View Full Version : Raising and Training Troops
The way MTW and STW handle the recruitment and training of troops whilst the accepted method of C&C style strategy games is a little cliche and not very realistic.
Has anyone considered any alternative idea's?
Personally my favourite for medieval strategy games was the approach used in Lords of the Realm where you paid for the weapons but then had to recruit peasants to train. The nice touch being that this reduced your peasant labour force and so reduced your realms food production and craft output. It was a nice balancing mechanism between 'swords and ploughshears' which worked well.
So what was the real cost of training a knight and how did a King ensure that he had sufficient for the battlefield????
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Didz
Fortis balore et armis
MonkeyMan
10-29-2002, 18:53
Quote Originally posted by Didz:
The way MTW and STW handle the recruitment and training of troops whilst the accepted method of C&C style strategy games is a little cliche and not very realistic.
Has anyone considered any alternative idea's?
Personally my favourite for medieval strategy games was the approach used in Lords of the Realm where you paid for the weapons but then had to recruit peasants to train. The nice touch being that this reduced your peasant labour force and so reduced your realms food production and craft output. It was a nice balancing mechanism between 'swords and ploughshears' which worked well.
So what was the real cost of training a knight and how did a King ensure that he had sufficient for the battlefield????
[/QUOTE]
I assume a knight was a noble born man, with land and money, who purchased his own weapons and armour and fought in order to keep what was his. In the grand scheme of things an army of a few thousand men would probably have little real effect on the workforce and some of this cost could be assumed to be accommodated by the support costs levied on each unit. I get the feeling that life was quite cheap back then with huge families to accomodate loss to disease and death in war (to pass the time given there was no telly). Also after a battle, very little was wasted and expensive armour and weapons would have no doubt found their way back into someones hands, or just been in constant production by the royal armourer/weaponsmith regarless of demand. To be fair you can make the strategy part increasingly complex all you want and it is after all a tool to balance armies and string together the real guts of the game in a way that makes you care more about winning or losing.
Pellinor
10-29-2002, 19:22
The MTW system gets to me slightly as well.
Historically, there were a few sources of troops. One was the men hired permanently as soldiers, equipped by the king. These tended not to be too numerous, at least not in the west (I'm a bit hazier about the east). There would also be armouries full of munitions which could be handed out to remporary militias. The main source of troops for a campaign was the king's subordinate lords, who would be equipped as knights and would have their own troops.
If you wanted to go on campaign, you'd summon a number of lords and remind them that they were obliged to provide you with a certain number of men for a certain period. You'd then take those me, plus some other trrops you'd equip yourself, and go off to beat up another king.
This other king would equip a load of militia, and remind his own lords that they were supposed to defend him and should therefore bring some more of their own men along.
To a large extent, then the king was only responsible for maintaining troops when he actually used them, and didn't have to equip many himself. The number of troops available to him him would be governed by how wealthy his people were, which would also determine the quality of their equipment; the loyalty of his lords would determine how many of these available troops actually turned up for the campaign, how hard they fought, and in extreme cases on whose side they fought.
An interesting model for an MTW-style game would be for the player to have no control of the raising of troops, except for mercenaries. Instead, he would have to use influence and cash to raise an army out of his subjects (something like starting a crusade - raise the standard and see who salutes it). Successful campaigns with few casualties and lots of loot would increase the loyalty of the lords and the quality of their troops. Conversely, a king who kept dragging people off to unsuccessful wars, got them killed and had his own lands looted would end up unly being able to raise a few unwilling people with pointy sticks.
If attacked, of course, you defend with the people who turn up, plus your mercenaries and household. The campaign probably becomes a war of manoeuvre to build a decent army before the enemy takes your towns or defeats you piecemeal.
The strategic aspect would be interesting: if your troops are only available for short periods before getting disgruntled, and recently-conquered people are unlikely to support you, you can't steamroller the continent. You'd have to depend on rich and loyal home provinces, and try to win others across by other means. Mlitarily, you'd end up having to focus on careful strikes against profitable targets to get cash, infulence and prestige to help out in your diplomacy.
Hard to model successfully, though. In particular,to get the manoeuvring a campaign would have to be played in months, or seasons at most, rather than years, which would be hard to fit into a multi-century span. The obvious way is to put a campaign game in between the strategic layer and the tactical, but that would be very tricky to do. MTW is much simpler and more intuitive.
sassbarman
10-30-2002, 05:56
i like your idea of balancing manpower, fewer men in the fields lower production lower income.
Richard the Slayer
10-30-2002, 06:15
Quote Originally posted by Didz:
The way MTW and STW handle the recruitment and training of troops whilst the accepted method of C&C style strategy games is a little cliche and not very realistic.
Has anyone considered any alternative idea's?
Personally my favourite for medieval strategy games was the approach used in Lords of the Realm where you paid for the weapons but then had to recruit peasants to train. The nice touch being that this reduced your peasant labour force and so reduced your realms food production and craft output. It was a nice balancing mechanism between 'swords and ploughshears' which worked well.
So what was the real cost of training a knight and how did a King ensure that he had sufficient for the battlefield????
[/QUOTE]
I'm all for realism too, but the main problem with getting too realistc is the game develops into a fancy history project. Realism is always the unltimate priority but where you can abstract ideas do it, to make the game simpler and easier to handle. If they make a more complicated system of recruitment in the new patch or expansion, I won't mind it. All I'm trying to say is the aspect of recruitment recreates the aspect of gathering armies in a general sense while keeping the game moving. There are many more realism flops in MTW that should be fixed much sooner - namely the siege portion of the game.
Hakonarson
10-30-2002, 06:23
One of the main reasons for computers in games, IMO, is precissely to handle a lot of teh minutae - at the moment we tend to use a lot of the power to give glitzy graphics - that's nice, but does it really need to be at the expense of realism that can be handled out of sight?
Quote Originally posted by Didz:
The way MTW and STW handle the recruitment and training of troops whilst the accepted method of C&C style strategy games is a little cliche and not very realistic.[/QUOTE]
I think Medieval Total War has got the balance right, between the 3D battlefield and the Strategy map/resource management. I certainly wouldn't enjoy a more labored way of producing units. Otherwise we are going back to the chopping trees senario....which is the same as watching paint dry.
Lets face it the game takes long enough to finish as it is. But I could be in the minority here?
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Don't be in a rush to die!!
solypsist
10-30-2002, 10:04
We had the same conversation during STW, when people would complain about fighting full banner after banner of No-Dachi and Warrior Monks.
The best solution, so far, is to allow limited quantity of troop types, either in total (100 units of Arbalastiers on the map total) or within specific timeframes (ie. can only produce 10 units of Feudal Knights for 50 years). What we end up with, then, is armies made up of peasant-types with fewer elites in each banner, and less armies in general. The number would be variable on land held, happiness, etc.
The interesting part is if this system is in control for the map in total; it would be possible that you can't produce Feudal Sergeants because your neighbor has produced the game-total allowed for the whole map!
Well if we look at the amount of troops raised for a campaign it would not effect the economy of a country that much..the wages the king needed was a problem yes but not for overall production. Its nothing compared to what we see in the world wars.
If we wanted it to be more realistic, the gameplay would in fact look simpler than MTW: you wouldnt need to worry much about all the buildings/upgrades, but more about how many troops you could get (that would be a bit random, based on population/economy etc) and have to raise the taxes to pay for the logistics/wages of your troops, which could cause rebellions and if taxes are too heavy it might hurt the region/country's economic development.
Basically: more realism equals less control than what we are used to in most games. Not that I would mind http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
CBR
A long time ago on my c64 there was a game called medieval lords (ssi). In the game, whenever you created an army you would issue a feudal levy. The number of troops you could field would be relatively proportional to the size of your empire. You could keep levying troops but each subsequent action would yield less men as the pool would decrease. Your treasury would plummet drastically while the men were in your service. Obviously if you got all of your men killed before disbanning them, it would be some time before you could raise an army again. I would love to see something like this implemented in mtw. Or, maybe it could be a selectable mode. This would seem to be in line with many of the previous ideas on this thread.
http://www.c64gg.com/Images/M/Medieval_Lords_ingame.gif
Do you think the developers of this game ever envisioned mtw?
[This message has been edited by sbreden (edited 10-30-2002).]
Cardinal
10-30-2002, 21:04
What if more specialised units took longer to train, like some of the heavy cavalry units?
Just a thought.
Quote Originally posted by Cardinal:
What if more specialised units took longer to train, like some of the heavy cavalry units?
Just a thought.[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure training ought to be an issue.
From what little I know men were required by law to train for war just in case they were needed.
Certainly Longbowmen were required to practice regularly just in case they were called up. And knights were also constantly practicing their skills.
So what little training was required would be limited to understanding your captains expectations and working together as a combat team.
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Didz
Fortis balore et armis
Quote Originally posted by sbreden:
A long time ago on my c64 there was a game called medieval lords (ssi). In the game, whenever you created an army you would issue a feudal levy. The number of troops you could field would be relatively proportional to the size of your empire. You could keep levying troops but each subsequent action would yield less men as the pool would decrease. Your treasury would plummet drastically while the men were in your service. Obviously if you got all of your men killed before disbanning them, it would be some time before you could raise an army again. I would love to see something like this implemented in mtw. Or, maybe it could be a selectable mode. This would seem to be in line with many of the previous ideas on this thread.
http://www.c64gg.com/Images/M/Medieval_Lords_ingame.gif
Do you think the developers of this game ever envisioned mtw?
[This message has been edited by sbreden (edited 10-30-2002).][/QUOTE]
That looks a lot more appropraite certainly for a feudal society. No sure how well it would represent the eastern factions.
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Didz
Fortis balore et armis
Quote Originally posted by Didz:
That looks a lot more appropraite certainly for a feudal society. No sure how well it would represent the eastern factions.
[/QUOTE]
Good point didz. Perhaps the two could be implemented at the same time... The western societies could use the one system while the eastern would use theirs (i have no idea what that would be, maybe professional soldiery only?) The differences could be one of the unique items to consider when choosing which faction to play.
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