Well that didn't last long. A few hours and already thinking of dropping the playthrough. I had forgotten that one of the reasons I stopped playing this was the rng grind embedded in this game.
Nothing wrong with the randomization mechanics, but the 10 or so indebted I managed to capture were all shitty. I realize it would have taken a long time just chasing bands of northern raiders and fighting them until I get a good set of recruits.
I wasn't even being too demanding. Just a couple of stars in mattack and no negative trait are my requisites. I'm not sure I'm willing to spend hours more just to find recruits that are midgame material, nevermind lategame.
Does it even make sense to keep capturing barbarians with asthma, rickets and cowardice? Maybe the germans forgotten to balance this one.
Yeah, that's the "hardest" part of this origin, grinding fights for good recruits. Tho tbh you don't really *need* perfect indebted, as long as they aren't minrolled or have super negative traits, they should be ok lategame due to whip buffs. I considered any indebted that can hit 70MA(will be ~90 after whipping) and ~80HP at lvl7 as a great recruit, anything above that is godly, but I had some absolutely shitty meatshields that survived the meatgrinder and accidentally made it to lvl7, and they were also able to pull their weight with whip buffs. Even shittiest minrolled indebted will have 80MA/~30MD after whip buffs, which is enough to beat every encounter in the game.
Also, as I said before, stars are a trap and not super important, maxrolled indebted with 0 stars, will on average end up having better MA on lvl 7 than minrolled indebted with 3 stars.