The Pet Peeve thread

[Didz]

What bugs me is the composition of rebel armies. I don't consider myself to be an expert for medieval European history, but how often did the knights and other soldiers rebel? Not very often, I think. And yet, the rebel armies in M2TW consist mainly of those troops.

I think you'll find there were a lot of both, though I do think that the game should make a better distinction between the two.

As an example of the distinction take:

The Peasant Revolt 1381
http://www.britannia.com/history/art...ntsrevolt.html
and the revolt led by Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur) in 1403.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Percy

These two rebellions were very different in both nature, composition and threat and that isn't really highlighted in the game very well.

Also the third type of uprising which is implied by the game but not really handled very well is simple brigandry. e.g. bands of redundant soldiers, unemployed mercenaries and outlaws wandering about preying on the local population. e.g. Robin Hood and his associates. The number and strength of these bands ought to be directly related to number of military units disbanded in a given province over recent game turns and/or the number of battles fought in the area.

Another thing, when a city revolts, you just find your troops out of it, and a province lost. How did the rebels manage to do it? Did they, in the middle of the night, carry your sleeping soldiers and their beds outside the city walls??

Possibly.. although its more likely they were woken up and frog-marched out the gate after being given the chance to join the uprising.

Funnily enough I was watching 'Bloody Britain' last night on the TV and they were covering The Peasant Revolt which has some relevance to this discussion. Apparently, the peasants from Kent and the South-East initially massed around Southwark on the south bank of the Thames where they were addressed from a barge on the river by the 14 year old King Richard II. They demanded that the King hand over the corrupt cleric's and ministers who were on the barge with him so that they could be tried and given their just deserts and when the King refused they decided to go and get them themselves.

This involved crossing London Bridge, which at the time was a fortified part of Londons defences guarded by two gatehouses and a draw bridge. In theory, they had no chance of getting across as they had no seige weapons and were only armed with makeshift weapons. But they apparently magically made it, pouring into the city of London, burning palaces like the Savoy and murdering anyone they didn't like the look of, the assumption is that the guards on the bridge must have just lowered the draw bridge and let them in.

Still not satisfied that justice had been done the peasants decided they wanted to get their hands on the ringleaders amongst the corrupt government, namely the Lord Chancellor (Simon of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was particularly associated with the poll tax), and the Lord Treasurer (Robert de Hales, the Grand Prior of the Knights Hospitallers of England). These dignitaries were hidden away in The Tower of London under armed guard and the protection of the King, completely safe and beyond their grasp. That is until the peasants simply walked up to the guards said 'Lets us in mate, we want to kill your boss', at which point the guards simply opened the gates and let them into the Tower. They dragged out all the noblemen and their families hiding inside and proceeded to behead them all at Smithfield.

So, based on that real-life example I think your expecting a but much of your soldiery in such situations, in fact I would argue that the garrision of a settlement that revolts ought to join the rebels. Governments cannot rely upon the dumb loyalty of their national military in situations of civil revolt, thats why many nations retained foriegn mercenaries as bodyguard troops.