Unrealistic Water Crossings

[Delta146]

Well, I always imagined that those "ships" are abstractions for entire fleets.

[jirisys]

Well, I always imagined that those "ships" are abstractions for entire fleets.

Or the tall dude is an abstraction for entire armies.

~Jirisys ()

[Delta146]

Well, I meant more in that each ship that you can recruit is actually a little fleet, which is kind of how EB did things anyway since they call them fleets rather than ships.

[Ichon]

Yeah each ship represents several. Rome had hundreds of individual ships at various points in its wars. Would be weird to be required to build each one in the game. In my campaigns building 20-30 "fleets" is a huge naval presence and can be quite costly to achieve. I actually think the costs of most ships initially should be raised but upkeep lowered as regular maintaining wasn't incredibly expensive then but launching and the occasional refits were. Since a small fleet of quiremes costing less than a couple unit of peltasts seems unreasonable.

[jirisys]

Yeah each ship represents several. Rome had hundreds of individual ships at various points in its wars. Would be weird to be required to build each one in the game. In my campaigns building 20-30 "fleets" is a huge naval presence and can be quite costly to achieve. I actually think the costs of most ships initially should be raised but upkeep lowered as regular maintaining wasn't incredibly expensive then but launching and the occasional refits were. Since a small fleet of quiremes costing less than a couple unit of peltasts seems unreasonable.

Nevermind the ship itself. What of the crew?

~Jirisys ()

[Populus Romanus]

Nevermind the ship itself. What of the crew?

~Jirisys ()

Well, the majority of the crew would be slaves. But the marines certainly would have to be paid...a lot.

[jirisys]

Well, the majority of the crew would be slaves. But the marines certainly would have to be paid...a lot.

The actual cost of hiring/paying the marines/crew and the fleet itself=price, paying for repairs and the stuff and pay for the marines/crew=upkeep, hiring and replacing downed ships and crew/marines=retrain

~Jirisys ()

[Foot]

I actually think the costs of most ships initially should be raised but upkeep lowered as regular maintaining wasn't incredibly expensive then but launching and the occasional refits were. Since a small fleet of quiremes costing less than a couple unit of peltasts seems unreasonable.

From our internal forums:

It's true that building a ship was expensive, but the cost of paying the crew was even more so. The ancient sources indicate the cost of building a trireme was about a talent, and outfitting the vessel cost another talent. Paying the crew cost about a talent per month. So the maintenance cost for a full year was 6 times the expense of construction and outfitting. Even if the vessel was crewed for only half the year it would have been 3 times more expensive to crew than to construct. In practise, the Athenians crewed only as many vessels as they felt they needed and kept large numbers of uncrewed ships in reserve. In an emergency, the reserve vessels were re-outfitted and manned.

While large mediterranean states maintained standing fleets, these tended to be small compared to the fleets they built in wartime.

Foot

[Ichon]

Well I don't know that much about Athenian vs Roman navy but my 1 impression was that Athenian and most Greek states were crewed by free men while the Romans used slaves. That might be a wrong impression but it would change the cost of labor I'd guess.

Also sailor was a respected occupation among Greeks- not as much among Romans. Though if all the factions share ship types it wouldn't make sense to have different costs anyway.

I've read that typical wages for a middle class Hoplite were 40 drachmas a month? And its roughly 6,000 drachmas per talent? So 1 talent would pay 150 men for a month. So if a single trireme cost 2 talents and we figure a ship/fleet represents 10 ships then 20 talents to build- another 1 talent for repairs per ship over 6 months and crew of 200 per ship upkeep would be 90 talents for 6 months.

Since we can't disband the crew when ship not in use in the game I figure half that is fair since in a 6 month period of the ship in service it might actually only be at sea for 3 months. Depending on conversion to game currencies then roughly that could be 1,000 build cost and 2,250 upkeep for a single "fleet" of tiremes. Seems a bit much unless the economy is radically altered so maybe half that? 500 build cost and 1,125 upkeep?

If it were a Roman ship and slaves were prisoners of war or criminals whose cost was quite cheap would wages be half or even 1/3 of a Greek ship? Although the initial Roman fleets used free sailors so the cost would have been equivalent.

Anyway- after looking into it I am convinced that most times the upkeep cost would be more than the initial construction costs by a large factor- my impression originally was based on thinking most of the crew other than officers and marines were slaves.

[moonburn]

slaves were used in ships but not in warships i believe at least until the imperial era romans used citizens or auxilia to row the warships since it demanded alot of training and willingness i mean many pirate groups where more powerfull then kings at given times and those pirates gave caesar and pompey a thriumph each so using slaves in warships seems counterproductive

[Atilius]

my 1 impression was that Athenian and most Greek states were crewed by free men while the Romans used slaves.

That's a misconception. During most of our time period, Roman warships were crewed by proletarii - citizens who did not have enough wealth to qualify for service in the army (Polybios 6.19). The Roman navy also used vessels supplied by the allied greek city states of Magna Graecia. These vessels would hae been crewed by free greeks.