Army Take II

[Guinness]

50,000 mouths to feed is 50,000 mouths to feed. People costs (and in this era, horse costs) are the lion's share of the maintenance costs of an infantry unit.

[Darman]

And horses cost immeasurably more than men to feed. 

[Tanthalas]

And horses cost immeasurably more than men to feed.

That kinda depends, on the region your using them in.  My Family raises Quarter Horses (ok so realy we just keep a few around for trail rides and chasing an ocasional cow) however 6 months out of the year they cost us basicly nothing to fead.  However the other 6 months they would run us around $200.00 per horse per month to fead if we didnt raise our own Hay.

[Darman]

If you are trying to maintain army horses (generally draft horses and larger riding horses) in the field then yes, much more expensive.  Most of the expense stems from either the cost of transporting the fodder or the cost of the grain (if the horses are being fed grain).  Obviously hay can be grown or cut just about anywhere grass grows and horses do have the ability to graze, however the larger draft animals need something more substantial than just grass or hay. 

[Tanthalas]

I admitedly dont know much about Draft Horses (only ones I have ever realy been around even are my Uncles Percharons which he uses for show pulling) and I know less about Cav Horses (although I do know that thats what the Thuroghbred was bread for originaly).  The little I do know about horses comes from growing up with them (literaly I got my first pony when I was 4)

[Darman]

I wrote my senior thesis on the logistics of the early Crusades.... there were a LOT of horses that died from lack of water and food.  Most of the horses the knights ended up using were the local ponies that were more adapted to both the heat and the quality of forage available (grass rather than grain).  The larger European warhorses and draft horses were bred on farms and mostly housed in stables.  They were fed grain, especially when they were going to be worked hard.  Even during the Boer War the British Army's horses were fed grain and had to spend several months in South Africa getting acclimated to pasturage rather than hay and grain before being sent into combat. 

[miketr]

Some detail on how Forts are to work.  They represent 1/20th a Corps in terms of manpower so 2,500 men per citadel.

Hgn, just how large a single citadel are you thinking about? Or is a regiment of infantry included and other independent support included in that number?
Most forts I am familiar with (Boden and the Belgian ones) hade garrisons of around 3-600 men, including the close defence infantry.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=62cd5882-1e25-45f2-ad46-7291392c525e
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=d2883f4d-5ee4-4d1a-867c-edf5832c4c00

Reason I react is because there is quite a few cities with ports along the coastlines that could use a serious fort in the archipelagos to deter any amphibious assaults, but were a fort with 2500 men are massive overkill.

Its not a real number, I have read 19th century and early 20th century forts and I don't think any of them had this much manpower.  Its a number for accounting / game mechanic reasons. 

Michael

[miketr]

... so with 42 forts of about 300 men each, you're looking at a total of 12600 men manning those forts (but that is a bit of a guess; German wiki on the defense line gives about 10000 men).

Other people packed troops into forts; Belgium's defense plan was in effect to have no field army in WW1 they were all to be garrison infantry to support the forts.

Don't get caught up on manpower numbers again, its a game mechanic. 

Michael

[Carthaginian]

I wrote my senior thesis on the logistics of the early Crusades.... there were a LOT of horses that died from lack of water and food.  Most of the horses the knights ended up using were the local ponies that were more adapted to both the heat and the quality of forage available (grass rather than grain).  The larger European warhorses and draft horses were bred on farms and mostly housed in stables.  They were fed grain, especially when they were going to be worked hard.  Even during the Boer War the British Army's horses were fed grain and had to spend several months in South Africa getting acclimated to pasturage rather than hay and grain before being sent into combat. 

As a man who has fought in these kinds of climes and knows the stresses involved, allow me to make a few statements.

A lot of ANYTHING is going to die if you are traversing a desert.
Darman, a lot of those horses likely did not die due to 'acclimatization' or lack of fodder... I'm quite willing to say that they died of the KNIGHTS lacking sufficient fodder. Whether it was the knight making something semi-palatable out of the oats he had intended for his horse, or just deciding that a nice horse steak beats the shit outta starving to death- well, you take care of the horse first under most circumstances, but eventually the man takes precedent over the horse.

I can see the temperatures making a lot of difference during the Boer war... but for the Crusades, it's not like the horses were there in a matter of weeks. Most of those horses took YEARS to reach their destination (especially in the early crusades) and would have had sufficient time to become accustomed to both the climate and the pasturage before actually reaching the Holy Land. In the late 1880's, the horses were practically instantaneously changed from one environment to another, and I can buy the long acclimatization period. 

[Tanthalas]

Granted I never used Horses in Combat, still it makes sence to me it costs more to cloth equip and fead an infantryman than it would a horse.  The bigest expence with horses is the initial investment and training.  Anyone who has ever transported a horse anywhere, knows they dont exactly enjoy the experiance, I can only imagine how a long trip on a ship affects them (but im sure from my own experiances that some recovery time is necessary)

as far as the game Mechanic im more concernd with Marines being aparently lumped in with Army than I am about the aditional costs of Cav vs Infantry...

[miketr]

Depending on how often we get new citadel and artillery techs, I would say forts should not receive additional mali against siege weapons that are only one generation ahead, the difference in strength should be sufficient.

Vague plan is to have it as an increasing bonus.  The projected availability dates are shown above.  So 1860, 1880, 1895, 1905, 1915, etc.


As to the bonus its to be an increasing bonus the more outdated the fort is the more effective siege artillery will be at breaking the fort.  I am being vague here because the exact detail hasn't been worked out.  I am leaning toward a multiplier for each separation in generation.

Michael

[miketr]

Will historical (pre-start date) forts in our territories be considered "free" (ie only need to pay for upkeep)?

NO

You have to pay for forts, you pay for dry docks, etc.  NOTHING IS FREE.

Michael

[Carthaginian]

Perhaps this needs to be separate, perhaps not...

How would we pay for canals and the like?

[miketr]

It's probably true that our manpower estimates per fort item are all wrong. We're trying to equate a fort of given size to an infantry unit of given size to evaluate their relative fighting power. A medium sized fort system, like that of the Crusnes Sector of the Maginot line, with 7 Ouvrages might equate to a 7 citadel "fort" in our system, but by my count would need something like 3000(ish) men to man, including it's outlying fortifications. It's probably very close to equivalent to a Division's fighting strength in our system, except that with no attacking power or mobility, all that fighting strength is concentrated in defense.

So what we probably need to get to is a system where Forts are more expensive to build than an infantry formation, but much less expensive to maintain, given they should have lots less mouths to feed. So we'll work on it. Right now a fort is 3x more expensive to build than it's equivalent infantry formation, but has the same cost to maintain. It's possible that number needs to be more like 5x more expensive to build, but 1/4 or 1/5 as expensive to maintain.

I will repeat what I said in private before so people know where I am going from.

Manpower isn't much an issue.  Issue is attempting to balance things, the more variables you add in the hard to balance things.

Currently the only variable is combat power.  Cost and upkeep are all the same for each fraction of unit.  If we start playing games with the upkeep it will make it harder to balance the effectiveness of things.  So if we have forts having more combat power and cheaper upkeep how does that line up?  Right now forts have twice the combat power of a infantry unit and don't move + they block communication.  Its very easy to think on the relative balance there.  The more variables you add in the harder this balancing becomes.

Michael

[miketr]

So really old forts?  More than 50 years old, maybe even 100 years old, will be cheaper, but not worth a lot against modern cannon...but still viable.  Even several hundred year old forts are viable against ground troops....if they don't have cannon.  And even then, small cannons can only do so much...and be destroyed by the forts cannons if not careful.

1) The world is made up by in large.  Who is to say what stone fort is where?

2) Really old forts with high stone walls are death traps vs. artillery.  There is a reason that forts once gun powder appeared went down and had lots of earth works.

Michael