Reforming Levies
Problem: Several people in the OOC thread have expressed having an issue with the way levies work, believing it to be unrealistic and that there are better solutions to forming armies in the field than our current levy system. So let's have a dedicated discussion.
For starters, I've thought up my own idea and I've listed what I understand about the idea formulated by Ponti.
1. "Levy, Militia and Professionals"
We move from a 2 tiered system to a 3 tiered system that works like this:
- Levies are the points values currently in the rules but we change it so that they are comprised entirely of Light Infantry and Archers. You no longer get any other unit type.
--- Levies now take 24 hours to mobilise rather than 12.
--- Levies will only serve for a maximum of 2 years (2 RL weeks) before disbanding and going home. They will not answer a summons to arms again for 2 more years after that.
--- If we move back to vaults, calling your levy incurs a 1 off fee of 10 dragons per point. If your levy is 5,000 points, you pay 50,000 Dragons to bring them into the field. High Lords and Lords Paramount pay only for their personal levies, not for the levies of all their vassals too. This makes mobilising the realm a mighty tool, but also a very expensive one that, once used, has a lengthy waiting period before being useful again.
--- When a High Lord calls their levy (or an LP calls their personal levy only), everyone inside their "kingdom" (eg, within the Reach) knows immediately and Westeros knows after 24 hours. When a Lord Paramount calls all his Banners, Westeros knows immediately.
- Militia will act the way levies currently do and are accessed through buildings and edicts. Militiamen can be any Light/Heavy Infantry, Polearms, Archers and Light Cavalry.
--- Militia will mobilise in 12 hours.
--- Militia are accessed by building buildings and enacting edicts, which will now give +x militia points instead of +x levy points.
--- Militia represent freedmen, burghers, individual sellswords etc who will go to war for pay, but aren't in the permanent employ of a Lord.
--- Militia will cost 5 Dragons for every point mobilised. Since militia are worth more points per man and the number you can get via edicts and buildings will be restricted, the troops you can deploy this way won't be excessive.
--- To balance this the cost of the militia edicts and buildings will be reduced somewhat to represent maintaining the ability to summon them and paying their wages while on campaign.
--- If a Lord Paramount is calling his High Lords and their militia to him as well (eg generally mobilising), Westeros knows about it after 12 hours. Moderators can decide whether or not the knowledge is Westeros-wide, and it will generally depend on whether or not you're calling your vassals up as well: call up more Lords, word travels further.
- Professional Troops will be the paid-for points-capped troops you can hire via the normal process we're all familiar with. These men represent full-time soldiers and can be any type of soldier.
--- The only way to access elite troops is through this mechanism.
--- They're always mobilised.
--- I propose discussion on further limitations of the points cap to shift the bulk of a Lord's available fighting forces onto the militia and levy pools as opposed to having a formidable field army. Thus this "unit pool" will be comprised of only a few hundred men at most. At 3,000 points, for example, you'd get 1,000 Elite Infantry, which I feel would be adequate for representing an elite company of a Lord's full time soldiers.
- Changes to Castles
--- To facilitate this I think we need to move away from the idea that every Lord sat in an imposing and militarily significant castle. Minor castles should be easier to occupy and be more widespread, with major fortifications being truly noteworthy. This would mostly mean fortresses that we already give regional bonuses to because the Lore identifies them as castles of significance, while other castles will have their +Siege bonus heavily reduced and their ability to wait out sieges much shortened.
--- This would make seizing land easier, but seizing important land harder. Riverrun would be very difficult to capture unless you can reliably sit outside it for a long time, but the scores of minor provinces throughout the Riverlands could be more easily occupied and looted.
Pros & Cons:
- It still gives players a small amount of troops to throw about for their own plans and influence.
- It means summoning an actual full-sized army (eg your levy) is a major undertaking that Westeros will know about.
- Your huge field armies will only last for 2 weeks and won't come back for another 2 weeks after that, so use them efficiently.
- Still helps stop player-stacked regions from overpowering everyone else. A single active player will probably be able to gather no more than 8-10,000 points worth of professionals + militia meaning even 5 or 6 players in a single region can launch a surprise attack with only ~15,000 points (professionals only, Westeros will know if a bunch of Lords are gathering a larger army). Can't take a castle with that before your victims can marshal their own militias or even levies to counter-attack.
- Allows for escalating crises to occur. Fighting starts with professionals doing raids or attacking soft targets, so people call up militias to beef up border regions and man vital positions, which then might end up with someone summoning their full levy for a massed invasion.
- It stops the trivial levy summoning we saw in past games where every time we rolled an NPC rebellion or invasion everyone and their dog would call their banners and go fight it because why thenot?
- It might stop Lords Paramount being control freaks and crushing their vassals every time they pursue their own grudges or agendas inside their realms. This is one major challenge we've regularly failed to overcome: even with experienced players taking up LP positions they always resort to micromanaging their vassals and preventing them doing things independently. Players are products of the 20th century: we understand nationalism and think the Reach is a country when it's not. Lords Paramount really shouldn't care what their vassals do as long as it isn't blatantly breaking the law, and even then the Boltons publicly claim Skagos partakes in First Night and the Starks never even sent someone to check.
2. "Levies and Professionals - Enhanced"
The same system we currently have but instead levies are restricted to Light Infantry and Archers, take 24 hours to call up, will only last 2 weeks and go home for 2 weeks once demobilised, cost money to summon, and instead players will rely mostly on their own professional troops. This system could integrate with a proposal made by Ponti to create a far more detailed "Retinue" system where players have a highly-customisable group of a few hundred elite troops at most.
This would still make summoning your levy costly and alert everyone to your intentions and would shift the focus to building a retinue of troops that will outperform some other setups and be beaten by others. A new battle system would have to be created to integrate such customisable troops.
I'd rather Ponti, or someone who knows more about this proposed system, flesh it out in greater detail and I'll happily quote it here in the OP.
3. Any other ideas?
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Originally Posted by Skylord_Conor21
