Can anyone rationalise the MTW units?

[econ21]

I've been doing some reading around the area and am having trouble rationalising the Catholic units we have in MTW. Ultimately, I'd like to mod them to get a bit more consistency with history.

At one level, units are defined by armour and weapon, eg Chivalric sergeants are mailed spearmen. One problem with that is that I suspect that in the period, the better equipped warriors were not uniformly equipped. For example, I think the dismounted knights at Agincourt used spears (lances, shortened or not) as well as other weapons.

At another level, units are defined by "status" and softer factors: knights, men-at-arms, sergeants, militia etc. However, my understanding is that men-at-arms were defined as knights and lower status/less well equipped sergeants. (Anyone know if knights and sergeants intermingled on the battlefield with the better equipped ones or were kept separate?) Some less well-equipped infantry were distinct from men-at-arms - eg billmen, longbowmen, lighter spearmen etc.

One problem is that there is unlikely to be a good mesh between the hard factor disaggregation (kit) and the soft factor one (status), as we can see with the spear wielding knights at Agincourt. I am little hazy on militia - presumably they were not generally included as "men-at-arms" but could have many weapons other than polearms.

Finally, there is the issue of unit size (40 vs 60 vs 100). What do people think about this? Presumably it could be used to induce a realistic balance of force (ie not too many knights). I would probably set 40 for knight type troops (the best equipped); 60 for sergeant type (less well-equipped men-at-arms) and specialised units like archers, bowmen etc; 100 for less good troops, eg lighter infantry. For consistency, one might want size 60 non-knight cavalry units but I don't know what that would do for gameplay.

Anyone got any reactions to the above? Anyone made sense of the MTW units or got ideas how to make them more authentic? My first instinct would be to make knight and sergeants units have "composite" weapons eg which had the properties of swords AND spears; and to make them dismountable. The chivalric knights are already close to that, with their polearms as modelled in the game. Other troops that are not men-at-arms could be modelled along similar lines to those in the game.

Thanks for any opinions.

[Hakonarson]

Knights and Sergeants usually fought formed up together - Knights in the front, Sergenats in the rear.

"Men-at-arms" is a term used to describe anyone who could meet the requirements of fighting like a "knight" - by the 14th century there weer many people rich enough to do so who were not actually nobles - but they wanted to be treated as such, and the king of course wanted as many heavy armoured cav/foot as possible.

Unit size based on equipment is pointless - why bother?

All the various grades of "feudal" and "chivalric" are nonsense too - troops did uparmour, but they didn't change rapidly as much as those grades would ahve us believe.

If the units were to be more "historical" ther ewould just be "knights", and various types of foot - spears, bows, etc.

All progression would then be by way of weapon and armour upgrades.

there would still be provision for some specialisd types - military order foot sergeants for example, but essentially they're just better trqined and equipped "standard" foot.

[econ21]

Um, thanks for that Harkonarson. The more I dig, the less I see a basis for distinguishing units on "soft" factors. Having distinct "sword", "spear" etc type units maybe ahistorical in a strict sense but does introduce an interesting element of "rock-scissors-paste" gameplay.

On the armour, I was also thinking the upgrades could be rationalised as part of the enhancement of armour - eg feudal sergeant may get 1-3 shields of armour, representing moves to light armour, mail and transitional. Maybe the knights would have to be stripped of some starting armour value to allow this to work.

I am not sure the weapon upgrades make so much sense (specifically being tied to iron deposits). At the moment, I'm thinking of disabling them. I actually think the period upgrades reflect the evolution of weapons fairly well (eg Chiv knights move to polearms; CMAA get a +1 to attack as they adapt to better armour, eg by getting pointed swords) although it could be tweaked.

On the unit sizes, what do you think should determine them? They are pretty important to the game, given the 16 unit limit. Raising all unit sizes to 100 would change the game dramatically (and arguably give too big a role to economics, with the likely cost of 100 knights). Presumably, the function of the different unit sizes is to try to induce balanced and realistic armies. But I just can't understand why spear units should be size 100 and other foot 60. I was thinking the spears are cheaper levy type, but this is conflating equipment with status again, and is probably untrue. At the moment, I'm thinking 40 for cav, 60 for almost all infantry, 100 for "horde" type units such as peasants or poorly trained levies.

Anyone have any reactions to the above? Is it worth pursuing a mod along these lines?