Militia

Militia are the volunteer soldiers who hold your towns while your mercs are off fighting somewhere else. In vanilla JA2 they were little more than colored dots that you trained, redistributed within a town and then hoped for the best. 1.13 turns them into a real second army: they cost money to maintain, they can be equipped, moved around the strategic map, sent to intercept enemy patrols, and — most famously — you can give them direct orders in tactical combat.

Almost everything on this page is tunable in Ja2_Options.INI. The defaults quoted below are the values shipped with the current GitHub release; see the options tour for how to edit them. Militia has several dedicated INI sections: [Militia Training Settings], [Militia Volunteer Pool Settings], [Militia Strategic Movement Settings], [Militia Strength Settings], [Militia Equipment Settings], [Militia Resource Settings] and [Individual Militia Settings].

The three tiers

Tier	Map color	Notes
Green	Green	Fresh recruits, the direct product of a training session.
Regular	Light blue	Promoted from green through further (paid) training sessions.
Elite	Dark blue	The top tier — per the INI, "almost as well-trained as enemy Blackshirts".

The community and the game files use elite and veteran interchangeably for the dark-blue tier — the INI comments say "Elite (Dark-Blue)" while the strength settings below use VETERAN_MILITIA_* names. It is the same tier.

Each tier's combat power is externalized in [Militia Strength Settings]. The shipped defaults give higher tiers a modest edge:

Setting (GREEN_ / REGULAR_ / VETERAN_MILITIA_...)	Green	Regular	Veteran
..._AUTORESOLVE_STRENGTH_BONUS (power in auto-resolved battles)	0	5	10
..._APS_BONUS (flat bonus to Action Points)	0	0	5
..._CTH_BONUS_PERCENT (percentage bonus to chance-to-hit)	0	0	10
..._DAMAGE_RESISTANCE	0	0	10
..._EQUIPMENT_QUALITY_MODIFIER (better generated gear)	0	1	2

Training militia

Training works as in vanilla — put a merc on the militia-training assignment in a town sector you control — but every requirement and cost around it is now configurable, and there are new rules to be aware of:

• Leadership matters. The trainer needs at least 20 Leadership (MINIMUM_LEADERSHIP_TO_TRAIN_MILITIA). By default higher leadership also lets a merc train more militia per session (LEADERSHIP_AFFECTS_MILITIA_QUANTITY); a full training squad every session requires 60 Leadership (REQ_LEADERSHIP_FOR_MAX_MILITIA).
• Town loyalty matters. The town needs at least 20% loyalty before anyone will sign up (MIN_LOYALTY_TO_TRAIN_MILITIA).
• Money. A training session costs $750 (MILITIA_BASE_TRAINING_COST). Promoting militia to the next tier costs the base price times a multiplier: MILITIA_COST_MULTIPLIER_REGULAR (default 1) for green → regular and MILITIA_COST_MULTIPLIER_ELITE (default 2) for regular → elite.
• Session size and caps. One session trains up to 10 militia (NUM_MILITIA_TRAINED_PER_SESSION); a sector holds at most 20 (MAX_MILITIA_PER_SECTOR). Training speed is governed by MILITIA_TRAINING_RATE, and MILITIA_TRAINING_CARRYOVER_PROGRESS can carry leftover progress into the next session.
• Elite training is off by default. In the shipped INI ALLOW_TRAINING_ELITE_MILITIA = FALSE, so town training stops at regular. Set it to TRUE to allow promoting regulars to dark-blue elites (optionally delayed until a given campaign day with ELITE_MILITIA_TRAINING_DELAY). The old 1.13 wiki notes that veteran militia can be trained in city and SAM-site sectors.
• RPCs are good trainers. Locally recruited characters like Ira train militia 10% faster by default (RPC_BONUS_TO_MILITIA_TRAINING_RATE).
• Training is good for the trainer too: mercs gain Wisdom for training militia.

You don't need the whole town

You can train (or buy) militia before you have captured every sector of a city — useful when preparing for the Drassen counterattack. See the starter tips and the early game walkthrough.

Daily upkeep

Unlike vanilla, militia are not free once trained. Every midnight you pay upkeep per militiaman: $10 for green, $20 for regular, $30 for elite (DAILY_MILITIA_UPKEEP_TOWN_GREEN / ..._REGULAR / ..._ELITE). If you cannot afford the full amount, some or all of your militia desert. Militia are only paid once they have been in your service for 24 hours.

Other ways to get militia

• Interrogated prisoners. Captured enemy soldiers that you interrogate have a chance to defect and join your side as militia of the same or lower quality (PRISONER_DEFECT_CHANCE, default 25%).
• A private military contractor. With PMC = TRUE (the default), you receive an email from a PMC once you start training militia. Through its website you can hire regular and veteran militia for a steep price; they arrive through sectors with a suitable entry-point facility — in the stock data, the small airports in Drassen and Meduna. The company slowly replenishes its ranks up to PMC_MAX_REGULARS (35) and PMC_MAX_VETERANS (20). Pricing, arrival and wages are covered in depth on the hiring & contracts page.

Optional recruitment limits

Two off-by-default systems make militia a limited strategic resource rather than a money sink. Both also appear as toggles (Militia Volunteer Pool and Militia Requires Resources) on the 1.13 features screen when starting a new game, and both plug into Rebel Command if that feature is active.

The volunteer pool

With MILITIA_VOLUNTEER_POOL = TRUE, Arulco holds a finite number of people willing to fight for you: a single country-wide pool of volunteers. Every militiaman trained consumes one volunteer, and with the pool empty the training assignment refuses to start ("There are no volunteers left for militia!"). If a training session finds fewer volunteers than the trainer could handle, the excess training effort goes into promoting the sector's existing militia instead.

The pool fills from several sources, all verified in the current code:

• An hourly trickle from your towns. Every town sector you control contributes its population times its town's loyalty (its "loyal population"); the pool then grows by ln(1 + loyal population × modifier × 0.002) per hour. The logarithm means hard diminishing returns: holding more, and more loyal, towns always helps, but volunteers never pour in.
• Farms. Every farm sector you control outside a town raises the modifier in that formula by 0.05 — controlling the food supply wins hearts and minds.
• Liberation. The first time you liberate a town sector, you instantly gain volunteers equal to 0.2 × that sector's loyal population.
• Prisoners. Some interrogated prisoners choose to volunteer rather than defect straight into your militia.
• Recruiting civilians in tactical. Some ordinary civilians are potential volunteers: have a merc talk to an unhurt, friendly, unaffiliated civilian in a peaceful sector you control, and if the merc's effective Leadership is high enough he wins them over — the civilian joins a volunteer group in the sector and the pool grows by one. The check is a hard threshold, not a dice roll, so retrying or reloading does not help, and a sector remembers recent recruiting so freshly spawned civilians won't volunteer for a while. In towns this requires the same minimum loyalty as militia training. If a recruited volunteer civilian is later killed, the pool shrinks by one.
• Rebel Command. The Draft Civilians directive adds volunteers daily (at a loyalty cost) and the Civilian Aid administrative action grows the pool per region — both only exist when the volunteer pool is on; see Rebel Command. Per the INI, quests can also award volunteers.

While the militia view is active, the strategic map's bottom-left corner shows "Volunteers: N (+hourly gain)", colour-coded against the training session size; the Rebel Command HQ overview lists the same number.

Setting ([Militia Volunteer Pool Settings])	Default	Effect
MILITIA_VOLUNTEER_POOL	FALSE	Master switch for the volunteer pool.
MILITIA_VOLUNTEER_POOL_GAINFACTOR_LIBERATION	0.2	Instant volunteers for liberating a sector for the first time: its loyal population × this.
MILITIA_VOLUNTEER_POOL_MULTIPLIER_FARM	0.05	Hourly-gain modifier increase per controlled farm sector.
MILITIA_VOLUNTEER_POOL_GAINFACTOR_HOURLY	0.002	Factor inside the hourly gain formula above.

Resource requirements: Guns, Armour, Misc

With MILITIA_REQUIRE_RESOURCES = TRUE, training and promoting militia costs equipment as well as money, in the form of three abstract country-wide resources: Guns (from firearms, launchers and ammo), Armour (from helmets, vests, pants, LBE gear and face items) and Misc (from melee weapons, grenades and bombs). Weapon attachments feed Guns, armour attachments and slings feed Armour, and explosive attachments (detonators, launcher grenades, bayonets, rockets) feed Misc.

• A green militiaman costs 1 Gun. Promoting green → regular costs 1 Gun + 1 Armour; promoting regular → elite costs 1 Gun + 1 Armour + 1 Misc. Training will not start without enough resources ("Not enough resources to train militia!"), and prisoners who defect into militia consume resources too — PMC hires do not (per the INI).
• You produce resources by smelting items in the sector inventory: hold Alt and right-click an item to convert one item; also hold Shift to convert the whole stack, or Y to convert every matching stack in the sector. Hovering with Alt held previews an item's resource value.
• An item's value is its class modifier (see the table) × coolness × condition × a progress modifier (MILITIA_RESOURCES_PROGRESSFACTOR divided by your highest campaign progress). Ammo is valued per bullet. Everything devalues as the campaign advances — including your existing stockpile, which is scaled down each time your progress reaches a new high — so smelt cheap early-game guns early.
• Resource totals appear at the bottom left of the strategic map while the militia view is active. The Rebel Command Militia Warehouses administrative action — which only exists when this feature is on — delivers daily resources.
• The feature requires MILITIA_USE_SECTOR_EQUIPMENT = FALSE: militia either draw on your abstract stockpile or on your real one (see below), not both.

Setting ([Militia Resource Settings])	Default
MILITIA_REQUIRE_RESOURCES (master switch)	FALSE
MILITIA_RESOURCES_PROGRESSFACTOR	10.0
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_GUN (guns and launchers)	0.9
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_ARMOUR	0.3
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_BOMB	0.25
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_MELEE	0.2
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_GRENADE	0.17
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_FACE	0.05
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_LBE	0.03
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_AMMO_BULLET (per bullet)	0.01
MILITIA_RESOURCES_ITEMCLASSMOD_ATTACHMENT_LOW / _MEDIUM / _HIGH	0.05 / 0.1 / 0.2
MILITIA_RESOURCES_WEAPONMOD_PISTOL / _M_PISTOL / _SMG / _RIFLE	0.6 / 0.7 / 0.8 / 0.9
MILITIA_RESOURCES_WEAPONMOD_SN_RIFLE / _AS_RIFLE / _LMG / _SHOTGUN	1.0 each

Defending towns

When enemies attack a sector that only militia defend, the battle is resolved automatically; when your mercs are there too, you fight it out in tactical with the militia at your side. Militia in 1.13 pull their weight in several new ways:

• Sector-to-sector reinforcements. Militia (and enemies!) can immediately reinforce an adjacent sector that comes under attack, arriving at the map edge a few turns into the battle. The master switch lives per difficulty in TableData\DifficultySettings.xml (<AllowReinforcements>); related INI knobs include ALLOW_REINFORCEMENTS_ONLY_IN_CITIES (militia only), MIN_DELAY_MILITIA_REINFORCEMENTS, RND_DELAY_MILITIA_REINFORCEMENTS, MIN_ENTER_MILITIA_REINFORCEMENTS, RND_ENTER_MILITIA_REINFORCEMENTS and REINFORCEMENTS_ARRIVE_WITH_ZERO_AP (make arriving troops wait a turn before acting).
• Recon. With NO_ENEMY_DETECTION_WITHOUT_RECON = TRUE (the shipped default), enemy groups moving on the strategic map are only revealed when militia spot them — garrisons double as your early-warning network (see reading the map).
• Shared vision. WE_SEE_WHAT_MILITIA_SEES_AND_VICE_VERSA = TRUE means your mercs see what militia see in tactical combat, and vice versa.
• Mine flagging. Militia who spot a landmine plant a blue warning flag on it (MILITIA_CAN_PLACE_FLAGS_ON_MINES = TRUE).
• Skill traits. Militia can roll the same skill traits as mercs (ASSIGN_SKILL_TRAITS_TO_MILITIA = TRUE), so a militiaman may turn out to be an auto-weapons specialist or sniper.

Don't shoot your own

CAN_MILITIA_BECOME_HOSTILE controls how militia react to friendly fire. The shipped default (1) makes them hostile only if you kill one of them; 2 is the vanilla behavior (hostile when hurt) and 0 makes them endlessly forgiving. Separately, the optional ENEMY_ASSASSINS feature lets the Queen slip disguised assassins in among your militia — another reason to keep an eye on the dots.

Moving militia on the strategic map

Vanilla JA2 only let you shuffle militia between the sectors of one town through the militia assignment window. That window is still there, with 1.13 shortcuts: hold Ctrl while left/right-clicking to assign or remove 5 militia at once, or hold Shift to assign or remove all.

1.13 goes further with strategic militia command ([Militia Strategic Movement Settings]), introduced by Flugente in 2014 and expanded into full path-plotting in 2015 (r7727):

• With ALLOW_MILITIA_STRATEGIC_COMMAND = TRUE (off in the shipped INI), you can plot travel paths for militia groups exactly as you do for merc squads or the helicopter: switch the map to the militia view, then left-click a sector containing militia. This works for all militia, town garrisons included.
• With MILITIA_STRATEGIC_COMMAND_REQUIRES_MERC = TRUE (the default), someone has to relay the order: a merc in the same sector or town as the militia (asleep is fine, comatose is not), a radio operator in an adjacent sector or town — or a staffed military HQ (Alma, on the standard map). The HQ's war room is a facility assignment (STRATEGIC_MILITIA_MOVEMENT in TableData\Map\FacilityTypes.xml) that demands an experienced merc — level 5, Wisdom 70 and Leadership 70 — and in return lets you command militia anywhere in the country. The assignment slowly trains Leadership and Wisdom, and modders can give the same assignment to other facilities.
• While plotting, a small overlay in the top-left lists the selected group. Tiny + and - marks to the right of each militia-tier count let you split off part of the sector's militia into the traveling group — they are notoriously hard to spot. Right-clicking with a group selected clears its planned movement (also the fix if a group refuses new orders).

Militia groups travel about as fast as mercs, but slower at night — except between sectors of the same town — and at most 30 groups can be underway at once. Unlike merc squads, a traveling group counts as still being in its origin sector until it arrives, and until then it cannot be redistributed in the town militia window; a group also refuses to leave a sector where a battle is in progress. Traveling militia engage any enemy force they meet, and you can deliberately send them into enemy-held sectors — even towns — where the fight is auto-resolved. If merc squads and militia groups converge on the same hostile sector, the usual "wait for the other squads?" coordination prompt appears. Militia that can receive commands (per the rules above) can also retreat from an auto-resolve battle via the retreat button.

On the map screen, press Z to toggle the militia & enemies map filter. The full list is in the hotkey reference.

Mobile (roaming) militia

Militia are not tied to town garrisons — but how out-of-town militia behave depends on which era of 1.13 you play:

Old SVN builds (up to early 2018) and mods based on them. Headrock's HAM features gave 1.13 self-roaming mobile militia: with ALLOW_MOBILE_MILITIA = TRUE, militia trained outside town formed patrols that wandered the countryside on their own and intercepted enemy patrols before they ever reached your towns. Where they roamed was governed by restriction settings (RESTRICT_ROAMING, ALLOW_MILITIA_MOVEMENT_THROUGH_EXPLORED_SECTORS, ALLOW_DYNAMIC_RESTRICTED_ROAMING) plus an in-game overlay: a flag-icon button next to the militia view button colored the map, and right-clicking sectors cycled them between allowed (green), forbidden (red) and "no-leave" (yellow) — mobiles could enter a no-leave sector but not exit it, turning it into a player-made roadblock or wilderness garrison. ALLOW_MOBILE_MILITIA_REINFORCE_TOWN_GARRISONS and ..._SAM_GARRISONS controlled whether roamers moved back in to reinforce towns and SAM sites. If you play an old SVN-based mod, these are the settings to look for. The r9389 hotkey sheet still lists a mobile-militia-restrictions map filter on R; in current builds that binding is gone — R now toggles the weather overlay (see the hotkey reference).

Current builds. The self-roaming feature was removed in March 2018 (r8548) in favor of strategic militia command (see above) — that is why none of the MOBILE_MILITIA or roaming settings appear in today's Ja2_Options.INI. Militia no longer patrol on their own; they only leave town, guard a crossroads or intercept a patrol when you order them to on the map. There is no separate "mobile" militia type in the code — any militia you march out of town is your mobile militia. Two details remain current:

• The Leadership training rules (and the Teaching trait bonus) explicitly apply to mobile militia training as well as town training.
• If militia use sector equipment (see below), militia trained outside town take their initial gear from the sector they were trained in and carry it with them as they move.

Commanding militia in tactical combat

The headline feature: when a battle starts in a sector where you have both mercs and militia, you do not have to watch the militia AI charge into machine-gun fire. With ALLOW_TACTICAL_MILITIA_COMMAND = TRUE (the shipped default) you can take control of militia and give them orders: have a merc talk to a militiaman and an order menu pops up. The full menu in current builds:

Order	Effect
Attack	Sets that militiaman to aggressively seek out the enemy.
Hold Position	Sets him to stationary.
Retreat	Orders him to fall back and go defensive.
Come to me	Calls him over to your merc's position.
Get down / Crouch	Drops him prone / into a crouch.
Take cover	Sends him to the best cover spot near him.
Move to	Real time only (grayed out in turn-based combat): click a spot on the map and he moves there and holds that position.
All: Attack / Hold Position / Retreat / Come to me / Spread out / Get down / Crouch / Take cover	The same orders issued to every militiaman in the sector at once — plus All: Spread out, which only exists as a sector-wide order.
Cancel	Closes the menu.

Communication rules and side effects:

• Orders to a single militiaman require line of sight between the merc and that militiaman — or an active radio set, which lets a radio operator direct militia he cannot see.
• The All: commands require the selected merc to wear hearing-boosting headgear — the classic extended ear — or to carry an active radio set.
• Mercs who order militia around in tactical gain Leadership experience.

Related conveniences:

• When your mercs are about to enter an enemy-held sector and a moving militia squad is nearby, a message box offers to bring them along as reinforcements in the battle.
• The tactical action menu on Ctrl+. (canteens, clothes, cleaning weapons...) includes militia-related commands such as militia inspection.
• If militia turns drag on in big battles, MILITIA_TURN_SPEED_UP_FACTOR in the INI speeds up their turn animations.

Militia equipment

By default, militia gear is generated automatically and improves with your campaign progress — the same "item progression" that drives enemy equipment (the Progress Speed of Item Choices new-game option affects your militia too), plus the per-tier ..._EQUIPMENT_QUALITY_MODIFIER shown earlier. Militia do not drop their gear when they die (MILITIA_DROP_EQUIPMENT = 0; set 1 to let them drop gear when killed by anyone except your mercs, 2 to always drop).

Arming militia yourself

[Militia Equipment Settings] contains an optional quartermaster system, added by Flugente in 2013 (r5869). With MILITIA_USE_SECTOR_EQUIPMENT = TRUE (off by default), militia no longer get random gear — they equip themselves from the inventory of the sector they are stationed in:

• Per-category toggles control what they may take: ..._ARMOUR, ..._FACE (goggles and gas masks), ..._MELEE, ..._GUN, ..._AMMO, ..._GUN_ATTACHMENTS, ..._GRENADE (up to 2 of one type) and ..._LAUNCHER (LAWs, mortars, RPGs, grenade launchers).
• How much ammo each militiaman grabs is bounded by MILITIA_USE_SECTOR_EQUIPMENT_AMMO_MIN / ..._MAX / ..._OPTIMAL_MAG_COUNT — if militia are looting your ammo stockpile, remember to restock it. Militia also weigh ammo supply when choosing a gun: as Flugente put it, they "will likely prefer a 1911 with 100 bullets over an M16 with 10 bullets".
• To keep something out of militia hands, hover over it in the sector inventory and hold Tab while left-clicking. With MILITIA_USE_SECTOR_EQUIPMENT_CLASS_SPECIFIC_TABOOS = TRUE you can even restrict items per militia tier; the taboo sticks to the item even after a militiaman drops it, so an "elite-only" rifle stays elite-only.
• Militia return borrowed gear to the sector inventory when the sector unloads, and you can make them hand it over in tactical via the Ctrl+. action menu's militia inspection entry. They remember exactly which items came from your stockpile and return only those — anything militia steal during a battle stays lost, as it always did.
• Militia reinforcing another sector take their gear along (as do militia groups you march out of town — see above).

It is up to you to keep your garrisons supplied — leave spare weapons, armor and ammo in the sectors your militia defend.

Individual militia

Normally militia are anonymous and regenerated every time a sector loads. The optional INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA feature (FALSE by default, in [Individual Militia Settings]) gives every militiaman a persistent mini-profile: a name, a look, a battle record with kills and assists, and a health ratio.

• Kills earn 2 promotion points and assists 1; militia are promoted to regular at 4 points and to elite at 6 (INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_PROMOTIONPOINTS_TO_REGULAR / ..._TO_ELITE) — so a veteran militiaman may literally be a survivor of your earlier battles.
• With INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_MANAGE_HEALTH = TRUE, wounds persist between battles. Militia slowly heal over time (INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_HOURLYHEALTHPERCENTAGEGAIN) and your doctors can patch them up through the Doctor Militia assignment (INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_DOCTORHEALMODIFIER). The INI warns this makes the game harder.
• Profiles for the different militia origins (Arulcan local, PMC mercenary, army defector) are defined in TableData\MilitiaIndividual.xml.

Sources

• Ja2_Options.INI from the current 1.13 gamedir repository (setting names, defaults and comment documentation)
• DifficultySettings.xml from the current 1.13 gamedir repository
• JA2_113_Hotkeys.pdf (r9389, 2022), from the 1.13 gamedir Docs/Manuals folder (militia hotkeys and map filters)
• JA2 v1.13 wiki — Features and Instructions For New Features (pbworks, 2008–2012 era; militia feature overview and tactical command instructions)
• The previous 1.13 starter documentation (2019, r8741 era)
• New feature: strategic militia command (Bear's Pit, Flugente, 2014; military HQ command requirements)
• Expanded Feature: Move militia in strategic map, part 2 (Bear's Pit, Flugente, 2015; path plotting, travel rules, group splitting, retreat, and the 2018 removal of the old mobile militia feature)
• MANUAL Mobile Militia Restrictions (Bear's Pit, Headrock, 2010; the SVN-era mobile militia restriction system)
• Need help w/ militia (Bear's Pit, 2020; how militia movement works in post-2018 builds)
• New feature: Equip militia with guns/armour/etc. (Bear's Pit, Flugente, 2013; militia sector-equipment behavior)
• The 1.13 source code on GitHub — Tactical/Militia Control.cpp and i18n/_EnglishText.cpp (the tactical order menu entries and their line-of-sight/radio/extended-ear conditions), Strategic/Town Militia.cpp (volunteer pool gain formulas, training draw, resource conversion values, devaluation), Strategic/Assignments.cpp (training gates, prisoner interrogation outcomes), Strategic/Player Command.cpp (liberation volunteers), Tactical/Soldier Control.cpp (tactical civilian recruitment), Strategic/Map Screen Interface Map Inventory.cpp (Alt + right-click conversion), Strategic/Map Screen Interface Map.cpp (militia view overlay) and Strategic/Rebel Command.cpp (volunteer/resource hooks and feature gating)
• TableData/Map/FacilityTypes.xml from the gamedir repository (military HQ war-room requirements)