How to raise only the men-at-arms

crusader-kings-3

Now that I'm getting closer to forming an empire in my first CK3 campaign, I've noticed that I tend to have more levies than I really need for most wars. Raising them all takes time, keeping them raised costs money, they tend to cause unnecessary attrition and they're not even that good in battles. My knights and men-at-arms just seem more cost-effective. But there doesn't seem to be any button in the interface for only raising them.

I know I can raise all my troops, wait for them to assemble, and then split the army manually and dismiss the half with all the levies in it. But that's really slow and awkward, and dismissing the levies incurs an additional (though minor) time penalty before I can raise them again, should I decide that I need them after all. I can't believe that's the best or only way.

Is there some way to tell CK3 to only raise your knights and men-at-arms? (And possibly a small amount of levies to serve as meat shields?)

Bonus points for an easy way to choose which men-at-arms to raise — if my enemy has nothing but light footmen and no spearmen, I might as well not raise my token heavies since they'll just get countered. And sometimes all I want is my siege units.

Best Answer

While I'm unaware of a way to raise only men-at-arms, it's relatively straightforward to (effectively) achieve just that:

  1. Pause the game
  2. Select your chosen Rally Point and press "Raise All". This will immediately raise all your knights, mercenaries, and Men-at-Arms.
  3. Ctrl+Right Click on adjacent barony. This will order your Men-At-Arms to move out immediately and stop Levies from assembling.
  4. Unpause. Proceed to do as you will with your Knight & Men-at-Arms stack.

As of 1.5 Azure

The 1.5 "Azure" Patch purports to bring a "Raise Men-at-Arms" button to make this even more streamlined.