A discussion about devastation, pastoralism and upkeep

[MrT]

I have been reading and playing your mod a lot during my short vacation and some things have sprung to mind. Most aren't quite good yet but I am hoping you smart people can get them on track.

The devastation a large army has on the economy of the province in which it islocated could be much higher. When an army stays in a province it will consume a lot of supplies as we all know. This could devastate entire regions for long periods of time and decrease the population of that particular region for years. Even when a region was "spared" the effects of a huge army crossing through and consuming large amounts of food could be disastrous. This explains why defending armies often faced their enemy on the field of battle. The suffering of just having a large army inside your territory was worth risking battle. The hard part however is to represent this in game. Increasing the economic costs of devastation is a good start but more interesting would be long term damage to farm income and population growth. The larger the army the more devastation of course. What would be really neat would be if this could make the AI engage in field battles more often but I am guessing this will be hard.

Also a friendly army would have the same effect unless well prepared beforehand. Can it be programmed so that your own armies also devastate your regions? Maybe a building lika a granary could negate this. What would be really cool would be that depending on army size different levels of granary would be required. This building could also add to population growth.

Reading a lot about pastoralism has made me think a lot about upkeep. A horse archer unit that is located on the steppes, constantly chaning position would require a low upkeep but that same unit would require a lot if it was located in a city or beseiging one. When forced to remain stationary like this they would need a means to deliver sufficient food thus requiring much resources. Is it even possible to have 2 upkeeps values?

I must also add that I really appreciate how lancers and such heavy cavalry have high upkeep as this was most certainly the case.

[anaztazioch]

I must also add that I really appreciate how lancers and such heavy cavalry have high upkeep as this was most certainly the case.

Hight upkeep ? Man i play as Khwarezm and i have 3 (3) Full stacks of Khwarezm Guard and Guard Lancers and I STILL have over 4000+ income and i dont have Calula, nor merchants there (they are at Herat Wine, 800 from best merchant so far).
Normally a highly trained and equipped formation was as expencive as large town. Think why there was so little stational army in Medieval, mostly they were nobles waiting for call to arms.

[MrT]

Ok I might be wrong but I was under the general impression that heavy lancers like knights and such had much higher upkeep than for example turcoman HAs. Sure maybe they aren't high enough for heavy cavalry but at least there is a difference which is realistic.

[anaztazioch]

Dont talk about turkoman HA please, they get whipped making singular casulties to weakest of Kypchak HAs.
Khwarezm Guard has arround 600 i think, or 800 (Senior Ghulams have 650), given their strong arrows, strong melee and impenetrable armor, these guys are SUPER CHEAP compared to 120 upkeep for lousy turkoman archers.

Or the "ballance bug" of Armenia. Vishap javnelin is as strong as Dismounted Aspet. I think the differance is 1 or 2 points of armor, yet Aspets are more expencive and come at 4th archery range i think while Vishaps are from 2nd.

[MrT]

Ok the point of this thread wasn't to discuss actuall values of different units or balancing but rather the general idea behind upkeep values and such like. What I am saying is that the upkeep of pastoralist units should be relatively low as they can find pasture from the land as long as they aren't forced to remain stationary in one place to long like besieging a city. When the Seljuks defeated the Ghaznavids according this had much to do with the fact that Seljuk armies did not require baggage trains and therefor could maneuvre much more freely according to Baihaqi. Whereas the Ghaznavids had to tether their camels outside their tents the Seljuks camels foraged freely over large areas. Maybe even this could motivate a movement bonus?

The knit this together about my other paragraph about devastation the need to constantly supply the armies in Khorasan brought such devastation that the towns lost all enthusiasm for Ghaznavid rule.

[Cromagnon2]

Yeah good suggestion, but I don't think it is possible to correlate devastation to unit type for hardcode reasons. I still haven't figured out correctly how devastation works, but I agree it could have more impact.
Another thing I find lacking is when you build a fort on enemy territory there will be no devastation at all !?