I'm currently working up a setting for a campaign I hope to run later this year. I'm definitely looking at delving into Domains at War, since my setting is thoroughly "war-torn". As a result, I have been working on existing military forces in the game setting.
One thing that stood out was that by the standard assumptions of D@W:Campaigns, the main sources of troops (at least for PCs; NPC/monster troops are of course basically whatever I say they are) are mercenaries, levies, conscripts and slaves. But one thing that comes up a surprising amount in my campaigns is a desire to form elite military units; knightly orders, royal guard, and so on. I can build these as units using the custom unit rules and even generate a BR for them.
The D@W rules (especially in Campaigns) seem to assume that all units are either paid (in the case of mercs) or otherwise subject to restriction based on available levies, population penalties from conscription, or monetary outlay for slaves. But how would you fit those kinds of elite military units into that kind of army maintenance structure? Who, ultimately, pays for those kinds of special units anyway? In particular things like Templar orders tend to act as a generalised religious tithing element; I don't really see how that would fit into the ACKS financial management paradigm.
Now, my guess is the official answer is "you're the DM, you decide" and that's fine. I was just wondering if anyone had advice.