Houserules
Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Recruitment is limited by a) the level of the town and b) the class the unit is drafted from. A level 1 town (-2,000 inhabitants) can support one unit of each type, a level 2 town (2,000 – 6,000) can support two of each, level 3 three units, and so on. Each type can have maximum as many units as its class is from a single town. That would be, 5th class soldiers (all units that can be recruited from a level 1 barracks) can form a maximum of 5 units from each town, men from the 4th class (level 2 barracks) can at maximum field 4 units and so on to the 1st class (level 5 barracks) that can only field one single unit from each city where this type of unit can be recruited.

Example: Gund-î Paltâ are 5th class soldiers. They can form a maximum of 5 units from a single town, but only if that town is level 5 (24,000+ inhabitants). In a level 3 town (6,000 – 12,000) they can form up to three units.

Aznvakan Aspet are 1st class soldiers. They can always only form one single unit in every province they exist, but that already from the smallest village. Why? They are noblemen that hold large estates, large enough to provide them with the wealth they need to maintain their exclusive weaponry and fine horses. Their number in a single province can not be raised because that would require raising the number of estates by reducing the size of the existing ones. With smaller estates they would be no longer able to arm themselves as Kataphrakts.

The same goes for all classes of units: at least one of them can be recruited from each province but there is an overall limit. That means that population growth results first of all in the growth of peasant and levy soldiers. Elites are limited. The idea is also to make all units important even if they are pretty much the same by their stats. Kavakaza Sparabara would be Caucasian peasants, Pantodapoi Hellenized townsfolk. Both are of the same class and have about the same stats, but both are limited what might require recruiting them both at a time. Persian Hoplites are fine, but there can be no more than two per city that can raise them.

I do not keep track of the units’ whereabouts, only about the limit of each per town and how many had been raised there already. Once a unit is raised it might be used ad the king’s wishes, be it a garrison in its hometown, a part of the main army or a garrison elsewhere. When a unit is disbanded, annihilated or merged a province that has already raised units of this type and where not all of these are part of the local garrison gets back a “recruitment slot”.


The military budget is usually ½ of the overall income. If the other half produces a surplus after paying for construction, wages and the like, this can be used to pay for mercenaries.


The characters’ ranking is determined by their standing in the royal court. They get “points” according to the system “The King’s Favourite”. All characters that are of the same ethnicity as the king receive one point. His sons +5 points, grandsons, father, brothers +4 points, in-laws +3 points, uncles and nephews +2 points and cousins +1 point. The also get +1 point per every basic character trait they share with the king (sharp, charismatic, pessimistic, dull, vigorous, etc.). That would be a maximum of twelve points for being his son (+5), of the same ethnicity (+1 default as his son) and have all 6 basic traits the same as the king. To this is added (or subtracted) the character’s influence.

This results in a list, and when ever a post of provincial governor is vacant or an army needs a general the next “free” character from the list gets the job. Only when the king happens to be intelligent I also take a look at the character’s qualification and may pick the second or third form the list if he is really much more qualified for the task. Naturally not all characters do really want all jobs. Characters that are lively and optimistic, and don’t have any negative values in command, troop moral or hit points, in general prefer tasks that include a marital challenge, like an army command or governing a province bordering a hostile faction. Characters that are lazy and pessimistic and don’t have any positive values in military traits try to avoid these posts as much as possible. Characters that are not part of the stirps regia prefer to govern the province they came form or serve in an army that is commanded by an ethnic fellow of theirs.

Young boys of 16 usually start by visiting the royal school in Armavir until they are 20. Afterwards, or even occasionally during this time, they join the army to serve among the Khuveshâvagân, the king’s heavy cavalry. When the king seas them fit they might be given a province to rule. There they speak law in the king’s name, supervise the trade and mining, return taxes to the royal treasury, raise soldiers and enforce the king’s supremacy by crushing any resistance or uprising against the crown. Usually these commissions last a live time. In return these noblemen are required to join the king’s forces whenever he summons them. They are the backbone of his army.



Introduction



Apollonides’ career was outstanding so far. Like his father before him he had joined the army of the Makedonian king in Seleukeia. And like his father, and his grandfather before his father serving the great Alexander, he climbed the ladder very fast. The guards, nothing less, it must have been for him, and now with barley 28 he commanded his own unit of Hypaspistai, the king’s favourites. So it was not surprising for him to be summoned to the royal palace, ordered to pick his men, march out for Assyrie and summon more men from the Satrap in Edessa. With these men he should head into Sophene and siege Karkathiokerta until the main army would arrive. That was three month ago.



When Apollonides arrived in Edessa, proudly presenting the Satrap his written orders to get every man he sees fit for campaign and march them North the disappointment begun. Of cavalry there was little. And the few that were there had to stay because they were the only troopers who were able to establish at least a little order in that large province. Of Klerouchoi there had been some 4,000 men. Apollonides ordered about one third of them to arm themselves with javelins and the rest formed his phalanx, what numbered not more than some 2,500 men. Another day the Satrap paraded about 2,000 Jews in the vast gardens behind his palaces. He advertised them as “fine lads, outstanding fighters, best material I’d had here all those years”. Apollonides picked them learning weeks later that the Satrap had palmed him off his worst troublemakers. When a letter arrived from Seleukeia ordering him to begin his campaign “without further hesitation” Apollonides feared for his career what was outstanding so far. In his desperation he ordered the local Psiloi to be armed, a procedure the Satrap called “exceptional” because it had not been done for decades. At least he wouldn’t have dared to do so, but he again would have been doomed to live among the widows and orphans after the campaign. Not so Apollonides, who scarified to Hermes upon his departure that his travels would never again lead him to Edessa.

Marching out with the first dawn of light, despite being advised not do so during the summer months, Apollonides was leading the march of his Tenthousand. His army was composed of his own 1,500 Hypaspistai, 2,500 Klerouchoi Phalangitai another 1,500 Klerouchoi whom he had armed as Pletasts, 2,000 Jews and some 2,500 Greek citizens of Edessa armed with slings and bows. 500 died the first day. After that Apollonides had them marched at night and rest at day until they reached the foothills not far from Karkathiokerta.



Karkathiokerta, once a Seleucid outpost guarding the entrance of the Mesopotamian lowlands now was an Armenian outpost guarding the foothills of the Caucasus. It was some twenty years ago when the war begun, even though it was the Armenians who called it a ‘war’ while Seleukeia did still classify the bloodshed as ‘rebellion’. The trouble had started after Yervand I had made peace with the Steppe people and subdued the lesser kings in the Caucasus, mainly the Egrisi and the Kartli. Technically Yervand of Armenia was something between a livelong Satrap over Armenia and a very junior partner in an alliance with the Seleucids. And even though king Antiochos in Seleukeia approved of the fact that the danger from the North was banned for the time, he did not agree to Armenia triplicate her lands. A King of Armenia he might have controlled, a king of All-Caucasus he couldn’t. So he named two new kings, Kappadokians, for the thrones of Egrisi and Kartli and sent them north, together with some thousand Greek soldiers to reminded Yervand of who after all was King of Kings.

Yervand killed them all including the two kings-to-be from Kappadokia. That way the war between Armenia and Seleucia begun. Antiochos sent a strong force into the mountains, once he learned of the fate of the former expedition. This force was destroyed too, and the next, and the following, and that after it, and so it went on for some twenty years and more than four dozens battles. Parthia and Pontos, two other client kingdoms to the King of Kings learned that it was save to threaten the Seleucids and started their own campaigns against the giant far in the West and far in the East. Yervand died of old age and his son, Samus, grew old but the war still went on.



Samus even was able to conquer more valleys, Pork Hayk to the West, Sophene to the South and, with Parthia’s help, Adurbadegan to the East. And through all those years the Seleucids kept coming. Army after army was sent to the hills and mountains and valleys of Armenia, and army after army they perished in Armenia. But Apollonides knew, this time it would be different…