View Full Version : Debate - Castle vs. City Free Upkeep
Agent Smith
05-31-2007, 19:07
In light of my garrison thread and the reading I've done, it seems to be completely coutner-intuitive to make cities have free upkeep slots and make castle units unavailable for free upkeep.
In the feudal system, knights had the duty to serve for military purposes up to 40 days without pay, and they also had a duty to garrison castles for a certain period without pay with a constant rotation so the castles were all well garrisoned. This suggests that it would make more sense to have free upkeep slots in castles to represent this duty that the knights always had.
On the other hand, cities would have been the exact opposite. In large cities, most notably in Italy, the wealth was highly concentrated and the population was large, so the cities actually paid for their own police forces. In other words, the "militia" units were actually paid to do their job rather than being akin to the shire levies that were called into duty during a time of crisis. This suggests that there really should be no free up keep slots in cities and the militia should be paid to do their duties.
Thoughts?
Well you can have free upkeep in castles as well. If you check the thread about "recruitment que" (keywords) I've posted links there.
My view is both castle and city free upkeep is good for the AI. I'd go for both. But I get your point, I'm not sure how well it would work though because in large cities the cost of maintaining a loyalty garrsion would cripple the AI. Need to think about it some more before I can offer anything solid.
Agent Smith
05-31-2007, 19:47
Well you can have free upkeep in castles as well. If you check the thread about "recruitment que" (keywords) I've posted links there.
My view is both castle and city free upkeep is good for the AI. I'd go for both. But I get your point, I'm not sure how well it would work though because in large cities the cost of maintaining a loyalty garrsion would cripple the AI. Need to think about it some more before I can offer anything solid.
Well, I guess it depends. The castle units by and large require larger levels of upkeep. So, the AI might be able to save money if their higher upkeep units were kept free of charge while the lower upkeep militia continued to be paid, especially when considering cavalry.
I guess it would require some calculations based upon how the AI actually garrisons castles.
In the feudal system, knights had the duty to serve for military purposes up to 40 days without pay, and they also had a duty to garrison castles for a certain period without pay with a constant rotation so the castles were all well garrisoned. This suggests that it would make more sense to have free upkeep slots in castles to represent this duty that the knights always had.
Not all units AI or player has are knights, only the elite.
Giving Tourney buildings 4 free upkeep knight units and make it properly work would be good.
Kobal2fr
05-31-2007, 20:59
In light of my garrison thread and the reading I've done, it seems to be completely coutner-intuitive to make cities have free upkeep slots and make castle units unavailable for free upkeep.
In the feudal system, knights had the duty to serve for military purposes up to 40 days without pay, and they also had a duty to garrison castles for a certain period without pay with a constant rotation so the castles were all well garrisoned. This suggests that it would make more sense to have free upkeep slots in castles to represent this duty that the knights always had.
On the other hand, cities would have been the exact opposite. In large cities, most notably in Italy, the wealth was highly concentrated and the population was large, so the cities actually paid for their own police forces. In other words, the "militia" units were actually paid to do their job rather than being akin to the shire levies that were called into duty during a time of crisis. This suggests that there really should be no free up keep slots in cities and the militia should be paid to do their duties.
Thoughts?
Not really - militias are meant to represent citizen who just bring any old weapon they were issued and trained with over week ends, the peasants and merchants and officials and so on, which is usually what's written in their flavor text. Whereas castle troops are usually professionals drawn from society's soldier class/nobility, meaning they don't do anything constructive except bash people's heads in from time to time and enforce the local lord's law... usually by bashing people's heads in. When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail :beam:.
What I mean is that while the militiamen may or may not have "real" jobs besides their status as defense or police force, you'd never see a knight or sergeant-at-arms tilling a field, carrying heavy loads, carting crap around from town to town etc..., hence they're economical and societal dead weight, i.e. a pure money sink, which is why the don't get free upkeep.
I mean, that's why we guillotined/hanged/axed/shot kings in the end, isn't it ? They took all the wealth and did none of the work. Well there you are. No work, no free upkeep for you ! :laugh4:
And if you think about it, even police work is constructive work, in a fashion, since they deter criminals (quite terminally, in the case of medieval justice :sweatdrop:) who would prey on the city's wealth and citizen. But there's no crime to be fought in a castle which is supposed to represent the networks of fortresses, keeps, forts, watchtowers etc..., the purely military aspect of the castle concept.
I know castles would often have villages all around them, that the castle's troops would act as "policemen" in the surrounding lands etc... in real life, but you have to understand that what we know as "cities" and "castles" in game are not actual cities or castles, but the idea thereof, the purpose behind them.
If I'm being fuzzy and unclear... drink some more. It'll make sense then. :clown:
Agent Smith
05-31-2007, 21:18
Not really - militias are meant to represent citizen who just bring any old weapon they were issued and trained with over week ends, the peasants and merchants and officials and so on, which is usually what's written in their flavor text. Whereas castle troops are usually professionals drawn from society's soldier class/nobility, meaning they don't do anything constructive except bash people's heads in from time to time and enforce the local lord's law... usually by bashing people's heads in. When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail :beam:.
The problem is that "militias," as we use the term today, didn't really exist in feudal periods. What you are thinking of is the equivalent of the shire levy, where all common citizens could be called up to defend their country. However, levies were only called into service in times of emergency and had to be ready to serve, and they never provided police duty through being levied.
In large cities (Italy being a prime example of such cities), the cities PAID for a constant police force. Which is what I'm getting at: city garrisons were paid to do their jobs, so why can yo get some of them for free in the game?
Compare that to castles. The nobles HAD to provide their services in a garrison periodically, WITHOUT pay. So, shouldn't castles garrisons have free upkeep since the crown wasn't required to pay the nobility for their periodic garrison service?
What I mean is that while the militiamen may or may not have "real" jobs besides their status as defense or police force, you'd never see a knight or sergeant-at-arms tilling a field, carrying heavy loads, carting crap around from town to town etc..., hence they're economical and societal dead weight, i.e. a pure money sink, which is why the don't get free upkeep.
I mean, that's why we guillotined/hanged/axed/shot kings in the end, isn't it ? They took all the wealth and did none of the work. Well there you are. No work, no free upkeep for you ! :laugh4:
It isn't about their economic value to society, it is just a basic notion of feudal duty. Nobles were required to provide services such as garrison duty without pay, so why should you pay for their upkeep in a castle garrison in the game?
And if you think about it, even police work is constructive work, in a fashion, since they deter criminals (quite terminally, in the case of medieval justice :sweatdrop:) who would prey on the city's wealth and citizen. But there's no crime to be fought in a castle which is supposed to represent the networks of fortresses, keeps, forts, watchtowers etc..., the purely military aspect of the castle concept.
Yes, the common citizenry was, I suppose "more productive." However, no person living in a city provided their time and effort policing the streets for free. They were paid to do it. Hence why cities shouldn't have free upkeep.
I know castles would often have villages all around them, that the castle's troops would act as "policemen" in the surrounding lands etc... in real life, but you have to understand that what we know as "cities" and "castles" in game are not actual cities or castles, but the idea thereof, the purpose behind them.
If I'm being fuzzy and unclear... drink some more. It'll make sense then. :clown:
I understand the notion is abstract, but so are the garrisons. If there is a unit of 60 Dismoutned Feudal Knights garrisoning a castle, it isn't necessarily the same 60 guys sitting there constantly, but should represent the number of knights garrisoning the castle at any given time, with any of them being a nobleman from the country having to fulfill their duty. So, whether Larry and Bob are there or Joe and James isn't of much consequence, just that there is always 60 guys there. Since it is their duty, you shouldn't have to pay for those 60 guys being there.
Police, however, ARE the same guys day in and day out, as it is their job that they are paid to do. So, you should have to pay them day in and day out for their services.
Does that make more sense?
The ingame doesn't really have much link to histroy though does it? Ingame Castles have the mcuh better troops for most factions and better defenses, but they don't get free upkeep or as much income. Cities have the free upkeep units, some agents and more income but not as good units and less defenses.
With your system, castles would have the best troops AND free upkeep so they don't need the extra income. and cities get more income but spend it on upkeep. So apart from a few agent types why go for cities?
Kobal2fr
05-31-2007, 21:44
It isn't about their economic value to society, it is just a basic notion of feudal duty. Nobles were required to provide services such as garrison duty without pay, so why should you pay for their upkeep in a castle garrison in the game?
Because they eat. And there ain't no such thing as a free meal, or so I'm told :)
Plus of course, on top of that someone has to fork it out for chainmail knitting, sword sharpening, raped peasantgirl reparationning, fields destroyed because the lord's hunting party just happened to chase a wolf over it with 150 horses and so forth.
Apparently there's no such thing as a free soldier either.
Yes, the common citizenry was, I suppose "more productive." However, no person living in a city provided their time and effort policing the streets for free. They were paid to do it. Hence why cities shouldn't have free upkeep.
And no farmer provided his time tilling his mud puddle and effort spreading pig shite around for free either. That's all invisible to us.
Consider if you need to that said police force is paid for anyway (i.e. their cost is already taken into account it what the city gives you in taxes+trade+mining+farming), but they're only willing to fight a foreign aggressor (as opposed to just giving them the keys to the city) if you, as the king, provide them with war-worthy equipment instead of the poor quality crap that's enough to apprehend thieves, or if you send messengers with threats/encouraging and so on, through the concept of the recruiting cost.
Besides that, there is a very basic gamey reason for the free upkeep slots : in RTW past a certain population level cities became completely unmanageable and came out as a money sinkholes on the whole (because you needed umpteen units to keep them from revolting, plus low tax levels, plus throwing games daily etc...), leading experienced players never EVER to build farms because that would spell death for their faction in the long run, when obviously larger cities ought to have meant larger incomes as well. Unrest is one thing, the destruction of a whole empire through sheer population is another. The French revolt (pardon, revolution) didn't spell the end of France.
Thus they (CA) reduced unrest, reduced distance to capital penalties, and came up with the free upkeep slots, the sum of which make cities both manageable and profitable from the first turn to the 225th. Might not be 100% historian-proof, but it makes the game more playable for everyone.
EDIT : oh, and what Lusted said. Much more to the point. And in much less words.
...
...
Bastard. :clown:
EDIT : oh, and what Lusted said. Much more to the point. And in much less words.
...
...
Bastard. :clown:
MWUHAHAHAHA!
Agent Smith
05-31-2007, 22:36
The ingame doesn't really have much link to histroy though does it? Ingame Castles have the mcuh better troops for most factions and better defenses, but they don't get free upkeep or as much income. Cities have the free upkeep units, some agents and more income but not as good units and less defenses.
With your system, castles would have the best troops AND free upkeep so they don't need the extra income. and cities get more income but spend it on upkeep. So apart from a few agent types why go for cities?
Not at all.
It isn't as if you're getting the ENTIRE city garrison for free. The maximum of free upkeep slots in a city is what, five? If those five garrison units cost 100 each in upkeep (such as the decent crossbow militias), that's only tacking on a cost of 500 florins, possibly around 625 or so if they are more expensive spear militia type troops, to the city at the huge city stage if the upkeep slots weren't present. It's even less of a big deal in smaller towns. One upkeep slot missing will only cost the town about 100-125 florins in income. Hardly an issue, and hardly a dent in the income you get from a city to the point where it would deter you from having them and getting castles instead.
On the other hand, add those upkeep slots to a castle. Say a citadel has five free upkeep slots. DFK are 225 a pop and are relatively early in most tech trees. That's 1,125 florins in upkeep for that garrison, twice as much as the city garrison. Also, because of the castle's low economic output, you have practically negated it's income OR you are losing money on the effort for a five unit garrison, especially if you are keeping good troops because it is close to a front. And in an actual feudal system they basically did it for free as was their duty.
I know it isn't entirely historically linked, but free upkeep slots in cities just really don't make much sense when, in game, militia upkeep is the lowest in the game (for the most part) and, as an added bonus, it would have made more historical sense to give the castles the upkeep slots. Nothing wrong with trying to do that :yes:
On the other hand, add those upkeep slots to a castle. Say a citadel has five free upkeep slots. DFK are 225 a pop and are relatively early in most tech trees. That's 1,125 florins in upkeep for that garrison, twice as much as the city garrison. Also, because of the castle's low economic output, you have practically negated it's income OR you are losing money on the effort for a five unit garrison, especially if you are keeping good troops because it is close to a front. And in an actual feudal system they basically did it for free as was their duty.
But that's exactly my point, if you add in free upkeep to castles you don't need cities as even if castles have low income a lot less of your money is going towards military units because of free upkeep in castles.
As you are talking about it you would remove the free upkeep slots for cities. Then you're basically going to have the option between a multi walled castle with free upkeep high quality troops, and you could survive on castle income because oft he huge chunk of upkeep the free castle units would remove. Or You could go with cities who don't have free upkeep units, don't have great defenses, and who's income you don't need as mcuh anymore.
Kobal2fr
05-31-2007, 22:53
Not at all.
It isn't as if you're getting the ENTIRE city garrison for free. The maximum of free upkeep slots in a city is what, five? If those five garrison units cost 100 each in upkeep (such as the decent crossbow militias), that's only tacking on a cost of 500 florins, possibly around 625 or so if they are more expensive spear militia type troops, to the city at the huge city stage if the upkeep slots weren't present. It's even less of a big deal in smaller towns. One upkeep slot missing will only cost the town about 100-125 florins in income. Hardly an issue, and hardly a dent in the income you get from a city to the point where it would deter you from having them and getting castles instead.
Basic math :
The "proper" ratio is 4-5 cities per castle, +- geography. These cities need at least the amount of free upkeep militias they get, if not more (a lot more) to put up with the High Taxes needed to maintain multiple full stacks of castle troops.
5*5*125 = 3125 florins per turn per 5 provinces you own.
By the time you're about to win the campaign (40 regions), that's 25.000ish florins per turn. I'd hardly call those free garrisons "hardly a dent in the income you get", especially considering that once you move past tech tiers 1 or 2, it's not uncommon for even the most basic of buildings to cost 5-10k.
EDIT : And Lusted once again beat me to the point. But remember folks, he's the Man now ! Look, look, I'm being repressed by The Man !
Agent Smith
05-31-2007, 22:57
Because they eat. And there ain't no such thing as a free meal, or so I'm told :)
Plus of course, on top of that someone has to fork it out for chainmail knitting, sword sharpening, raped peasantgirl reparationning, fields destroyed because the lord's hunting party just happened to chase a wolf over it with 150 horses and so forth.
Apparently there's no such thing as a free soldier either.
Everyone, from peasants on up, supplied their own arms and armor. No king in the feudal period supplied his troops with equipment.
As for the food, that would've basically been free, too. The peasants pay the landlord for the right to work a strip of land, so the nobles have a steady stream of income while they sit on their butts. The Barons further get portions of that income from the nobility and they keep most of that, and I'm sure the cost to feed a garrison is minimal, as opposed to paying for actual services like you would for a police force.
And no farmer provided his time tilling his mud puddle and effort spreading pig shite around for free either. That's all invisible to us.
Peasants weren't paid ANYTHING. They basically paid the freeholders for the right to work the land. They paid the freeholders from their land and got to keep the rest to live off of. So, yes, they did do it for free basically, because they paid for the right to do it and did it mostly as subsistence farming.
Consider if you need to that said police force is paid for anyway (i.e. their cost is already taken into account it what the city gives you in taxes+trade+mining+farming), but they're only willing to fight a foreign aggressor (as opposed to just giving them the keys to the city) if you, as the king, provide them with war-worthy equipment instead of the poor quality crap that's enough to apprehend thieves, or if you send messengers with threats/encouraging and so on, through the concept of the recruiting cost.
What I'm saying is that city police forces did police work for a living. Therefore, they are not out working the fields and making any income that way, per se. Instead, you have to pay them because their duties do not allow them to do anything else, like farm to feed themselves. It isn't much different than the hiring of mercenaries in the feudal system. In fact, most all of the Italian cities DID hire mercenaries as their police forces, mostly from Germany. They paid them for their services.
Taxes+trade+mining+farming is only that. If you want to take into account paying the police force, they already do that...with upkeep cost. Allowing you to have some people work for free in a city just doesn't make sense to me. But, I understand, like Lusted said, that is being overly historically technical. I just think that it is mroe historically accurate that way and could actually help gameplay if the roles were switched.
Besides that, there is a very basic gamey reason for the free upkeep slots : in RTW past a certain population level cities became completely unmanageable and came out as a money sinkholes on the whole (because you needed umpteen units to keep them from revolting, plus low tax levels, plus throwing games daily etc...), leading experienced players never EVER to build farms because that would spell death for their faction in the long run, when obviously larger cities ought to have meant larger incomes as well. Unrest is one thing, the destruction of a whole empire through sheer population is another. The French revolt (pardon, revolution) didn't spell the end of France.
Thus they (CA) reduced unrest, reduced distance to capital penalties, and came up with the free upkeep slots, the sum of which make cities both manageable and profitable from the first turn to the 225th. Might not be 100% historian-proof, but it makes the game more playable for everyone.
Again, like I told Lusted, you are only getting 5 free upkeep slots...out of 20. That barely puts a dent in garrison upkeep costs for a city. A city will still be very, very profitable even without the free upkeep slots. Castles, on the other hand, are complete sinkholes. In fact, most people are forced (as in Russia's case) to convert almost ALL of their castles to cities early on, where it may be more prudent to have a castle for defensive purposes in some areas. However, the castles turn out even or in the red virtually all of the time unless you just stock them with peasants and hope for the best, which defeats the purpose of castles in the first place.
Anyway, in gameplay terms, I suppose there is no "right answer." It's jsut my opinion that it would work better if they were reversed and have the added bonus of being a little more historically accurate.
On a completely different not, on the Britannia Campaign teaser video for Kingdoms, didn't they hint that the new forts would provide free upkeep to allow for the "building of larger armies than ever before?"
Kobal2fr
05-31-2007, 23:16
Peasants weren't paid ANYTHING. They basically paid the freeholders for the right to work the land.
You obviously have never watched "Seven Samurais". Peasants are deceitfull ! Crafty ! Dishonnest ! Underhanded ! :)
They only gave what they either thought they could live without, or couldn't hide efficiently enough, or couldn't hide fast enough.
"It was a bad year miloooord ! What with the blight/rain/sun/invasions/pox/brigands/weddings/bachelors/solar rays ruining the crops, you understand..."
But that's not the point. It's true that a peasant's life was basically a zero sum game : tending to the fields, and getting enough food to keep on tending. The nobles, on the other hand, got enough to more-than-enough to live, but didn't tend to shite.
Which is represented in-game by their high upkeep cost, paid for by the farming values (OK, so it's a total reversal from the "ignore upkeeps" line I put forward earlier. Sue me, I'm being rethorical.)
What I'm saying is that city police forces did police work for a living. Therefore, they are not out working the fields and making any income that way, per se
Like I said, they didn't make any income, but they prevented most..."outcomes" ?
Note to readers : not only is English syntax naturally geared towards made up words, you get added perks to them if you're a foreigner. Hurray !
The way I've always seen it is that those militias are actually paid for by the city. As in the city pays for a certain amount of protection that you, being their lord, don't need to pay for. It's not like the taxes they pay are the only money they have, so they've probably got a lot of money left to pay for those militias.
EDIT : And Lusted once again beat me to the point. But remember folks, he's the Man now ! Look, look, I'm being repressed by The Man !
Shouldn't it be: Help! Help! Im being repressed!
Agent Smith
05-31-2007, 23:59
@Lusted: It wouldn't necessarily completely shift the focus to castles, but I guess it would completely depend on your style of play in the first place. I was basing it on my current campaign and my style, which, after reading Kobal's post, made me realzie it wouldn't work for everyone. More below:
Basic math :
The "proper" ratio is 4-5 cities per castle, +- geography. These cities need at least the amount of free upkeep militias they get, if not more (a lot more) to put up with the High Taxes needed to maintain multiple full stacks of castle troops.
5*5*125 = 3125 florins per turn per 5 provinces you own.
By the time you're about to win the campaign (40 regions), that's 25.000ish florins per turn. I'd hardly call those free garrisons "hardly a dent in the income you get", especially considering that once you move past tech tiers 1 or 2, it's not uncommon for even the most basic of buildings to cost 5-10k.
EDIT : And Lusted once again beat me to the point. But remember folks, he's the Man now ! Look, look, I'm being repressed by The Man !
I do see what you are saying, but just a few things:
First, you aren't taking into account the money you save from free castle upkeep, which each castle's garrison (using our current math) is about double the cost of the same five upkeep slots in the city.
Even though that may seem like it still doesn't make a big difference, it still entirely depends on your gameplay style, which I'm now seeing. Your "proper" ratio of cities to castles is completely arbitrary. But, if you play that way, you would take a decent hit (more around 10,000 if you include the gains in free upkeep in castles). But, in my current campaign, I'd actually save money. I am playing Russia and I have 32 cities and 20 castles under my control. Using our same calculations, those 32 cities, without free upkeep, would cost me about 20,000 florins if they were removed. However, those 20 castles (using, say, dismounted Dvor instead of DFK, since they cost the same in upkeep), if they all had the same five free upkeep slots, would save me 22,500 florins in upkeep. It would actually be a net gain of 2,500 florins for me, but it really wouldn't matter since I'm making over 30,000 florins a turn as it is now anyway. So, using the same math, I could actually reduce the number of castles I currently have and still break even. That's what I was getting at by saying it wouldn't make a dent.
Not to mention, in terms of gameplay, one other fact: the AI, from what I can tell, NEVER converts castles to cities. So, the AI most likely, probably never, plays with a ratio of 4 or 5 cities to every castle. The British Isles alone has a ratio of 1 to 1 for cities to castles (well, if you include Caen from the British staarting territory, anyway). Come to think of it, this is probably one of the main reasons why the AI always runs out of money. Changing the castles to free upkeep would probably save the AI money without really changing the ratio of cities to castles that are already on the map in the first place.
But, to each his own, I suppose. Everyone can have their opinion :beam: I guess my problem is just mainly historical fun. If I'm going to change the system in the first place, maybe I'd just reduce the upkeep for militia units as well as give the free upkeep to castles. Why should, for instance, spear militia cost as much to pay as dismounted Polish nobles? But, that would be a whole lot of work to make a zero sum gain for the sole purpose of history. Eh, forget I said anything :sweatdrop:
Still, I wonder if free upkeep in castles instead of cities would help the current AI out at all...
Gaiseric
06-01-2007, 03:53
@AgentSmith: I read your posts in the garrison thread, and your posts here, and I belive that Castles should definatly have some free upkeep slots to represent the 40 day service period that a subject owed his lord. I think the lord of the castle would have had enough subjects to rotate his garrison force and keep his castle well defended without the need for paying upkeep.:2cents:
It depends on how you veiw militas, but I think that these militas are under the same fuedal, 40 day service contract as the men in the castles. Instead of paying homage to a lord, they pay it to the mayor. They are probably rotated just like castle garrisons are and therefore they don't require upkeep either.~:lightbulb:
I think that free upkeep slots in both the cities and the castles can really help the AI defend its settlements better and let them have more money to spend on larger armies and improved economies. This should offset the advantage that the player will recieve with the free upkeep. I know for me it will not effect gameplay too dramatically. I will just be able to keep larger garrisons at my castles. Maybe the AI script could even be rewritten so that it takes full advantage of the free upkeep and only feilds his armies for shorter, more logical campaigns.:logic:
Kobal2fr
06-01-2007, 07:45
Of course you'd save more money with DFK free garrisons instead of militia crossbows in cities !
But that's the whole point of not giving them those free upkeep slots : castles are supposed and designed to be money sinks, and cities money makers. The 4-to-1 ration being a rough guesstimate of how to break even while still keeping decent garrisons all across your borders (100% castle troops in castles, militia+castle troops in cities)
Not to mention, in terms of gameplay, one other fact: the AI, from what I can tell, NEVER converts castles to cities. So, the AI most likely, probably never, plays with a ratio of 4 or 5 cities to every castle.
Now we're talking, and yes, the AI never switching its castles to cities and vice versa is at a big financial disadvantage, both because of this and because castles don't make money, something that you can work around in two ways : either don't do it yourself either (meh. Double meh. Me wants the Oslo trade !), or give the AI free cash every turn (as in LtC I believe).
If you reaaaally want to slice hairs, I suppose you could write a script which, at the end of every turn, checks the castles' upkeep costs for the AI and gives it back to them at the start of their next turn, but since the AI hardly ever garrisons and always uses all the units it can spare from PO duties as soon as it's at war, most players just up the king's purse of all factions they're not playing by 5, 10 or 100 thousand florins. Sinan gives them all a million from time to time I believe.
@Lusted : see the verbal violence inherent in the system !
or give the AI free cash every turn (as in LtC I believe).
Not in the current LTC, but a small version of the money scripts going to be back in the next version.
@Lusted : see the verbal violence inherent in the system !
Bloody peasant!
The ingame doesn't really have much link to histroy though does it? Ingame Castles have the mcuh better troops for most factions and better defenses, but they don't get free upkeep or as much income. Cities have the free upkeep units, some agents and more income but not as good units and less defenses.
With your system, castles would have the best troops AND free upkeep so they don't need the extra income. and cities get more income but spend it on upkeep. So apart from a few agent types why go for cities?
Yeah, that may overbalance things in favor of castles - too much of an edge over cities. I do think it's obvious that something is amiss though in the current system: people commonly accept that you need 4 or 5 cities to every 1 castle in order to maintain a good economic balance (i.e. have good prospects to expand and survive efficiently and effectively). The map, however, does not have even nearly this ratio of cities to castles on it. The end result is all this swapping of castles to cities, which if the two are balanced against each other should be absolutely unnecessary - you should be able to play about as well with either one, they should just contribute in different ways. The problem is that cities are far out in the lead, and not only does it hurt the AI which cannot fix the poor castle-heavy (by the 5:1 rules - it really is about a 50/50 split probably) situation it constantly finds itself in, but it also screws up the faction balance by yielding too many benefits to factions that are city-oriented in troop production: the city then has all economic benefits AND all military ones. Milan comes to mind here, and the problem is worse because it borders many castle-using factions that are crippled by the relative under-balance of their many castles.
But that's exactly my point, if you add in free upkeep to castles you don't need cities as even if castles have low income a lot less of your money is going towards military units because of free upkeep in castles.
Huh? Don't need cities? That's just not right. Maintenance on field stacks is still a significant portion of military expenditure, and the low income of a castle is still a big drawback in that regard - it just is not good at sponsoring a stack abroad. Castle units are not always parked in castles receiving free upkeep, you know. In order to pay for all those high quality units your castles will pump out, you'll need cities more than ever to keep up with the increased burden. The point is that free upkeep in castles only makes it more viable to not immediately turn every castle in sight into a city. You still have to deal with the increased costs associated with the castle troops it will produce, which remain just as prohibitive for every facet except free upkeep garrison duties.
As you are talking about it you would remove the free upkeep slots for cities. Then you're basically going to have the option between a multi walled castle with free upkeep high quality troops, and you could survive on castle income because oft he huge chunk of upkeep the free castle units would remove. Or You could go with cities who don't have free upkeep units, don't have great defenses, and who's income you don't need as mcuh anymore.
IMO it is likely that cities become too hampered without free upkeep. It would require testing to see, though - it might be what's needed to make the choice between cities and castles a worthwhile one.
Basic math :
The "proper" ratio is 4-5 cities per castle, +- geography. These cities need at least the amount of free upkeep militias they get, if not more (a lot more) to put up with the High Taxes needed to maintain multiple full stacks of castle troops.
5*5*125 = 3125 florins per turn per 5 provinces you own.
By the time you're about to win the campaign (40 regions), that's 25.000ish florins per turn. I'd hardly call those free garrisons "hardly a dent in the income you get", especially considering that once you move past tech tiers 1 or 2, it's not uncommon for even the most basic of buildings to cost 5-10k.
EDIT : And Lusted once again beat me to the point. But remember folks, he's the Man now ! Look, look, I'm being repressed by The Man !
Your basic math, while correct, is not definitive in any regard. It merely reflects the state of the game currently. There's nothing correct or right about needing 4-5 cities per castle, and frankly I think we should try to base the balance between the two settlement types on the actual facts of the campaign map when play begins, as the vast majority of settlements will remain what type they start out as initially, since the AI never flips them. A system that benefits a ratio other than what the game naturally provides to the AI is guaranteed to hamper the AI as long as it can't/won't change the ratio, and so such systems should be avoided at all costs.
But that's the whole point of not giving them those free upkeep slots : castles are supposed and designed to be money sinks, and cities money makers. The 4-to-1 ration being a rough guesstimate of how to break even while still keeping decent garrisons all across your borders (100% castle troops in castles, militia+castle troops in cities)
The inherent greater expense of castle troops and its lower income are, combined, MORE than enough to ensure that a castle is never as economically viable as a city. The further economic crushing caused by their lack of free upkeep, however, just ensures that you can't viably keep many castles at all, and is wholly unnecessary as a drawback.
Now we're talking, and yes, the AI never switching its castles to cities and vice versa is at a big financial disadvantage, both because of this and because castles don't make money, something that you can work around in two ways : either don't do it yourself either (meh. Double meh. Me wants the Oslo trade !), or give the AI free cash every turn (as in LtC I believe).
You missed the far more obvious answer of "try to make the two settlement types equally viable, just in different ways." It seems clear from the balance of the 2 types on the map that they are intended to be more or less equal, and yet it is painfully obvious in practice how much better a city is to have than a castle. If you need evidence that cities are better, I cite the oft-quoted 4+-to-1 ratio everyone says you should have of cities to castles. If they were really balanced, you'd be quoting a 1-to-1 ratio, not this 4-to-1 BS. Free upkeep in castles is, therefore, a step toward balance since it improves castles. Since it affects all factions it is a fair change to implement, however it helps the AI as well because it marginalizes the player advantage from swapping settlement types around. As a result, there is little question that it is a very good change to make for the benefit of gameplay overall.
The end result is all this swapping of castles to cities, which if the two are balanced against each other should be absolutely unnecessary - you should be able to play about as well with either one, they should just contribute in different ways.
This is something i've been working on for the next LTC, the city/castle balance. Im gonna be boosting the income from trade, and trade income from markets so you don't need as many settlements, and reducing the construction time and seriously reducing the cost of low level barrakcs, stables and ranges to balance things out more.
The end result is all this swapping of castles to cities, which if the two are balanced against each other should be absolutely unnecessary - you should be able to play about as well with either one, they should just contribute in different ways.
This is something i've been working on for the next LTC, the city/castle balance. Im gonna be boosting the income from trade, and trade income from markets so you don't need as many settlements, and reducing the construction time and seriously reducing the cost of low level barrakcs, stables and ranges to balance things out more.
Kobal2fr
06-01-2007, 18:16
but it also screws up the faction balance by yielding too many benefits to factions that are city-oriented in troop production: the city then has all economic benefits AND all military ones. Milan comes to mind here, and the problem is worse because it borders many castle-using factions that are crippled by the relative under-balance of their many castles.
Yeah, the Milanese XBow Militia is definitely too good, and should probably be much more expensive and/or toned down.
I wouldn't say that the better quality of Italian militias is that much of an imbalanced advantage though. I mean, sure, early on they're very good compared to the Town Militias or even unarmored Sarges the other factions have to make do with, but they're still mere spearmen, and they'll get butchered by DFKs/archers/xbows/good cav like every other spearmen out there.
So Milan/Venice/Sicily don't need so much castles early on, this is true, but they'll want to switch over to castles in time (which is the opposite of what most other factions go through - fight with castle troops early in the campaign, then a gradual switch to city professionals).
Your basic math, while correct, is not definitive in any regard. It merely reflects the state of the game currently. There's nothing correct or right about needing 4-5 cities per castle, and frankly I think we should try to base the balance between the two settlement types on the actual facts of the campaign map when play begins, as the vast majority of settlements will remain what type they start out as initially, since the AI never flips them.
The inherent greater expense of castle troops and its lower income are, combined, MORE than enough to ensure that a castle is never as economically viable as a city. The further economic crushing caused by their lack of free upkeep, however, just ensures that you can't viably keep many castles at all, and is wholly unnecessary as a drawback.
There is balance, I think, only not on mere economical grounds. Cities fall without much help, but a manned castle is nigh untakeable (never mind the better units, that's just the icing on the 10ft wide stone cake). Castles also have many advantages over cities : they never ever revolt, they don't need govenors which leaves your family free to crusade and conquer, they're hard to spy on and to assassinate in as well, don't really *need* to be garrisoned unless actively threatened, make just as much cash as cities on farming and mining...
In fact, I'm pretty confident one could play a successfull vanilla game without switching over any settlement. The 4:1 is hardly a rule or even a real need, it's just faster/optimized/more comfortable/more expedient to do so. I know I hardly ever respect that 4:1 ratio myself, as I most often convert anything "inside" the realm to a city, and any province bordering another faction to a castle, which more often than not means a 50/50 ratio (if not worse) anyway, only without the useless castle 3 lightyears away from the front the AI is saddled with.
This is something i've been working on for the next LTC, the city/castle balance. Im gonna be boosting the income from trade, and trade income from markets so you don't need as many settlements, and reducing the construction time and seriously reducing the cost of low level barrakcs, stables and ranges to balance things out more.
That seems considerably less optimal than simply granting castle units free upkeep. In particular raising city income even further seems unlikely to give balance: you could keep more castles, but you get even more benefit from having extra cities around when you convert them, which actually makes the player/AI gap wider, not smaller as free castle upkeep would. Making the cities better able to support the castles is not an answer: you must make the castles better able to support themselves.
Reductions to the military building costs in castles could be partly effective in the same economic sense that free upkeep is, but it lacks the staying power and constance of the free upkeep feature. Free upkeep is active every turn, and so represents a much more predictable and more controllable measure to bridge the city/castle gap, which is exactly what we want: something easily predicted and controlled. Furthermore it increases as the campaign moves on (because castles expand and get more slots) so it is a more robust way to fix the problem, and likely gives a far better city-to-castle balance over the entire length of the campaign as a result.
But i don't like the idea of free upkeep as something for both cities and castles, having it for only cities helps emphasis the differences between the 2.
With reducing the building times and constructions time for military buildings you can get access to better troops quickly, and with increased income from cities you won't need as many cities to support your castle produced troops.
I like the idea of having free upkeep units in castles.
What you all forget is that a lot of the castles (well all coastal ones) are much better economically than they should be because as it is designed they shouldn't have sea trade routes, which makes up about a third of their total income.
It would also probably counter-balance the castle-dependant factions a bit when compared to militia factions like Milan who can just field a much larger army without paying all that much, which isn't too sensible to me, because they should by rights use mercenaries who were a lot more expensive than feudal units.
Anyways, in my opinion castles are very much underpowered - I never have more than 2 or 3 of them unless I play a blitz game where I don't bother building anything anyways, just because you can recruit so many units in a single castle and they just don't make the cut economically. Giving them free upkeep instead of the cities would mean it'd become at least somewhat interesting to have castles at your borders rather than cities for defense purposes.
Furious Mental
06-01-2007, 19:02
The distinction between made between feudal and militia obligations is frankly quite ahistorical. In times of peace neither feudal knights and sergeants nor militia were needed and they were not called up. Who garrisoned a castle if there was no threat in the vicinity? Practically no one. Often it was just the castellan, a janitor, and a chaplain/ cleric. In any case no castellary had enough land to support many knights- in fact to maintain a permanent garrison of knights the size of even one unit of them in MTW 2 would have meant hiring mercenary knights from elsewhere and that was a gargantuan expense. Gargantuan expense though it was, nonetheless, it was commonly done in trouble spots and for example Henry II, Richard I and John of England all preferred simply to have "knights" commute their military obligations for a money payment which was used to hire mercenaries. The only other way to support them was to let them subject the surrounding countryside to a regime a robber baronage, which was commonly done by all belligerents in the Hundred Years War. In other words, the notion of feudalism providing kings or nobles with a "free" army is quite artificial.
Like militias feudal troops were called up when they were needed- so perceive both of them that way in MTW 2- the militias or knights or whatever you make "free upkeep" were rarely actually standing on the walls at all times, but because they live there and owe military obligations to the castellary or community they can be raised very quickly and so for all intents and purposes are ever present. But the free upkeep deal is far more logical for cities because a city could raise hundreds or thousands or tens of thousand of militia from its own population, whereas the number of knights enfeoffed on any given castellary could probably be counted on your fingers (and in fact after subenfeoffment and partition divided knights' fees between smaller landholders alot of castellaries had "knights' fees" but no actual knights in them).
Agent Smith
06-01-2007, 19:29
Well, maybe this will be a simple modification that would help the AI deal with the 1:1 castle to city ratio and make things more equal:
The income you get from a province should be set, no matter what the building type is in the province. That way, it's actually the province that you are after and not necessarily what type of settlement it is. This would reward the player/AI with the most TERRITORY, not the most cities.
So, couldn't this be easily done by removing the castle modifiers in descr_settlement_mechanics.xml? For instance, the SIF factor for trade in castle settlements is cut in half from what a city would be. Making it 1.0 would make castle base value the same as city base value. However, cities would still have an economic advantage because of their ability to build the trade buildings.
Then, it won't matter if a faction builds their better troops in cities. Being able to build their better troops in cities just gives more incentive for them to have cities, while making castle income higher (instead of the tedious work of adding free upkeep slots and the like) would make castles more worthwhile all around, for troops and for their better defensive abilities. Just because some factions like the Italians recruit better troops in cities doesn't mean the castle factions should be so heavily penalized.
Agent Smith
06-01-2007, 19:37
The distinction between made between feudal and militia obligations is frankly quite ahistorical. In times of peace neither feudal knights and sergeants nor militia were needed and they were not called up. Who garrisoned a castle if there was no threat in the vicinity? Practically no one. Often it was just the castellan, a janitor, and a chaplain/ cleric. In any case no castellary had enough land to support many knights- in fact to maintain a permanent garrison of knights the size of even one unit of them in MTW 2 would have meant hiring mercenary knights from elsewhere and that was a gargantuan expense. Gargantuan expense though it was, nonetheless, it was commonly done in trouble spots and for example Henry II, Richard I and John of England all preferred simply to have "knights" commute their military obligations for a money payment which was used to hire mercenaries. The only other way to support them was to let them subject the surrounding countryside to a regime a robber baronage, which was commonly done by all belligerents in the Hundred Years War. In other words, the notion of feudalism providing kings or nobles with a "free" army is quite artificial.
That is simply untrue, but I think you are mistaking the feudal garrison duty. The kinghts weren't required for garrison in every castle/motte and bailey throughout the entire land, only the important Baronial (i.e., the highest landlords in the kingdom) and Royal castles. And, those castles were always well garrisoned, early on by feudal knights. Later, when Kings began moving towards indentured service contracts and keeping a personal household guard, the duty was less and less important. However, in the earlier periods this was not the case. If field armies were needed, these knights would be released from their duty and their place would be taken by freeholders and/or townsfolk.
Contrary to what you said, outside invasion wasn't the only threat to medieval landlords and kings. They needed those garrisons for some very good reasons.
Kobal2fr
06-01-2007, 19:40
But i don't like the idea of free upkeep as something for both cities and castles, having it for only cities helps emphasis the differences between the 2.
With reducing the building times and constructions time for military buildings you can get access to better troops quickly, and with increased income from cities you won't need as many cities to support your castle produced troops.
Then a possible idea (but admitedly, one I've not thought through at all, I'm just flinging it as it strikes me) would be to give the polar opposite to castles : free units ! As in, units costing 0 to buy, but with a normal or perhaps higher than average upkeep.
They'd have to be low to medium-level troops only (like unarmored sarges, or non-pavise X-bows), replenish slowly and have a limited max pool, but could be summoned instantly to defend a castle, no matter how bad the economy. Heck, you could survive with nothing BUT castles as your treasury spirals ever downwards to set new records in the negative.
EDIT : (of course, one would also have to add in the "Lombardian bankers are after you !" event in such a case :p )
(plus it would satisfy the OP and his "knights were supposed to serve at least 40 days for free", I suppose.)
Furious Mental
06-01-2007, 19:47
No, it simply is true. You can go and read the contemporary accounts and records and see for yourself. Even in war time alot of important castles had minimal garrisons because castles were formidable enough that a very small but vigilant garrison could hold off a much larger force, and a large garrison needed lots of supplies, which meant it lasted less time in a siege and was harder to support on the surrounding countryside when not besieged. To take the example of England in the High Middle Ages, in the First Barons' Wars only Dover had a garrison of the size you see in MTW2- most other castles, including some that successfully withstood escalades for months, had garrisons that were tiny by comparison- in one case 13 men. The same was true in the Hundred Years War, which is why even free companies numbering less than 20-50 men found it easy to simply climb into castles at night and take over them if the nightwatch was lazy or simply absent, and then hold such castles for years on end. Indeed, garrisons numbering the hundreds were found to be a drawback, as was demonstrated in the purging of the free companies from Champagne in 1359- these garrisons were simply too large to sustain themselves and had to vacate their fortifications and face the numerically superior French. In peacetime garrisons were even smaller or non-existent altogether even in important castles, and the only place where there were really permanent garrisons were in the marches. In England Dover was an exception because it lay in the path of any force coming across the Channel. But for a king or a baron to fill up a castle with soldiers in peacetime was a serious provocation, indeed the only new royal stone castle built in England in the reign of Richard I was in response to that sort of conduct by one of his earls. To rely on feudal obligations to do that also went way over what the king or nobility was considered to be entitled to do. People talk about knight service as though it was inviolable and entirely at the discretion of said lord or king. Quite the opposite. Even when fighting a hated enemy like the Scots Edward I had to send his lieutenants to plead his case for war before county courts in the northern shires of England just to raise the forces he needed. If he had asked hundreds of knights simply to turn up at a royal castle just for kicks he wouldn't have gotten far. To maintain a large and permanent garrison generally meant relying on stipendiary troops who would serve as long as they were paid and didn't care about being separated from an estate. They might be part of a royal or baronial military household or a mercenary company, but were patently not serving under the obligation of knight service. As such it cost vast sums to sustain large garrisons and there was little point in incurring the expense during peacetime. As I said above a tiny garrison was usually perfectly adequate both for protecting the castle and patrolling the castellery (one only needs to read accounts of the massacre of the French Jacques to know how easily a small but experienced military unit could crush spontaneous uprisings which lacked proper strategic and tactical leadership), and a large garrison was usually just cumbersome.
Agent Smith
06-01-2007, 20:02
No, it simply is true. You can go and read the contemporary accounts and records and see for yourself. Even in war time alot of important castles had minimal garrisons because castles were formidable enough that a very small garrison could hold off a much larger force, and a large garrison needed lots of supplies, which meant it lasted less time in a siege and was harder to support on the surrounding countryside when not besieged. To take the example of England in the High Middle Ages, in the First Barons' Wars only Dover had a garrison of the size you see in MTW2- most other castles, including some that successfully withstood escalades for months, had garrisons that were tiny by comparison- in one case 13 men.
"Knights were also obliged to serve in the garrisons of royal and baronial castles and, although service in both the field and a castle was not really practicable, many knights found themselves obliged to fulfil both duties. The period of service in a garrison varied from two weeks to two or three months, the shoreter period usually being served more than once a year, and a rotation of knights ensured the castle was always well garrisoned."
-Terence Wise
Medieval Warfare
Terence Wise has written a lot of books about medieval warfare and is pretty knowledgeable on the subject:
http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=70864
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/002-1224658-6583247?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Terence%20Wise
But i don't like the idea of free upkeep as something for both cities and castles, having it for only cities helps emphasis the differences between the 2.
With reducing the building times and constructions time for military buildings you can get access to better troops quickly, and with increased income from cities you won't need as many cities to support your castle produced troops.
I don't particularly like the idea of removing any differences between the two either, but I don't see anything else that can get the job done without compromising some other aspect of their differences, and those things would generally not do it as well either.
Concerning your notion that increased city income will mean you need less cities to support castle troops, I will again point out that there is a difference between needing less of something and in fact not benefiting at all from having more. The latter is what needs to be done to fix the disparity between the human's situation versus that of the AI, and your proposed city income fix will instead mean the player can benefit a lot more from flipping castles to cities. That the player doesn't need to do so is a moot point: you don't need to even now, it is just a good idea economically. How much more of a good idea will it be when cities make even more money??? By increasing city income you are actually making castles even less important, and also making the problem between the two settlement types worse, not better.
So to recap, I am looking at this as primarily an issue of players being able to gain tremendous advantage from doing something the AI cannot - flipping a castle to a city. That fact that you should do so to play optimally is a clear indicator that castles are underpowered by comparison, and the change you've suggested, Lusted, to have a city be able to support even more castles and make more money, really only serves to make the cities even more overpowered. If it remains gainful (and by your method even more so) to convert a castle to a city, players will continue to do so as much as possible, and that will continue to mean the AI is disadvantaged by it, and more so the more powerful a city is by comparison. The only real fix is to actually make them balanced somehow, and raising city income is exactly the opposite of that.
I've been reading this thread with interest and thought I'd write my opinions... :book2:
Well, first, I think it's hard to define how the medieval military system actually worked. It probably was not similar everywhere. When you state historical facts I'd like to know what country you are talking about, for example. Things certainly were quite different in Spain, Denmark and Egypt. Still, in MTW2 all countries handle the military system in the same way, basically.
I find the game's city-castle system a bit strange. What I've understood is that castles were mostly built to protect cities and towns? When the town was threatened the people would abandon the town and seek refuge in the nearby castle. So it would be cities with castles and cities without castles as well as minor castles without towns nearby to protect. Those lone castles would serve as forward camps or regional control centers.
If that system was transfered to MTW2, there would be towns with castles, town without castles (which the player could still build) and lone castles which the player could build at the localation of his choosing. A bit like the current forts in MTW2. The player could upgrade all castles (and city walls). Those lone castles would have an upkeep cost but no income.
This was just a rough idea. I like the game's city/castle -system good enough.
If I'm wrong about something please correct. Especially the history part.. I hate being wrong.
I'm playing modded game with free upkeep in castles. Nevermind history. It's a game after all and the main point is gameplay (for me at least).
Guru out
Agent Smith
06-01-2007, 20:41
I've been reading this thread with interest and thought I'd write my opinions... :book2:
Well, first, I think it's hard to define how the medieval military system actually worked. It probably was not similar everywhere. When you state historical facts I'd like to know what country you are talking about, for example. Things certainly were quite different in Spain, Denmark and Egypt. Still, in MTW2 all countries handle the military system in the same way, basically.
I completely understand. The book I'm reading and referring to is mainly referring to England, France, and many parts of Germany where Feudalism had been mostly adopted in the section I quoted. Feudalism existed in one form or another across Europe, but to lesser degrees and later development. So, you're right, you can't lump them all together. But, the game is inherently lumping them all together as practicing feudalism, so that's why I'm being general for game purposes.
But you are right. The Italian city states are a good example, where they relied heavily on mercenaries to guard their cities and fight their wars (mostly mercs from Germany), and they occupy another section in the book I'm reading. Russia practiced feudalism to some extent, but the area was so vast that it couldn't be counted on and was difficult to implement in a wide spread fashion. Etc.
Concerning your notion that increased city income will mean you need less cities to support castle troops, I will again point out that there is a difference between needing less of something and in fact not benefiting at all from having more. The latter is what needs to be done to fix the disparity between the human's situation versus that of the AI, and your proposed city income fix will instead mean the player can benefit a lot more from flipping castles to cities. That the player doesn't need to do so is a moot point: you don't need to even now, it is just a good idea economically. How much more of a good idea will it be when cities make even more money??? By increasing city income you are actually making castles even less important, and also making the problem between the two settlement types worse, not better.
But why will i be making it worse? Castles provide the better troops, and if you want to support castle armies and improve settlements you need cash. By making cities produce more cash a single city can better support castle troops, and so you can have more castles. There is just no substitute for castle troops, and unless you weant to spend the game making huge amounts of cash with not much to spend it on there is no reason to have more cities.
So to recap, I am looking at this as primarily an issue of players being able to gain tremendous advantage from doing something the AI cannot - flipping a castle to a city. That fact that you should do so to play optimally is a clear indicator that castles are underpowered by comparison, and the change you've suggested, Lusted, to have a city be able to support even more castles and make more money, really only serves to make the cities even more overpowered. If it remains gainful (and by your method even more so) to convert a castle to a city, players will continue to do so as much as possible, and that will continue to mean the AI is disadvantaged by it, and more so the more powerful a city is by comparison. The only real fix is to actually make them balanced somehow, and raising city income is exactly the opposite of that.
But you see it's actually helping the ai. With it's tendency to very rarerly convert settlements, having cities able to produce more cash the ai can better support it's castle produced troops. Cities make cash, castles produce the best troops. My changes make cities produce more cash, and castles get access to better troops more quickly and cheaply. You will always need castles to produce your best troops, and cities to support them. If cities make more income you can have fewer of them supporting the same amount of troops as a larger amount in vanilla, so you can have more castles.
Furious Mental
06-01-2007, 20:56
It's all very well and good for you to give some general quote from some bloke in a book but can you actually give me some examples of places where every castle was constantly filled with knights even in periods of extended peace? I suspect not but I'm interested to know. As I said above even in times of continuous private and public warfare such as the First Barons' War in England and the Hundred Years War in France it is rare indeed to come across references to large garrisons- because they were invariably expensive and cumbersome and usually unnecessary. In the Hundred Years War the vast majority of warfare was carried on, on both sides, by small groups of soldiers operating out of numerous castles and other strongholds. And as I have pointed out they were expensive because there were only so many feudal soldiers around and as such stipendiary soldiers had to be relied upon. I have never heard of a castle that has had hundreds of knights enfeoffed around it- there is no way that that number of knights could possibly be supported in such a small area. In other words to rely on feudal obligations to maintain large garrisons meant concentrating the soldiers in one place while leaving other places with a skeleton garrison. Aside from that the simple fact, which Wise appears to ignore, is that lords and kings could not just demand knight service when they felt like it even if they were supposedly entitled to. To simply demand that knights turn up at a castle when there was no conflict in progress or imminent was simply to make oneself unpopular. Maybe you are just misinterpreting Wise. Wise says a rotation of knights ensured the castle was always "well garrisoned". It is quite clear that in the opinion of medieval castellans a castle with a very small number of soldiers was still considered to be "well garrisoned" in most circumstances.
But why will i be making it worse? Castles provide the better troops, and if you want to support castle armies and improve settlements you need cash. By making cities produce more cash a single city can better support castle troops, and so you can have more castles. There is just no substitute for castle troops, and unless you weant to spend the game making huge amounts of cash with not much to spend it on there is no reason to have more cities.
But you see it's actually helping the ai. With it's tendency to very rarerly convert settlements, having cities able to produce more cash the ai can better support it's castle produced troops. Cities make cash, castles produce the best troops. My changes make cities produce more cash, and castles get access to better troops more quickly and cheaply. You will always need castles to produce your best troops, and cities to support them. If cities make more income you can have fewer of them supporting the same amount of troops as a larger amount in vanilla, so you can have more castles.
Perhaps I'm not being very clear.
What you've suggested is not helping the AI by comparison. Consider what happens when I continue to employ the strategy I always have: 4 or 5 cities to one castle. I will still have 3 or 4 castles that constantly produce troops, like I always have (though often not constantly in production due to monetary concerns). However, with the increased city income, 4/5 of my settlements will now make loads more cash. By comparison the AI, while gaining the same benefits, does not do so as often or as much because it will not shift its castles to cities, so it is benefited by your change far less than I am, as I will have MANY more cities than the AI will and so I benefit 2 or 3 times as much if cities are improved in any way. So while you could say it helps the AI, it does not help the AI when compared to the player: the player actually gains MORE ground from your proposed change through switching castles to settlements, which is exactly what we're supposed to be trying to reverse.
So what I am saying is that your system doesn't change the optimal ratio of cities to castles much if at all, so it also has failed to address the disadvantage of the AI caused by its many castles being far worse than the cities the player will always switch to having more of. Making it more viable for the AI to have castles by improving cities is not a good approach, since it means improving the cities, and the player can always choose to have more cities than the AI and thereby gain a big advantage. You have to either make cities less useful in order to make it not worthwhile to flip castles into cities, or you have to make castles good enough that you shouldn't necessarily flip them into cities. Either way the behavior absolutely must be prohibitive to the player automatically flipping all spare castles to cities since we want the player to be best off in the same situation the AI is: a 1-to-1 ratio. Since increasing city income actually promotes flipping the castles and thereby wrecks the ideal 1-to-1 ratio, it is quite obviously going to be detrimental to removing the problem.
The basic idea boils down to the fact that true balance is going to happen at the point where the player benefits the most from the ratio of cities-to-castles that exists naturally on the map already, since that will have removed any advantage gained from flipping settlements to cities, and simultaneously proven that castles at that point are as worthwhile to have as cities are. Any other optimal ratio means the player gains an unfair edge by employing that given ratio, and is therefore undesirable as it gives the player an advantage. The corollary is that any other optimal ratio inherently disadvantages the AI since it can't use any non-standard ratio... so getting cities and castles to be equally viable but still different and thus promoting the 1-to-1 ratio will by definition provide players with the most challenging AI since we'll have optimized conditions for the AI's natural state of affairs.
Agent Smith
06-01-2007, 22:34
I quoted a man that has written several books and is well versed in medieval history and warfare, and you are giving information that isn't even cited. It's all well and good to just throw info around. At least I'm giving sources.
That aside, Furious, you're logic is fundamentally flawed because you are holding some notion that there was no need for a garrison during "times of peace." That's not true. The garrison was as much a personal police force as it was a defensive unit.
And you completely missed what I said from Wise's quote, which is what I'm trying to tell you. The feudal garrison duty was mostly to BARONIAL and ROYAL castles, not every castle in the entire kingdom. It was one of the duties a knight owed to his landlord, and the Barons were the highest landlords other than the king.
So, yes, your average, everyday small castle could very well just have maintained a garrison of 10-20 soldiers. However, like I've been trying to say, many, many more were present in the Baronial and Royal castles (i.e., the biggest ones), and they were regularly staffed by many knights and possibly other commoners. And that's what I'm getting at about upkeep. The provinces on the campaign map in M2TW are very large, and only have one representative castle in place.
"The thing to remember is that a castle was a residence as well as a private fortress. Most of the time the castle operated as a small, large, or medium-sized household.
Now, the number varied hugely depending on the size of the castle. During the civil wars of King John's reign, Odiham was defended by a garrison of three knights and ten men-at-arms. And that's about as small as a garrison would get. However, Rochester Castle at the same time was held against King John by a garrison of a hundred knights and men-at-arms and a whole variety of lesser men. So we're looking at garrisons that went from a dozen or so to several hundred, though several hundred would have been exceptional.
Some of the people in the garrison were paid, such as the crossbowmen. Medieval society was a sort of interlocking network of relationships between people based on feudal obligations and on money and very often a bit of both. People who did jobs in the castle were often paid. They might have been local people with a long-standing personal or family relationship with the lord and his family as well."
-Prof. Richard Holmes
British Military Historian
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/trebuchet/castle.html
The larger variety may have been exceptional (i.e., in small numbers of castles), but in M2TW we're talking about ONE castle in an entire large region. Having a garrison of several hundred in a castle is completely historical in that context. And that isn't even subjectively adding together all of those smaller, 10-20 men garrisons as well that would've dotted the country side. Note, even the smallest garrisons had feudal knights that would be in garrison, as was their feudal duty.
At times of war, this could swell even more dramatically, growing larger as time went on and kingdoms moved away from feudalism. In the Livonian War (1557-1569), a total of 11 castles were garrisoned by aroud 3,000 troops. That's about 300 men per castle which, ironically enough, is the same number of troops for 5 DFK in game (if you're playing on a normal setting). That information is present from the Lithuanian Institute of History (http://www.istorija.lt/lim/lesmaitis2004en2.html).
Does that suffice?
What you've suggested is not helping the AI by comparison. Consider what happens when I continue to employ the strategy I always have: 4 or 5 cities to one castle. I will still have 3 or 4 castles that constantly produce troops, like I always have (though often not constantly in production due to monetary concerns). However, with the increased city income, 4/5 of my settlements will now make loads more cash. By comparison the AI, while gaining the same benefits, does not do so as often or as much because it will not shift its castles to cities, so it is benefited by your change far less than I am, as I will have MANY more cities than the AI will and so I benefit 2 or 3 times as much if cities are improved in any way. So while you could say it helps the AI, it does not help the AI when compared to the player: the player actually gains MORE ground from your proposed change through switching castles to settlements, which is exactly what we're supposed to be trying to reverse.
But only if you play like that. I very rarely convert castles to cities and generally maintain a 1:1 ratio, or slightly more cities.
So what I am saying is that your system doesn't change the optimal ratio of cities to castles much if at all, so it also has failed to address the disadvantage of the AI caused by its many castles being far worse than the cities the player will always switch to having more of.
But not all players play like that, and with the changes the player doesn't have to convert to cities as much.
Making it more viable for the AI to have castles by improving cities is not a good approach, since it means improving the cities, and the player can always choose to have more cities than the AI and thereby gain a big advantage. You have to either make cities less useful in order to make it not worthwhile to flip castles into cities, or you have to make castles good enough that you shouldn't necessarily flip them into cities.
But that is already shown in the differences, which are more prominent in my mod due to increased effects of corruption and religion and distance to capital penalty. So because of the good order in castles and large number of recruitment slots and best units are valuable, and in cities, which have increased free upkeep slots and better income but which are less able to deal with the increased effects of unrest.
Either way the behavior absolutely must be prohibitive to the player automatically flipping all spare castles to cities since we want the player to be best off in the same situation the AI is: a 1-to-1 ratio. Since increasing city income actually promotes flipping the castles and thereby wrecks the ideal 1-to-1 ratio, it is quite obviously going to be detrimental to removing the problem.
I don't get why increasing the income is going to flip things too far in favour of cities. You can only use so much money, so having individual cities churning out more cash allows the player to have more castles, more armies and still upgrading settlements without converting large amounts of castles to cities.
so getting cities and castles to be equally viable but still different and thus promoting the 1-to-1 ratio will by definition provide players with the most challenging AI since we'll have optimized conditions for the AI's natural state of affairs.
That's exactly what im going for. I've already moved towards it a bit in LTC with the increased recruitment slots, free upkeep slots, increased DTC and unrest penalties which make castles more useful, and the latest changes will push it further in promoting the difference and moving towards a 1:1 ratio.
But only if you play like that. I very rarely convert castles to cities and generally maintain a 1:1 ratio, or slightly more cities.
...
But not all players play like that, and with the changes the player doesn't have to convert to cities as much.
Everything in the game is subject to "only if you play like that" statements, so it's really not helpful to say that. That something is possible is sufficient enough to imply it matters and should be accounted for, and just because you play the game one way doesn't mean you can design things only accounting for your own play style.
I don't get why increasing the income is going to flip things too far in favour of cities. You can only use so much money, so having individual cities churning out more cash allows the player to have more castles, more armies and still upgrading settlements without converting large amounts of castles to cities.
It's not going to flip things too far in favor of cities: things are already too far in favor of cities, and I'm simply saying increasing city income does nothing helpful to alleviate that. It's attacking the problem from the wrong end. If you make the city more desirable by increasing its income, it stands to reason that having more cities then means you benefit even more from them, so I think your suggestion that raising city income promotes more castles in some way is just poor logic. You can't promote more castles by making cities better, it simply does not work that way. You promote castles by making CASTLES better.
I am trying to understand why you think that will work, though. Are you saying that you think you can pump up the economy so much that the player will need more castles to continue spending away enough money? If so, I doubt the validity of such an argument. A mere handful of castles can recruit enough units over a few turns to make huge dents in your treasury and raise your upkeep thousands of florins, so for this to even be close to having a shot, you have to be talking about astronomical boosts to the cities in order to mandate an equal number of castles, otherwise the income can just be offset by more standing armies everywhere and more recruitment from existing castles. If you do boost the income that much, more problems are born:
- The economic difference between cities and castles is hugely increased, meaning AI economies will suffer horribly if they happen to acquire 2 castles instead of 1 of each, and will thrive ridiculously if they acquire 2 cities. That inconsistency alone is likely enough to sink the idea.
- The AI will become inundated with cash. It has proven that outside of war it can spend little more than it currently makes on VH, so increasing city incomes by much is virtually guaranteed to flood it with florins which has a variety of negative effects like corruption-related VnVs.
- Factions will be way off balance depending on their starting situation. For instance Milan that already makes oodles of cash will make even more, and is almost guaranteed to dominate Europe b/c of its superior starting position.
In contrast, free upkeep in castles avoids those various pitfalls. It actually lowers the economic difference between the two settlement types, promoting better stability no matter which settlement type a faction acquires. The AI gets no cash build-up out of free upkeep either: it simply alleviates what would otherwise be a burden from defending the castle (yet another benefit: we want it to defend castles). There may seem to be little difference, but the AI appears to handle free upkeep far better than it handles increased cash income, so I am counting it as a plus for free upkeep. Lastly, factions will be much more balanced in their starting positions since castles will be in less of a hole economically right off the bat, which helps marginalize the advantage of factions with otherwise-great starting position by giving the previously less-advantaged a more viable start.
If you still think it can work, then hopefully you can write back how you think it can be achieved without any of the pitfalls that seem to be everywhere. I'm certainly interested if you've figured out something I've not thought of to stave off all the problems.
Gaiseric
06-02-2007, 08:37
I agree with alot of the points that were mentioned here. I agree that Historically, except in trouble spots, most garrisons were kept at a minimum to avoid high upkeep- whether that be a soldiers wage, or the cost of his food and lodgings. Since money was in short supply, It makes me wonder wether the local peasents were required to supply these to the garrisons-no matter how large they were. Thus I still think that a few free upkeep slots in castles would be good. The units recieveing free upkeep wouldn't necessarily be garrisoning the castle, but they could represent the amount of men that could be called up under their service contracts to help defend the province that is about to be besieged. Most likely many of these men wouldn't have been in the besieged garrison, but would be outsid the castle, hampering the enemies supplies, making small raids on the enemy, and defending the provincial assets. Either way I really need castle sieges to be more challenging and fun, even if it seems a little ahistorical. The larger, free upkeep, garrisons of a Castle will make it more challenging and more fun to take.
If you decide against adding Free Castle Upkeep Slots, would there be a way to make all the enemy towers shoot at me. Then I will at least feel like I had to fight my way into a Citadel that is only gaurded by one unit. Maybe something can even be added like in MTW1, where my army takes causualties when I besiege a province. Anything to added to provide more realism or more challenge would be great.
As for the player swiching his castles to cities to recieve an unfair advantage: Why dont you balance the map layout a little and not allow the player to convert. Or at least make it an extremly expensive process. This would definatly give castles more emphasis because most factions need them to produce their powerful units. Therefore control of castles would be vital. I know one tactic I use in my campaigns is to take all the enemies castles right away so that they are stuck fighting me with their crappy millitas. Maybe, to make castles more important, they should be the only place that you can recruit siege weapons and maybe ships? Or to lower the city millitia stats so that castle units would be very hard to beat.
Just my 2 cents worth. If you dissagree please let me know.:2cents:
Meh, I'll toss in my two cents. First, I still don't really like the concept of cities vs. castles in the game, but that's just my own deal. Second, I think free upkeep in castles makes a lot of sense. That's why I've given the larger cities and castles larger free upkeep and recruitment slots based on their size, and made just about everything except merc and siege equipment upkeep free when in a properly tech'd-up city/castle. While it does help me out in a way, it really does seem to help out the AI in terms of cash. I also run a version of the "give the AI cash every turn" script to help it out some, which also seems to give it a good boost.
As for the 'castles only stategy' not being economically viable/doable/smart, that's just tripe. Even before I decided to go with the free upkeep slots deal, I ran a campaign as the English where I convered EVERY city I could into a castle and left it that way. Ended up 'winning' by turn 100, and owned 99.9% of the map except Rome by turn 150ish, and all but about 15 settlements were castles, and all of my castles had at least 8 DFKs as garrison. I was swimming in cash by turn 40 or so and was having trouble keeping my treasury under 50k each turn about turn 70ish, before finally deciding to periodically dump it all on the Popester. Going with all castles is perfectly doable, you just don't get access to the some of the nice city-only units and structures, which depending on your faction may or may not be all that wonderful to begin with.
Everything in the game is subject to "only if you play like that" statements, so it's really not helpful to say that. That something is possible is sufficient enough to imply it matters and should be accounted for, and just because you play the game one way doesn't mean you can design things only accounting for your own play style.
But when modding how the hell do you take into account all the different play styles? You can't, and i don't, as i make the mod for myself.
It's not going to flip things too far in favor of cities: things are already too far in favor of cities, and I'm simply saying increasing city income does nothing helpful to alleviate that. It's attacking the problem from the wrong end. If you make the city more desirable by increasing its income, it stands to reason that having more cities then means you benefit even more from them, so I think your suggestion that raising city income promotes more castles in some way is just poor logic. You can't promote more castles by making cities better, it simply does not work that way. You promote castles by making CASTLES better.
But i have amde castles better, you seem to forget this. with the increased effects of religiou sunrest and distance to capital penalty, and the increased recruitment slots castles ARE better in my mod.
You keep on coming back to the topic of money. If you carry on playing with a 5 to 1 city to castle ratio or something in the next version of LTC you'll end up with more money than you can spend, and as a result lots of bad traits. So you'll want to have more castles, and also with individual cities producing more cash you can support more castles, so you'll want to have more castles to produce more of the best troops.
But i have amde castles better, you seem to forget this. with the increased effects of religiou sunrest and distance to capital penalty, and the increased recruitment slots castles ARE better in my mod.
Will this include the option to switch large and huge cities back into castles? I shudder at the thought of controlling Antioch and Baghdad from Europe if the distance to capital penalty is increased.
No not atm, might look into it.
Furious Mental
06-02-2007, 16:23
"you are giving information that isn't even cited."
Alot of what I have said is not susceptible to citation. How can I cite proof that you will rarely come across references to large garrisons in the Hundred Years War except by telling you to read to every primary source out there?
But as far as some of the more specific claims go, well.
Regarding the small size of most free companies in the Hundred Years War, see the account of the Bascot de Mauleon in Froissart's Chronicles, and also Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years in the French Countryside. For the suppression of the free companies in Champagne and potentially cumbersome nature of large garrisons, The Hundred Years War vol II by J Sumption. Wright's book remarks extensively on the difficulty of supporting large garrisons and the expedient which even small ones had to turn to of extorting or pillaging the surrounding area to the point of being unproductive.
Regarding Edward I and the difficulty which even he had raising troops with feudal obligations, Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience. Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings by Morillo goes through in detail the reliance of the Norman kings, especially William I (who probably relied more than any other monarch on castles for internal security) chiefly on stipendiary soldiers to provide substantial garrisons for strategic castles both in England and Normandy.
Now I don't like to go around forums dropping names but if you imply that I'm pulling stuff out of thin air well I don't have much choice.
Now it is true that in the space of a province in MTW 2 you would find castles with substantial numbers of soldiers inside them. But frankly I think you are confusing garrisons and feudal soldiers with military households. If there was a baron or a king in a castle there would always be an unusually large number of soldiers there, but their job was not to garrison the castle except as an incident of accompanying said baron or king. And their obligations were personal, not feudal, in nature. And they did have to be paid. In fact Orderic Vitalis referred to the armies which Henry I collected from his large garrisons in Normandy (which were drawn from his military household, not feudal soldiers) as "mercenarii". Brown in English Castles makes the point that this is why most castles in peacetime were nearly empty most of the time- whoever owned the castle was elsewhere. I suppose if you aggregated all the feudal soldiers in a province you would get a reasonable number of man hours served in garrisons. But then again you would get the same result aggregating all the militia in cities and towns, so back to the original point at last, I don't see why cities shouldn't get free upkeep units. My own view is that free units should depend on public order in a province and should also impact on public order in a province, which would actually reflect the political dimension of enforcing military obligations.
Agent Smith
06-02-2007, 18:04
"you are giving information that isn't even cited."
Alot of what I have said is not susceptible to citation. How can I cite proof that you will rarely come across references to large garrisons in the Hundred Years War except by telling you to read to every primary source out there?
But as far as some of the more specific claims go, well.
Regarding the small size of most free companies in the Hundred Years War, see the account of the Bascot de Mauleon in Froissart's Chronicles, and also Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years in the French Countryside. For the suppression of the free companies in Champagne and potentially cumbersome nature of large garrisons, The Hundred Years War vol II by J Sumption. Wright's book remarks extensively on the difficulty of supporting large garrisons and the expedient which even small ones had to turn to of extorting or pillaging the surrounding area to the point of being unproductive.
Regarding Edward I and the difficulty which even he had raising troops with feudal obligations, Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience. Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings by Morillo goes through in detail the reliance of the Norman kings, especially William I (who probably relied more than any other monarch on castles for internal security) chiefly on stipendiary soldiers to provide substantial garrisons for strategic castles both in England and Normandy.
Now I don't like to go around forums dropping names but if you imply that I'm pulling stuff out of thin air well I don't have much choice.
Oh, so EVERY source ever agrees with you? Some of the things you said, like very specific historical information that you are asserting, isn't subject to citation? Get off your high and mighty horse for a moment and read through everything I said. I didn't even CARE that you weren't citing sources. I don't expect people to do that online. It is only when I pull a very specific reference from a military historian to show what I mean while you mock it as if it isn't worth a dime that I pointed it out.
In fact, I have cited two military historians that are saying the exact same thing I am, so I really don't even get what you are arguing about.
Now it is true that in the space of a province in MTW 2 you would find castles with substantial numbers of soldiers inside them. But frankly I think you are confusing garrisons and feudal soldiers with military households. If there was a baron or a king in a castle there would always be an unusually large number of soldiers there, but their job was not to garrison the castle except as an incident of accompanying said baron or king. And their obligations were personal, not feudal, in nature. And they did have to be paid. In fact Orderic Vitalis referred to the armies which Henry I collected from his large garrisons in Normandy (which were drawn from his military household, not feudal soldiers) as "mercenarii". Brown in English Castles makes the point that this is why most castles in peacetime were nearly empty most of the time- whoever owned the castle was elsewhere. I suppose if you aggregated all the feudal soldiers in a province you would get a reasonable number of man hours served in garrisons. But then again you would get the same result aggregating all the militia in cities and towns, so back to the original point at last, I don't see why cities shouldn't get free upkeep units. My own view is that free units should depend on public order in a province and should also impact on public order in a province, which would actually reflect the political dimension of enforcing military obligations.
I am not confusing anything. It is what it is, and it is exactly what I said. The Baronial and Royal castles were always well garrisoned. Portions of those garrisons were under feudal obligation (i.e., why they should have free upkeep slots). The ENTIRE garrison wasn't under feudal obligation. Like the one quote I already put down, it was a mix of feudal obligation, paid soldiers, or a combination of the two (such as knights who were garrisoning past their obligation).
Household troops were a later development in most of feudal France and England when the Feudal system began breaking down further and there was more of a move towards fielding larger amounts of mercenaries, which didn't really begin (in England at least) until the 14th century, when Free Companies began to emerge with greater force. In fact, you continually keep referring to the 100 Years War, which didn't begin until the middle of the 14th century, well over half way through the M2TW timeline. M2TW starts in 1080.
Prior to the 100 Years War, the Kings of feudal systems didn't nearly have enough money to just hire out garrisons and relied on feudal obligations to at least fill part of the roles. Furthermore, you also still seem to be acting under the assumption that a garrison did nothing but mill about inside a castle. I'll quote another section from Wise:
"It is important to remember that the castle was not a place of refuge, but a center of military power from which the surrounding countryside could be dominated, or a vital pass commanded, or a seaport or trade route along a river be protected. Therefore, a castle's garrison frequently contained a large proportion of mounted men who patrolled an area with a radius of about 30 miles. In times of siege, sorties were often made from postern gates, for even under siege conditions the castle maintained the ability to take agressive action."
Furthermore, again, of course the smaller castles in the kingdom weren't heavily garrisoned, which is what I think you are confusing. That's perfectly logical. Often times, smaller fortifications and castles were the home of lesser nobility, so it was their own personal duty to protect their own homes. It was the highest landlords, the Barons and Kings, which required the feudal duty of garrison to the largest extent.
Like I've also been trying to say, the game operates under an assumption that the factions use a feudal system like that of England or France, and those systems relied upon feudal duty to garrison large baronial and royal estates. I've already shown that larger castles could have upwards of several hundred men in garrison. So, that, including the aggregate of the entire countryside in a game province, can add up to a lot of soldiers. At least you seem to agree with me on that. That's all I'm trying to point out: castles deserve at least some upkeep slots to represent the obligation of feudal duty to garrison castles of the largest size.
As for cities, there were no "free" militias. Cities, like those in Italy, didn't operate on the principles of feudalism like the rural areas where castles were the center of power. In almost all cases, especially in Italy, their "police" forces were paid individuals because the city had enough wealth to afford it, unlike feudal lords. Sure, people could be called up in times of war, but they weren't policing the streets simply because they could be called up. Why do you need a city garrison in the first place? Primarily to deal with public order. Therefore, that is why I think cities should not have free upkeep.
I hope that at least clears everything up, and I apologize if I'm coming across harshly. I just run across this online all of the time, which is the whole:
"Oh yeah? Cite it!"
"Ok, here you go."
"Well, those aren't good enough."
Endless circle. You asked for sources, and I gave you several that stated what I am saying. And it's hard to have the conversation, too, when you keep focusing on the 100 years war in the middle of the 14th century when I'm talking generally about the game starting in the 1080 period.
Oh well, rant over. Accept it for what it's worth. I suppose we should just leave it and let the peanut gallery figure out what they agree with (if they are even reading our discussion at all).
Will this include the option to switch large and huge cities back into castles? I shudder at the thought of controlling Antioch and Baghdad from Europe if the distance to capital penalty is increased.
Sorry mate, not possible. I tried to add that same feature, the game ignores any convert_to statements for stone walls on up when trying to make them convert to castles.
Agent Smith
06-02-2007, 20:38
Sorry mate, not possible. I tried to add that same feature, the game ignores any convert_to statements for stone walls on up when trying to make them convert to castles.
I'm not sure that it would be prudent to drive tens of thousands of people from their homes out into the countryside, anyway :laugh4:
I'm not sure that it would be prudent to drive tens of thousands of people from their homes out into the countryside, anyway :laugh4:
Chivalrous weenie! :skull: :laugh4:
Agent Smith
06-03-2007, 00:24
Chivalrous weenie! :skull: :laugh4:
So I'm a nice guy...
Plus I don't want those tens of thousands of people knocking on my door when all is said and done. I guess I could always hit the extermination button. One click, that quick!
I thought castles just meant you were focusing on the rural aspect and cities meant you were concentrating on building up the towns. Nobody needs to move house just because you convert Rome into a castle.
I thought castles just meant you were focusing on the rural aspect and cities meant you were concentrating on building up the towns. Nobody needs to move house just because you convert Rome into a castle.
Cities = Give me lots and lots of cash! Also only one set of walls to breech, which is frightfully easy.
Castles = Sit back and laugh whilest your foes toss themselves at your walls. Three full layers of def. @ Citadel level + your best military units = pwnage.
Also to my knowledge Rome starts out as a stone wall city, which cannot be converted to a castle. Once you hit stone walls in a city, that's all she wrote, no going back.
Furious Mental
06-04-2007, 06:38
"Household troops were a later development in most of feudal France and England when the Feudal system began breaking down further and there was more of a move towards fielding larger amounts of mercenaries, which didn't really begin (in England at least) until the 14th century, when Free Companies began to emerge with greater force. In fact, you continually keep referring to the 100 Years War, which didn't begin until the middle of the 14th century, well over half way through the M2TW timeline. M2TW starts in 1080."
The focus on the HYW is not obvious to me. I've given examples that go right from the Norman conquest of England down to the Hundred Years War, which is to say, the whole span of the Middle Ages. Household troops were not a "later" development- they existed long before the hard and fast tenurial obligations of feudalism and they long outlasted it. As I pointed out, the armies of the Dukes of Normandy, and then the Anglo-Norman kings of England, were based on household troops who were almost all stipendiary, and said household troops, along with mercenaries hired on a short term basis, formed essentially all large garrisons in Normandy and England. This is because feudal soldiers simply were not numerous enough and served too little time and disliked being away from their land too much to be of use in that respect.
The fact that you seem to be confusing later military developments such as the expanded magnate affinities and mercenary companies with the ancient military household (which goes right back to the German war band) suggests that we are somewhat at cross-purposes here. Household troops served permanently under a personal obligation. In the 14th century they were supplemented with men retained under contracts of indenture, who could be called up for military service but did not necessarily serve constantly. Mercenary companies were something else altogether- groups of men who relied on constant military service to survive and formed a military enterprise. Such men rarely if ever banded together to form mercenary companies within England but were very common elsewhere Free companies were basically a phenomenon of the breakdown in public order and constant private warfare in places like France, Italy and Spain. Anyway to use the concentric analysis of Bean in From Lord to Patron, the household was the core, the part time retainers were the middling, and mercenary companies were the outermost reaches of a magnate's affinity.
"Prior to the 100 Years War, the Kings of feudal systems didn't nearly have enough money to just hire out garrisons and relied on feudal obligations to at least fill part of the roles. Furthermore, you also still seem to be acting under the assumption that a garrison did nothing but mill about inside a castle."
Feudal troops were often not suitable for long term, large garrisons, for the reasons I gave above. Flash forward from the Norman conquest to the Angevin kings in the 12th/ 13th centuries and you will find that they preferred to simply have landholders owing knight service commute it with a money payment, which money was then used by the kings to hire professionals. The fact that partition had divided knights' fees into plots too small to actually support a knight contributed to this. Aside from that, feudal sergeantry often served no useful purpose in the long term because all sorts of arcane obligations had been worked out when a castle was first built and then ossified when the original sergeant died and his land was devised, alienated, and otherwise split between many others; Coulson in Castles in Medieval Society (in other respects a fairly useless text) gives plenty of examples of ridiculous sergeantries which both the putative sergeant and the castellan preferred to just commute for a cash sum. The royal lieutenants who were the chief military supporters of the Angevins (e.g. William Marshal) also relied on military households of soldiers compensated by wages or money fiefs in a fashion very similar to the Anglo-Norman kings- see Crouch, 'Debate: Bastard Feudalism Revised'. Of that large garrison mentioned above which held Dover for John and Henry III under Hubert de Burgh, it is likely that fewer than a third of them had any tenurial connection to de Burgh at all.
"It was the highest landlords, the Barons and Kings, which required the feudal duty of garrison to the largest extent."
Actually because of their large military households and ability to simply demand money from numerous people lower down the feudal hierarchy instead of actual military service they could and did rely on these permanently serving, chiefly stipendiary soldiers. It was frequently difficult for the higher nobility to collect feudal soldiers in one place because the estates of the higher nobility were often dispersed all over the country. In fact kings distributed land in that way precisely for that reason.
"As for cities, there were no "free" militias. Cities, like those in Italy, didn't operate on the principles of feudalism like the rural areas where castles were the center of power. In almost all cases, especially in Italy, their "police" forces were paid individuals because the city had enough wealth to afford it, unlike feudal lords. Sure, people could be called up in times of war, but they weren't policing the streets simply because they could be called up. Why do you need a city garrison in the first place? Primarily to deal with public order. Therefore, that is why I think cities should not have free upkeep."
In times of war military obligation frequently became, of necessity, universal for the entire male population, for the very simple reason that they often had to defend their community or perish. The Hundred Years War is good example if I may commit an apparently cardinal sin and cite it once more. Now for me the obvious way to reflect this is free militia units.
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