How Should War Work

[Mirviriam]

There is no category of wizards, but there is a category of wizard's marks, and there are 17 of those, and I know I have really only scratched the surface. I'd estimate the total number of wizard domains as closer to 50, and they will have successors in grooming, plus the odd wizard who isn't attached to a domain, I'd estimate close to 120 as a minimum, with dilettante wizards being a much larger number still.

I am refering to information on the wiki. Up on the top of the screen there are links to "portal", "forums", and "wiki."

Someone want to point what which subcategory that's under - which part of the wiki rules? Anything to get me started - I'm looking through the wiki 3.5 & just not seeing it.

This is as close as I am getting - I tried to search by wizard's & wizard mark with plurals...

http://birthright.net/brwiki/index.php/Rune

[Sorontar]

I believe that he is refering to [[category: Wizard Mark]] which is found at http://www.birthright.net/brwiki/ind...ry:Wizard_Mark .

[kgauck]

I'm going to keep this civil though you seem to be losing the thread or your cool (ad hominem arguements indicate lack of sleep or belief that one is losing the argument).

Or frustration that someone who quite obviously have never lifted a book, pretends to a knowledge of warfare which is in fact derived from an amusement. Nothing is more irritating that ignorance parading as understanding, and does not respond to evidence that fundamental assumptions may be mistaken except by repeating himself.

[Rowan]

Let this (when I play rogues, though my paladin will kill everyone in vengeance as required by his god of battle!) brutual leader illuminate you on one point. Most sieges end because of starvation & disease. A fact in all of your dazzling knowledge you missed ... my playstyle is to not roleplay 2-9 years of starving out my enemy.

Let me have a go

Kgauck's point was that only in rare instances in history can you actually manage that "2-9 years of starving out" your enemy. You have to deal with morale and disease in your own ranks (the ranks of the besiegers), which is often as much if not more of a problem for the besiegers camped in flimsy canvas exposed to the elements and muddy trenches. They are very exposed to pests and the elements. Further, they must forage farther and farther afield, spending much if not most of their time doing that, preventing plenty of opportunities for the besieged forces to sally forth and harass them, then fall back to their greater stores behind the walls. Then there are supply lines that must be maintained--and protected from harassment. And then, probably the biggest problem of all, is the fact that relatively few armies throughout history could manage a huge professional, year-round army. Pretty much throughout medieval and Renaissance Europe, wars had only the summer season between planting and harvest. Then your men at arms and even many of your nobles needed to get home to deal with agricultural and mercantile realities to keep their families from starving or protect their wealth. So you basically lose your army and can't maintain the length of siege necessary to "starve out" your target.

Then there's the problem that while you're sitting in one place, you lose the big advantage of offensive attack: concentrated forces applied to weaker defenses. You see, a defender's big problem is that they have to try to protect a large area, spreading out their forces. Fortifications act both as force multipliers and as anchors, slowing down attacking forces to allow you to rally defense to respond.

Even if you've got that nice (very expensive!) professional army encamped year round in a siege, you're only focused on one (or relatively few) target. This gives the defender all kinds of wonderful opportunity. If he's got any strength at all, he can destroy your supply lines fairly easily, now making YOUR army the one starving. He can easily scorch the earth around your besiegers, eliminating any food they can get from forage, or destroying your foraging forces with harassing cavalry or even peasant levies. And that's if the defender can't muster an army capable of challenging yours--when, in his home country, he's much more likely to be able to muster quite a considerable army with which to double encircle yours.

Or, the defender can take advantage of your tidy little siege to go gallivanting into your country and ravage your countryside, looting and pillaging, while your army is twiddling their thumbs and waiting for one little castle or town to starve.

Henry V encountered almost all of these problems in his French campaign. He had to speed up his initial siege and instead attempt to reduce the fortification because his army was dying to disease and their morale was suffering greatly, and he had intelligence that the French were busily mustering a major counterattacking force. Then he had to leave his conquered keep rather than sit in one place and become vulnerable, and soon his army was desperately marching across the countryside, essentially trying to escape, because the various French armies were all around him. Agincourt was such a remarkable victory because, by all rights, Henry should have lost his entire army and been himself captured by the superior French forces. It was primarily French arrogance, underestimation, and lack of discipline and a battle plan, put against Henry's excellent use of terrain and deployment of forces in an otherwise desperate situation, that allowed his victory. The relevant point to our discussion is that Henry's invasion and attempted sieges and so forth were extremely dangerous undertakings for him that almost ended in disaster.

If you really want to chase the other argument about my tactics of spreading enemy out & how to raid - start another thread, I know there's 3 ways to do it - all of them involving non-fortified provinces (which is the only place to attack in my opinion).

The problem with your sallying example is that a sally only works if it works by surprise. Postern gates are built into fortifications just so that they can be used for such surprise missions, sending out small harassment forces. I wouldn't think a defender would risk a sally if the distances involved to your encampments were so great that your horsemen (which presumably he knows you have) could easily cut off their escape. More likely, your encampment is 1-2000ft from the walls (wider than that and you need tons of men to encircle, and can't really threaten walls; you may have reserves or even the bulk of your army farther back, but then they become irrelevant to the sally anyway). That's a quick sprint for a man on foot--and the defender may well have horses, too. So what the defender will do is sally forth a squad of quick men at night, hit a camp--maybe only killing a few men and setting fire to a few tents--and dash back. IF your sentries spot them, they're likely on the sentries from the camp that they're hitting and might be able to get soldiers to wake up bleary-eyed before they strike; you most likely won't be able to launch a rapid counterattack from other areas, since you can't maintain that kind of readiness and communication at all times. And the defenders can dash back across that 1-2000 feet in only a couple of minutes.

Small sallies occur to harass and seriously harm the morale of the besiegers, while often increasing morale of the besieged.

Large sallies would occur only if the defender has some reason to believe he can win a pitched battle by issuing his forces from the gate. This might occur if the besieger has to send off a large force to defend a supply line; if reinforcements arrive for the defender; or if the besieger has lost a lot of men to disease and the elements and is in low morale and disarray.

As the the premise of your post - how wars should work. It will be a trading of lands that are not protected by fortifications & destruction of low level fortifications till outside interference & several others help to carve up or save the province. ...

...Everyone had to go through some power consolidations. Not all brutual, maybe they used behind the scenes actions. The upfront ones didn't always get neutered though...I won't mention the H word, King Louis XIV, Julias caesar, Chinggis Khan etc ... the priesthood didn't slow any of them down once they started ... and they all killed lots of civilians, nobles, barbarians (think they were probably dealt with before hand - bribed, killed, demoted, promoted ... bet on it).

"Claiming" lands is one thing. "Trading" them is another. Many lords or realms have competing claims. Who's collecting taxes and administering government over those lands? How can you do that if you don't have a secure hold of the land and the people's at least grudging allegiance--to say nothing of the government officials and their guards, an assessment/records of the assets to be taxed, safe places to store the taxes (often grain or livestock), etc. This requires some stability. The only other way you get income from such lands is through pillaging.

Kgauck made the case convincingly that you need some time and security to establish the government necessary to truly derive income from a land and organize its people under law. That's not easy to achieve.

As for priests, if you're talking about internecine conflict in a culture that accepts essentially the same religious authority, you better believe the priests matter. You go around slaughtering priests and you'll have massive uprisings and wars, and likely the condemnation and conquering armies of most of your neighbors bearing down on you--to say nothing of your loss of face among your peers. This is well-supported by European history, and in this regard Anuire does share some similarities with Christian Europe.

The way I understand Anuire to work, with the devotion to a family of Good gods working together, theological differences may exist, but a certain brotherhood does as well. If you go destroying a temple and slaughtering its priests just because they won't do what you want, you'll soon be fighting every temple and realm in Anuire, likely with the support of many guilds, to say nothing of the fact that your own lands and nobles will rise against you. If you don't think faith and religion are actually important to people, you have little understanding of human culture; even in modern times religion is an extremely powerful force, and in times not long past it was much more influential even than it is today.

[Birthright-L]

At 07:48 AM 7/7/2009, kgauck wrote:

>Or frustration that someone who quite obviously have never lifted a
>book, pretends to a knowledge of warfare which is in fact derived
>from an amusement. Nothing is more irritating that ignorance
>parading as understanding.

I`ve been keeping quiet about this sort of thing lately, but this is
really uncalled for. You should really consider more carefully
whether you want to respond at all in this kind of situation.

Gary

[Thelandrin]

This disagreement is starting to get a little bit acrimonious. Let's all please keep calm and civilised about this.

[AndrewTall]

GA does mimic the DM Fiat idea ... difference is it's the unrest/attitude - razing or occupying drops it significantly, then you simplely demarogue or espionage it back up.

Thus the solving of issue of occupy and destroy churches power base without having rebellion.

Not from a simulationist viewpoint - have you really exterminated x thousand people, if so why would anyone migrate to your lands and welcome your rule? If not, why would they casually change their religion or otherwise lose loyalties? GA makes a simplistic attempt to recognise this, but is a long way short of what simulationists look for.

From a roleplay perspective ... with multiple churches any that rebel will get the stick. Or I find a greedy priest within their ranks who wants a promotion...history is more than full of those.

Indeed it is, as the Raven will tell you. However a greedy priest wants power and money - not to be another regent's whipping boy - they expect the same power and perogatives as the old guy, they might settle for less initially (i.e. while they are building their strength) but will eventually seek to regain 'their true power'. And once you've given the rivals the stick you are stuck with what's left - and have just made a rival much more powerful, no regent (aside from a theocratic realm) should want a monopoly in their realm so that they always have the threat of supporting someone else...

If it's not a computer game (really the only thing left of birthright unfortunately) that might last & it was more worthwhile to establish a spy network, 3 spies to counter-spy, cover-up, and finally sway the public into a rebellion then tempt them over to my control with diplomancy - I'll do that instead.

I play the game every now and then, but spend more time PBEM'ing, and yet more time expanding the simulationist and story-teller side of the game, so to me GA is an amusing side point, not the real McCoy - good for quick comparisons of realm/army power to aid in designing mechanics, but that's mostly it.

My belief is that your idea's about counter balances are completely wrong. Even if I played in a realm ran by you - I'd keep public opinion on my side via other means.

True, but that then saps your strength in other areas - its a balancing act however you play it, take from your vassals and you are stronger, but have weaker less loyal allies, give to them and get the converse, host festival after festival and have a loving populace but empty treasury, tax harshly and see morale drop as income increases. Working within the systems rather than riding roughshod over them is a classic 'short term' play, very few managed to smash the existing system and then enjoy a long reign free from the need to pander to others.

Mainly I saw that your posts all reflected taking countries apart was based on strength...

Strength comes in many forms - numbers, technology/magic, economy, morale, skill etc all play a part. In general in any contest favours 'the stronger' contestant (although like simplistic darwinism this is a self fulfilling prophesy)

As for the resources to do it - I'm used to running level 10 court...so there's build up time...maybe my enemies having knowledge of my play style create level 3 or better fortifications in all of their provinces while I build up?

Again a trade off, high court spend vs what your enemies will do with that money. Can you keep your future conquests off guard? Sweet words cost little while forts are expensive - and built only where need is seen.

I'm going to keep this civil though you seem to be losing the thread or your cool (ad hominem arguements indicate lack of sleep or belief that one is losing the argument).

I think that's its more that you are arguing at complete cross-purposes. You are working from a computer game mechanic perspective, Ken from a historical basis (which is what the thread was specifically started to discuss) - in that situation ignoring each other's points as off-topic is standard fare since you are effectively talking different languages - but no one likes being ignored when they have made a valid point, particularly if the 'wrong' point that has been 'proven wrong' is then repeated.

A note on sieges - castles & towns were 'taken' quite often, Joan of Arc made a hobby of it for a while, but as has been pointed out, they were rarely taken by outright force - bribery backed by force is generally cheaper and quicker in any event. That border lord with the unbreakable keep could be a 3-9 year siege, or a 1 month carouse as your new vassal as your new count/baron, if someone wanted a quick victory then, at least initially, they were probably going to end up with a lot of fairly powerful vassals under them - if they could later quash those people and strengthen their rule then they are remembered as great, if not their grand realm generally riped itself apart when they died, or they were reduced to a figurehead by their feuding nobles/etc.

[Mirviriam]

Indeed it is, as the Raven will tell you. However a greedy priest wants power and money - not to be another regent's whipping boy - they expect the same power and perogatives as the old guy, they might settle for less initially (i.e. while they are building their strength) but will eventually seek to regain 'their true power'. And once you've given the rivals the stick you are stuck with what's left - and have just made a rival much more powerful, no regent (aside from a theocratic realm) should want a monopoly in their realm so that they always have the threat of supporting someone else...

Very true! We have to expect that he will be careful to use only mildly bright protege's to discourge us from promoting one of them. As for the power aspect there would have to be an agreement that his power will grow while he supports me, initially he can do level 0 temples & if he does not cross any lines, I would eventually (years later) actively oppose expansion of other temple's current holdings in non-original or powerbase provinces. Eventually I'd have to actively endorse his formation of new holdings & ruling them up.

As with most of the characters I've played, the province holder + one other holding type as his other income would power up so much faster that the priest would not make a dent should they use game mechanics to oppose.

You have to remember too, I might just be the priest & ruler of the province...thus on one hand I beat myself & demand absolute loyalty, while with the other I flick myself off.

[Mirviriam]

Kgauck - I have a printed & bound copy of the D20 rules - which appear to be the current ones...I read it three times in past 2 weeks. Iif you're looking for me to point out that stonehedge's walls were 14" thick, but 12" was regular timber & only 2" was tar treated white pine - measured in Edward the MIV's foot, not the Spanish ruler Isabelle, then you're going to have to look elsewhere. I'm looking to provide just enough vague examples that:

1. There's no set number of units to seige a castle - because it's the defender's choice to lock up shop.
2. Siege checks won't infinitely defend a castle against projectiles - access to resources is the best argument without involving tactical...thus siegecraft check can't be used to prevent loss of a level of fortification during siege resolution.
3. For every foot/horse action, there's a reactionary roll for someone predicting the sally & through subterfuge ambushing it (modify it if the castle guards take precautions to contain a counter by +2 or something).
4. The limit of the province fortification(not holdings)levels that can be supported is reached by summing the levels of all the provincal fortifications together...as it is the standard limit for all holding types(source is inverse of p.Level but same idea that each province has a power cap).

There's a critical load point where the resources to appease the population are miniumal next to the income a regeant generates. It's built into the core of the domain rules, there is no social mechanics system beyond appeasement generic population. The other thing is that basically, if the NPC's can do it (Gorgon), the PC's can do it (within their own power). I've never ran an evil campaign, we can't force everyone to play how we want or D&D would have died years ago.

I'm going let the "should/can regeants get absolute control" issue go after stating this, because it really, truly, deeply belongs in another thread. I've stated why it can be done, this is the point where we agree or don't & move on to more important issues.

Consider only the 4 points I numbered in my last point or start a new thread if you want to continue on "strategies of domain control"

[AndrewTall]

[*]There's no set number of units to seige a castle - because it's the defender's choice to lock up shop.

However the attacker will need a sufficient number to effectively surround the fortifications, or the besiegers also have no effect beyond being camped nearby. I'd suggest opposing rolls where the number of units inside and outside impacts whether the siege has any effect - so 10 units besieging 1 would pretty much always work, the converse always fail...

[*] Siege checks won't infinitely defend a castle against projectiles - access to resources is the best argument without involving tactical...thus siegecraft check can't be used to prevent loss of a level of fortification during siege resolution.

The 'battles' are taking days if not weeks to carry out, so you will have ongoing repairs, shoring up, etc. Major repairs (repair the breach) are very difficult, minor or moderate repairs (block the main gateway, repair the turret) are not - so I can see attackers without significant siege units actually seeing the castle get stronger as the siege progresses. The real question is just how serious the attack is, which would reflect itself in a buns/penalty to the opposed siegecheck. An attacker with makeshift artillery used by raw recruits is going to mostly hurt themselves. The defender, who will have their own artillery, with the advantage of height, cover, etc could destroy poorly placed sites etc. So I'd say definitely an opposed roll, but with, say, a cumulative bonus to the attacker (who can scavenge resources, whistle up reinforcements, etc.

[*] For every foot/horse action, there's a reactionary roll for someone predicting the sally & through subterfuge ambushing it (modify it if the castle guards take precautions to contain a counter by +2 or something).

Again probably best reflected by an opposed roll - does the castle sally at the moment when the attacker is off-guard, or when they are about to launch a major attack? the defender has the best chance to decide when they fight - they can prepare without being seen whereas the attacker will probably be seen martialing the troops, talking them into a frenzy, etc. So opposed rolls with bonuses for number/type of troops, castle design, besieging camp design, etc.

[*] The limit of the province fortification(not holdings)levels that can be supported is reached by summing the levels of all the provincal fortifications together...as it is the standard limit for all holding types(source is inverse of p.Level but same idea that each province has a power cap).

I disagree. Some very large fortifications have been built in fairly isolated areas - at great cost, but built nonetheless. The key issue is ongoing supply, which has far lower resource costs.

There's a critical load point where the resources to appease the population are miniumal next to the income a regeant generates. It's built into the core of the domain rules, there is no social mechanics system beyond appeasement generic population.

Which was one of the core concepts of the thread - what social mechanics should be built, how should they be designed? We can all see the failings in the existing systems, but how to expand them without creating a book-keeping nightmare is harder. 'Core' provinces which support you quickly if conquered, 'rebellious' provinces which resist any foreign ruler, 'opposed' provinces which have a particular hatred for one race, nation, etc and never accept it, etc are all obvious possibilities for expansion as are increased costs and reduced morale in unfriendly territory, etc.

The other thing is that basically, if the NPC's can do it (Gorgon), the PC's can do it (within their own power). I've never ran an evil campaign, we can't force everyone to play how we want or D&D would have died years ago.

True, but equally if the DM isn't happy running a game then it will die, so the DM's style has to be accepted by the players just as the DM needs to be happy with theirs. I ran an evil campaign (having planned for a good campaign) because the players wanted it, I hated it and it came through...

I'm going let the "should/can regeants get absolute control" issue go after stating this, because it really, truly, deeply belongs in another thread.

No it doesn't, it was again one of the starting concepts - how should war work is inseparable from the question of how control can/should be exercised, relative costs for attacker and defender, etc - the core of the thread was the design of a system to replace/enhance the existing system for those who wanted historically more accurate battles and sieges and similarly more realistic conversion and control rules. Arguments over what can/cannot be done under BRCS/etc systems is the sidetrek