How Should War Work

[AndrewTall]

3) I think that with Haelyn as a god of both law and war, the concept of a war waged for legitimate aims would be very important

That´s fine for Anuire, possibly Khinasi and the Rjurik Highlands, but not for the other nations or races - I can´t see the awnsheghlien generals caring about what Haeyln´s priests say or any formalities beforehand and I wouldn´t want them to have an advantage - they are tough enough already!

Longer build times for armies (1d4 per turn per court action like any other build?) is a good start, making it a public expenditure makes subterfuge difficult, increased costs for occupying armies and hostile investiture would also reduce the gulp factor - if the enemy has to occupy for 3-4 seasons while they eat the realm one bite at a time gives the defender time to call for support.

I´ve considered some sort of realm traits system to make conquest harder (increased domain attitude DC´s for a period etc) but BR is already a pretty complex game and traits just increase the learning curve required...

[kgauck]

That´s fine for Anuire, possibly Khinasi and the Rjurik Highlands, but not for the other nations or races - I can´t see the awnsheghlien generals caring about what Haeyln´s priests say or any formalities beforehand and I wouldn´t want them to have an advantage - they are tough enough already!

Nor can I see awnsheghlein caring about what Haelyn thinks- they are already ideological enemies. Even further, they are monsters, meaing one who excites horror by wickedness, cruelty, &c. They are so different as to require a whole seperate consideration.

I'm not clear on your discussion of their advantage? Are you opposing the idea that an awnsheghlien might launch a surprise attack? That would seem to be the very avatar of an awnsheghlien.

Did you mean to exclude the Brecht? For I see it that the Brecht are the most in need of Haelyn in war, for their own patron, Sera is the least warlike of all the gods (except maybe Laerme).

I´ve considered some sort of realm traits system to make conquest harder (increased domain attitude DC´s for a period etc) but BR is already a pretty complex game and traits just increase the learning curve required...

I am loathe to add rules. This kind of thing should be in the pervue of the DM and the players should know nothing first hand of the mechanics of game play. Good advisors can provide neccesary exposition about how the world works.

[AndrewTall]

I'm not clear on your discussion of their advantage? Are you opposing the idea that an awnsheghlien might launch a surprise attack? That would seem to be the very avatar of an awnsheghlien.

Did you mean to exclude the Brecht? For I see it that the Brecht are the most in need of Haelyn in war, for their own patron, Sera is the least warlike of all the gods (except maybe Laerme). .

My thought was simply that telling Anuirean regents that war takes 2-4 rounds to prepare is fine since it represents lack of communication, etc in a medieval world - but ideally the source of the delay should be due to a non-cultural specific action, otherwise the Gorgon whelms in 1 and charges which gives him, and other awnies, elves, goblins, etc a further advantage over the humans. I agree with all of them prefering sneaks attacks and so on though.

The point re: non-Anuire was that Haelyn is god of law+war - so is a very good example of the god who would require formalities before war, I wasn´t so sure with Avani, Erik, etc. Thinking more about it Avani quite possibly requires some exposition and Erik mediation between the parties to prove lack of reconciliation (if both are Rjuvik) which also causes a delay, Belinik may require ritual sacrifices and the like, but I can´t see the check on the goblins, orogs etc - and they need to have a delaying factor as well otherwise the human regent says "Í annoy the priests now to win the war, then say ´sorry´ later - victory excuses all".

I am loathe to add rules. This kind of thing should be in the pervue of the DM and the players should know nothing first hand of the mechanics of game play. Good advisors can provide neccesary exposition about how the world works.

The reason I consider adding rules is to prevent arguments later, but I´d prefer just to say ´be reasonable and don´t expect surprise invasions unless you take a LOT of care and use an existing army´ - it depends on the players though.

[kgauck]

There are three kinds of things that cause delays. Forming the army (recruitment, musters, &c), Assembling the army (provisioning, moving recruits to a common location), and the need to declare one's cause of war.

Its possible to bypass all three under certain conditions, but what you will be able to put forward,whether human or goblin, or whatever, is a raiding force. It would lack the strength to attack defended points, and would be suitable for causing a little mayhem and distracting the regent. It could not occupy a province or be sure of defeating even militia.

If you bypass two, say Markasor takes its existing standing force, and invades Mhoried, so there are no musters, and no declaration, you still have to assemble the army near Mhoried before you get to Mhoried. A large goblin force will be spotted by someone. Armies are not easy to conceal. They may be able to conceal their intentions, and even their precise location, but their existence is obvious if there is anyone to look. For instance, armies on the move create a giant dust cloud. I'm sure every shepherd of Mhoried knows what it means to see a giant dust cloud being kicked up across the border in Markasor. While you would not be have time to recruit new troops, you would only have missed a single war move and will be meeting a force already in your country. However, they would not have time to do much more than pillage. If Mhoried maintains a standing force capable of receiving the standing force of Markasor, then they are able to give battle.

There is a question, about how secretly the Gorgon could muster troops. He is surrounded mostly by vassals. Even though the Gorgon must advertise his desire for troops within his realm, he can position his musters so that word must travel through vassals or from foreign cultures. Danigau might recieve rumors that the elves of Tuarhievel report musters in the Gorgon's Crown well after those troops are laying siege to an important border fort. Because of the size of his realm, and the questions about its permiability, I could see a greater degree of secrecy for the Gorgon than for other realms. Some of this depends on what you thing life is like in the Crown itself.

I also wonder how well the elves report to humans what they know. It might well be a question of interpreting what the elves know by their own actions, rather than by their reports. Something along the lines of:

Sire, the elves move a company of their cavalry and two companies of archers from east to west, perhaps more troops move in the north. The Gorgon seems to be up to something.

As time goes on, you begin to rule out a direct attack by the Gorgon on the elves and begin to suspect the elves spotted troop musters or movements and simply went to an alert posture.

Of course Mheallie Bireon has guild holdings in Tuarhievel, and would know the most. What does she reveal and to whom?

[AndrewTall]

Sounds good - large realms get to hide stuff in their core (say a delay of the ´noise´reachiung the outside, or reduced impact of the action due to distance from nosy nieghbours). Of course the Gorgon then has the bother of shipping his troops half way across his kingdom - but they hit without much warning.

The Gorgon has the added advantage over the Raven for example, of no guild holdings - so few wandering merchants etc to spread the word. By contrast Kalien for example probably knows about troops movements across half of Anuire even if the target is too far away to hear the rumours directly...

Similarly if you maintain a large army you can act, and react very quickly - but at the substantial cost of maintaining the army. Ships become more useful as well do the speed of shipping troops as opposed to trogging.

Re: the 3 factors, you might also say that troops ´rushed in´have reduced effectivness at emulating law holdings, attacking fortifications, etc depending on how rushed the move was - and what RP ´cover´the rush gets.

[Galdred]

Indeed, warfare should rely more on raiding and less on decisive battles IMO.
I had a similar problem in an internet game I was designing, and I had thought about the following (but maybe they would not work there), to avoid the big decisive battle syndrome:

There needs to be an evasion mechanism to allow a larger one so that it is viable, and one to solve skirmishes, as raiding parties would probably be split. In most systems I have seen, the "stealth" of the raiding army would depend on the speed and size of the force, while the detection capacity of the patrolling one would depend on the forces sent into patrol. There needs to be some mechanism to restrict the moves of a patrolling army

Another way to limit warfare would be to factor the time needed for forraging:
A huge army would use too much supplies to be carted (unless ship transport is possible), thus, they'd need to depend more on foraging, and spend a longer time doing so (because their needs would rapidly exhaust the neighboring supply sourcesn forcing them to do longer foraging trips).
A larger army should be penalized by a smaller movement rate.

The last way to limit warfare, would be to factor the contraints of feodal hosts, that usually only forced vassals to supply troops for a limited amount of time (that would not apply when defending, as they would see the obvious need to come).
Increasing the upkeep cost of an unit once it has spent 3 month outside its realm (or even home province) could do the trick, but that could force too much bookkeeping.

Making siege more rewarding compared to assault would help too, as it would make campagins more expensive and longer.

[vota dc]

Indeed, warfare should rely more on raiding and less on decisive battles IMO.
I had a similar problem in an internet game I was designing, and I had thought about the following (but maybe they would not work there), to avoid the big decisive battle syndrome:

Off Topic

You are able to design a game alone?Sadly I'm able only to make mod or simply games with rpg maker,you should make a new birthright pc game!If you need help I think you will find a lot of volunteers.

[Galdred]

Off Topic

You are able to design a game alone?Sadly I'm able only to make mod or simply games with rpg maker,you should make a new birthright pc game!If you need help I think you will find a lot of volunteers.

Off topic:

It was a web multiplayer game though (no heavy coding, only Ruby on rails), and I had to stop working on it for personnal/professionnal reason shortly after having begun the coding itself, but I plan to finish it someday in the future.
It would be hard to make enough money though donations to pay for the IP if we wanted to go with a new birthright game (I am not sure WOTC would release the rights for a computer fame easily), but it should be possible to implement the concepts themselves with a different ruleset and background.

[ryancaveney]

with the situation as portrayed in the rulebooks, this inner consolidation is mostly finished, and the larger powers have started to look outside their realms to increase their power

I think the inner consolidation is closer to the beginning than the end. Even militant, proto-fascist Ghoere holds only 40 of the 96 province levels his 6 plains and 4 hills provinces allow. I think all those apparently missing people are already there, but his control over them is so incomplete that most of their effort goes into supporting his local landholders' minor competitions with each other rather than advancing his own realm-scale agenda. Medoere, at 9 province levels held out of 30 possible, is much less centralized, as one expects in a realm which has only recently won its independence from the much more centrally-controlled Diemed (23 levels out of 52). I think none of the realms of Cerilia has a king who can even dream of centralized control comparable to Louis XIV's, not even the Gorgon. I see the standard campaign setup as waiting for a PC to show up who understands that intensive administrative investment in his realm is necessary to build an economy which can support the really powerful army he needs to make large-scale conquest possible. That is, you suggest the time is ripe for Richard Coeur de Lion to venture off on crusade, but I think it's 50 years earlier, and his father, Henry FitzEmpress, has yet to make the legal and financial reforms which would later enable his son's foreign adventures. The time for war in BR is not Turn One, but only after all your provinces are at least level 4 and support both the trade routes they allow, and those guilds are controlled by a loyal vassal whose piles of cash go to pay for your stacks of knight units. The only reason not to wait for all level 7s with 3 TRs each is that your neighbors may beat you to the punch if you do.

[ryancaveney]

Perhaps the reason realms maintain the forces that they do is that they cannot raise units of such quality when they need them, so they keep them around so they have them when they need them. As such, additional troops raised would be no better than irregulars or levies. Growing similar units would either be slow, or would require experience.

I like "would be slow". A suggestion made many years ago which I quickly adopted was that units do not appear until some time after they have been bought, with more powerful units taking longer to show up. The formula I have come to like best is number of GB cost = number of domain turns delay. This means that if you purchase a unit of irregulars, they are assembled, trained, equipped and ready for battle in three months, but a unit of knights takes a year and a half. I also have them count against the number which can be mustered in that province throughout that entire time (so a level 4 province can have at most 4 knights in process at once, not 24). This greatly cuts down on the "massive army overnight" phenomenon, and forces some advertising of martial intent. The only exceptions I make are levies (which show up immediately because they are zero cost, so they're not really an exception), mercenaries (which cost twice as much as the matching regular unit precisely because there is no delay), and elven archers, dwarf guards, goblin infantry and gnoll marauders (who are the levy-equivalents of their races, even though they are not zero-cost).