Skip to main content
If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

How to recruit new soldiers in Phoenix Point - a guide to expanding your army

Phoenix Point NEEDS YOU

Ollie Toms avatar
Guide by Ollie Toms Guides Editor
Published on

Phoenix Point puts you in charge of the near-defunct Phoenix Project - an organisation meant to kickstart the recuperation of mankind after the emergence of the deadly Pandoravirus. But to do that, you'll need recruits - and the game really doesn't explain the recruitment process all that well. But hopefully this quick guide will explain to all the newer players how to recruit new soldiers in Phoenix Point, and what you'll need to keep track of in order to successfully expand your army.

Phoenix Point recruiting guide contents:

Phoenix Point recruiting guide

Phoenix Point - how to recruit new soldiers

In order to recruit new soldiers in Phoenix Point, you'll first need to research the Haven Recruitment Protocols technology. It's a very early technology, and it won't take long at all to research, particularly if, like me, you tend to build an extra Research Lab at the very beginning.

After this point, if you zoom in closer on the Geoscape view you'll start to see human icons appear next to certain faction havens that you've discovered. This indicates that you can recruit a new unit from that haven. You can see what kind of soldier is in a haven (and how much it'll cost you to recruit them) by clicking on the haven and selecting Haven Info.

How to recruit a new soldier

To recruit a new soldier, all you need to do is send one of your aircraft to the haven in question, then select Haven Info and click the Recruit Soldier button. The new soldier will be automatically placed inside your aircraft, or, if there's no room on the aircraft, it will be magically transported to the nearest Phoenix base.

Simple as that!

Specialist recruits

The other thing worth mentioning is that there are two types of recruits: regular recruits, which are recruited from a haven's Training Center building; and specialist recruits, which are only to be found in a faction haven with an Elite Training building. Specialist recruits offer you the unique soldier classes for that faction - for example, the Infiltrator for Synedrion, or the Berserker for Disciples of Anu. The specialist recruits are distinguishable from the Geoscape view because they will have a star next to their little human icon.

Phoenix Point recruiting limitations

"Why can't I recruit soldiers?" - Limitations & Prerequisites

I already mentioned that before you can recruit soldiers you'll need to research the Haven Recruitment Protocols technology from the tech tree - but that's not the only prerequisite to recruiting a new unit.

One obvious requirement which nonetheless may skip your mind at times is that you need all of the required resources to recruit a soldier. This is always a mixture of Materials, Food, and Tech (and that's in order from most to least costly in almost every case).

But the other big requirement is that you need enough living space to actually accommodate all of your soldiers. You can construct Living Quarters buildings inside any of your Phoenix bases, and each of them, regardless of location, will contribute towards a global soldier capacity resource (that's the first of the yellow icons at the top). In the screenshot above, this capacity is maxed out at 8/8, which means I cannot recruit any more soldiers until I've built extra Living Quarters in my bases.

The final thing to bear in mind is that each soldier uses up 1 Food every day (you can keep track of this at the top of your screen in the Geoscape view as well), which means if you don't stay on top of food requirements then you may land yourself in trouble. Thankfully, Food is very easy to deal with in Phoenix Point, because a single Food Production building is enough to feed 8 soldiers every day, and that's a pretty phenomenal exchange rate which all but ensures your people will never go hungry.

Phoenix Point - how to recruit soldiers

And that's all there is to recruiting new soldiers in Phoenix Point - but if you're still hankering for some more Phoenix Point-related guidance and advice, then why not stick around and take a look below at some of the other guides we have on offer regarding this ambitious turn-based tactics game?

Read this next