Page 3 of 12 FirstFirst 1234567 ... LastLast
Results 21 to 30 of 115
  1. #21
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Springfield Mo
    Posts
    3,562
    Downloads
    2
    Uploads
    0
    About the massive army overnight phenomenon. The limiting factor is how many of a certain troop exist. Using the 50 million total population figure, where Diemed would have something on the order of 100,000 people accessible to the state. 2000 people is about the total maximum of the state's army. 5000 is the absolute maximum.

    Some number, about 500, are almost free to the state. Another 100 or so probably come with the Duke's court costs. So between 600 and 2000 costs of the army would be normal, and time to recruit would be normal (though as I described, more time consuming than the rules generally expect). After this limit, costs should go up for the additional native units, perhaps double. Keeping track of the upper limit of troops for me is the important part, because beyond this point everything should begin to get harder, more expensive, and take longer.

    Once a realm the size of Diemed gets to 5000 men, extra men should basically be impossible.

    Because I see knights as a feudal duty, knights can be raised in a few weeks, faster than most units, but there is an absolute ceiling on how many can be raised. You can't hire or recruit new knights. The only way to get more is to enfief more knights. This requires the rule action to raise the level of a province.

  2. #22
    Senior Member Mirviriam's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    Where the moon cuts the wind.
    Posts
    259
    Downloads
    4
    Uploads
    0
    Quote Originally Posted by vota dc View Post
    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: I'll start thread on developing something

    On Topic:

    Historically (in Europe basis for our version of dnd):

    -Early on wars of destruction are fought to get access to limited resources.
    -Later on wars of destruction are fought for the room to breath for the larger cities needs.
    -Next we see some cross over of domestication of locals and empire building
    -Eventually wars are fought for profit, to prevent other nations from getting deadlocks on trade.
    -When the ruler kings of nations start to fall, then we see nations developing treaties of mutual aid.

    While we do not need to imitate life to play the game - as DM's or players we need to decide why regeants & rulers are going to war.

    Do these nations go to war for the traditional control of the good farming lands, mines to supply metals, woods to fuel the smithies? Maybe they are even fighting to wipe out those guys who's sheep are eating all the vegetation the animals your foresters hunt for food or their national insignia.

    Are they nations operating at the higher level? Seeking to remove trade blocks on river fjords, mountain passes or ocean straights?

    Now we need to consider that our regents are vying for magical ley sources, blood line mojo (regency), realm spell books, extra magic treasures, or lore pointing towards old empire materials.

    How far will these guys go?
    How many other regeants will want a piece of the cake when the fighting starts?
    How many others will attack their nearly equal power rivals when their backs are turned?
    Which nations are the swing parts?
    How many of the regeants correctly predict how the others will throw down the gauntlet?
    What elements does the magic[al warding] add to these strategies?
    Who intercedes just to maintain a buffer state between them & the monster duchies?

    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    My assumption is that the world exists as it does for reasons (rather by accident).

    • realms are the size they are for a reason
    • realms and domains are not easily toppled, many have been around a very long time
    • war is pretty frequent, but it doesn't much change the map
    They are there for a reason - the designs carefully placed each size to make it so the blade never fell the same way when the wars began

    I'm always of two minds on slashing up the map - because the players will want to use the world they created later on for their next characters & I might have inevitiably destroyed the possibilities in the chaos. Which would force the players to act as subordinates of non-soveign realms. That is why I'm a big fan of the wolf pack theory on nations checking eachother not directly, but in a zone defense (basketball) sort of theory. Any changes in displacement will result in picking apart the defenses.

    As to the castles holding down the territories of course it works that way - thats why you built them. Think of the greatest fortress in the world ... Constantinople - which kept a nation in power for 1100 years. You better believe the fortication is hard to destroy. Almost as hard as it was to build.

  3. #23
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Springfield Mo
    Posts
    3,562
    Downloads
    2
    Uploads
    0
    Here is a simple model of how war works. A combat force seeks to destroy another combat force in order to create a safe zone for a period of time to establish government. Government is not very robust under war-time conditions, even under the best circumstances. So the first priority is to establish security for the various officials to do their work.

    A defender can make this nearly impossible by fortifying the centers of government. This means that an attacker must create a space of security to besiege these fortifications, capture, and then rehabilitate them, and then and only then begin to employ them for government.

    As I brought up in the thread on castles, small keeps like this one can be really effective.

    Without big royal armies, taking this small keep with time, force, or equipment all take a significant amount of money.

    What medieval armies tended to do was attempt to fight a battle. If someone had a decisive victory, they had the time and space to start sieges, because no one would bother them for a reasonable amount of time. Combine this with the seasonal nature of warfare, and you have a pretty clear pattern. Between planting and harvest the attacker seeks a decisive battle. If he cannot get one, because the defender evades or battle is not decisive, when harvest comes, everyone goes home except for garrisons. Rinse and repeat until someone gets a decision, or somebody runs out of money and can't field large armies this summer.

    Suppose this is now the case. Someone lost a battle or ran out of money and is now only able to field a small army. During the summer, the other guy can put his large army in the field and must use part of it to keep watch on the defender's army and the other part he can use to begin sieges in places far enough from the defender's army that they can't be surprised. Consider strategic movement here. At the end of the summer, many of these sieges will be abandoned. Those which have progressed the farthest will be conducted by people who don't farm for a living, but are year-round soldiers.

    This is slow progress. Even with large royal armies (like an Anuirean army), Henry V landed at Harfleur unexpectedly in 1415 and found the city poorly defended. Even so the siege was long and difficult, the army got sick and Henry eventually stormed the city. His army exhausted, he moved tom march to Calais and on to home, the capture of this one city his victory for the year. The French harrased him and pursued him and forced him to fight a battle at Agincourt, which Henry won so decisively he created a significant space with which to return the next year mostly besieging cities. Even so, it took four years before Rouen fell.

    At the scale of BR, its hard to imagine any sieges, anywhere, without a battlefield victory to open the space for these kinds of activities. The exception is probably a quick storm at the beginning of major operations. Expensive in terms of manpower, and generally relying on surprise.

  4. #24
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    London, England
    Posts
    2,476
    Downloads
    30
    Uploads
    2
    What the 'gap creation' theory suggests, is that in order to start the 'contest down, create & rule up' you first need to win some decisive victory - the enemy is then seen by the local peasants to have 'lost', and is themselves in disarray from loss of commanders and impoverished by the loss of assets, called in loans, and a reluctance for further lending.

    So rather than just 'I move in to a province, I now control it' you would get 'I move in, people within arm's reach of a soldier do as they are told with minimal enthusiasm' with the army only functioning as a virtual law holding after some decisive engagement has been seen, or after the province has been held for a reasonable period.

    Building a castle would reduce the time for the province to 'change allegiance' as it is a very visible symbol of who is in charge, controls key trade routes, provides a secure base, etc - of course before you can build a castle you need to 'make a gap' to avoid constant harrying.

    As a mechanic you could build in a DC modifier for law holdings - the local nobility are seen as 'having the right' and others are seen is interlopers. So maybe +10-20 DC to interlopers on law actions amortising 1 point every year or so barring some decisive event (I.e. if you smash their army the peasants see you as the 'natural' ruler). Similarly castle costs are increased in 'conquered' lands barring a victory. In a PBEM or other short game you could allow adventure actions and suchlike to increase the amortisation rate.

    The existing pillage and occupation actions would also have to be adjusted - currently it is 1 round and the old regime is swept away, I'm leaning to extending the time required significantly. So you can loot quickly, but to destroy the infrastructure and human capital of a domain (or gods forfend a province) would take longer - say a full season for a holding and a full year for a province, with the army required to be double the holding level or eight times the province level to rule it down, with an army under half the size unable to rule it down.

  5. #25
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Springfield Mo
    Posts
    3,562
    Downloads
    2
    Uploads
    0
    Another part of this process is diplomacy with the local powers. Once you've defeated the realm's ruler, people way down the feudal structure, lords and mayors, might have lost confidence in their ruler, and be liable to diplomacy. Again, this takes a while. But once its clear that the other guy isn't coming back, and your not so bad, its possible to turn local powers.

    Some local power centers are replaced entirely (or most favorably, were friendly prior) and that is the part best represented by contest and rule actions. But the contested power centers don't go away, they simply don't have control of the levers of power. These leaders wait in the wings, openly, in hiding, or in exile, waiting for trouble so they can catapult to the top of the discontented throng.

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    What if the way Roesone, Ilien, and Medoere gained independence was that the founder-heros gained control of key fortresses by treachery, the citizens throwing open the gates, or other means? Then Diemed spent the rest of the civil war winning battles in a futile attempt to recover the lands lost, because battles won mean nothing without capturing the key fortresses in the realm.
    I may have to work this into the campaign I started on Thursday, which is a semi-canon account of the founding of Medoere.
    Look for me by moonlight
    Watch for me by moonlight
    I'll come to thee by moonlight
    Though Hell should bar the way

  7. #27
    Senior Member Mirviriam's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    Where the moon cuts the wind.
    Posts
    259
    Downloads
    4
    Uploads
    0
    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post

    When you get away from the rulebook and read the PS's they depict domains that are pretty disunited. Most of them look like they are about to fall apart. The PS's focus much more on the internal problems within a realm.
    The players view is meant to feed the pyschology of the costumers...in example; create a need for them to fufill & give them a reason to keep playing your game.

    Easiest Common Denominator (ECD).

    Either it is not an issue if the DM doesn't need as a game tool or status quo makes the change so slow it basically doesn't happen in that campaign.

    As to real wars - it was technology or strategic concentration for winning the wars. Consolidation was a completely different matter IF the attackers chose to do it.

    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post

    A defender can make this nearly impossible by fortifying the centers of government. This means that an attacker must create a space of security to besiege these fortifications, capture, and then rehabilitate them, and then and only then begin to employ them for government.
    I don't know man, if I have the castle and the smart people in it who weren't smart enough to leave...I start killing till they all do what I want. I probably brought with a bunch just for that purpose of running it all/suprvising the bean counters etc.

    It seems to me that the small realms tended to have a higher magical reagent (been 2 years since I paged through domains books), with one of those next to you, he can just walk over & raze your castle assuming you're distracted enough to not contest his leyline strongly.

    ...once again everything comes down to the whole region getting busy & the smart reagents finding the chinks in the realms, before their neighbors drag them down for expending their forces too much...wolf pack! Attack!

  8. #28
    Site Moderator AndrewTall's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    London, England
    Posts
    2,476
    Downloads
    30
    Uploads
    2
    Quote Originally Posted by Mirviriam View Post
    I don't know man, if I have the castle and the smart people in it who weren't smart enough to leave...I start killing till they all do what I want. I probably brought with a bunch just for that purpose of running it all/suprvising the bean counters etc.
    The strategic issue is that the attacker needs a lot more soldiers - and they cost money, so the attacker has to outspend the defender to neutralise them - and spend much more to beat them. You need more than 1:1 to seal the castle since the defenders can exit whenever the besieging force least wishes it, probably also doing so from more than 1 location for at least small bands (a D&D staple of course), ideally the attacker wants 2 or 3 men to each 1 defender...

    The attacker then needs enough 'spare' men to then set up the government, guard the tax inspectors, enforce their laws, etc, etc - and all the time the castle defenders can sally out whenever they like while waiting for the attacker to run out of money and go home - and meanwhile the peasants may begrudge their lord his taxes, but they really hate paying anyone else - as that means paying twice (usurper and true ruler) - so the attacker is in a hostile land where everything is expensive, small groups of men simply disappear, and they have no safe refuge in which to recover.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mirviriam View Post
    It seems to me that the small realms tended to have a higher magical reagent (been 2 years since I paged through domains books), with one of those next to you, he can just walk over & raze your castle assuming you're distracted enough to not contest his leyline strongly.
    That's a game conceit to balance domains and realms for potential players, if looking at things from a simulationist approach, as Ken is doing, the balance is unstable - the realm/source domains will fail as soon as the mage dies and is replaced by an incompetent (as the power is that of the individual), the realm/guild domain and realm/temple are more stable but have competing internal goals that will cause ongoing issues with the medieval mindset.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mirviriam View Post
    ...once again everything comes down to the whole region getting busy & the smart reagents finding the chinks in the realms, before their neighbors drag them down for expending their forces too much...wolf pack! Attack!
    Ah, the difference of gaming approaches My view is that the PS's spent so long talking about internal dissent so that the domains could be 'plug and play' with any other realms - if TSR had spent all their time in PS 'A' talking about the hatred and rivalry for an external realm 'B', what would have happened when two gaming buddies pick A and B as their realms? The market would thus be reduced as the realms would be less playable...

  9. #29
    Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Qld, Australia
    Posts
    93
    Downloads
    24
    Uploads
    0
    Quote Originally Posted by kgauck View Post
    About the massive army overnight phenomenon. The limiting factor is how many of a certain troop exist. Using the 50 million total population figure, where Diemed would have something on the order of 100,000 people accessible to the state. 2000 people is about the total maximum of the state's army. 5000 is the absolute maximum.

    Some number, about 500, are almost free to the state. Another 100 or so probably come with the Duke's court costs. So between 600 and 2000 costs of the army would be normal, and time to recruit would be normal (though as I described, more time consuming than the rules generally expect). After this limit, costs should go up for the additional native units, perhaps double. Keeping track of the upper limit of troops for me is the important part, because beyond this point everything should begin to get harder, more expensive, and take longer.

    Once a realm the size of Diemed gets to 5000 men, extra men should basically be impossible.

    Because I see knights as a feudal duty, knights can be raised in a few weeks, faster than most units, but there is an absolute ceiling on how many can be raised. You can't hire or recruit new knights. The only way to get more is to enfief more knights. This requires the rule action to raise the level of a province.
    Hi kgauck,

    I am not sure where you are getting your population from but that's ok.

    I am currently working on 4e conversion of BR and funnily enough I have come up with similar figures. I am working off the province rating as the maximum number of troops a domain can muster. Thus Diemed could muster a total of 23 units. Using something similar to 2e muster rules you could only muster Knights or Elite Infantry (which I see as knights on foot) with province level 4 or higher. So in Diemed's case you can muster a maximum total of 6 knight units and 17 other type units. This would give you a total of 4600 men (assuming the 200 men/unit). I am actually working on 100 men for knights & elite inf.

    I also agree with you that knights are a feudal duty. I am actually working on play rules for 4e on adventuring side of things that translates to domain side of the rules as well. The very basics are as follows:
    *A province is made up of shires based on level of province eg. Lvl 3 province would have 3 shires.
    *Each shire is overseen by a Lord.
    *Each Lord has knights that owe him feudal duty.
    *1-3 shires/lords - each lord has 30 knights.
    *4-10 shires/lords - there after each lord has a number of knights equal to the following calc; 30 x No. of lords + 100 per province lvl / No. of Lords = Total knights that owe fealty to each lord. The initial 30 is to represent the knights that are not available to muster but are kept at home for general law keeping.
    * Finally if you do not controll all the Law Holdings in a province then you would only be able to muster you Law Holding level worth of knights (those who listen to you call of muster).

    eg. Take the Diemed province of Celiene (6) - Law HD (4) DA (2)

    Using the calculation above the total knights would be 480, which means that each shire/lord has 80 knights. HD's lords have a total of 320 knights but 120 of those cannot be mustered. This would mean that HD could muster 2 units of knights.

    With populations figures I am working on this would mean that nobility (knights, lords & blooded nobles) make up about 2% of population. Does this sound reasonable and make sense?

  10. #30
    Site Moderator kgauck's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2002
    Location
    Springfield Mo
    Posts
    3,562
    Downloads
    2
    Uploads
    0
    I have also used 100 men for Elite Infantry and Knights. I have detailed two realms military forces on the wiki, Stjordvik and Dhoesone.

    On the Stjordvik army page I describe the standing army, its deployment, and what additional mobilization looks like.

    The Dhoesone military page also has the standing army (detailed by Andrew), and the deployment and mobilization.

    I should run up a Medoere and see if my system looks like yours. I suspect they will be close enough, size of one half dozen of the other.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. Good work
    By MorganNash in forum BRCS 3.0/3.5 Edition
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 02-19-2005, 05:13 AM
  2. How does the Espionage work exactly ?
    By Achab in forum BRCS 3.0/3.5 Edition
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 10-16-2004, 08:49 AM
  3. how is work?
    By marcum uth mather in forum The Royal Library
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 07-26-2004, 06:43 PM
  4. Hows Work Coming On The New Site
    By marcum uth mather in forum Birthright.net support
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 07-22-2003, 04:51 AM

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
BIRTHRIGHT, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, the BIRTHRIGHT logo, and the D&D logo are trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc., and are used by permission. ©2002-2010 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.