Jesgard Gysson said:
ehm i think that has been there since 1.0
Apologies, what I mean is ordinary townspeople, as the urban equivalent to 'Saxon peasant (Gebur)' etc. etc. The idea is that, due to the lesser need to have everyone at work all the time in the city (since there is no harvest to gather and the population is much greater), there would be more idle/unemployed/deadbeat people hanging around that could be potential troops. Not necessarily trained warriors, but a nice low level rabble to fill out a warband or a fyrd. That's the fluffy bit.
The gamey bit: with realistic village recruitment on, it's pretty hard to get peasant rabble at low levels. I like the feature, but with it enabled you have to either save up and get mercs from the mead hall, or spam shepherds/refugees from monasteries. Either way, by the time you've got cash to spare to bribe village reeves/elders, you can afford better than untrained villagers anyway. I barely ever actually end up recruiting villagers for this reason and <insert whiny comment about immersion here>. Sooo, by having a plausible alternative (i.e. recruiting less needed 'villager' equivalents from towns) means that during early-game you can still have untrained rabble so that your army can start from the bottom, so to speak.