Info about the Barbarian Recruitment

**skeletor** · 07-29-2005, 13:20

It's very hard to determin exactly what kind of structure their army's had. It was not like the organized and specialized army's further south.

The cuntry was built up by partly independent farms (gaard's) sme big and ritch, some small. Every farm wold have slaves/trells (thrall) freed men and the landlords family. They wold allso have a hird (guard of the landlords and their gaard) The size and gear of this hird wold often be relative to the size and richness of the gaard.

The hird (allso known as Karls/Huskarls (house karls) was usually responsible for defence of the gaard, but in times of crises, the workers on the farm wold allso take to arms with whatever skill they had. (hunters = archers, farmers = spearmen aso.) so called bondis (bonde = farmer)

In times of war and defence of the cuntry, The kings and Jarls wold send out massages to all the gaards. the loyal ones wold then show up with their hird, and sometimes allso regular workers, depending on the time of year(somone had to keap the gaard running) and the magnitude of the threat. All together these men wold form the Norse defencive army.

The viking armys, the ones we usually combine with the norse pople, were actually pirates (in norse viking=pirate) and adventurers seeking loot (some working at farms all year, but joining raids in the middle of the summer when the farms didn't need mutch attention. It was these pople who were responsible for most of the grusome raids in Britain and Europe. They allso raided the Norse cuntry's alot. (In norway there were an alarmsystem along the coast using fire in the same way as seen in LOTR: ROTK to be able to respond to the raids.)

The viking armys were ofcourse used politically by The Norse Kings/Jarls/Landlords in war, as merc's, with the promise of loot. The Kings/Jarls/Landlords wold ofcourse jon the vikings with their own men, to get their part of the loot.

In battle, using cavalery wasn't an option. The commun horses used in Scandinavia, and by Vikings, were small strong horses suited for seatravel, and hard work. As ridinghorses big strong horses were seen as good horses, but these were slow, and not suited for fighting like the frankish and aabic ones. Still, norse armys wold have cavalery scouts that could end up in scirmishes. They allso used horses when chasing routed armymen, so some lowlevel cavalery wold be fine.

Thats why i want to see the army as follows:

Lovest level troops: bondi spearmen and archers and spearthsowers

Viking troops: Spearmen, axemen, and archers, maybe allso spearthrowers. More professional then the bondis, but not too well equiped.

Professional army: Geirrmen (spear) karls, huskarls, heavy axemen, aso.

- Its not too easy with the names, but a Karl working for the Jarl/King wold be mutch bether trained and equiped then a Karl working for a lesser landlord, so we shouldn't have one Karl or Hird unit, but have them in ceveral levels.

The special units is easy (Birkebeiners, Berserkers, Jomsvikings) These were known for their special abilitys and devotion to battle.

-Skel-

**Randarkmaan** · 08-01-2005, 15:44

Okay, thanks for clearing that up, I knew there were people who knew more about the viking organization than me...Anyway, Im not entirely sure if the frankish recruitment/unit list that i posted is good for anything else than the late 10-11c as I dont have any books or anything on this subject yet.

**Incongruous** · 08-06-2005, 02:58

Remeber for most units there is no training time, and armour cost and stuff will go into the millitary biuldings rather than the training. Look at the minor adjustments thread for the Call-To-Arms thing. Maybe you have already?
The way I see it with the Call-To-Arms idea Western armies are now reliant on the proto-feudal system as is historically accurate, so now we have the idea of unnproffesional armies. Whereby the player can Call-To-Arms an army for hardly any direct cost, but maintaining that army will cost alot of money because of the Feudal system, and the biulding required to gain such unites e.g latter knights are going to need a collection of higher rung biulidings, will cost alot of money.

**Rodion Romanovich** · 08-06-2005, 12:43

That's right Bopa, my plan too was to give all militia 0 turns training time and low hiring cost but relatively high maintenance cost, while all professionals would cost much to hire and much to maintain. Especially mounted units will cost much to hire and maintain, due to the horses and so on. However, for cultures where horses played a central role and was as natural as sheep and cattle were to west Europeans - I'm of course talking about the various steppe peoples - the horses shouldn't be a nearly as expansive as for western factions, however they shouldn't be as exaggeratedly cheap as horses are in vanilla R:TW, there either.

**Jarlabanke** · 08-06-2005, 18:08

Did the vikings actually have people whose sole purpose was skirmishing with javelins? The sagas gives the impression that their conduct was more like that of the romans, every man has a couple of javelins which are thrown before they engage in close combat. Having separate javeliners might add diversity though.
I'm still wondering what's so special about the Birkebeiners, Heimskringla really doesn't make them look like anything other than a normal vikinga age group/community.

**Rodion Romanovich** · 08-06-2005, 18:15

The birkebeiners are good in close combat but also have bows. There are also some lighter version that are excellent archers but less impressive in close combat. The birkebeiners will also have combat in woods and snow, and they'll probably also be quite fast compared to the heavier infantry.