Call To Arms and the Feudal Levy

NOTE: CTA is not used in all games, and because of playability and historicity problems with it, it is being phased out. It is only mentioned here because there are still games that allow it.

CTA costs 2,000 ducats man. CTA takes two seasons to arrive, however. For example: if you do a CTA in Winter you get the men in the Summer. CTA allows you to recruit ANY NUMBER of men, even tens of thousands. CTA can only be done by the English King in a fief he owns or manages and in England.

Three important things to keep in mind when calling a CTA:

1. It takes no days off your days remaining in the current season.

2. You pay for the men immediately when you call them.

To do the CTA go to the Official Acts menu and select "Call to Arms". Ask for as many men as you want, and can afford, and you will be given a list of your fiefs. Select the fief you want the troops to assemble in. What this represents is the sending of messengers far and wide to announce that you are seeking mercenaries. Mercenaries often came from as far away as Germany and Poland when a CTA was put out.

Your officials will be in the fief designated for assembly, to pay and enroll the troops answering your call to arms. Because traveling took so long, a CTA takes two seasons to complete.

On the season the troops are to appear, go to the fief designated and go to the Army Management Menu and pick them up with option "Pick up men responding to Call to Arms". Note there are other ways to pick men up. "Pick up transferred soldiers" is how you get men another player transferred to you. If you choose the wrong option, it will say there are no men there. Don't panic, just read the menu carefully and take the right choice

Then choose "Army Status" to confirm you have the army. You will be told you have, for example "100 Knights, 75 MAA (Men at Arms) and 1325 Foot (poor quality infantry)." You will also be told your army is on stand and fight. Go to "Army orders" and change your orders to "Retreat." With a small army, anything under 1,000 men is small, you will be safer when offline etc with "Retreat"-you will TRY to avoid combat then, even when offline, but may be forced to combat if the opponent attacking you has great stats or a much bigger army.

The Feudal Levy

This is a special form of Call to Arms, available to the French King. Once a year, the Roi can, as his feudal privilege, summon the armed levy of his vassals. This is a special CTA that is delivered at the rate of 2 troops per thousand population controlled by the Roi. The Roi loses 2 stature points each time he calls the Levy.

The Roi must announce via an ingame message to ALL that he is calling the levy, giving the season, and fief for assembly. The Levy appears after reset two seasons hence. The troops are free for one season. Technically, the feudal levy can be called for 40 days, but the number called has been adjusted to give the king the proper number of troops for 90 days.

Note that this levy calls on all the chivalry of France, whether they have been conquered by the English, or someone else, or not. It is assumed that more will come from free areas, as well as some from conquered areas, to give the same amount as a proportion of population each time.