Right, I've been meaning to post this for a while. I can't get my head round the recruitment system. I am told I can recruit, say, hoplites, and so I do. However, they take absolutely ages to recruit or sometimes just don't finish.

I've seen people on this forum saying you can disband workers and they will enter the population pool and then be filtered into the recruitment system, but I've tried that and it doesn't seem to be happening.

The only thing I remember seeing in the in-game encyclopedia is that population (and therefore the recruitment pool) gets bigger when migrants turn up, but that they also spawn at fixed locations, meaning of course that if one of those locations is not nearby, then you're not going to get any.

Is there something I am missing.

I do tend to have a tactic of Blitzkrieg at times, and if it fails then I am really knackered because I won't get any more soldiers. In any case, what is the best way to manage the population pool and recruitment?

The reruitment works like this, Heracleum has 20 people. phallangites have 60 so when you start recruiting them in heracleum they will immediatly get the 20 people but after that they will have to wait for the citizens to regenerate. there is usually another citizen evety minute or so, so it ends up as an extra 40 minutes to recruit phallangites in heracleum.

The rate is somewhat faster dependent on how large the city is, and if I remember correctly, even for smaller cities the rate is quite a lot faster than 1 citizen per minute. Mouse over the recruit pool, and it will display a number (2.5/wk or something). That is how fast recruits are replenishing in that city. A week is about a minute, I think.

But it's a good example. Also pay attention to the population type of each city; Macedonian units disbanded in non-Macedonian cities (and vice versa) will not add to the recruit pool. Migrant points also only work for Macedonian cities, obviously, and can be used anywhere there's a free space in a Macedonian city.