Why haven't I ever fought a winter battle in a campain before?

[Graphic]

What's the deal?

[Joshwa]

I havn't fought many either, i think in ye olden times they didnt fight during the winter, only when the weather was fair. I mean, if youre going to die you might at least die on a nice day!

[tigger_on_vrb]

I think if you fight several battles in one turn then the battles cycle through the seasons, you only really notice though if you fight somewhere way up north as the winter in the desert aint much different. I have fought severla winter battles, but they have all been in Scandinavia and the north east of the map.

[ichi]

Normally the third or fourth battle on any one turn will be winter.

ichi

[Graphic]

Ah, I see. Thanks.

[EatYerGreens]

That's interesting, ichi.

I can't say I've ever noticed this before but it's probably down to my playing style where I elect to only commit to one battle per turn and any additional battles are (generally unexpected) actions initiated by the AI.

Until now, I thought the whole winter business was like a leftover from Shogun days, code ported over into the game and then, at some stage, they changed the system to one year per turn and never got around to removing the code for season changes. Good to see it still has a purpose of some kind.

[English assassin]

No, its def more likely if you have multiple battles per turn. Seems to be more likely in VI rather than vanilla too, in my experience

[Patron]

how does fatigue work in snow?

[Graphic]

That's a good question.

[Ghost of Rom]

how does fatigue work in snow?

It reminds me of fighting in the desert but worse. Heavy armor gets fatigued really badly. Running your units will also tire em too fast.

[dgfred]

I had a couple of fights as HRE in Norway before , but I can't remember how many total battles were that turn .

[Graphic]

Hmm. I wouldve guessed all that armor kept them warm lol

[Ironside]

It reminds me of fighting in the desert but worse. Heavy armor gets fatigued really badly. Running your units will also tire em too fast.

The snow isn't too bad, but is it a blizzard .

Had a vinter battle in VI. During the blizzards (it came several) everyone was exhausted on both sides, while some troops did recover when it was clear weather.

[EatYerGreens]

The effect of cold/snow on stamina was more significant in Shogun, with the explantion being that the Samurai armour was typically made up of lots of very small plates, tied to one another with bindings made out of string or leather.

Rainwater will trickle off the plates easily enough, but it would soak into these bindings and would add several pounds of extra weight in a heavy downpour, when the whole suit was taken into account. Snow probably causes similar problems as it melts, though you could equally argue that leather bindings stiffen in the cold, bows are harder to draw, you have to pick your feet up more if the snow's deep and so on. Not to mention the extra energy expended on just keeping warm.

It would be interesting to know if the exhaustion factors were carried over from STW completely unchanged, or if they made allowances for the different styles of European armour - larger plates, fewer bindings and so on.

Then again, mail armour is totally porous, allowing the clothes and padding typically worn under it to become soaked and heavy. Just the large surface area of the mail itself will hang onto a certain quantity of water as well. I wonder if anyone's ever tested this on a replica suit?

I'd extend the fatigue argument to say that choosing 'heavy rain all day' type weather should impact the walk/run/charge speeds of all unit types, maybe only the odd few mph, as they have to trudge through the mud. Horse racing fans make a big deal about the 'going', so it can't be insignificant, even for cavalry. This factor could be used to advantage against highly mobile enemies, for instance.

[Mount Suribachi]

Winter battles are cool. Shoguns were the best though, with the fog and everything.

As someone hinted at earlier in the thread, the campaigning season in mediavel times was spring/summer. All the men had to be back home by September to bring the harvest in. So winter battles, whilst not unknown, were the exception.

I've had them in Britain and Central Europe.

[ajaxfetish]

Another problem with winter campaigns is the grass. With the grass dead there is no fodder for the horses, which is obviously a problem for cavalry, but also effects the entire army as horses are so vital in the supply train, etc. You pretty much need to carry everything you need (food for man and beast, warmer clothing, etc.) with your army, making a winter campaign a logistical nightmare.

[Geezer57]

Normally the third or fourth battle on any one turn will be winter.

ichi

I just had a year with six battles and can confirm Ichi's findings. Four battles were in Northern or Central Europe, the final two were in the Trebizond & Georgia. The third and fourth battles (Europe) were both in snow.

[EatYerGreens]

Another problem with winter campaigns is the grass. With the grass dead there is no fodder for the horses, which is obviously a problem for cavalry, but also effects the entire army as horses are so vital in the supply train, etc. You pretty much need to carry everything you need (food for man and beast, warmer clothing, etc.) with your army, making a winter campaign a logistical nightmare.

Grass dead in winter? Depends which part of the world you're from, I suppose. It slows down its growth to such an extent that it doesn't need weekly mowing, true enough, but it doesn't die and have to re-seed iself.

Crops are another matter entirely, of course. It's normal to plough up the land shortly after harvest time and leave it in that state until time for planting, in the spring. With or without snow on it, ploughed fields are a pain in the neck to walk across and a continuous tripping hazard. Not conducive for horse galloping either, I imagine.

Ok, that's with modern-day mechanical ploughs, I admit. In medieval times they didn't have the tractive power to plough that deep, so they used what's called the 'ridge and furrow' system. The plough cuts a shallow scoop of soil and flops it over on one side. Successive years of this deepens the cuts and raises the ridges, into which you do the planting. That undulating surface would make battle maneuvers just as tricky to negotiate as modern ploughed soil. No doubt battelfield sites were chosen not just for local terrain advantages but because a suitable expanse of fallow ground, or pasture land was available to fight across.

Winter weather is more extreme in the depths of central Europe than it is in Britain France and Spain, which are kept mild by the Gulf Stream. No shortage of green grass around in winter, albeit a touch on the soggy side.

There was a time when, according to climatologists, the Gulf Stream had a bit of a wobbler, changing course for a time and triggering what historians refer to 'the little Ice Age'. I forget the actual dates but, since Britain was the real bell-weather for this effect, you only need to Google {"Ice fair" <space> Thames} to come up with something relevant.

I don't doubt that supply trains existed and that some food items needed to be carried for long distances but there are plenty of instances whereby armies would break up a route-march to make foraging trips - hunting being a popular pastime amongst Royalty and the nobility, after all, but you can bet the lower orders had their poaching skills equally well honed and were capable of looking after themselves. Also, being armed to the teeth, I dare say that they could collectively descend upon the local farmers and requisition whatever fresh produce they took a fancy to. I forget how many cuts of meat you can get off a single cow but it's in the hundreds, isn't it?

Who knows, they may have even had a money chest in the supply train so that they could recompense the farmers for what they took? Wouldn't want to spark a rebellion along what might become their path of retreat, after all!

The problem of provisioning in winter is that all and sundry are banking on sufficient stored food reserves to last them through winter and well into next year. Periods of religious fasting (eg Lent) are timed to coincide with the time of year when stores are getting down to the dregs, in any case. It's the cold weather when you need to eat lots just to burn off calories and create body heat. In spring, it's warm enough to be able to get away with eating less.

To get to the point, an army descending upon a settlement and saying "give us everything that you've got - don't worry, we can pay you in gold" is going to get very short shrift because you can't exactly eat gold. You can't use it to buy replacement goods from the next town either - not at a fair price anyway - because they won't know if they'll have enough to spare either. A travelling army was a genuine threat to the lives of the places they passed through, simply because they could be faced with starvation within weeks, if their stores got used up.

It's at times like these when it becomes tantamount to crossing a desert and the supply train becomes essential. To my mind that would hint that winter battles were only ever made possible by a genuine glut at harvest time. It all had to be eaten within a certain amount of time anyway, so why not use it to provision an army and make an attack at a time no-one in their right mind would have expected?

As if I haven't blathered enough...

I've repeatedly encountered that thing about Roman soldiers being paid in salt (from which we get the word salary), which seems an absurd idea nowadays. However, if your daily meat is 'free range' and costs nothing because you hunt it yourself, the one thing you really need is a preservative for when you can't eat the whole batch of meat at one sitting. Salt is just that.

[Forward Observer]

In case no one has mentioned it, if you play a 3rd or 4th battle around the Mediterranean area--sometimes you get rewarded with a neat weather effect. Your battle will start out with light rain, but after a while the rain will turn into snow flurries---Of course nothing accumulates, but then eventually the snow turns back into rain.

I've only had it happen once or twice in a game, but it is kind of neat that the devs would put a realistic weather effect into the game that is only rarely seen.

Cheers

[Budwise]

Normally the third or fourth battle on any one turn will be winter.

ichi

I've seen first battle, once.

[bretwalda]

I've seen first battle, once.

Was that the only attack? Or the enemy or you retreated without fighting battles earlier? Also if there were more battles afterward were they winter battles, as well? Just interested...