gold to buy three more Phalangite brigades.

Maybe this was obvious to everyone else, but I thought I'd mention it for the benefit of noobs or people like me who weren't comparing prices for a given unit type.

I first noticed this in the Spartan campaign. I'm pretty sure it's based on how much the city's faction hates you. It'll take more Macedonian gold to persuade mercs from Illyrian to fight for you than friendly nations.

Belisarus is right.

Its not anything to do with the hostility value. Instead it is whether the city is 'allied' and 'will never rebel'. Mercanery units are the ones from normally conquered cities, they cost alot and have poor morale generally and are unable to level up. Allied units are from allied cities, they cost the same as regular units and have only slightly reduced morale as well as no ability to level up. Factional units (or whatever) are built from your culture cities and cost half of the merc cost and have the best morale. They can also level up freely.

The problem though belisarus, is that manpower becomes a problem. As much as possible I try and recruit allied or factional units and use them for garrisons. But if expansion is fast or there have been significant losses or you are playing a faction with a very few starting cities then mercs might be your only option.

Good of you to post about it though for anyone who didn't realise.

The problem though belisarus, is that manpower becomes a problem. As much as possible I try and recruit allied or factional units and use them for garrisons. But if expansion is fast or there have been significant losses or you are playing a faction with a very few starting cities then mercs might be your only option.

Yeah, gold sets the upper limit on your entire army's size, but recruitment rates limit how fast you can build or rebuild units. And you don't really want all those recruitment points from conquered cities go to waste.

But it's probably best to spend them on units that go out and bleed for you, rather than garrisons that sit and draw pay and rarely need replacements once you've built them. I'm going to try accompanying my army with a handful of home-grown spearmen to put in the cities as I conquer them. In addition to saving on gold, that will keep the main force from having to sit in garrison until something can be built locally. The extra spearmen can also do light-duty work such as screening the flanks while all the heavies are tied up in a siege.

But as you say, you can't always do exactly what you want.