Peasants vs. Conscripts

[Angelspit]

Bash and 6 HP are not bad, but are they worth the cost, considering you lose the taxpayer ability? Do you ever upgrade your peasants?

That being said, I'd be curious to see the alternative peasant upgrade.

[Grey Pilgrim]

Always peasants for me...only exception may be when castle is about to be attacked, and I could use a slightly better defender...

[Elvin]

For the few times I've played haven since 2.1 I don't until when I really need them. At first you don't need them or peasants expect peasants may give you a portion of their value back or even more that it so you might as well buy them. The rest of the lineup can do just fine on their own and once you won't be able to train them all I just upg them for a good battle.

[okrane]

I think you should do the math on how much you really gain by keeping them as peasants.
If you don't have any external peasant dwellings I say peasants are not worth keeping. They serve much better at fodder.
What do I do.
First. Take peasants to abuse the single peasant stack.
Second. Train a few peasants into archers - the first 3 weeks or so.
Third. Upgrade them into conscripts. With Vitality or an artifact they deal some damage and can take the heat from your other units.

I mean... Imagine this: you lose 100 peasants in a battle. This means 600 damage. In cost of other creatures what would this be? Ok I agree other creatures have bigger armor. But let's say you saved 10 griffins(300hp). That would mean how much gold? 3000 something - about 30 days of keeping those fatties around.

Let talk now about income. Suppose we have Ellaine to make things simple. A peasant pays back all the gold it costed in 10 days. that a week and a half. And until the end of the month he makes 40 gold.
You have 40 peasants a week that means :
40 * 40 + 40 * 20 = 2400 gold per month in the first month. Equivalent to 2 chests roughly.

in the second month suppose all peasant have been bought and have repaid their cost. With Ellaine you make
30(days) * 2(Ellaine) * 4(previous weesks) * 40(peasants per week) =~7000 gold.(roughly equivalent with a hero with Estates)

So to sum up I would say that this is an aproximate calculus... I hope I got the numbers right(please say so if not).
Peasants become useful if the game lasts long. But what game have you seen that lasts more than 2 months. 2 months is pretty long for a game.
For me I keep them if:
a) I found Ellaine in a Tavern.
b) There is a peasant dwelling nearby.

[Elvin]

First. Take peasants to abuse the single peasant stack.
Second. Train a few peasants into archers - the first 3 weeks or so.
Third. Upgrade them into conscripts. With Vitality or an artifact they deal some damage and can take the heat from your other units.

I don't think training during the first weeks is a good idea. You'll never find the wood and ore to build the rest of the dwellings or even consider upgrades and angels only cost 15 ore. And for what? 3x7=21 archers? Hall of heroes needs even more wood and ore so it's out of reach too.

[okrane]

Well... then tell me your first 14 buildings... until the Capitol - hard difficulty medium resourced map.
Because I can't exclude it - my problem is gold, not w and o.I have to build the cheapest buildings in order to have 10000 to put the capitol early on. Keep in mind Haven is more gold oriented than resource oriented. Plus... You need even the smallest army boost to creep, and you put an use to your racial.

Keep in mind that you get 10 archers or so without citadel, so another 7 would be a good addition... not to mention peasants are just fodder.

When do you start training stuff? 'cause with the new limit on training you must start using it quickly because if not you lose the creatures you might have trained.

In week 3 or 4 when I get the priest buiding, I start upgrading footmen into priests.

[Avonu]

Keeping peasants. Extra gold is always nice boost.
Also I buying peasants even if I don't played Haven (capture this town) and trying to recruit Elleine for double income.

That being said, I'd be curious to see the alternative peasant upgrade.

Dragon peasant?

[Ar.Pi]

[Campaigner]

With the new limit on training I would train as many as I can every week to get as many Crossbowmen as possible which will make using them as taxpayers useless. Therefore I would upgrade them to Conscripts and use them in combat and ofcourse as quickstriking distractors.

[Elvin]

Well... then tell me your first 14 buildings... until the Capitol - hard difficulty medium resourced map.

When do you start training stuff? 'cause with the new limit on training you must start using it quickly because if not you lose the creatures you might have trained.

In week 3 or 4 when I get the priest buiding, I start upgrading footmen into priests.

In the first two weeks I get dwellings up to cavaliers(priests usually not due to wood) and city hall. I upg only the archers. Afterwards I go for angels and citadel in week 3. From then on it depends on my resources but I will go for angels and castle before training. I believe that with these first I get more of an advantage though I haven't tried to skip something and then train footmen.
What's your strategy on this, do you skip angels? Seems too hard to build everything.

[erased. over. out]

That being said, I'd be curious to see the alternative peasant upgrade.

The alternative peasant upgrade might have a longer rake-like weapon, so that it can attack from an extra hex spot away, thereby escaping a retaliation strike (much like the Pikemen from H4). This feature might mean giving the unit less speed/initiative/defense. We'll have to wait and see.

[Omega_Destroyer]

With the right Haven hero, the one who adds an additional +1 gold per Peasant, Conscripts can be easily over-looked.

[Vokial]

1 peasant will give 1 gold per day, right? so one peasant cost: 20 gold, so you need 20 days if you want to get your gold back (only for one peasant). You must have 4200 peasants to buy 1 Angel (for 1 day), or you must wait 420 days with 10 peasants. Well you can use the gold for hiring some archers in the game start... but still no... one archer is 50 gold, the population is 12 per week, with one population of peasants you'll get 140 gold = 2 Archers + 40 gold , so not very good ability.

[okrane]

Well... then tell me your first 14 buildings... until the Capitol - hard difficulty medium resourced map.

When do you start training stuff? 'cause with the new limit on training you must start using it quickly because if not you lose the creatures you might have trained.

In week 3 or 4 when I get the priest buiding, I start upgrading footmen into priests.

In the first two weeks I get dwellings up to cavaliers(priests usually not due to wood) and city hall. I upg only the archers. Afterwards I go for angels and citadel in week 3. From then on it depends on my resources but I will go for angels and castle before training. I believe that with these first I get more of an advantage though I haven't tried to skip something and then train footmen.
What's your strategy on this, do you skip angels? Seems too hard to build everything.

Yeah I usually skip angels until late week 4, but take advantage to use training and have a lot of inquisitors.

I focus on building the capitol asap, because if not I will have major problems in recruiting everithing.
Of course it depends on how rich the map is and other variables...

[Apocalypse]

I upgrade my Peasants when I need Conscripts. I don't consider the Tax Payer ability a big bonus to income. I mean, some even say Estates is a bad ability, and that means 250 Peasants!!!

If you're in lack of gold and that's why you don't want to upgrade the peasants to conscripts, then I suggest you don't even buy the peasants because even if in 20 days you get back your gold, buying them will slow your town's development and after three weeks they won't give you a huge bonus anyway.

Ok, I might consider the Tax Payer ability with Ellaine and some Peasant Huts

[Zamolxis]

Well, it's 1 year since I last played the game, but IIRC these were my strategic choices:

- If I was short on money, I was keeping them, to halp me raise the money I need to buy higher lvl dwellings & creatures

- If I had loads of gold, I was upgrading them directly to Archers (and further to Crossbowmen)

Conclusion: Conscript might be an interesting lvl.1 unit (6 HP + Bash + nice growth rate), but the game mechanics make it quite unattractive. And what makes it a total no-go now, is the new alternate upgrade, which I understood has the same stats + tax payer ability.

Solutions:

1. Tweak up the Conscriptor a bit, to make it a worthy alternative of the Brute (a higher speed would already be interesting for example).

2. Dunno if the Training specialty was ever correctly tweaked in the patches, but the upgrade from Conscript to Archer should definitly be cheaper than that from Peasant to Archer, with the exact amount of money we already paid to upgrade that Peasant to Conscript.

If both of the above are implemented - I guess only then this unit will become worthy again.

[Elvin]

No need for that, in 2.1 training has a cap of 7 units per week and 20 with hall of heroes. Nobody cares to train peasants now, footmen and priests are a more attractive choice.

[Zamolxis]

No need for that, in 2.1 training has a cap of 7 units per week ...

That's just Nival way of turning a slightly overpowered skill, into a lame underpowered one, as solution to "balance" things. And it still doesn't solve the problem of Conscripts being unattractive.

[okrane]

Nival sucks I agree...

[Apocalypse]

into a lame underpowered one

Underpowered?
It is MUCH cheaper now and even if you're limited to training 13 paladins per week it's still overpowered