Peasant Levy/Bronze Dawn
In game[edit | edit source]
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Very weak melee unit which is only good for city defence.
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| Prereq: | Build time | HP | LOS | Attack | Attack speed | Movement speed | ||
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3.3s (50t) |
80 | 6 | 12 | 2.33s (35t) |
24 | ||
| Cost | Created from | Armour | Weapon range | Specialty | ||||
| Base | Ramp | Pop | ||||||
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1 | 
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0 | Melee |
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Overall strategy[edit | edit source]
Agricultural cultures tend to never be short of volunteers eager to go on military expeditions for additional booty to enrich their families, for adventures to see the world, or protect their loved ones and neighbours from barbarians. Nevertheless, regardless of what motivations they hold for service, Peasant Levy, while weak and difficult to muster can be used to swell your ranks. Nevertheless, however, Peasant Levy are still only rabble at heart, and meant to operate in a defensive role - heavy cavalry will easily rip them apart, as will arrows fired by horse archers! — but nevertheless, should forces be needed in a jiffy, you can do no wrong in calling them up to swell their ranks, even if only to give the enemy pause.
History[edit | edit source]
During the Warring States period, Chinese society was split into four \social classes (simin 四民): state officials (shi 士), peasants (nong 農), craftsmen (gong 工), merchants (shang 商). Alhough their social status was that of free men, peasants had often to serve the nobility (guizu 貴族) for different tasks (yi 役). The peasantry — by far the largest section of the Chinese population even today — did not only contribute the most part of the state income by taxes (zushui 租稅), but also served as laborers (yaoyi 徭役) for state projects and as militia (bingyi 兵役); mercenaries (mubing 募兵), or conscripts zhengbing 徵兵) in the ever larger infantry units.
The heaviest burden thus lay upon the shoulders of the farmers that were not only exploited by their own ruler but also had to suffer the inflictions of the intense warfare campaigns between the contending states. In years of famine peasants gave up their fields and engaged as craftsmen, petty traders or sold their labour force as day-labourers (gugong 雇工, yong 庸). In the worst case, the whole peasant family sold themselves as slaves (nuli 奴隸).
