Sicilian Combat Thread

[notger]

Dear community:

This thread is intended to be a base to discuss further things planned in the sub-mod Sicilian Combat.

Point Blank, Konstantin Alexander and me need a proper form to discuss our plans and this thread provides one. Furthermore, you are invited to discuss with us, since very input helps us improve.

Regards
Notger.

[Konstantin Alexander]

The issue at hand is the army composition and, as we want to implement the realistic building tree mod or a system that is very similar to it, the prerequisites for building certain units.
Below you will find syllabuses of Notger´s, Point Blank´s and my discussions, so you can follow our thoughts. Note, that right now we are at the point of doing brainstorming, to which you are invited to contribute. As we discussed by PM and email things might be a bit consufing at first. (It was for me at least)

Point Blank
For SC, have you guys ever considered making some units take greater than 1 turn to train (since turns are only 6 months), via the stat_cost line? It would make gameplay much more strategic. You would have to manage your queues and plan ahead. It would also increase the relative importance of mercenaries, which would also be historical. It would also mean that, if your expensive army of knights was destroyed, you would be crippled for up to 2 years. Also historical.

Konstantin Alexander
But yet i am not sure if it would be better to balance this whole thing with reduced replenishing rates or with production time. The first would mean, that you can easily compensate for big disasters at first, but will be bled dry if prolonged wars strain your recruiting pool of nobles and commoners alike, which are "in stock", that means ready but not commited to the king´s armies. The latter would mean that you have to plan more from beforehand and emphasizes mid-term strategy planning and a higher chance, that you could be forced to rely on sellswords untill you canassemble a new army. Probably a combination of both would be the best solution.

Point Blank
I agree with you, merc replenishment rates should be raised
significantly, especially in regions and during times when they were
historically prevalent (eg italian wars etc), and replenishment rates
lowered for normal units, especially as you are using 6 month turns.
This should be very true of 'feudal' units such as feudal knights, which
were not 'trained' by the faction as such.
The above would fit in quite well with the way I simulate the feudal
system in my install. It is simple but probably a reasonable abstraction.
Ok, you will know all the following, but bear with me a moment: How do
we define feudal units, ie vassals? They have obligation to the lord for
a period of service each year/turn. The lord resides in the castle. He
gives the vassals tenured land (fiefs) in return for the service, that
is the cost to the lord. So how do we simulate this in M2TW?
-We have the lord and his castle already.
-We simulate the giving of lands by paying a one-time recruitment cost,
but in this case we could call it a tenure agreement.
-We simulate the ongoing obligation of the vassal by making it a free
upkeep unit at the castle, which is easy to do in the EDB/EDU.
-We keep the replacement rate and pool size of these units low.
-If the vassal/feudal unit ends the year away from castle, it has
clearly been in the lord's service that year/turn for a greater period
that its nominal obligation, and an upkeep cost of some variety must
then be paid.
Note that these units are recruited by the castle, not the barracks or
stables. By recruiting at the castle we are simulating the gathering of
nobles/landowners seeking tenure etc from the castle lord.

Notger
What about the following: After the Timurid warning, half the number of units a castle can support. Furthermore, the new units (MAA) will have a higher replenishment rate, thus they will 'outgrow' their feudal counterparts.

As I see it, implementing the system as proposed by you and modding replenishment rates of feudal units to a third of their current rate could achieve what we are looking for: Armies with little elite units and lots of rubbish, valuable feudal knights and after the Warning an increasing percentage of professional armies. What do you think?

Notger
Implementing the RealisticBuildingTree will be not very different with your approach. But I am thinking about another building tree system. One similar to the Rome: Total Realism system with zones of recruitment and less buildings to build until you get the juicy units. (Balancing via build-time and replenishment rates.)

I always disliked the fact that in 1311, when the HRE was at its prime, you are not able to recruit anything decent that was common to that time period....
In the late campaign, Genoa is not able to build its famous crossbowmen. The ERE cannot build its Kataphraktoi, which it had been building for the last seven hundred years. Maybe there is an elegant solution for that that does not turn the game balance head over heels.

Konstantin Alexander
Point 2)

I think the best would be to make a cohesive system, with individual mechanics for every form of soldiery. Hereby i mean that the prerequisites to recruit a unit of feudal knights should depend on completely different factors than, let´s say a spear militia. The whole "build this level of building X-recruit unit Y" system is partly inconsistent and misleading from a historical point of view. In terms of frequency, availability and method of recruiting units it sometimes produces gross results, in regard to historical reality and gameplay, like Danes and ERE sharing a border in the middle of Poland. Take Notger´s example of the Kataphracts. It is plain stupid, that the ERE cannot recruit units, that have saved it´s ass for hundreds of years in 1311. My proposal would be to make different mechanisms for these unit categories:

Feudal Units (vasals and their armed followers)
Urban Militias (enlarged semi-professional units taken from the urban population)
Rural Militias (armed peasants and village guardsmen [in german-Dorfschulze] and countryside barracks)
Professionals-early (men that live by making war in the pay of the dukes etc)
Professionals-late (men paid by the state/king. Mercenaries in constant business relation)
Free mercenaries (Soldiers for hire by any employer, swiss, lansquenets, italian adventurers etc)

Point 3)
Have a look at the auxiliary system of Social Infidel´s "Pro deo et rege". Not, that i would like to copy it one to one, but i find it inspirational, if you read his thoughts behind this system.

I will try to make a more cohesive list with solution proposals, when i have the time.

[notger]

That auxiliary system was exactly what I meant when talking about the Rome:Total Realism system.

What are in your opinion the differences between the five branches?
I make a first shot:

Feudal units : Like PB suggested can be built with castles alone and can be free upkeep units to a certain degree within a certain timespan.

Urban Militias : Require buildings in cities and should not be buildable until the city reached a certain size (a town of 3000 would not be able to have an urban culture and raise militias, I guess).

Rural Rabble : Buildable without any buildings or only basic buildings in castles. Maybe even buildable in cities until they are able to build militias. That could reflect the change from rurally dominated to urban dominated areas.

Professionals early/late : Castles, need advanced buildings. Mechanics like they are now. No free upkeep. (Why did you distinguish between early and late professionals?)

Free mercenaries : Buildable in castles when a special building is available, which we could call recruiting center. Or maybe also buildable in cities with a large market or a town house ... i.e. some organizational structure. What do you think?
Is that possible or would we then need extra skins for the recruited units?

I will have to download the "Pro Deo et Rege"-Mod to see, how they did it. It sounds like a hell lot of work. (Do you realise that we have to categorize all 450 units and rewrite the whole building tree?)

[Konstantin Alexander]

I have been thinking and i suppose it is a good idea to write down the goals of what we hope to achieve with the categorization and what could be realized with it´s help. Please complete my list, in case i forgot something.

Goals:

Realistic army composition
So far there are always one or two unit types that dominate the AI armies and the player is likewise not motivated to use armies, that, at least roughly, resemble those of history, when he can afford an elite army. (Which he usually can, but this is another topic and should be discussed no sooner than SV2.1 is out and we can get a clear picture of the new circumstances) There are two extremes, which we should avoid. The one is being too strict and giving the player almost no possibility for free decisions and his personal preferences and the other is being too hell bent on being flexible and create a anything goes system.
Typical european armies consisted of a core of knights, ie heavy cavalry with at least the same amount of light cavalry, if not more, (this should change later on, when the heavy cavalry should become easier available) a small contigent of heavy infantry (at first mostly noble infantry and it´s amount would increase later on as well) accompanied by conscripted peasants and semi-professional urban militias and, according to the culture, between a fourth and half of the infantry armed with ranged weapons. These armies would be supplemented by a single or two special units (for europeans mounted archers for instance) and an artillery park according to the age, bolstered by some mecenaries. For eastern armies the special units would be the heavy cavalry, while the melee cavalry would be substituted by light and heavy horse archers. In general the amount of cavalry would be higher and the infantry mostly equipped with bows, with only a comparatively small part equipped for melee.
If we could get the AI to recruit armies, that at least resemble such armies and encourage the player to act like this, that would be getting somewhere. I have to stress that this should not be a dictate, but just the common army composition. (later armies of course would look much different) If a faction concentrates it´s mounted forces, there is no reason not to allow unusual armies, like spanish all-heavy-cavalry-forces. But a faction that fights on multiple fronts with roughly equally distributed strenght, the common sight should be such mixed contigents.

Historical accuracy in regard of the appearence of unit types
Like mentioned above in the discussion, the vanilla recruitment system leads to ahistorical situations, in which units that were quite common at an age are placed at the end of the tech tree or their appearence far before their time. (Although the latter is already controlled to a certain extend with SV) One could think of introducing more historical events (like UAI+vanilla had) to regulate the appearence of certain unit types and their rate of refreshing. I´m not thinking of something as closely to history clinging as "Ghibelline-Guelph wars 1313-1328, double the german mercenary knights refreshing rate in tuscany" but of a more rough system, that works with decades and periods of 25-50 years.
Likewise units that were already an important part of a faction´s army at a certain date, i return to the example of the Kataphrakts in the late era campaign, which must be available, but, on the other hand, should not wreak havoc in terms of game balancing. So it is not necessarily useful to work with the system in mind "X is a better unit than Y, therefore it comes after it in the tech tree" but find other means, like varying costs (unlikely) or varying refreshing rates to balance things. For instance it would be perfectly okay, if the Byzantines could recruit Kataphrakts in 1311, even when there is no citadel, but make them so rare, that the Byzantines will not stomp any opposition into the ground, because Yeniceri would appear later on. One or two units of Kataphrakts will not win a war, but it adds flavor to have them available, even when the bulk of the Byzantine army consists of other unit types.

Slowing down blitzing player and AI factions
It might be a bit ambitious, but while we are already regulating the availability of unit types it could be wise to implement a system of restrictions in recently conquered settlements. For this purpose we have several options of which some are more restrictive and others more easygoing. If we simply reduce the refreshing rates of units in general and set the refreshing counter for a newly conquered province to zero (i think this is close to what vanilla already does) then it would take a few turns, before a conquered province is equal to any home provinces with comparative population size. This would be a bit too easy from my point of view. Conquering a province is one thing, bringing order into the backwaters, implementing similiar political structures (or trustworthy personell in case of closely associated cultures like Sicilians and Neapolitans) needs time, effort and money. I was very impressed by the system of "Pro Deo et Rege" which regulates this by a very restricted building tree, that requires certain adiminstrative buildings to be built at first, before any units are available in the region. After this you are not able to build the regular units of your faction, but only units which are typical in the region, before you can rely on your normal unit tree, which is, even at it´s height still restricted in terms of typical faction unit. (That means no portugese knights will ever be buildable in anatolia.) While this is definately slowing down any expansion i have the feeling it might be a bit cumbersome and might lead players to wish for undeveloped settlements, because those "regional units" supplement his normal unit roster nicely. (I´m thinking about Cuman horse archers for west european factions) Additionally i do not know, if the AI can be forced to build the right buildings and to use the increased unit options in a sensible way. (I´ve not played Pro Deo et Rege myself so far and cannot say if it works. No offense intended, i simply do no know it) There would also be the option of reintroducing something like the culture penalty of RTW. Or one could make the distance penalty apply also for the settlement´s income, but this would equal the differences between a recently conquered province at the other end of the world and a long established colony which was absorbed into the factions culture long ago. No easy choices here. Another idea would be to let the conquerer recruit units as usual, but those units would be clones of the faction´s originals with reduced morale (they are subjects of a possible detested invader) and/or decreased quality. (Spanish spear militia conscripted in England would count as peasant quality, in terms of RC´s quality system, as they are not used to this style of fighting and/or disobedient to their officers or equipped with second hand armament) In concert with some of my ideas for a new recruiting system of mercenaries (see below) one could also balance the new conquest´s value, when you only have the option to recruit people, who do not care under which banner they march.
One would also have to find a mechanism to overcome those penalties eventually, for which the happyness percentages, the cultural penalties which are reduced with every new building or by a building tree like Pro Deo et Rege solved it, would be possible. Maybe creating a new set of traits or letting some of the traits (like "aloof" or "open to all religions") influence the duration of the assimilation would also be an interesting solution.

Essentially there are three things i would like to achieve. I am yet undecided which of the above mechanic or which combination would be the best to realize them.
1.) At first, from a gameplay point of view, i definately want to make progress significantly slower. (Have a look at the Reconquista, which took a century) I do not want to make expansion impossible but just slow it down, when wars would be fought over the possession of one or two valuable provinces and huge empires aren´t crushed in a couple of years. Even this should be left as possible, but such a huge empire, that had no time to settle down, to complete it´s conquest by finding a way to dominate the foreign subjects culturally or even merge the cultural aspects of both peoples, will stay fragile for some time to come. In history all swiftly expanding empires where finally crushed, mostly not by the nominal strenght of its enemies, but by internal discord and the centrifugal forces of the different subjects beliefs, ambitions and a lack of common interests.
2.) I like the idea of being forced to rely on units which are typical to a region in the first stages after a conquest. Those local troops would also add a bit of flavour in regard to the value of certain conquests. I love the cultural diversification which such an option would emphasize.
3.) I also want to represent the slow development of a country, that is simply occupied by a foreign power, to a unruly part of the kingdom, which may be prone to rebellions, but generally works in concert with it´s souvereign and finally to an integral part of the power base of the crown, whose inhabitants are assimilated and integrated into the culture, power structures and military of it´s erstwhile conquerors, if those conquerors were making prudent decisions and put enough effort into it. This would greatly add to the immersion and even more to the importance of long term strategic planning and short term decision making, offering the player a new aspect in which he has to proof his skill. And of course, it would make it more difficult to achieve the winning conditions.

Making mercenaries useful and necessary without letting them dominate the campaign
The value of mercenaries is closely linked to the availability of the normal unit roster. The more problems we make to recruit regular units of the faction the more valuable mercenaries will become. When military desasters like Crecy left a kindgom with insufficent trained manpower (=reduced refreshing rates), when the control over an alien region is still fragile (=penalties for recruitment in recent conquests), when major conflicts exceed the military potential of a state (=balanced maximum of recruitable units in settlements) or time is running out (=some units take longer than one turn to train) european rulers frequently relied on bands of mercenaries to wage their wars.
What i definately dislike is the reliance on family members to recruit mercenaries. One might say, only nobles of such prominence would have the money and connections to make them interesting employers from the point of view of mercenaries (Notger´s knows, that i handled things like this in my AAR) but maybe we can represent the attraction specific regions have for mercenaries with a system of buildings and likewise implement the differentiation of local and international sellswords. Local mercenaries would be locals (surprise) who lost their employment, when new rulers took over, opportunists, who try to make the best of the abolishment of the old network of dependencies, or real rebels, be they inspired by political, religious or monetary reasons, who despised the former rulers and now are looking to find a way to profit from the new situation. Turkopoles and Khwarizmians would be a good example of such local mercenaries and Social Infidels Mod represents this with the auxilia. International bands on the other hand are offering their services to anyone and mostly are a part of a strict organization (strict in the terms of medieval times), which regulated the distribution and terms of service of the various units. Of course the Swiss and lansquenets are a good example, but likewise John Hawkwood´s english band, the company of St. George of Astorre Manfredi, the bretons in the Romagna and the german knights who looked for employment after Henry VII´s death at Bounconvento 1313 were extremely important in ther times. And who would forget that terror of the Languedoc during the 100 years war, Villandrando, who would later on play an important role in the defense of Aragon.
This is an idea that just came to my mind, but could serve as inspiration of how we try to solve this dilemma. WHat about introducing two small building trees, one for the recruitement of international bands, that is not available at all times, but appears like a guild and offers the possibility to recruit a certain type of mercenaries. (swiss contract bureau for instance, or, more general, spanish mercenary agency [sword&bucklermen, musketeers etc]) Playing around with the prerquistites for such opportunities might lead to enhance the customization of settlements. (Another issue i definately would like to dig in in the future) For local mercenaries there could be something similar to Pro Deo et Rege´s auxiliary barracks or, as the maximum of different buildings is somewhat limited, a single building, that changes the available mercenaries according to the settlement´s size (soldiers are drawn by wealth as a donkey is drawn by a carrot), historical events (like the vanilla barracks offering pikemen after event XY) the province´s happyness, or after a certain counter ran out. Such buildings could even cost money, as business relations usually do. (Considering there are buildings that bring constant income, like mines, i guess this would be technically possible.) Perhaps another building is not even necessary, but i often experience situations, when everything possible is already built in a settlement and all i can do is to wait for it to grow.

Substitute the RBT-mod
I think in regard to building-prices (but not in regard to building times) we should have a closer look at it, but eventually i think the system is not compatible with what we have in mind in it´s current form. Perhaps it might be easier to work on the base of SV+vanilla1.2 instead of relying on something that would have to undergo as much changes as the other way around.

Making military desasters having more impact
We often see AI factions sending stack after stack of units against the player, when it has a sufficent economical base. Destroying such armies has almost no impact, not in terms of gaining a bit of time to rebuild und reorganize your own military and in no way in regard to the AI armies´ composition. Although i would appreciate, if GrandViz would one day implement a way of letting the diplomatic AI recognize, when the last 10 years of war resulted in 15 terrible defeats, one draw and only two victories and the rate of losses is ten times higher than that of the enemy, i think we can circumvent this necessity to a certain degree with this system, which we are currently discussing. I don´t know if it is only me, but i regularly find myself in the situation, that i feel forced to conquer and annihilate a certain faction, only to be left in peace to follow my plans, which i originally have in mind. The annoyance factor by certain factions, which seem hell-bent on wasting their soldiers by throwing them into the jaws of your fortified positions is extremely high in my eyes. As far as i know the AI only calculates the overall military strenght of the hostile faction, which is displayed in the graph in the faction menu and with slowing down the build-up of armies with the proposed mechanism we can perhaps convince an enemy to cease hostilities by destroying a couple of stacks of him, which he can´t compensate for as fast as before.

Encourage long-term strategic planning
As this is a topic on its own, i wont discuss it here. I just want to state, that the customization of settlements is an important issue here. I think it is enough to keep this goal in mind, when discussing the various mechanics, we would like to implement.

Trying to represent the social and political changes of the period and the faction´s peculiarities
I think the era´s social and political circumstances, as well as a factions peculiarities can be roughly displayed with the changes of availability, refreshing rates and possible free upkeep. I won´t go into too much detail here, as i would just repeat many of the above suggestions and just want to name the single example of longbowmen. With new historical events one could, for instance, allow bowerys (bowman ranges? i have no idea how that building is called in the english version. You know...the stuff with which you recruit bowmen!) to have garrisoned units of longbowmen with free upkeep after the start of the reforms (i forgot, which english king made the peasants to train a certain amount of days per annum and regulated their terms of service, when they went abroad to fight), so that naturally the amount of longbowmen in english armies would increase at the time of the hundred years war.

Generally making the strategic part of the game harder
Well, i think this is self-explanatory.

Explanation of the categories, as they are set at the moment:

Feudal units:
The major and minor nobles, that follow the call to arms by their overlord, the king and bring with them their armed retinues. They serve as part of their tenure agreement and formed the core of the early era´s armies, but will not die out even at the end of the period given by the game. This category includes almost all of the early, high and late era´s european heavy cavalry, a large part of the light cavalry and the noble infantry.

Rural Units:
As can be expected by the name this category summarizes all units that are recruited from the rural population, mostly by drafting them. They serve as part of their duty as subjects of the realm and, mostly, are either receiving less pay than other soldiers or none at all. There are, of course, also volunteers among this group, but mainly because there is a multtude of reasons why someone lost his livelihood. Their main characteristic is, that they are never full time soldiers, but all their martial prowess is learned as part of their civil live or during the short training they receive before being organized in companies, given officers of regular units (mostly experienced full-time soldiers and only very seldom one of their own people of higher status like village headmen) and shooed in direction of the battlefield. Their quality mainly depends on how warlike their origin is, while their equipment is commonly of low quality, second hand (which means looted) or provided by themselves, which makes them more readily available than other troop categories. This group encompasses all units with the term "peasant" in their name, but also members of kingdoms, which have either a sophisticated system of implementing the rural population into its armed forces or who have a considerable amount of more warlike population. (Nomads with units like Cuman horse archers, woodsmen etc)

Urban Units:
Lo and behold, urban units are taken from a region´s urban centres and often they are paid by them as well, while they are doing their usual service of guarding and patrolling the towns´ areas of interest, which is represented by being a free upkeep unit, as long as they are garrisoned in a town. If leaving the town´s limits they are supposed to be that urban centre´s contribution to the kingdom´s war efforts and sequentially have to be paid and provisioned by the crown. While some of them, who were raised in towns of secondary importance, are organized militias, those who are recruited by the more influential population centres often have no other job besides soldiery, as we suppose that such big amounts of population can produce enough income for letting a significant amount of the citizens dedicate their live to secure this income. (And their comparatively high independency towards the realm´s leadership.) Their main characteristic is their relatively good equipment (as there are enough specialist craftsmen in a city) while their effectivenes and discipline will proportionally increase with the city´s political and economical importance, even when still lacking a bit in comparison to true professionals, who live by war. (instead to live by keeping the peace) Italian Militias would be a perfect representative of this category.

Early Professionals:
For our reasons to differentiate between early and late professionals have a look at my post below. This category encompasses all those types of men, who live solely by waging war in the pay of either some noble or the crown on the base of contracts for a specific amount of time or a campaign. Although they are full-time soldiers, their regular pay, while of significant size, is often just complementary to them getting a chance to loot and as they are regularly dismissed, after they served their purpose in a specific campaign, they often invest their money in a second base of fortune or have to look for another mission by another employer. This and the relatively easy going recruitement criteria mean that the numbers of professionals in a kingdom´s service are extremely volatile. They represent hard-bitten individuals or small groups of men, who are trying their best to profit from the ongoing feuds and major campaigns of the medieval world, which leads to a surprising high fighting morale, while their discipline and equipment is generally of good to moderate. The more efficient and better equipped units of this category are supposed to be that part of this class that found a regular employment in a noble´s or the crown´s service. For the first half of the game´s timeline early professionals are the core of the melee infantry part of an army supplemented by militias, while the noble heavy infantry is either used at critical points or kept in reserve. Sergeant spearmen are a stereotype of this category.
(Includes all mechanical artillery)

Late Professionals:
Contrary to their early counterparts late professionals have much clearer dependencies, which come along with the development of the stronger central powers of the medieval states. Instead of being assigned for service for a specific campaign the crown now tended to keep a significant amount of those full-time soldiers in regular pay and founded something similar to a standing army, which encompassed the most reliable (which means loyal to the realm´s gouverment, not well behaving) companies of armed men, whose core stayed the same for a considerable amount of time, even as still a good part them had a fluctuating staff. They have a specially trained officer corps (in which, as a novelty, even some minor nobles make career) and the more advanced states even sport regular recruitment institutions (like the military academy). Their equipment is usually among the best available, as the states wanted to profit from their considerable investment they put into their training and more often used the threat of the power, which they represented, to ensure the loyality of the major nobles of the realm, than in actual battles against foreign powers. Going along with this and the technological development the kings of europe made sure that almost every tactical role on the battlefield (especially that of the heavy cavalry) now could be brought to bear by a class, whose primary dependency was to the crown, instead of local nobles. This is represented by units as Scottish guards, Demi-Lancers, Pikemen and Tabarydiyya (spelling? What the heck, you know...those axemen!) which are all part of this category.
(Includes all gunpoweder artillery)

Local Units/mercenaries:
For more details to this group have a look at the discussion about mercenaries above. The main charcteristc of this group is that their members have a clear cultural imprinting, which often is a prerequisite for their fighting style and they are different from rural units by being full-time soldiers. Unlike early professionals though, they sell their services as a group to anyone who can provide payment and have no loyalities to nationality or local authorities to which many of the former group grew accustomed. (And who, admittedly, would seldom be able to afford hiring such a large group of armed people, so that it is usually the territory´s current ruler to which these men turn for assignments) Another characteristis is, that besides the fighting men, there are few men, who work for the individual units or anything like a general organisation. Catalans or Welsh Bowmen would be good examples of this group.

International Mercenaries:
International mercenaries, on the other hand, are integrated in a sophisticated organisation, whose representatives (or, in the case of the swiss full grown contract bureaus) are seated in most major cities of this time and/or assemble around a reknown mercenary leader (of which some even came tp play a role in politics i.e. "Lord" John Hawkwood) and sell their services to anyone in europe. They are well aware of their value, that can go as far as decide a war on it´s own and successful rulers of that period take care not to step on their toes. (Which, essentially, means not owning them too much money) They are indeed live by war and although they make full use of the modern technology available at the time of their appearance, they hardly have an interest in their employer´s goal of a campaign and are reknown for insubordination or defecting as soon as more than minor problems with their payment. (Often that would happen exactly after a -!successful!- battle, when they raised their demands) In the long term that doesn´t even go against their interests as a peace resulting of a war being won deceisively would make them unemployed. Their equipment is up-to-date and while they are tenaciously pursuing their profession (which means killing people or even better threatening to kill people with no danger for oneself) and are generally well disciplined on the battlefield nothing like that can be said about their behaviour towards their employers. While the Swiss and the german lansquenets (Landsknechte) are the stereotype of this group, nearly every unit with the term "free band" can be counted among this category.

[Point Blank]

Looking good so far, will contribute more when I am back in the loop.

[Konstantin Alexander]

It sounds like a hell lot of work. (Do you realise that we have to categorize all 450 units and rewrite the whole building tree?)

You already know, who will be the idiot that volunteers for the job, don´t you? :wink:

(Why did you distinguish between early and late professionals?)

Danger! This is a lengthy excursion about history! Beware!

I distunguish between early and late professionals, because the frame of reference of both groups was significantly different. During the whole medieval era people choosed to live by war. There were no total wars like the age of mechanization and national states knows them. Basically war was the sport of the rich and bored people (no Schwarzenegger movies back then) and professional soldiers were something like the stagehands, who made war their trade. "Craftsmen of war" like they would later be called. In the words of Jean Giono: "But the common people were largely indifferent. During most wars the ploughmen were ploughing, the cobblers continued making shoes"...To them it did not matter if those armed men who were robbing their possessions, burning their houses and raping their women were their king´s men, who often resorted to pillaging when their payment was not coming forth, as a way of substituting the detour of the money from the taxpayers to the royal treasury and back to them, which often wasn´t even considered as unduly and even served the king´s intentions, when local nobles were uncooperative, which is evident in the hundreds of letters of remission signed by them, or if they were foreigners trying to damage their enemies by attacking them, where they were vulnerable, in their purses, or if they were simple bandits.
Under these circumstances, when ideas of a "greater good" or "fighting for the fatherland" had yet to be invented, it mattered alot, to whom you address yourself, when it comes to paying your bills. I named the categories early and late, while you could also name them household-troops and state-troops. Early professionals were by large in the pay of barons and dukes, protecting their castles, roads, bridges, cities and flour mills. (important strategic positions back then. No flour, no bread, no army) They did all the jobs which were to dirty to be entrusted to the lord´s retinues of armed servants and knaves. Being full-time soldiers, who knew their trade, they found work when small scale wars between different nobles (of the same kingdom) were waged and promised chances for looting, they are different from militias. Real wars against foreign nations were more the exeption than the common thing and to this purpose they simply signed another treaty or followed the bigger units of the royal armies (which consisted of nobles and their retinues, see above) on their own initiative and entered the king´s payroll like they would enter just another nobles service and would leave it as easily as they would leave the service of a baron. Their numbers were extremely volatile. A perfect example of such units would be sergeant spearmen.
As wars and the entities that waged them became more organized, centralized and began to loose their character as sport events at the end of the period which is covered by the game, things were far different. The armies grew in size and those parts, which composed the standing army of the royal crown played a more important part. This was the time when the mamluk caste, the imperial knights of the holy roman empire of german nation and the ordennance companies of the french crown gained their prominence. The soldiers had long term assignments with regular incomes and set dependencies, which played an important part in what we would meet again as a feeling of belonging to a nation centuries later. (One wouldn´t believe what an important trigger money can be for nation building) This didn´t necessarily increase their professionalism, but definately paved the way of what we consider a nation´s army nowadays and certainly influenced their reliability (not in terms of behaviour. The streams of letters of remission did not cease) and their availability to the crown, which is represented by the player/AI in game terms. I might get a bit stagy, but from the middle of the 14th century on we see the first glimpses of the dawn of national feelings. Again in the words of Jean Giono at the end of his book about the battle of Pavia: "So far, we have seen nothing of the simple, ordinary people, the commoners, as Amyot called them. They are present at the game, but do not play themselves, unless they happen to live on a battlefield or in a besieged town. They are like spectators at a rugby match, but they are burning to go on the field; they long to find more amusement than they get from sitting watching, and are eagerly looking for a chance to join the fray. The wars of religion are not far distant." The involvement of something similar like public opinion would eventually lead to what i often refer to as the "first world war of the 17th century", the 30-years war.


I am sorry if this explanation ended in another lenghty lecture about history, but you know...i get fired up on things far too easy and cannot surpress the urge to explain myself in detail. I just want to make sure, we discuss with the same picture of the situation in mind.

Of course i will continue to complete the post above and give my best to express myself as briefly as possible.

[notger]

You already know, who will be the idiot that volunteers for the job, don´t you? :wink:

I fear to volunteer,
yet for appropriate booty
I would do my duty.
And be it cumber-some,
I would check the numbers, um,
I lack the next rhyme,
what a shame.

For a detailed answer to your posts, I eagerly await the completion of your yet uncompleted post. It is well thought, that we go back a step and first categorize everything, before we begin to make up relations and mechanisms.

[Konstantin Alexander]

People like Goethe, William Blake or Homer would struck you down on the spot, you know that, don´t you? Anyways, the idiot, that i was refering to, is me. But if you volunteer, well...

I think i have completed the post above, although i let the descriptions of the unit categories untouched so far. But i think defining them later on is not such a bad idea. (And writing such long posts is straining, i can tell you) I think we have a good start for brainstorming and discussing comments of other players. I have to stress, though, that the above mentioned ideas are just that, ideas and in no way represent a set system. If the discussion results in realizing that such a system would be rubbish, then this is allright as well.

[beezneez]

glad to see you guys implementing and expanding on "Real Combat" for SV. just to put my two cents in, i'd LOVE to see an AOR system like Pro Deo Et Regio" (sp?) added. i love how it works, but i'm not to keen on his mod as yet. SV is my favorite so far. i LOVE being able to start a late era campaign. i'm so sick of the early units to be honest. so i'd also like to see the AI w/ more modern top tier units in it's army. it's more interesting and more difficult.

one of you had touched on something i'd also like to see happen in game. devastating defeats. battles do not seem important enough. when states lost decisive battles back then, it could be crushing, i.e. manzikert. however, i dont want to hamper the AI TOO much after i whoop 'em, or only have a battle every four years or something.

lastly, have you thought of incorporating any of darth's work in? would it conflict too much?

basically, i want much more difficult battles/campaigns with the most historical accuracy possible.

[DaVinci]

KA, your description in post 6 is well made, and you are referring mainly to the feudalism (mainly 10th-13th cent.) in Europe (especially in german lands) of the High Middleage (in the game Medieval the Early Era and High Era).

One thing you left out in the description is, that all (at least valid for the real feudal countries) the soldiers in the game, except the knights and nobles, are 'Leibeigene' (don't know the concrete english translation, principle the 'levies'), they were just peasants or other low unfree class members, who were forced to go to war or to serve at the courts, castles and houses, goods or whatever for the nobles, their lords, which then again, were mainly the vasalls of the king, if there was a king.

Our sergeants in the game are all peasants/levies, or whatever we want to call them, just people without a free will, and as there is the differentiation for the non-casle levies, calling 'militia'.
This land- and human-owning feudal system in this kind ended first with the liberation of the peasants class in some countries in the Late Middleage and just with the growing stength of 'citizens' in the growing cities, so that such mercenaries as the Landsknechts and other were established, who were in fact free men, and decided to serve for whomever.
Former to this timeframe, there were pretty less free men who offered their service as mercenaries, or in another term, as real professionals of war.

Our Sergeant unit for example are servants of their lords (any nobles), who were forced to do whatever the lord calls for, and i guess, there were some but rare exceptions, that those sergeants people, if very loyal, got a little land or more seldom got free, in general they were just unfree 'slaves', but even not real slaves.

But i'm not the expert to describe how it worked in other lands, ie. Italy with all their pretty early free city states, or in Castile/Iberia. But there, i guess, we had just the so-called militia units who served (as well unfree if not free citizens) for their leaders (also nobles, mainly).

[notger]

Off-Topic: Since Trebuchets very rarely were used in field battles and were not dragged fully assembled, why not make them buildable as siege equipment or as very expensive mercenaries? That would also lead to less artillery in the AI armies thus more movement points for them.

[Konstantin Alexander]

Notger knows it already, but for th rest of the community i´d just like to mention that i have no access to my PC at the moment (it´s harddisc has commited suicide) and can only post, when i am at work. Naturally this will slow down things. I will contribute my thoughts in detail as soon as possible.

[Point Blank]

OK, RealCombat 1.2 is released so I have time to start on this.

[Konstantin Alexander]

Well, well folks. I´ve completed the description of the unit categories. Again...

I think we should first briefly discuss them, before going on to speak about the mechanisms to achieve our intended goals, so that we all know to which troop types a certain mechanism would apply and noone gets caught by surprise afterwards. SO let´s hit at the weak points, shall we?

I still got the feeling that i have missed the most important points while i´ve written the descriptions the second time, though (and paragraph long posts in the vegestia...). It is difficult to express what i think of the database error last weekend, but i think i can narrow it down to: Crap on a stick! Databases are ****tards!

[notger]

Finally, we get starting! Wohooo ...

Ok, in answer to your categorization: I agree with your points all in all, though I thought quite a while about the urban units, that get more battle-prowess when their home-town grows in importance. I see no causality here.
The only link I see, is that more important towns can field armies with better equipment and better training. We could implement that easily (experience bonuses ... ).

Before we go on, K.A., please state wether you agree to my statements in post #15, since they give a rough prioritization of our construction sites.

[Konstantin Alexander]

General question to anyone more knowledgeable than i in the inner working of the M2TW engine:
Would it be possible to include an additional line in the EDU for every unit, whose content can be read by scripts? I mean could i add a line "category......early urban light infantry" which would be read by data X and lead to changes Y. Like the script would check "category: early urban light infantry+date 1103=increase replenishment rate from 0,5 to 0,8" Sounds weird, i know, but maybe this would make things easier to implement. Just a thought. I´m no programmer.

To your question:

Ok, in answer to your categorization: I agree with your points all in all, though I thought quite a while about the urban units, that get more battle-prowess when their home-town grows in importance.

Actually i was writing that they gain in effectivity, not necessarily in prowess. What i meant by that was, that the growing importance of urban centres lead to bigger, more professional and standing armies, while the technological advance especially exploited not the individual´s skill, but suplemented that with different forms of units. The "old" urban units would not get better, but the new available units would be more effective in comparison to the respective contemporary feudal units. Pike militia and musketeers are more effective against late era units than spear militia and bow militia against early era units. Indeed the prevailing weapons of the late age all share the characteristic that they were a) reliable b) relatively easy to train in and c) reproduceable in large quantities. If an individual was especially tall, strong, dexterous or enduring no longer played -such- an important role than before, which was a prerequisite and a consecution as well of the increase of the numbers of armed forces.

Now to your suggestions:

In my opinion, we should further categorize our aims and even so our means:
1. Short-time fixes, very easy but effective changes and changes that are but a crook and are replaced in step 2
2. Mid-term fixes and systems, implementable without too much hassle but taking some work
3. Long-term goals, dreams, things Sicilian Combat can do without if need be

I agree and would even put more emphasis on the short term fixes. As long as we keep our mid term ideas in mind and do not produce contradicting systems, of which some would fundamentally change, when we go to step 2 and hereby create a hybrid, of which some parts do not correspond to those that are already updated in step 2 and spoil the whole step-by-step implementation, we´ll be fine.

The realistic army composition should not be too difficult to achieve. Let us use the only thing, economic sciences have produced, that is useful: The theory of offer and demand.
We have to cut down the offer of units that are overrepresented in the current version.
Steps:
Phase 1: Cut down them buggers, especially the replenishment rates and the maximum availabilty numbers. Introduce free-upkeep-feudal-units.
Phase 2: Develop a system of numbers like in Phase 1, that depend on the current timeframe (=events).

I agree and propose, that we take a certain date, let´s say 1310, the starting point of the late era campaign on which we concentrate at first and experiment with the replenish rates and maximum availability. Without having digged deeper into this mechanism i´ll wager that the maximum of available units of a certain type are almost more important than the replenishment rate. Why? Because usually the player adopts one of two policies. Advance in the tech tree or build units and wage war. In case one he won´t be recruiting much anyways, so even low replenishment rates will not bug him and in case two he usually prepares the best available armies before he engages in major campaigns. This preparation time will increase considerably when he cannot build the major part of the army in a few turns, as the respective units are already available even with vanilla replenishment rates. (I will call it ReplenishmentRate and MaximumAvailableUnits from now on, i´m too lazy to write the whole term every second sentence, even when it is nerdy)
Would you mind to educate me on the exact mechanism and the respective data, where RR and MAU are located? Especially i´d like to know if a RR of 0,5 really means that a new unit of a certain type will be available every second turn untill MAU is reached or if a more complicated calculation is working.
My proposal:
Step1:Take the period from 1310-1325 and go through the available units untill realistic army composition is achieved
Step2: Go forward (or backward) in time and break the timeline in specific periods, adjust RR and MAU and create historical events that notify the player.
Step3: Research more diligently about each faction´s military reforms and customize the historical events and RR and MAU

I wonder if there could be a way to limit the maximum amount of a certain unit category per stack. I am thinking about siege machines.




It´s late and i am not yet done with the post. Be patient, i will complete it in the next few days.

[Lusted]

Would it be possible to include an additional line in the EDU for every unit, whose content can be read by scripts? I mean could i add a line "category......early urban light infantry" which would be read by data X and lead to changes Y. Like the script would check "category: early urban light infantry+date 1103=increase replenishment rate from 0,5 to 0,8" Sounds weird, i know, but maybe this would make things easier to implement. Just a thought. I´m no programmer.

Nope not possible.

[DaVinci]

Nope not possible.

Hey Lusted, good to see you here, all good at CA?


KA,the edu is a pretty static file. Only code lines you can add to unit blocks, that have them not, are the ones you can find explained at the head of the file (all the by semicolon outcommented stuff).

[notger]

Apart from firearms not being easy to mass-produce until 15th century, I accept your post.

No, attaching scripts in the EDU is not possible, as far as I know.
But we can attach triggers as building conditions in the EDB, meaning that only if a certain event ('Blablas army reform') happened, then that certain building can build a specified type of troops. (E.g.: Mongol Invasion triggers late troops, gunpowder event triggers gunpowder, ... )

Yes, RR=0.5 means that half a unit is spawned every turn, thus it takes two turns for every full new unit. Keep in mind, that the engine keeps track of fractions. Meaning that, if you fight a battle every turn that reduces your unit to half its size, with RR=0.5, you could retrain that unit at the end of every turn. (But this would leave no room for new recruitment.) Retraining also substracts from the number in the pool and it does with the correct number. It might be, that you are not able to recruit a new unit but are able to retrain an existing unit.

No, increasing the maximum number of units per stack is not possible.

Propositions:

1. Raise recruitment times, according to the following sheme:
a) Bodyguards = 4 turns
b) Feudal units, late pros = 3 turns
c) early pros, militia units = 2 turns
d) rural units = 1 turn

2. Reduce the availability of elite units. As a first shot, we could halve the availability of Bodyguards, Feudal units and early pros. The RR of late professionals should not be changed, since this is their big advantage: Plenty of men to fill the lines.

3. Reduce the MNUA (that sound like better english than MAU, but I might be wrong; N = Number) of Bodyguards to 1 and of Feudal units to 1-3 (depending on the settlement size). Together with the changes above, this will make feudal units very rare and thus quite valuable. The number of early pros, militia and rural units will rise.
The RR and the MNUA are equally important, in my eyes. Every teching player gets to a point where he cannot tech further and then he will go to war, if only to hunt down some infidels, recreate historical wars or whatever. As soon as someone goes to war, the RR and the stocked-up recruiting pool is of importance. If you have low RR's, every big loss in battle hurts. You will not be able anymore to pump out troops in the backlands and send them to the front, replacing your losses 1:1. This will slow you down and make you cautious. Of course, that also applies to the defending side but the defending side will have a garrison script to help. The impact of the garrison script will be even bigger when troops are scarce.

4. Make Trebuchets and some other siege equipment immovable on the battle field. But fully movable on the campaign map.
I propose this to reflect that siege equipment was transported disassembled in the train and thus would not slow down the moving army. Once assembled, I do not think that it was able to move around. For an object the size of a small hut, you need extraordinarily even and clear ground to move it around. In any case, it would be too slow to be moved around in battle.

5. Reduce siege equipment availability drastically, especially RR but also MNUA. I sometimes see the AI recruit siege equipment very confidently.

Recruiting what when where?

A very important topic has not been touched yet: Which type of troops are recruited where and when (timeframe)? I guess that is something that falls under your line "i am not yet done", so I wait patiently. You are the historician of our sub-mod, so you have the honor to start.


(The points above are, with the exception of point 1, short-term fixes that might be enough to solve the problem. They all pose a certain improvement over the current situation but are of course subject to changes.)

[Lusted]

Hey Lusted, good to see you here, all good at CA?

Yup, definitely fascinating finding out how games development works.