Fort logistics in Kyushu as an example of replicating history

[RubiconDecision]

With my current settings of 135 in the descr_character (which is a boost from the basic settings of the 2turns/year RNJ mod), then the following illustrates the real life difficulties of getting the samurai from one place to another in order to attack another part of the country.

In this example, I'll demonstrate the main issue, but perfectly correct historical problem of inefficient road networks in 16th Century Nippon, and why improving the roads was crucial for military logistics as well as trade.

Let's look at getting samurai and ashigaru from Minamata to Utsuki Jo so that from a port located there, they could then move on to be redeployed or attack another island segment of Nippon.

With the very best roads in RNJ 2.8 and with carefully constructed forts, then at best it takes 2.5 years or five seasons to get your army in Minamata to Utsuki Jo. That's a big IF because that's presuming that they're ready to go and in the right composition for movement from Minamata. So a plausible six turns to get there. Of course that isn't historically correct.

One could add more seasons per year, but then you get into serious real life issues of winter travel restrictions. Besides the fact that it did take quite a bit of time to train the samurai, so that boosting of the seasons would reduce the actual time for construction of buildings in effect as well as allow for many more soldiers to be generated than was probable (save for ashigaru spam).

Some mods use a winter travel rate and a summer travel rate, and then in a 4 turns/year mod, the building rate and the unit creation rate, and the income/costs are all adjusted to fit that ratio. BUT the hole in that philosophy is the limit on movement rate is contingent upon a named character leading the army, which the AI most often doesn't do, so that would give a big boost to the AI who is not impreded by a winter travel restriction trait. Otherwise you're into altering the movement on snow/ice to replicate this, but that's contingent upon cross-country snow/ice travel versus on roads.

One could make a change in the descr_character to something realistic, but a random change would be just a guess versus logically making changes to approach a normal movement rate of walking soldiers with less than ideal roads, and the baggage trains that they were using. The roads of the time limited how much equipment could be carried by cart, as the heavy carts would have ruined the roads. Which meant equipment actually went via ships, and then met up with the soldiers there. And the ferrying of huge numbers of soldiers to say Shikoku to attack the Chokusabe or Miyoshi. It would require committing to a considerable amount of ships constructed and diverting supplies from other ports to get to Utsuki Jo to move them onward. So we're back to calculating the plausible walking rate of soldiers.

The landmass of Italy is 116,346 square miles (301335 square kilometers) versus Japan being 145,894 square miles (377864 square kilometers). During the crusades and on foot, the pilgrims and soldiers could get from France to the Holy Lands in 1.5 years, a considerable distance.

At the very least, it shouldn't take 6 months. Which means changing 135 to 540! But doing so would radically alter the combat logistics for the mod. Blitzkrieg attacks would become common place under that sort of change, mostly by the players and ruin the AI.

Here's a graphic depiction of the stops in-between to get from Minamata to Utsuki Jo.

Pic labeled #14 (the last one) shows the whole short distance. However that this is using fast generals with high movement rates, but unmodded would be even slower.

Note the numerous forts that are not on the roads, but necessary in real life during the Sengoku period in case of banditry and logistical deployment, because there really weren't any roads in the interior due to the mountains and lack of engineering and the will to do something about it. Even with a massive fort network, because of the movement rate without roads, then this crosscountry fort network does little to cut the travel time, but does help with banditry.

On top of which, the daimyo would have to have the cooperation and the dedication to the martial arts, to plan for the creation of adequate samurai and ashigaru for years in advance in order to be able to deploy them to a launching point for a naval invasion of another part of Japan, and then still leave enough troops behind so that they wouldn't be attacked.

So you can imagine the difficulty of an Imjin War, right? It's putting a lot of eggs in one basket, and leaving behind a chance for being dominated by another daimyo who didn't commit to a Korean invasion.

During this time period, Japan's combined forces across all of the daimyo was immense compared to French troops as well to the number of professional soldiers. My research is about four years old, but it was something akin to four times the number of men mustered by the Japanese versus the French, who of course weren't lightweights as military forces.

[If you look at the map, you might notice I altered the map colors to almost always be comparable to the clan samurai army colors as well as the banner colors, with the Ikko-Ikki being the exception. It results in a somewhat easier map to read since many are using similar colors, but clearly the border colors allow one at a glance to note the current ownership.

The Ikko-Ikki use orange as the main color, and so you can rapidly access the region flipping when one settlement rebels when using toggle_fow.

Edit: Changing the movement rate to 270 as the basic value in the descr_character, resulted in a perfectly believable one turn movement from Kagoshima to Minamata without improving the roads. Then I gave a movement rate bonus to the admirals (who are named characters so get traits), and when they win a battle, they have a 50% chance of improving their command status, plus they get a movement rate bonus to indicate their knowledge of the regional sea's current and depths and so forth.

In MT2, you can set the movement rate per character type like agents and named character, but in RTW1, you set a flat rate, though you can modify named characters with pluses and minuses for things like movement rate.

It may seem like a huge boost, but already in the first 10 turns I'm see the AI is figuring out the pathfinding better. The Mori launched a naval invasion on Shikoku that typically they waited to do. Takeda finally began to act normally, but still was too focused upon attacking main daimyo settlements versus the ronin.

The ronin clans are very strong in this mod. The amount of starting cash is high in the descr_strat at 800,000 ryo, but that's spread all across Nippon. And they have to deal with a lot more aggression than the regular daimyo too. However lowering that might then make the daimyo see them as an easier target than each other, which would then make more sense for the mod. It's a fine balance because you don't want the famous daimyo from history to die too soon, despite them not being the main factions.

Japan in total (including Hokkaido) is about the size of California, so imagine that lying on its side in the map. However Hokkaido is not included in the map for good reason, as it was only very late that pioneers went there to settle due to its well-known remoteness and cold and the presence of indigenous people. Which makes Hokkaido outside of Sengoku history. So this section of Japan is 3/4 of the size of California and the movement rate needs to be something approaching reality. Otherwise in truth, major conflicts like Sekigehara and the aftermath wouldn't have happened because it would take too long to get the samurai in position to be useful.

[RubiconDecision]

But doubling the movement rate has a serious flaw. When trying to reload a campaign with such a high movement rate, then causes a CTD. It causes no errors while playing from turn #1, but then for example, you lose the ability to pick up where you left off the next day when loading save game turn #20.

Realistically this means going to a 4T/year cycle, then leaving the number at 135, then recalculating all of the building times and the length of time to create a specific unit, then ALSO putting in a campaign script in for the 4T/Y. If you don't do the latter, then character aging is bugged. What a shame. You have to take steps when doing a 4T/Y mod because of the seasonal appearance on the strat map can get out of synch too. However some mods like the MTW2 ERAs mod then have a possibility of mild winters having an effect on the game.

Without the change, the movement rate is just not historically correct.

By making it a 4T/Y mod, then a plus is that while the road movement rate is vastly improved, particularly in Winter, the movement rate in the interior going cross country is greatly slowed down, and especially in Winter...which is accurate. This is why people "went up over the mountains" to escape the clan's clutches. It's a frequent historical meme in chambara and jidiageki films as some ronin needs to get away, and knows if they manage to get to the mountains, the lengthy time and poor quality to no roads means a chance at evasion.

This also means it's far less likely that any border incursion will occur from a mountainous direction. The Otomo will patrol the border between their regions and the Shimazu, but not usually cross the mountains or even go too far...because they cannot get back to a settlement easily. They will cross land in other places as it's easy to patrol, or even if they build a fort, then go from the fort to a border region, but not generally go the long roundabout mountain crossing.

So one could build forts leading to the mountain, and then gradually extend your fort network, and this allows you to do an aiiuchi attack i.e. a simultaneous attack while also attacking from the main paths, have some of your army cross over from forts and penetrate those mountain borders, and then relink up at the settlements. 'Kinda like a Lawrence of Arabia attacking from the Negev when the Turks least expected an attack from that direction.

It's a historical fact that much of Japan was wooded, and the vastly increasing populations from at the beginning of Sengoku of 12-17 million to 30 million in 1700 then caused a dramatic pressing need for firewood (mostly converted into charcoal due to effciency of burning plus need for blacksmithing and even temperature) and lumber. Which then began to alter the rural villages so they moved up into the mountains to exploit those untapped lumber sources, and transport them down into the urban areas.

It's a long drawn out process. Unlike MTW2, where you can do a simple seven lines of code to do math operations, in RTW1 you actually have to code a line for each season change with in effect two appearances of summer and two of winter so that the character ages correctly. But each specific season is then subtracted (ca chunk, ca chunk) in a plodding manner. So that's four lines of code per year for 200 years (800 LINES). It's a bit of work.

See:HouseofHam's turn script
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...turns-per-year

See Pat89's money script
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ript-Generator

Since those kind folks went to all the trouble of writing those great time-saving scripts, then I can add them in, so the movement rates approach historical values, and the money script acts as a last ditch buffer. Currently with a robust economy by alterations in the traits and the building text files, the AI doesn't run out of money provided the intial starting treasury is about 250,000 ryo. That declines in a normal manner as the AI judiciously makes infrastructure improvements, creates new units, and hires mercs (on the hard level [very hard is bugged in the campaign]). So this balances out by the 20th turn and the AI manages to have a standing treasury with good cashflow, versus the feast or famine with standard values. It ends up being a treasury (maintaining 100K on average) that's 5-10 years of infrastructure and military expendictures and helps them coast through poor harvests. It gives the AI a lot of wiggle room versus always broke and sort of paralyzed.

It seems that the money script would only rarely fire, when the AI is simply trounced and rather helpless and down to one settlement. Typically the AI seems hardcoded to offer a Protectorate to another AI faction in such a dismal situation.

If there's scripts involved, I might as well add garrison scripts for the original capitols as one last final protection against annhilation of the AI. The Hosakawa seem a bit doomed. Imagawa often gets hammered/bullied by the Takeda. Amato in the same boat by the Mori or the Ouchi or both.

[Hanti]

It seems that a good submod could emerge.