First, go to the city view on one of your castles that has a barracks.
Click on the barracks to open its interface.
At the very beginning of the game, it should look similar to this:
- barracks1.png (128.5 KiB) Viewed 18669 times
2. This shows the current number of recruits, and how many you can have in the barracks.
3. This is an empty army slot for the visiting lord. This lord has two open slots.
4. This is an empty army slot for the castle garrison. There are 4 such slots.
To recruit more troops, select one of the free slots, either in the army or in the castle.
The interface will change to something like this:
- barracks2.png (240.11 KiB) Viewed 18669 times
2. This is the secondary weapon slot
3. This is the main body armor slot.
There are additional slots available, but in the beginning you will only have gear to equip these 3 slots. As your kingdom develops, you will get access to equipment for the leg slot, feet slot, helmet slot and finally the glove slot, in that order.
In order to recruit a soldier, you must equip it with at least a main weapon. All other slots are optional, but the better the gear the better the results. Click on the main hand slot to see your options.
- barracks3.png (280.96 KiB) Viewed 18669 times
2. This is one equipment option. Initially there are fewer options. I have selected a short sword.
3. This number shows how many items of the selected type you have in the castle warehouse. I have none.
4. This shows the stats of the resulting soldier.
5. This is how the soldier will look like on the battlefield.
Give the soldier also a cloth armor. You may choose to give it a secondary weapon as well.
There are some restrictions for the main weapon and secondary weapon slots. Two handed weapons will be placed in the main weapon slot, but will occupy both slots. Bows and shields will only fit in the secondary weapon slot, but bows will also fill both slots.
After you select all the equipment you want, you can recruit soldiers or go to the blacksmith to purchase more gear.
- barracks4.png (264.88 KiB) Viewed 18669 times
2. Click on this button to select the maximum number of soldiers you can recruit
3. You can type/see here how many soldiers you have selected to be recruited
4. Confirm the order by clicking on the equip button. The process will complete immediately
5. This button takes you to the blacksmith interface with this exact configuration selected. Use this button if you are missing some gear pieces and cannot recruit.
Since you have no swords in the beginning, click the blacksmith button (number 5 from above).
This will take you to the blacksmith interface.
- blacksmith1.png (145.76 KiB) Viewed 18669 times
2. These are the equipment slots for a soldier. They show what kind of equipment you want to buy, as a set. The numbers in each slot show how many items you have and how many you are about to buy.
3. This shows the amount of goods (also known as prosperity or plunder) stored in the blacksmith. Purchasing weapons costs goods.
4. This slider allows you to allocate more people to work in the blacksmith. The more people are working, the more goods will be produced each season.
5. This button is used to confirm changing the number of people allocated to work in the blacksmith.
6. Use this slider to select how many equipment sets you want to purchase.
7. This shows how many equipment sets you have, how many you are about to buy and how many you will have in total
8. This shows the cost of the current sets selected to be bought.
9. This button confirms the order. The resource cost will be taken from the blacksmith and warehouse and the weapons will be stored there.
The blacksmith in the picture has been working for several seasons, so there are goods already stored inside. You might need to assign workers to yours and come back to it after a while.
After you bought the weapons, you can close the blacksmith window, open the barracks again and recruit the troops you want.
To move troops between slots simply drag and drop them from one slot to another.